Trip Report Didn't we JUST do this?

Yup. We did. Yup, 2nd trip in a couple months. In June, we did a rather unique trip for our clan. Playing the vague role of chaperones, but really just a safety valve, and doing what amounted to an adults only trip was pretty cool. Then we got home, and we got to talking, and dates showed up on RCI, and my parents had some extra RCI points b/c of no traveling for 18 months, and we wanted one more family vacation before our daughter heads off to college.

Need I say more? So, we are back at Old Key West from August 20-27. Hot on the heels of two weeks of me teaching marching band camp, our daughter saying goodbye to many of her friends going off to other colleges (her college starts very late - we drop her off on Labor Day weekend for a week of freshman orientation - classes start a full week later), and lots of online teacher training for whatever the new school year holds.

We decided to put the impetus of planning on our daughter, so she has picked our days in which parks as well as most of our table service meals (we jumped in with a couple ideas). If you've never followed along on our trip reports, I'm a rather... well, let's just say excessive planner. So, being a bit hands off this time is tough for me! But knowing that our original plans for the past two summers included an extended trip around Europe and college tours of the northeast and California, both of which had to be canceled - well, she deserves to have a little control over something!

Obviously, no control over the masking situation... but we did totally fine last July!

Normally, I'd wait until the week before our trip to start the Pre-Trip portion of the proceedings, but I'll be teaching marching band from 8am-5pm for the next couple weeks and the mental state upon return home those nights is fragile at best! The few days before we leave are not quite as intense, but I don't foresee a ton of PTR time during those days. So, here we are. I'll check in tomorrow or Friday with the basics of the plan!

 

[Swissmiss]

That last picture of the three of you is fabulous - just the type of picture that would look nice in a frame in a freshman dorm room

 

[brifraz]

While the girls slept, I decided to just relax a bit and watched a little mini-marathon of 4 episodes of Clone Wars. I figured I'm already at Disney in full geek mode, might as well relish in it! But, let's get back to our trip. This morning we had a brief visit to Animal Kingdom that started off with a beautiful view from the bridge across to Harambe village.

We got checked in right at 8am and were the first party to be seated at Tusker House this morning. It's been a few years since we have visited, but it was one of our daughter's favorites growing up. Now, with COVID precautions in place, it isn't quite the same and the family style meal isn't quite as good (or have as much variety) as the regular buffet, but it was still one we wanted to do! BUT the meal started off with a great tragedy. Now, this was something that we had read about online and were aware of, but nothing can prepare you for the harsh reality of THE GREAT POG SHORTAGE OF 2021.

We talked to our server a little bit about it and evidently Minute Maid is working remedy the supply issues and that they hope to have POG back some time in the Fall, but boy was it sad this morning - we left one juice cup empty in honor of POG.

The first course is a bowl of fruit (watermelon, honeydew, pineapple, strawberry) with vanilla yogurt and the beautiful bread plate. The cheetah bread is relatively simple in terms of taste, the cornbread muffins do have some bell pepper in them so be aware of that, and the multigrain croissant is really good!

The addition of nutella (or whatever brand chocolate hazelnut spread) to the usual jam and butter was nice. The main platter of food is pretty standard stuff for a Disney breakfast buffet. The potatoes are spiced a bit differently at Tusker House and you get some Simba waffles to go with the Mickey waffles, but pretty much as expected there.

The unique serving is the chicken curry bowl, which has some good curry flavor but not a whole lot of spice to it. It was good, but nothing really special.

But the main reason to head to Tusker House is, of course, the characters! We were visited by Daisy, Donald, Mickey, and Goofy all in their best safari outfits. Although the distanced character visits aren't quite ideal it is kind of nice not to see them getting mobbed by little kids and trying to move between crowded tables and get to all 10 pictures that each table wants and sign all the autograph books, etc. So maybe that's better???

That Goofy picture can also give you a good idea of the distances that are actually involved. The table you see in front of him was actually kept empty the entire time we were there and I suspect they rotate which ones they fill and which they leave empty - all the tables around the outside of the room were seated.

 

[brifraz]

After breakfast we still had some time in Animal Kingdom before we wanted to get to Blizzard Beach (opening was 11am so we just wanted to get in by about 10:45am). But first I have to share one more picture form the morning before breakfast. We got to see some animals that we have never seen at AK. We ALWAYS check out the Otter Grotto and never see any otters. A LOT of visits and no otters. But this morning... 4 otters! Playing, swimming, play-fighting, cuddling. It was awesome.

Since wait times are so low in AK right now, we headed back to the Safari first and pretty much walked onto a vehicle again. And another unique scenario there. A couple of the elephants also decided it was time for some playing as well - or, more accurate, some play fighting!

The lions were out and both females were awake (despite what it looks like here) and we think there might have been some roaring just before we got there.

We also got to see the juvenile giraffe again AND the young rhino as well! Plus we had a great driver for this one. Very entertaining and a big snarky as well.

After the safari, the girls decided that they needed a couple more rides on Everest and while they did that (yup, that would be rides 8 and 9 on this trip) I visited with Flik and friends and watched It's Tough To Be A Bug. Here are the girls enjoying their Everest overdose!

Next up was a ride on Kali River Rapids. Knowing that we were heading to a water park, we figured today was the best time of any to get wet! It's such a good ride, but... sadly it's just too short (and, based on the history, it should have been much longer but then money ran short). Nice and wet and now a little bit after 10am, we headed to Blizzard Beach. We are much more fans of Typhoon Lagoon, but it is what is open!

And it was not very crowded at all! As soon as we got in, we grabbed some chairs (many were available all day) and took the lazy river around the park to the steps up to Teamboat Springs. Rode that twice, once using the chair lift.

And then we did all three of the Runoff Rapids tube rides (that's a lot of steps). It was around 12:30pm after those five rides and we needed some lunch so our daughter grabbed a chicken sandwich and we got the chicken/parm/bacon flatbread. Both were good enough to get us filled and ready for more fun. Next up was rides on the Downhill Double Dipper, the Toboggan Racers, and the Snow Stormers. Following that we headed back up for one more ride on Teamboat Springs, but decided to get a selfie up on top of the mountain.

One last stop before we headed out - at I.C.E. Expeditions for the 'Princess Week' Special - the Elsa Sundae.

Lots of sugary goodness! Then back to the room and that pretty much brings you right up to the now! This evening we have our special 20th Anniversary (it was actually a couple weeks ago) dinner at Citricos. I'm sure there will be lots of pictures!

 

[RememberWhen]

We had to make ADRs recently for our October trip and I really waffled back and forth on Tusker House. In the end we decided against. Without the usual food AND distanced characters we just couldn’t justify it. But I’m glad you had fun! If it was a trip without little kids we might consider it.

 

[brifraz]

Anniversary Dinner from Citricos. Absolutely wonderful. Food was excellent. @MeffysMom surprised me with custom mini-cakes for dessert. The service and view was excellent as well (we could just see the HEA fireworks from our seats). Hope you enjoy the pictures!

1806 Old fashioned and the Orange Blossom Martini

Short Rib with Guava BBQ, with roasted poblano and cheddar grits.

Butter poached Florida Cobia with mashed fingerling potatoes, mushrooms, grilled asparagus, and a grapefruit buerre blanc.

Filet mignon with mashed potatoes and broccolini.

Surprise dessert!

And they brought us some complimentary champagne to help celebrate.

And just a little taste of the Mary Poppins decor around the place.

 

[Megbutnotmegan]

The otters are the best!! I was there in July and I think I spent 30 minutes watching them play while I waited for my family to join me after a solo morning! They were super playful and completely made my day.

 

[macefamily]

Happy Anniversary ! You're just a young couple. We're at 26 years next month

 

[RememberWhen]

Happy anniversary! Looks like a lovely dinner celebration!

 

[brifraz]

Good evening everyone. Hope you had a good Thursday. Down here we had a busy, but still with some time to relax. The plans for today have changed a few times over the past few weeks and finally got resolved yesterday evening with a plan for 3 parks in one day!

We were up and ready to go somewhat early and grabbed a morning bus to Magic Kingdom for a morning mountain tour. We got into the park at about 8:35am and headed to the rope drop for Seven Dwarfs. We weren't all that close to the rope and just didn't have the energy to push and shove to stay exactly in our spot when the masses started moving. We still ended up in a pretty good place, waiting only about 20 minutes for our ride.

One mountain done, we headed to Tomorrowland for the second mountain of the day. We both rode in Space Mountain, but the girls did it the 'normal' way and I just rode through on the TTA.

And here is your obligatory picture of the latest work on Tron! As someone who isn't all that into roller coasters, but has been a huge fan of Tron for almost 40 years I'm very excited about this... and hoping that it is one I can ride in comfort.

Now it was time for mountain #3 of the morning. After a very brief discussion, we decided on Big Thunder. Which we just walked right onto (oh, yeah - Space Mountain and TTA were both walk-ons as well). 3 mountains done and it was just an hour after opening and we were headed out. And onto the monorail for the first time on this trip. Not all that far as we had a late breakfast booked at The Wave... well, technically it was at California Grill which meant an incredible view from our seats!

And some really great food! Nothing all that incredibly fancy for us, but certainly some delicious food. Pictures here are of the avacado toast, the bacon cheddar grits, and the basic two egg breakfast.

After we ate, we felt it was absolutely necessary that we get that Cali Grill observation deck selfie!

We finished up lunch at about 11:30am and headed back to Old Key West to get some rest before hitting a couple more parks this evening. And this time it was legit rest as we just chilled out in our room for a couple hours before heading to Epcot. And that portion of the story will wait until tomorrow morning as I need some sleep!!!

 

[brifraz]

Alright, it's about 8:30am and we are getting everything in the room packed up and ready to go. I've got a few minutes, so let me catch you up on yesterday evening!

Mid-afternoon (maybe 3pm, not totally sure now), we headed into Epcot for for the first stage of our evening plan. Really, the only thing in the first stage was 'park at Epcot and get some food.' But, we decided that we needed a couple attractions as well. For the past year and a half, we've been calling each ride on Spaceship Earth our last one and now that the refurb seems to be shelved we just ride it for kicks now! As silly as the descent activity is, we were still a little bummed that the facial capture didn't work at all. I let @MeffysMom pick all the options and for some reason we ended up skiing and in an avalanche and breaking bones...definitely things we have not seen before.

Since food was our primary mission, that was what we decided to do next. @MeffysMom and I weren't quite meal ready yet, so we just grabbed some chips at Yorkshire Fish and Chips while our daughter got her favorite food in all of Epcot (ever) - the brie, apples, and cranberry sauce baguette from the Boulangerie. And we all drank a couple cups of ice water! Sorry no pictures of this food (okay, really no food pictures from the evening). We then decided to take a quick jaunt over to Mexico for a ride with the three caballeros. We had to wait a full 5 minutes!!

We then discussed possibly chilling at the DVC Lounge or maybe watching the China movie, but decided that it was time to head to Hollywood Studios. So, off to the Skyliner we went. Walked right on and rode our way through the Riviera, Caribbean Beach, and then to Hollywood Studios.

As soon as we entered Studios we were greeted by a surprising friend!

Honestly, I'm not sure that I've ever seen Max before! We did a little shopping along Hollywood Blvd and then decided that our relaxation time would be best spent with one more dose of our daughter's childhood revisited.

Yup, that's right. A little Frozen Sing-Along time. I know that this isn't a favorite among many folks over maybe 20 years old, but (believe it or not) it really is pretty enjoyable. The hosts (Arendelle Historians) are pretty entertaining and there are enough pop culture/modern society references that it keeps you on your toes. And the cuteness factor of a hundred or so little kids (and at least one 17 year old in this case) singing along and sometimes doing hand motions with the songs is pretty good.

While not all that exciting, it was time for some adult food and we went with Backlot Express. Sometimes chicken nuggets just hit the spot. And, actually, the hummus plate (Tatooine something or other is the official name) was really pretty darn good. We then headed back into the Black Spire Outpost for a little more shopping and then a ride on the Millenium Falcon. This time we took things a bit more seriously and had a very good adventure (two coaxium cannisters and very little ship damage). We then headed to Toy Story land and had a ride on Midway Mania. Once again, our daughter was the top score in the car! She's becoming quite the skilled Midway Maniac.

Our actual mission at Studios for the evening as a ride on Slinky Dog near closing when the line gets shorter. So over we went for about 20 minutes in line (it was showing 35 minutes) and then a nice ride with Slink. Personally, I think that Slinky Dog Dash is one of the better made roller coasters around. IMHO you actually feel like you are riding on a slinky with the motion created by the curves and hills. Well done, Mack Rides - as you can see in the picture I was trying to figure out who made it, but I had to look it up.

After Slinky, we headed out and caught a Friendship Boat back over to Epcot. And, yes... that means we have now completed the full Disney transportation circuit - bus, monorail, drive, skyliner, and boat (no Minnie Vans right now). And once back in Epcot we had about 15 minutes to find a good spot to watch Epcot Forever one last time. We went with right next to the rocks in front of Canada and although there were a lot of bugs in that area the view was pretty good and the smoke didn't linger as bad this time.

Very glad that there is a new show coming as I'm not much of a fan of this one. Although, perhaps some of that comes from my incredible love of Illuminations. I can't say that I like the giant obstructions in the middle of the lagoon, but I'm still hopeful that it will be a good show.

Well, it's 9am now and we are about to start packing up the car. Today's adventures will include Hollywood Studios (got group 27 for Rise) and Magic Kingdom (one last Happily Ever After viewing) and then the big overnight drive. Most likely won't be able to post about it until late tomorrow or even Sunday pending the exhaustion level!

 

[Tuvalu]

Maybe I’ll catch you in the MK later!

 

[brifraz]

Maybe I’ll catch you in the MK later!

Excellent! We will keep our eyes peeled.

 

[cgersic]

The Slinky picture is adorable and I love how the single rider with you is looking just as happy as the girls!

 

[brifraz]

The Slinky picture is adorable and I love how the single rider with you is looking just as happy as the girls!

His family was in the two rows in front of us and his girls were squealing with delight. They got right back in line.

 

[KellBelle]

Happy Anniversary! We plan to celebrate our 25th at WDW Thanksgiving week.

 

[macefamily]

Safe travels. Enjoyed going along with you on your trip. I hope to return the favor 9/23 as our family does Universal Studios Horror Nights and two Disney days.

 

[brifraz]

We are home! Another VERY fast drive. 14 hours door to door (including breaks) - it's very nice to have 3 drivers when you are driving overnight and are all pretty exhausted. I will post our final days adventures after getting some sleep, mowing the lawn, grocery shopping, and eating something!

 

[brifraz]

Okay, been home for 24 hours and feel like things are back to something resembling normality (or to quote Douglas Adams... 'we will be restoring normality just as soon as we are sure what is normal anyway'). Not that this week is anything like normal as @MeffysMom and I head back into school for teacher prep week (and our district BOE fights the statewide school mask mandate... but that's a whole different discussion) and we drive our daughter to college on Thursday-Friday.

You don't want to hear about all that stuff - you want to hear about our last day at Disney, right?

When I left you we were getting the car packed up and preparing ourselves for a day of Studios and Magic Kingdom. With our Boarding Group in hand, we headed to Studios at about 10am. It's a VERY rare day that we are not at a park at opening, so we were a little discouraged when we arrived and everything had 20+ minute waits. And the MDE App wasn't working to show the waits for everything, so we walked down Sunset Blvd to check the wait for Tower of Terror which was... 50 minutes! Well that wasn't going to happen for sure, so we did a little shopping (as you might have gathered we do a lot of shopping at Disney, but very little buying - total haul this trip was a backpack and a couple shirts). Then it was over to Star Tours and then Muppet Vision 3D. Both were walk-ons, which was nice (and both are fully air conditioned which is nice). For Star Tours we got pretty much all sequel trilogy segments. And now is the time when I will once again remind you that Muppet Vision 3D is one of the best attractions anywhere with a few pictures!!!

This is what happens when you have a little fun with your 3D Glasses and your iPhone camera.

It was pretty much lunchtime and we were getting pretty hungry so we decided to grab a bite to eat. Plan A was Baseline Taphouse and a pretzel or two, but the inside seating was all full and we just weren't up for sitting outside so we headed over to PizzaRizzo. No, it's not the best pizza on Earth, but it gets far more of a bad rap than it deserves! Our daughter had a little fun getting a mac and cheese kids meal and the frozen apple cider drink.

Plus a pumpkin cannoli!

We went with the appropriate to the venue, cheese pizza with a caesar salad and one of the Italian Margaritas (frozen lemonade with tequila, basically).

As you might be able to tell from the pictures, we were in the 'ballroom' upstairs with its fun collection of wedding dance tunes (as someone who spent a number of years playing bass in a wedding band, I totally get it) and nice light show. I also did a walk of the entire upstairs to get a little chuckle out of the records on the wall and the caricatures of the Muppet characters.

While we ate, our Rise number got called so we headed that way as soon as we were done eating. A little bit more of a wait as we went through the queue this time but still not bad at all. Having helped the Resistance for a third time on this trip, we checked out the app which was now showing Tower's wait time and it was just 10 minutes so for our final destination at Studios we took a ride on the Tower.

It was early in the afternoon and we headed to the Magic Kingdom. Our first destination was Space Mountain which did have about a 20 minute wait (was showing 30 minutes, if I remember right). Then it was across the park for one more ride on Pirates of the Caribbean and then wrapping up our afternoon at MK with a ride on the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Somehow on our walk across the park we managed to lose our daughter for a little bit... just couldn't find her anywhere!

After our three rides, it was time to rest for a bit of the late afternoon so we caught a boat to the Poly for some downtime.

Most of the afternoon there had been on-and-off light drizzle. Never enough to really need an umbrella, but enough to be a little annoying at times. The heavy clouds made the view from the boats very dramatic and the ride is always relaxing.

Got to go right now, so I'll have to wrap up our last day for you a later this week - although with the week that we have, it might not happen until the weekend!

 

[brifraz]

Hey all, what do you say we finally wrap up this adventure? Sorry for the week delay, but teacher duty week and driving to and from New Hampshire (about 8 hours each way) to get our daughter to college kinda made this week a bit busy! But, it's Saturday morning at 7am which means I'm up and ready to trip report!

All that's left of this adventure is a few hours of last Friday evening. When I left you we were on the boat to the Poly for some downtime and some food. We really didn't have any kind of plan, so when we arrived at Poly we just wandered a bit.

Did some shopping, hung out in the newly refurbished lobby and... neglected to take any pictures. After scouring the menus of all our options at Poly, we decided to give Trader Sam's a shot. And, the wait was about 40 minutes. Nope. BUT, with the rain sprinkles around, there was some seating available outside in the Grog Grotto, so we grabbed a table with a nice umbrella and sat and relaxed and ate and drank and enjoyed some live music as well. Honestly I can't remember exactly which drinks @MeffysMom got, but I just got a couple beers. The big excitement, though, was that our daughter got some... POG! Well, kind-of. Not the normal prepackaged stuff, but they basically homemade a mix for her - loved it! And we enjoyed the flatbread, dumplings, and pulled pork tacos to eat.

Our final adventure for this trip was to catch a last viewing of Happily Ever After before it goes away. So we caught a boat back over to Magic Kingdom and even though it was still an hour or so before the show, we grabbed seats at the Tomorrowland Terrace. Here's the view from our seats, although with the focus a little different!

Instead of just sitting there, we split up a little bit and the girls headed to ride Haunted Mansion one last time and then later I went and grabbed some fries to munch on. While the fireworks don't quite line up as intended from that seating on the side, you do get the big fun of having Tinkerbell fly directly over you!

And, regardless of the angle, the fireworks were excellent and a fitting wrap-up to our late summer week at Disney.

 

[MotherofaPrincessLover]

I walked by you guys when I was getting off Big Thunder Mountain on your last day!