Day 2: Animal Kingdom (Sunday May 30,2021)
Park hours: 8am-7pm
We arrived at the bus stop at 5:50am, with my daughters. Rest of family made it down by 6:10am. Crowd started to form shortly after. We made it to the park and were at the tapstiles by 6:55am. CMs let us through at exactly 7am. We had not been to AK since January 2017 and have never been exposed to Pandora.
We were 3rd into the park! I confidently followed the two people ahead of us hoping to god they were not going to the bathroom. We are Splash Mountain fans. We swear by it and it’s our favorite. If I’m honest with myself, Flight Of Passage is the new top dog. For all that is holy, I nearly cried. Fight me on this, it was amazing.
Day 2 AK:
Flight of passage
Na’vi
Kilimanjaro
Dinosaur
It’s tough to be a bug
Kali
Flight of passage
A few things to note, it was around the time we were in line for Kilimanjaro that we began to realize that Disney was cutting my youngest out of my family, to be replaced by randos, via memory maker. I called customer service and, after multiple disconnects and errors, was given the direction to find someone in the park to assist. My response was, “have you been to a Disney park?” If I take time out, especially at this park, I’m giving up a spot in line to a couple thousand of my closest friends. As I felt my pettiness begin to rise, I passed off with my wife who dealt with customer service. You will never know how much of an addict you are, or how cheaply you can be bought off, then when you go from nuclear rage to contented with an anytime FP for Flight of Passage. So, yay! Rode that twice.
Lunch was at Satu’li Canteen (I’m too lazy to look up the proper placement of the ‘). This was our first exposure and it is now probably our favorite CS in the parks. The only true competitor, for me, is Columbia Harbour House (down now) and Flame Tree. I had the pods- whoever said they tasted like a McDonald’s burger was high. But they were great. The little blue cheesecake was amazing though. I’ve been on a diet since 2019 and hadn’t had cake of any kind since then, so I may be suffering from recency bias, but it was amazing.
With that said, AK is still a half day park, and we didn’t have park hopper. We headed back to the hotel by 1pm... But this is probably still either the best or second best day of the trip because... Disney Springs.
We made it to the springs by 6pm and just relaxed. We stopped by the Coke store with the intention to hit my brother with a Beverly. Instead, we all shot Beverly, because we are stupid. Then, as a non-drinker, I said to heck with it and ordered the silliest looking adult beverage I could- Simply Rainbow (photo below).
But the live music was the thing. I’m from mississippi originally and have never been exposed to much in the way of live music. So, the first act we saw, in the landing next to the amphicars at Boathouse- Joseph Jovanni was great. Played a decent mix of pop songs with a unique flair, with a fair amount of humor mixed in. We had a 8:30pm for Raglan, a first for us, so we moved over. They had someone performing on the patio and he was amazing. I missed his name, but he was a from the tap Irishman. His performance of Hurt gives me chills thinking about it. Raglan was amazing. The food was a 7 out of 10, but the show, the dancers, the singers, etc, bumped it to a 9.5 out of 10. It is our newest must do every trip restaurant.
Day 2 grade: 9 out of 10.
Wins- Rope Drop
- Flight of Passage
- Pandora theming as a whole (better than Galaxy’s edge, fight me)
- Raglan Road
Push- still a half day park
Loss- memory maker took years off my life
