Trip Report Goin' Down the Bayou: Takin' You All The Way **COMPLETE**

I sit here at my kitchen table. Paw Patrol is on the TV, toys strewn around the living room. Breakfast made, eaten and cleaned up, coffee re-heated for the third time, and Malcolm down for his first nap. It feels the same, it’s our routine. Did we really just return from 8 days in Disney or was it just a dream? I see little Minnie and Mickey crocs on my counter…Snow White and Tigger stuffed toys in Kinley’s bed… It wasn’t a dream! It was 8 caffeine-fuelled, whirlwind days through Orlando, and somehow we survived to share the story with you all! Did my WDWMagic dreams come true? Did I accomplish all the things I was inspired to do by reading all the trip reports of the past? You’ll have to read along to find out!

Some quick reminders:

Who we are:
Me! (Teresa) and DH Lukas
Our kiddos Kinley (2.5yrs) and Malcolm (5 months)
My sister Emily (@AKemily)
My parents Marj and Kevin (Or “Baba” and “Oy” as Kinley calls them)

When and Where: Feb 1-8, 2018 at POR

We had a great time but MAN are we ever tired. It is a LOT of work bringing 2 kids to Disney World (never mind your parents ). But we had a lot of fun and I’m looking forward to re-living it all as I share with you because it is all still a blur in my mind. But we kept good notes, @AKemily will chime in here and there with her thoughts and feelings, and if you ever needed to see a thousand pictures of a 2 year old meeting Disney characters, we’ve got you covered!

Coming Up: Travel Day 1 - We forget something VERY important on the plane (Not a kid, don’t worry)

 

[krause]

Day 1 - Travel February 1, 2018

Our flight was scheduled to leave at 3:40pm which meant we planned to leave for the airport around 1:00pm. Lukas wanted us to have a bank meeting yet that morning and he thought that I wouldn’t want to do that yet before our trip but YES get me out of this house! We’ve been packed for hours and I need to leeeaavveeee!

I gave Kinley the "job" of decorating Mousekeeping envelopes to try and pass the time.

So, we officially “left” for our holiday around 11:00am. Quick stop at the bank at 11:45 to sign some papers, if Disney World is as exciting as this fountain at the bank we are set!

Get gas to fuel the van, and then Starbucks to fuel the parents . We picked up Lukas’ stepdad at 12:30 so he could drive our van home from the airport, and we’re off around noon! About a half an hour drive to the airport and we’re there! Mom, Dad, and Emily came via taxi and arrived about 5 minutes after us!

What we are leaving behind:

We only checked 1 bag on the way down (It’s an extra $25CAD to check a bag) so we dropped that off with the beautiful yellow DME tag on it. I’ve never seen security busy at our airport so we breezed through security, through American customs, and done!

We were still fairly early and Mom, Dad, and Emily hadn’t had the Starbucks stop that we did, so they ordered some Margharita Flatbreads from the airport restaurant. Dad started off his vacation with a Stella Artois (Dad and Lukas drink beer… but it’s rarely “fancy” beer), and a few Tim Hortons coffees. I’m told one of the pizzas was good and one was quite soggy (like they had made one, realized that we ordered 2, so made another one but the first one was gross by the time the second was made). Oh well, we’re on the DDP so no one will starve this week!

They let families with “infants” (not “children” because there were dozens of them on this direct flight to MCO) board first, so we took advantage of that and got on the plane! However the plane didn’t leave. So we sat. And sat. And sat some more. There was a ~4 year old girl in the airport already screaming, and that didn’t stop while on the plane. I normally don’t mind if there are other kids crying (Not my kids, not my problem). But this was a gut-wrenching, heart-breaking cry of “I want to sit with Mom!”. And it went on. And on. And on. Dad did nothing. Mom sat across the aisle with another (quiet) daughter. And did nothing. This cry was on and off the entire flight (but mostly on). I am totally fine with letting kids have tantrums and not giving into every whine but there didn’t seem to be a good reason for letting this go on .

Malcolm slept on and off during the flight and Kinley slept about the first hour and then was content making the rounds and sitting on everyone’s laps (mostly Baba’s) playing various games and snacking. With 5 adults, every once in a while me and Lukas would end up without a kid! I never anticipated this, so I didn’t even pack adult headphones. Lukas made it work!

I thought I had ordered us food for this flight but apparently I ordered us food for the flight home. Luckily they had extras so we all had some food and were still going fairly strong when we finally made it to MCO 45 minutes late around 9:15pm.

Up Next: What we forgot on the plane

 

[tasha ratliff]

YAY

 

[Pardonmypixiedust]

Following

 

[riverside]

Following along!!

 

[krause]

Day 1 continued

We were SO ready to get off this plane, between the 7 of us we had 5 carry on suitcases, 3 backpacks, a laptop bag, and a diaper bag. We scooped all this up and got off that plane as fast as we could (which isn’t very fast when you’re in row 22).

We made it to the fonorail,

and just as me and Emily finished our fonorail selfie, my stomach dropped. I forgot the baby carrier on the plane . Malcolm was going to almost exclusively nap in there on our trip. I didn’t know how he would nap in the stroller as he hasn’t had much experience in it (NOT a good stroller napper we found out) and when he is napping, the carrier allows us to still wait in queues and eat at restaurants (I was NOT going to be that person maneuvering a double stroller around in table service restaurants). Not only that, I am quite attached to my Tula carrier and they are not cheap.

Lukas tried to ride the fonorail back to the gate but they wouldn’t let him. They told us to go to the ticketing desk. We did that but there was no one there. We made our way to DME and asked there what we should do and again were told to go to the WestJet ticketing desk. Lukas and Emily ran back upstairs and found a WestJet worker who was on his way out. He made a call and found out that the plane had already left and “we don’t always check the plane after a flight”. Um, what?? Doesn’t this seem just bizarre that they wouldn’t do a walk through and look for left behind items?

By this time we were all exhausted, it was hours past the time we were thinking we would get to the resort and all I wanted to do was get on that bus and move on with our lives. I was really looking forward to the DME as it was my parents and Emily's first time staying onsite and I feel like following those signs to DME is the beginning of the magic. Being grumpy and upset was not a part of the plan .

We made our way to DME, walked straight on to a bus, and waited about 10 minutes for it to leave (people from our plane were on this bus so we didn’t miss a bus at least by going to ask about the carrier). This was the first of many times on this trip that I was thankful I hadn’t changed our reservation to POP as I thought about doing because there were cheerleaders and dance groups everywhere.

While waiting to leave, I was FB messaging with my aunt who was also in Disney as we had plans to meet them for lunch at Sanaa the next day. They stay off site and a brilliant idea hit me! Maybe just maybe they would be willing to find me a carrier the next day. I bribed them with the promise of naan bread and they agreed! They would be our Disney heroes and pick up a baby carrier for us tomorrow . I honestly don’t know what we would have done if this hadn’t worked out because we used that carrier a LOT.

The rest of the bus ride was more enjoyable after getting that figured out.

A terrible picture of the sign:

After dropping people off at OKW, SSR, and POFQ, we finally made it to POR.

We checked in (Canadians have to stop at the desk to check in and get Magic Bands), found out that my room requests had been received and we were in a room next to my parents on the ground floor (necessary with the stroller).

We walked to building 36, called for Bell Services to drop off our Garden Grocer order (bananas, yogurt, granola bars, milk, etc for early morning breakfast before parks as well as beer and wine for the evenings), and we were all in bed and asleep by 12:30am. Some time around 2:00 am our suitcase was dropped off (or so Lukas tells me, I slept through it). This was the first (and only) night that Malcolm had a solid stretch of sleep going 6 hours. Of course I was up every hour or two anyways.

And that was day 1. We got in way later than we expected and had a very busy week ahead of us but we had made it and that was all that mattered.

 

[myhappyplace]

Sounds like you're off to a great trip, baby carrier-forgetting notwithstanding! Reading along...your babies are adorable!

 

[krause]

YAY

Following

Following along!!

Welcome! Thanks for reading!

 

[krause]

Sounds like you're off to a great trip, baby carrier-forgetting notwithstanding! Reading along...your babies are adorable!

Thank you! We think they’re pretty great

 

[Sabrina1705]

Following!

 

[krause]

Day 2 - Animal Kingdom February 2, 2018

My alarm woke me up at 6:30am. I almost turned over and went back to sleep but then I saw a text from my Dad that said “Wake. Play.” which is what Kinley says when she doesn’t want to go to bed. Then I realized. We’re in Disney! I can sleep when I’m dead! (I told myself this many many times on this trip). I got myself ready and woke the kiddos and Lukas around 6:45am.

We got our first look at the beautiful POR in the daylight .

We were at the bus stop by 7:15 and only waited a minute for a bus to arrive. They loaded 2 ECV (one of them with a healthy-appearing ~12 year old boy on it... let's not go there...) and took the bus to AK for EMH.

We were quickly through security by 8:01am and started on our way to Pandora.

There was a 20 minute wait posted for NRJ and that’s about how long we waited until we got on our boat.

Now, we all watched Avatar again about a month ago and boy am I glad we did. Just so that maybe we had some tiny semblance of appreciation for this ride. I really wanted to like it more than the haters do, but seriously. They could have at least thrown in one tiny little drop or something, anything. It’s bad, guys. Really bad. Like I don’t know if I will ever go on it again bad. When you see the capability they have to create rides like FoP it really makes you wonder what they were thinking here. Cool animatronic at the end? Sure. But the next day riding Journey of the Little Mermaid, I was thinking that the Ursula animatronic is just as cool - AND it’s a recognizable, timeless character. I’ll move on.

@AKemily thoughts on NRJ: It was fine. I’ll go again when the waits go down to 10 minutes but as a new ride I feel like it should have exceeded or at least met the excitement level of other kid-friendly rides at AK. I feel like it’s meh for children and meh for adults. Also, the animatronic? Very well done but could they not have got a better singer? All I could think was, it’s impressive and all but MAN it’s bad at singing. I could hardly listen to it. I was really glad we only waited 20 minutes, for which the line was almost more impressive than the ride itself.

Pandora as a land? Amazing. Still not 100% convinced that the whole thing is necessary but it is a very cool area and of course FoP is an amazing ride, but we had a FP coming up for that a little later.

We made our way to Creature Comforts to pick up some sustenance. My drink of choice for the week was an Americano with an extra shot of espresso (yes that totals 5 shots of espresso). It was barely enough to keep me going. We got bacon, egg, and gouda sandwiches as well. I remembered that Kinley had liked trying these in the past so I gave her some to try and she LOVED it . She’s not a “picky” eater but I don’t cook a very wide variety of foods at home and she is always unsure of things she doesn't recognize. So when I find something she likes when we’re not at home, I let her have it! Needless to say, she had a Bacon, Egg, Gouda sandwich every single day of the trip .

Up Next: Safari

 

[krause]

Following!

Thanks for following!

 

[Tuvalu]

NRJ review? You and @AKemily nailed it!

 

[krause]

NRJ review? You and @AKemily nailed it!

Aw, shucks. Thanks @Tuvalu

 

[krause]

It was still EMH and KS had a posted wait of 5 minutes so we made our way there and walked on. It was a good safari!

Here's some obligatory animal photos:

The bongos were being fed when we drove by and who knew there were SO many of them! At least 10 came out of the bushes, they aren’t lying when they call them the “ghosts of the forest”.

No baby hippo sighting

The bridge still terrifies me even when they don't have the effect on.

Who doesn't love giraffes?? Also, they let us bring our coffees on the safari which surprised me. Jokes on us, bumpy road + hot coffee is not a good combination.

We had a safari on one of our past trips with the male lion roaring. Once you see that, nothing compares.

Up Next: Caring for Giants tour!

 

[krause]

We had the Caring for Giants tour coming up for me, Emily, and Mom but had some time to spare so we went and sat in the quiet eating area in Africa behind Tamu Tamu refreshments. This is one of our favourite “secret” quiet spots. There was no one here so we sat a while, grabbed some snacks, and used the bathroom.

The boys and kids took off on their own here, I’m told they just “wandered around” and tried to get the kids to nap.

Our Caring for Giants tour was great! We checked in along with another mom and her 2 daughters from LA.

Our name tags were made from elephant poop!

We walked backstage and of course were told no pictures in this area. I LOVE seeing backstage things. I pull up Disney on Google Earth and snoop through all the backstage areas. We walked through the parking lot where our guide said the KS trucks were parked at night (44 of them! None were in the parking lot - I asked if all 44 were on the safari at once and she didn’t seem to know). We got on a little bus and drove to the CFG area. We also drove past the horticulture area which our guide said is 90 acres.

A few fun facts we learned at this part of the tour: There is a floating rock in Pandora that looks like a Hidden Mickey, but apparently Joe Rohde said it was “just a coincidence” and that any potential Hidden Mickeys in Pandora are also just coincidences. He wanted to make sure there were NO Hidden Mickeys in Pandora to make it as other-worldly as possible. @AKemily says: Just another reason (in addition to his earring) that I don’t know how I feel about Joe Rohde.

We also saw a telephone pole that was cleverly disguised as a tree, the back of the "Disney sunset", and a fake hippo hidden in the bushes. The CM told us that the fake hippo came from the Jungle Cruise ride and apparently the keeper CMs used to hide him in different places to freak the other CMs out (including inside a refrigerator)! The bushes behind the CFG area is his final resting place.

We made our way to the CFG viewing area and learned all about AK's elephants.

We were told that AK currently has 10 elephants (7 females, 3 males). The matriarch is “Rafiki” and the CMs love her because she loves to eat so much. She eats everything they provide and then when she wants a snack she starts ripping down trees and bushes in the elephant area.

Luckily for us, the “baby” elephant Stella and her mom Donna were in an area that you wouldn’t have been able to see from the Safari but RIGHT in front of the CFG viewing area so we got a ton of pictures of that.

I also appreciated seeing another mother elephant nursing her baby elephant - our guide Connor told us that “baby” is 6 years old and actually had to kneel down on his front knees to still be able to nurse. I nursed Kinley to 19 months and am currently nursing Malcolm so I could feel this mama’s pain.

For the second half we had a CM who grew up in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe talk to us about conservation and what is was like growing up in Africa. Anyone like us who has been on the safari a zillion times knows how Disney researchers discovered that elephants don’t like the sound of bees so farmers in Africa put hives around their farms to keep the elephants away and they can sell the honey! I do like this story, (warning: cynical moment ahead) but have Disney researchers ever learned anything ELSE about elephants??? I feel like this is always their example of how Disney has helped Africa and it’s a great story, but please tell me there is more??

Anyways, CFG tour was a great tour and a nice “break” from the parks. We did it at 10:00 because the elephants were supposed to be more active in the morning, but we thought later maybe should have done it at a busier time of the day because lines were still quite short when we started the tour but the park had filled up by the time we were done.

Up Next: More AK

 

[krause]

We rejoined the boys at 11 and thought we would go check the single rider line for Everest.

I see you, Flights of Wonder refurb. We were super disappointed that this would be closed during our trip as we do love this show, but it is in desperate need of an upgrade and I'm hoping that they will make it really great.

I stopped at Y&Y and grabbed some fried rice for Kin. The standby for EE increased to 105 minutes by the time we walked there and single rider was posted at 60 so we decided to skip it as we had an ADR to get to! We had a quick break sitting in the RoL bleachers (so nice that these are open during the day as there is no where to sit in AK). Kinley ate her rice and we had a bit of a break.

We had time to walk the Maharajah Jungle Trek before we had to leave. The baby tigers were out but sleeping.

Dad overheard one lady talking to her friend and ranting about how the chains at the entrance to the bird area were “so unnecessary” and “SUCH a pain”. My Dad might have set them straight explaining the chains were to keep the birds in and that hushed them up .


We headed to the park exit to catch a bus to our ADR. While waiting, everyone else went to the bathroom and Emily was pushing Kin and Malcolm around in the stroller. We saw Brer Rabbit and Brer Bear walking around and Emily said Kinley FREAKED when she got close to Brer Rabbit. I was very worried going in that Kinley wouldn’t like the character M&G’s because I was hoping to do a lot of them. You’ll have to wait and see how that turned out.

While they were walking around, I stood by myself and when I turned around, Turk was RIGHT there! I jumped and screamed and everyone around me laughed. Well, what do you when a character approaches you? Take a selfie of course!

After I did that one, I figured I should start a collection so I chased down Brer Bear and Brer Rabbit. See what you miss when you go to the bathroom??

Up Next: An ADR that never disappoints!

 

[krause]

We hopped on a bus for AKL around 12:20 and had a quick bus ride.

Kinley fell asleep on the bus and ended up sleeping through the whole meal (so I did end up being that person with a double stroller in the table service restaurant! Sorry!) I am also that person who breastfeeds in public (Sorry, not sorry), so I found a little nook and fed Malcolm while the others went outside to check out the animals. We were seated right around our reservation time of 1:00 and were very hungry by this point so I quickly made sure the full naan service was ordered and we ordered drinks. My heroes (aunt and uncle) arrived and gave me our new baby carrier!

Seriously though, is this ever bad?

Mojito for me

Coconut cooler for Em

We all ordered our food. The Potjie Inspired on the menu says that you can have one from the “Journey” selections and one from the “Harvest” selections. However, if you are on the dining plan we learned you can have 2 from one and 1 from the other! Ahh my mouth is watering just typing this. It is SO good.

I had the Potjie with Butter Chicken, Braised Beef, and Paneer Tikka. It. Was. So. Good. I ate every bite. I don’t remember what everyone else had, but I remember that Emily wasn’t happy with her braised beef (thought it was dry) and my Dad wasn’t happy with the Goan Seafood Curry.

Uncle Eric had the Kenya Coffee Barbeque Sandwich.

Auntie Patti had the Tandoori Chicken.

I didn’t ask for reports (because I was SO full), but I didn’t hear any complaints!

Up Next: Dessert!

 

[krause]

For dessert, I had the Letite Creme. I took pictures of everyone else's but not mine. It was meh. But I believe I ate it all .

Uncle had the Chocolate Orange Tart

And everyone else had the Spice Trade Candy Bar which our waiter described as “a Snickers on crack”.

Emily thought it should have less fruit in it and more chocolate But overall - super good!!!

I also ordered Kinley the kids Mac and Cheese to go because I thought she would eat it when she woke up. But nope. Lukas ended up eating it cold because he said it was THAT good.

We went outside for a little while more but it was getting overcast and a bit chilly so we said farewell to Auntie and Uncle and got on a bus back to the AK.

 

[prfctlyximprct]

I have a Baba too!!!


Your kids are too cute for words!! You can just see Kinleys excitement in the photos, as well as yours your photos of Sanaa are tempting me. I’m always afraid to try there.. but AKL is too beautiful and your pictures have me drooling