Trip Report Golden Girls do Disney!!!

What happens when you get 5 middle age gals who refuse to act their age?? The Golden Girls 2018!! LOL me and my girlfriends have been friends for over 35 years, we met in college when we all joined the same sorority (Go Sorors) and have stuck together through marriages, divorces, deaths, births of kids, loss of childrens, breast cancer chemo, fake and now menopause!! So twice a year we leave husbands, significant others and kids (4 live in Philly, 1 in Atlanta and 1 in Ohio) and act like 16 year olds. . This year lil Sister Sheryl wanted to do a safari and since no one was going to Africa we decided to do the next best thing......ANIMAL KINGDOM kilmanjario safaris. Thank you DVC membership....

I'm Eliza, the girl in the middle in red. this unfortunately was at the death of the 6th member of our merry band.

fun with hats at our weekend in D.C.

NYC trip.

So, in 24 days we will be checking into the Animal kingdom lodge for 5 days of fun, frivolity and frolicing (with copious amounts of booze along the way. ) I am the only one who's been to the world so I can't wait to show off my happy place.

Warning: this will be a happy trip report, yes I love the world and not ashamed of it. I've been accused of accepting "mediocracy" but it doesn't bother me. don't care that they have replaced the red head on POTC and we'll deal with the crowds as best we can.

I'll give the plans tomorrow, just wanted to drop in and say hi. My plan is to give a live report from arrival to departure and hope you'll come along for the ride.

 

[eliza61nyc]

I'm totally following along! I would love to do something with my girl friends, who I've been friends with for close to 25 years (I'm 37 now) but everyone but me has young children. The ones without children don't want to leave their husbands LOL. I've been with mine for 15 years and I'm ready for a girls only trip My sister in law and I have discussed it though (our husbands are brothers). And speaking of her, I recently planned a trip for me, my husband, and them. I didn't plan that many ADRs this time because I didn't want too scheduled for them. I had Ohana (our requirement), lunch at Beaches and Cream (for me), Kona Cafe breakfast (my husband's request), and lunch at Be Our Guest (for the SIL). We did quick service everything else and used mobile ordering where available.

lol, Hang in there Leigh, great friendships adapt. We all had children and now we're dealing with aging parents. when the kids were younger, having lunch together was about all we could swing.

 

[SHP]

Love AKL, can’t wait to hear all about your adventures. Maintaining friendships through the “having young kids” phase is hard, thanks for reminding us that it is so worth it in the long run. I hope you gals have a fabulous time!

 

[LeighM]

lol, Hang in there Leigh, great friendships adapt. We all had children and now we're dealing with aging parents. when the kids were younger, having lunch together was about all we could swing.

There are times I've been lucky to see them once a year LOL. I just went through dealing with an aging Mom and I lost her in 2016. Those friends I hadn't seen in years helped get me through it. There's nothing like an old friend that has known you through almost every stage of your life. And luckily for me, their children have caused them to have horrible memories so they don't always remember the stupid things I did

 

[eliza61nyc]

Yeah, the countdown has begun!!

more sleeps before we're at the world.

Saturday we had our pre trip chewfest and check off. We are celebrating two miles stones, one our 35 sorority anniversary which is where we met and more importantly one of the 'girls" hit her 5 year breast cancer free goal. which from what I understand makes her offically a survivor. YES!!

A friend of ours made us shirts for our trip, while not totally Disney -esq. we appreciated them. They say "Blessed" on front.

So I've been wanting some "Disney" luggage for a while but never brought any simply because I have no need for any. I've got more luggage than I need now. lol, unfortunately I will admit to not being exactly frugal at times and last weekend I saw a nice "minnie" carryon bag for a decent price...... You can guess where this ends.

It was on sale for 50 bucks at home goods but the one there had a rip on it, so I did some investigating on line and if anyone is looking, American tourister has them on sale for 69 bucks + an additional 30% off which took my price down to 48 bucks before tax.


So we're ready. look for an update on Friday, we have a ridiculously early flight out of philadelphia (6:50 am) which means being at the airport at 5 am at the latest. Land around 9:30, pick up the rental and hit the liquor store, then it's over to Kidandi village at AKL

See ya then & thanks for coming along.

 

[disneypearl]

Your trip is so close! I just got back almost a week ago and really miss it! You and your friends will have so much fun together! The Minnie carryon bag is adorable.

 

[eliza61nyc]

lol so what was supposed to be a "live" report is now a trip report because I forgot to tell my friends we needed down time. for women who said they wanted to relax on vacation boy did we close the park every night.
So we started our journey on Thursday at the ungodly hour of 4:30 am for a 7am flight from Philly to Orlando. first flight out may not have been the best choice,

after a pretty uneventful 2 hour flight, we picked up the rental, stopped at Cracker barrel for breakfast and headed to Kidandi village at AKL. Our first bit of pixie dust came and we got a text saying our room was ready. YES!!

two of us have been to the world before and two are newbies. All of us were first timers to AKL. It definitely did not disappoint.

Our 2 bedroom villa was gorgeous, we had the Savannah view so were able to see a number of animals. My one and only complaint... hallways are ridiculously long whew. talk about hiking Mt. Kilimanjaro!! We were in 7947 and it's a bit of a hike.

 

[eliza61nyc]

First day up?? Animal kingdom but before that, food!! lol, One of the things we like to do when on our vacations is eat. mainly because when we traveled with our individual families food choices often depend on the whims of our kids. this time it's all about the girls.

Mimosa and bloody mary's all around. since we did not have any breakfast ADR's we decided on Oliva's at OKW. it's a hidden favorite of mine and I never fail to have a great meal there.

Breakfast was delicious all around, service warm and friendly and not ridiculously expensive (ok remember we're talking Disney here, not expensive for Disney).

ON to Animal kingdom for our Wild africa trek.

 

[LeighM]

I've been wanting to try Olivia's but still haven't made it there

 

[fractal]

Alright! Great way to start off the trip!

 

[John Dulmage]

First day up?? Animal kingdom but before that, food!! lol, One of the things we like to do when on our vacations is eat. mainly because when we traveled with our individual families food choices often depend on the whims of our kids. this time it's all about the girls.

Mimosa and bloody mary's all around. since we did not have any breakfast ADR's we decided on Oliva's at OKW. it's a hidden favorite of mine and I never fail to have a great meal there. View attachment 278348View attachment 278349


Breakfast was delicious all around, service warm and friendly and not ridiculously expensive (ok remember we're talking Disney here, not expensive for Disney).

ON to Animal kingdom for our Wild africa trek.

That bloody mary looks awesome! I've never heard much about Olivia's, but it sounds great!

 

[eliza61nyc]

That bloody mary looks awesome! I've never heard much about Olivia's, but it sounds great!

Oliva's at OKW and the Turf club at Saratoga springs are two of what I call my little known treasures. Food is great and never hard to get a reservation. although I've never had dinner at Olivia's.

So next day was our Animal kingdom day. One of the problems I ran into is that one of our friends is NOT (and that's an understatement) a ride person. so trying to convince her that Disney does rides a lot different was a challenge. I made Fp's for Dinosaur, FOP and kilamanjaro safari, which we didn't really need because we also had reservations for Wild africa Trek .

WOW would be an understatement!! If you can do any extra at the world this would be it.

LOL, our non ride member, she's looking thrilled!!

Wild africa Trek for those who haven't been, takes you back stage sort to speak of the safari ride. You get to see many of the animals up close and personal and you get to speak with the animals caretakers who answer all your questions. Our two guides were degreed animal behaviorist.

lol giraffe jam. Sara the giraffe decided to just chill in the middle of the road and since animals have the right of way here, we got a good look at her.

the trek is 3 hours long and includes a really cool lunch on the savanna. you don't walk the entire way. lol the carnivores still cannot be trusted. It also includes a ton of free pictures that were taken by our guides.

Another excellent day.

We also did It's tough to be a bug, rivers of light and expedition Everest. EE surprisingly only had a wait time of 38 minutes so we did standby. Kali river rapids had a wait time of 100 minutes at 4 pm. so we skipped it.

our plan was to leave around 5, shower and go to dinner but since we did not have a fp for Rivers of light we opted instead to have dinner and drinks at Rainforest cafe then see ROL.

 

[ajrwdwgirl]

You sounds like a fun group of girls! I'm looking forward to seeing your adventures.

In June I'm going to Florida (with a couple nights at WDW) with one of my college girlfriends to celebrate our 40th. There was supposed to be a large group of us but it has ended up to just be the two of us. My friend actually suggested the couple days at WDW, which shocked me because she doesn't like rides. But she wants to spend sometime enjoying the liquids of World Showcase! I plan to get her on Soarin' at least! Hopefully one year we can all do a Golden Girls trip like you.

 

[PacNWTigger]

Well if you started a ptr trip report
And invited everyone on this board
You would see the biggest “like” would come from me
And the reply attached would say
Thank you for being my (WDWMAGIC) friend

Following along

Max

I totally sang that in my head when I read that!!

 

[eliza61nyc]

Epcot here we come,

We stayed at Kidani village at the Animal kingdom lodge which is an awesome resort. We had a 2 bedroom villa with safari view.
The villa is definitely large enough for 7-8 folks, with both a pull out coach and chair.

The resort itself is absolutely amazing. I'm going to post some more pictures over in the resort section if anyone wants to check it out.

Anyhoo, next day was our Epcot day, I'm finally letting go of some of my nervousness as everyone is having a great time. It's always a little scary when Disney lovers invite someone who has never been to the world to go on a trip with them. You want them to love it as much as you do. especially when your guest say "I don't like amusement parks", how do you fully explain that disney is not a typical amusement park?

Second pixie dust moment, I totally forgot that it was the flower and garden show, so Epcot was at it's most impressive best.

First up, my favorite. Soarin. then it was off to Mission space and Test track. We did test track as a single rider as we did not have fp for that one. wait time, 30 minutes.

 

[eliza61nyc]

lunch was at the Paris pavillion, on the way (we started going left past Canada) we passed the UK pavillion and Mary Poppins was out and about. lol for some reason we couldn't get passed how white her outfit was. It was the whitest white any of us had seen. the mom in us came out, we wanted to know if she used bleach on the dress.

One of the nice things about going with adults is that we were very flexible with our schedule. we did have a fp for spaceship earth but decided to bag it because they wanted to see the Boardwalk area. I had mentioned that my home resort was the beach club because we love being able to walk to Epcot.

after that we made it back to our resort to relax and get ready for dinner at Le chefs de France......

 

[Minnesota disney fan]

I sympathize with your early flight! We only can pick from 3 flights out of our far north hometown, one at 5am, another at noon, and last one at 10pm!!!! So, if we want to get a good headstart, we opt for the 5am flight. That means up at 3am!!!!! and to the airport by 3:30 or 4am. Then we have a layover at Minneapolis before boarding for Orlando. Finally.
Enjoying following along.
I wish I could get our girl group to all agree on WDW, your trip gives me hope

 

[myhappyplace]

You definitely seem like a fun bunch of ladies!! Love your report so far!

 

[fractal]

 

[eliza61nyc]

LOL, thanks Fractal. Doing two things at once has never been my strong suit. Trying to write two trip reports (AKL) is enough to fry the brain capillaries.

Dinner at Le Chefs was a hit, we had made the decision earlier that even though we had a 3 day pass we would skip the magic kingdom and return to Epcot, normal Orlando rain showers had curtailed a bit of our touring. Also over the last year we had a few medical procedures so between the 4 of us we had a set of new "girls", two new knees and one titanium hip. lol Originally the plan was to return to the resort every day and relax, but it never happened so we sacrificed our Mk day to relax. I did feel bad because while I have an AP the others had regular passes and doing so basically meant lost money. they were ok with it.

Food was delicious and drinks plentiful.

Guys I gotta tell you, I'm beginning to think the commercials have it wrong. Disney is waay more fun without the kids. lol