Moderate Crowds, Good Weather and a Hurricane – a September/24 trip report.
Intro
Hello again everyone. We’re back from Disney and I’m finally getting around to starting this trip report. Before I jump in, I’ll just warn you that this will probably be a bit drawn out. I have just started writing now, and have about 9 days to cover and things are really busy right now. I’ll get it done, but it probably won’t be quick (fortunately, Netflix has conditioned us now to waiting extremely long times for things (looking at you Stanger Things and Cobra Kai)). LOL.
Quick recap of the trip
If you didn’t read the constantly-changing pre-trip report, here’s a quick summary
Who – This time we’re a different party of 4 than normal. There’s my wife and I (Tammy and Graham), and our daughter with her husband (Steph and Calvin - @S&CVDZ ). Our son Liam didn’t make this trip with us this time.
When - Sept 19-28
Where – Animal Kingdom Lodge – Kidani village in a 1 bedroom
Tickets - 5 day with park hopper and waterparks (we bought this using the Canadian deal they had). We also did a Not-So-Scary on the 22nd.
OK, let’s jump in
Let’s start with some pre-trip stuff
This was our first “long” trip in about 6 years (Thanks Covid). Tammy and I had been back at WDW twice in the past year for a few days (September 2023 at Wilderness Lodge for two days before our 25th anniversary cruise, and April 2024 for three days (that I tacked on to the end of a work trip to Tampa).
Those trip reports are here if you want to catch up:
forums.wdwmagic.com
forums.wdwmagic.com
The lead-up to the trip had us making a lot of changes to the original plan (here’s the link to the pre-trip if you want to catch up):
forums.wdwmagic.com
We finally nailed all the plans down a few days before we were schedule to leave.
One thing we did this year was pack a “park survival” case. Ok, confession time…getting older kind of sucks when it comes to Disney Parks. Tammy and I mentioned a few time during this trip that we have no idea how we used to do our trips back when we started in 2008. Back then we’d do 10 day park hoppers and were pretty much doing rope drop to the kiss good night almost every day (never mind the physical toll of that for a second, how crazy is it that 10 days with park hopper and waterparks back then cost less than 5 days now). With this trip we found that we needed more breaks than we used to…. Thus the “park survival” case. Things in this case included:
We also had to bring our Magic Bands along.
I’ll point out how many charge ports you need for your trip now. We had 4 magic bands and 4 phones that needed to be charged every day, as well as tablets and headphones/earbuds (for the flights), so it would be possible to have 10-12 things that needed charged at any one time.
Tammy went and got her nails done the day before we left. When she told them she was going to Disney they added some Disney “flair” to the nails.
Tammy and Steph also brought our cat Lylla to my brother’s house on the 18th
That's it for the preamble stuff. More to come shortly.
Intro
Hello again everyone. We’re back from Disney and I’m finally getting around to starting this trip report. Before I jump in, I’ll just warn you that this will probably be a bit drawn out. I have just started writing now, and have about 9 days to cover and things are really busy right now. I’ll get it done, but it probably won’t be quick (fortunately, Netflix has conditioned us now to waiting extremely long times for things (looking at you Stanger Things and Cobra Kai)). LOL.
Quick recap of the trip
If you didn’t read the constantly-changing pre-trip report, here’s a quick summary
Who – This time we’re a different party of 4 than normal. There’s my wife and I (Tammy and Graham), and our daughter with her husband (Steph and Calvin - @S&CVDZ ). Our son Liam didn’t make this trip with us this time.
When - Sept 19-28
Where – Animal Kingdom Lodge – Kidani village in a 1 bedroom
Tickets - 5 day with park hopper and waterparks (we bought this using the Canadian deal they had). We also did a Not-So-Scary on the 22nd.
OK, let’s jump in
Let’s start with some pre-trip stuff
This was our first “long” trip in about 6 years (Thanks Covid). Tammy and I had been back at WDW twice in the past year for a few days (September 2023 at Wilderness Lodge for two days before our 25th anniversary cruise, and April 2024 for three days (that I tacked on to the end of a work trip to Tampa).
Those trip reports are here if you want to catch up:
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Trip Report - *COMPLETED* How Much Magic Can We Cram Into 2 Days???....Allllll the Magic (if you know you know)
As the quote goes “Just when I thought I was out they pull me back in”. Welcome to my first trip report in 6 years. I honestly didn’t think I’d ever write a trip report again, but here we are. Maybe I’ll do more of these in the future. If you’re interested in the pre-trip report, here’s the...
Pre-Trip - The warmup is over - a September Pre-trip report
The warmup is over - a September Pre-trip report Some preamble stuff If you’ve read my last two mini trip reports, you know that we’ve been dipping our feet back into all things WDW (links to the past two mini-trip reports are here if you’re interested...
One thing we did this year was pack a “park survival” case. Ok, confession time…getting older kind of sucks when it comes to Disney Parks. Tammy and I mentioned a few time during this trip that we have no idea how we used to do our trips back when we started in 2008. Back then we’d do 10 day park hoppers and were pretty much doing rope drop to the kiss good night almost every day (never mind the physical toll of that for a second, how crazy is it that 10 days with park hopper and waterparks back then cost less than 5 days now). With this trip we found that we needed more breaks than we used to…. Thus the “park survival” case. Things in this case included:
- Cooling towels (just wet them and they stay cool for hours)
- Neck fans (I was on the fence about these, I got them off Temu but wasn’t sure if we’d use them or not (spoiler – we really didn’t))
- Waterproof phone cases (these were great for the waterparks)
- Ponchos (didn’t want to spend $12/poncho when we can get similar quality ones for $3 at home)
- Spray water bottles (these are kind of cool – it’s a water bottle, but they also have a trigger built into them (like a water gun) that will spray a fine mist)
- I also found a really cool Haunted Mansion sling bag
We also had to bring our Magic Bands along.
I’ll point out how many charge ports you need for your trip now. We had 4 magic bands and 4 phones that needed to be charged every day, as well as tablets and headphones/earbuds (for the flights), so it would be possible to have 10-12 things that needed charged at any one time.
Tammy went and got her nails done the day before we left. When she told them she was going to Disney they added some Disney “flair” to the nails.
Tammy and Steph also brought our cat Lylla to my brother’s house on the 18th
That's it for the preamble stuff. More to come shortly.
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