Trip Report Our 20th Anniversary Trip to the Caribbean...December 2018 COMPLETED

Caribbean Beach Resort, that is!!

Well, we've been back awhile, and the Disney Blues have hit me really hard this time for several reasons to be discussed later, so I have put off starting this report, but I am finally ready. I had arthroscopic surgery on my shoulder this past Friday and took this whole week off, so hopefully I can finish before I go back to work!

If you didn't catch my semi-live report, my husband (Brian) and I (Amy) were at WDW from December 16-20 celebrating our 20th anniversary.

Sunday, December 16, 2018
We had an early (6:00am) flight from Columbus, OH which is about an hour from our house, so we had a very early wake up call! My mom had come over the night before since she was staying with the kids while we were gone, so we quickly got ourselves ready and were out the door with minimal fuss.

I had my nails done up to match my new MagicBand!

We had an uneventful trip to Columbus and got checked in and through security very quickly. One of the gate agents had lived in Florida for years, and spent a good bit of time talking to us about WDW which made the time go faster. We got to see the sun come up while we were in the air.

It was very foggy in Orlando, and we thought we were still making our descent through the clouds, when all of a sudden we were on the ground! It was quite a shock, but luckily it was very smooth since Brian is not a good flier!

We were quickly in the main terminal and admiring this:

Had to stop to get a picture of:

Also had to stop in the Universal store to see if they had anything Harry Potter for Lily.

 

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I was happy to see that this was outside of the park, but disappointed that there was no PP photographer there!

Brian didn't really want to be in a pic by himself!!

 

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At this point, I had spent about as much time as Brian was going to tolerate, so we headed back to the bus stops to move on to AKL.

 

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We were way early for our ADR, so we decided to start at Jambo House and look around there first.

 

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I know I wasn't able to get the chocolate croissant from CBR which angered me, so that is why I think we got it the night before and ate in the room.

The chocolate croissant is my favorite!

 

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The chocolate croissant is my favorite!

For me, it is the ultimate Disney breakfast, and I felt cheated that I couldn't have one the first morning when we arrived!!

 

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We headed outside for a few minutes, then back inside and headed to the pool area to finish looking around.

 

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The we took the walkway over to Kidani Village.

 

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We quickly headed outside to view the savannas, as we had never been in Kidani.

Then we went to find Sanaa before relaxing outside watching the animals.

 

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It was finally 11:00, so we headed inside to check in for our lunch ADR and caught the opening "show".

We were seated nowhere near a window, which was disappointing!

We waited quite awhile to be helped, then our waitress wasn't really helpful once she did show up! Whatever! We opted to start with the famed bread service, which did not disappoint and was the highlight of the meal!

I am usually the pickier eater of the two of us, but Brian was having a hard time deciding what to order and ultimately ended up orderinmg another appetizer as his main and planned to share my butter chicken. He went with the Boerewors and Spiced eggs (sausage, eggs, and onions).

He was not impressed at all! In fact, he really disliked it. I tried to tell him to stop eating it, but he felt like he needed to finish it and regretted it later.

I ordered the butter chicken, basmati rice, and paneer tikka. I really enjoyed the butter chicken and the rice, but did not care for the paneer tikka. Brian didn't even care for the chicken!

So, it is safe to say that we will not be returning to Sanaa anytime soon! We really did enjoy the bread service, but nothing else about the experience blew us away. I was sad because I really wanted to love it!!

 

[TheMouseFan]

I really wanted to try the Jungle Juice slushy that they sell at The Mara, so we walked back over to Jambo House. We enjoyed the animals while we drank our slushies, which we didn't really care for! They were better once we found straws to use, but still not what I was expecting!

We then caught a bus back to AK and switched to a bus back to CBR to rest up for our late night at MVMCP.

 

[TheMouseFan]

We left for the bus stop at about 2:30 because I didn't want to take any chances on missing our 3:20 - 4:20 FP+. We arrived at MK, made it through security, and hopped in the MVMCP line at about 3:15 or so. They started letting party people in at 3:45, I think. We had plenty of time to make our FP+, so we took a few pics and made our way to the Fire Station to get the SotMK party card for Logan. Brian and I each got one, then I asked very nicely if there was any way I could get a third one since we have three kids at home. The CM just turned his head and slipped me one! It was pretty cute the way he did it, actually!

 

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Then we headed across MSUSA to take the "special" MVMCP entrance.

Then across the hub to get to Adventureland.

 

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We hopped in line for our first FP+.

 

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And we were quickly boarding Garland Gertie.

Unfortunately, we did not have a very good skipper! It certainly could have been the others on the boat too because nobody was laughing at any of his jokes! I chuckled at a few, but didn't really hear anything new and I've only been on The Jingle Cruise one other time.

 

[TheMouseFan]

Then we slowly made our way to our next FP+ which didn't start until 4:25.

I tried to get Brian to let me get a FP+ for Splash Mountain, as that is one of his favorites, but he didn't want to take the chance of us getting wet and walking around in the cold evening air, so I went with my favorite instead.