Trip Report Our (mostly) Dream-y June 2014 Vacation

Hi all! We returned from our trip 5 days ago, and I'm ready to relive it through this report!

First, let me introduce myself and my family in case you aren't familiar (here is my PTR if you are interested: http://forums.wdwmagic.com/threads/my-dream-vacation-a-june-2014-ptr.865397/)
Here we are on the last day of this trip:

Me (Amy), my 6 year old, Owen, my 11 year old, Logan, and my 9 year old, Lily. Also on this trip were my parents (Nanny and Papaw to the kids), my brother, Scott, my SIL, Beth, and my twin 4 year old nieces, Macy and Allison.

Unfortunately, my husband wasn't able to take this trip with us. I am greatly disappointed by this, as he ended up not starting the fire academy like he was supposed to! Long story short, the city of Columbus sucks! They told him that one of the 40 spots was being held for him as long as he passed all of the testing. Well, he did pass all the tests, but they said his labwork took too long getting back and they already gave all the spots to other guys. They guaranteed him a spot in the December class, but he also had to be available the first three weeks of the June academy, "just in case" someone didn't show up or dropped out. Of course, that didn't happen, so he missed the whole vacation and still won't start until December! The only good thing to come of this, is that my mom had me schedule a cruise in October for just me and Brian!

Ok, back to the actual trip! Let me just say that I will not be going on any more family vacations with my SIL and nieces. I will say that their time management (or lack thereof) is much different than mine, and not say anything else about it! We had a great time despite our differences!

We had a 6am flight on Wed. morning, so we drove from Dayton to Columbus Tues. night and stayed in a hotel. Here are the kids getting ready to leave our house:

We made sure to leave early enough so we could visit a few stores for the kids once we got to Columbus.


We grabbed dinner at Max and Erma's. It was about this time that my stomach started bothering me. I just assumed it was nerves (I was really nervous about making sure 9 other people had a good time on this vacation!) and being upset that Brian wasn't going with us. Well, it was more than that, and I was up sick all night!

 

[TheMouseFan]

Great trip report I was wondering what you got when you took your mining certificate to city hall, now i don't have to wait to find out!

Thanks! Nothing special on the certificate, but a cute little free souvenir!

 

[TheMouseFan]

loving the report!!

Thank you!

 

[TheMouseFan]

Tuesday had us at the bus stop early for our pre-park opening ADR.


We got to AK about 7:30am. Plenty of time to take pics before getting in line!!







Then a quick pic while waiting in line.

They let us into the park at about 7:45. We slowly made our way back to Africa for our 8:20 ADR.

 

[TheMouseFan]

I found lots of different animals on The Tree of Life this time that I hadn't seen before!

 

[TheMouseFan]

Ok, enough Tree of Life for awhile! Onward to breakfast!


I was excited to see the new FotLK theater!






We finally made it Tusker House and checked in. I had to get one more theater pic before going in to the restaurant!

 

[TheMouseFan]

We had our picture taken prior to entering.

We were seated fairly quickly. A few pics of the interior:


We were able to get food from the buffet and eat some before the characters came around.




(We had a major issue this entire trip trying to get both girls to want to take a picture at the same time!)





Two quick pics on the way out of the restaurant.

 

[TheMouseFan]

We left right at 9:00, so we were able to beat the crowds to Kilimanjaro Safaris!




We walked right on!













No lions to see this time!
Because we were done with breakfast so early, we no longer needed our 9:45 FP+ for KS, so I quickly changed them to the 2:30 FotLK show. I knew we weren't going back to the resort before our Boma ADR that evening, and we would need an AC break about that time!!

 

[TheMouseFan]

We next hit the Pangani Exploration Trail.



Then we headed to our FP+.


We stopped first to drop my mom, Lily, Owen, Macy, and Allison here:

Then we headed to EE.

 

[TheMouseFan]

Maybe it was just me, but I felt like you could see the Yeti much better this year! It almost felt like the Yeti was moving over the track!
We then used the remaining FP+ to ride again. My dad decided once was enough and sat this round out!



We saw these guys while we were deciding what to do next.

We decided to head to Flame Tree BBQ to get a light lunch to hold us over until Boma. We all ended up sharing meals. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pics. Lily and I shared a pulled pork sandwich and a fruit plate. I forget what everyone else had!
A few pics on the way over:

 

[TheMouseFan]

Then some pics of the view we had while eating. I absolutely love this seating area!

 

[TheMouseFan]

Up next, a quick potty break. I have never noticed the little details at this particular bathroom before!


It was then time for our next FP+.





Logan and I decided to have some fun with the ride pic.

Lily and Owen had some fun in the gift shop.

Can't resist having them stop for this pic!

 

[Zipadeelady]

Your pictures of the tree of life are spectacular!

 

[TheMouseFan]

Then my mom decided the kids would enjoy Triceratop Spin. The only problem was she decided she didn't want to ride it, so I ended up having to ride! Oh well!


Then we checked out It's Tough to be a Bug.

 

[TheMouseFan]

Your pictures of the tree of life are spectacular!

Thank you! It is one of my favorite things to photograph in WDW.

 

[TheMouseFan]

We stopped for some PhotoPass pics on the way to FotLK.


Logan was being a little overly dramatic in this one!


It was definitely time for some AC! I didn't take many pics because it had been awhile since I had seen FotLK, and I just wanted to enjoy it.

Owen had fun in the shops on the way out!



We missed so much at AK, but everyone else was ready to leave, so I didn't have much choice but to leave with them. I'm not sure they would have found their way to Boma if I had sent them on their own!

 

[TheMouseFan]

We just barely missed a bus to AKL, so we ended up waiting about 15 minutes for another one. That is the longest wait we had the entire trip!
I love the lobby of AKL! It is my dream to stay there one day!




The kids and I went outside to check out the savannahs.








Then we checked in 1 hour early for dinner. We were seated immediately in a basically empty dining room. It got much more crowded as our actual ADR time drew nearer!

The only food pic I took was my dessert plate. None were outstanding! I'm gonna be honest, I really don't like the zebra domes! I tried them again this time thinking maybe I would like them more, but nope!
I loved the light fixtures.

We grabbed a bus to DHS, and then were quickly on our way back to Pop. I made a quick trip through Everything Pop to buy a swimsuit cover-up before heading back to the room for an early night.

 

[Disneyfalcon]

Oh my word, I'm so far behind! I'll catch up tonight!

 

[TheMouseFan]

We were up even earlier on Wednesday, as we had an 8:00am ADR at Akershus.
Poor Owen was being ignored by the other two today as we waited!



A bus came fairly quickly and we were on our way!

We had to make a potty break before we even got to bag check! I mean, we just left Pop Century! Oh well, I took the time to get some pics while strolling along with Logan.

We eventually made it through bag check and made our way to the line.


They did not let anyone enter the park until 7:55!! How were we supposed to get all the way to Norway in 5 minutes? Needless to say, we didn't. But neither did any of the other parties going the same direction. We were the second ones to check in. Because we had some slower members of our party, I had plenty of opportunities to take some pics of an empty Epcot!

 

[TheMouseFan]

We finally made it, parked the stroller, and checked in. As a side note, you don't realize how much time is spent parking and finding strollers until you aren't the one in your party using them!! I felt like we wasted so much time with that stupid thing!! Anyhow, we checked in and got in line.



They certainly took their good old time getting people into the line to meet Belle and then seated! I was getting very frustrated at this point!



Unfortunately, I don't have any food pics, other than what you can see in this picture. I really enjoyed the potato casserole! Everything else was pretty standard breakfast food.

It seemed to take forever, but finally the princesses started coming around! (I'm sure it had nothing to do with the fact that I kept checking my watch so we could try to be at Test Track as close to park opening as possible!) They did come around fairly quickly once we saw the first one.


Unfortunately, Snow White was a little, ok a lot, blurry. Sorry!


I was so happy, we were done and ready to leave a few minutes before 9:00! But wait, we had to take another potty break! So the kids and I passed the time taking pics.

 

[TheMouseFan]

We finally headed toward the front of the park! However, several people apparently didn't get the memo that we were on a schedule for the first ride of the day!! I don't know how many times I explained that we could slow the pace down AFTER we rode Test Track!



We made it!! We had a little bit of a wait, but not much.

This was Lily's car:

This was Logan's:

And this one was Owen and Allison's:

Owen wasn't too pleased with it, but he was a good sport about it!


Unfortunately, we got put into a car with two tour group girls who really liked to scream!


All of the cars finished comparably. Thank goodness!