Trip Report Time for Flowers! Flower & Food (Garden) March 2017

Hello and welcome to my trip report! My hubby (Brad) and I returned a little over a week ago from a quick trip to the World to celebrate Flower and Garden, which we refer to sometimes as Flower and Food. It was my husband's first time at F&G, but I had gone a few times solo and we have done Food and Wine. So he was interested in how this festival would be.

So here's a little quick info:
Who: hubby (Brad) and myself (Amy)
When: March 3-March 6
Resort: All Star Movies (cheapest option, and all we need is a place to sleep)

Some tags to people who have read some of my other reports (I know I will forget someone, but everyone is welcome!): @figmentfan423 @Gabe1 @donaldtoo @betty rose @PacNWTigger @Tuvalu @fractal @JenniferS @bee @BuddyThomas @Mr Ferret 88 @MouseDreaming @PUSH @Wrangler-Rick @MOXOMUMD @MinnieM123 @Songbird76 @Cesar R M @prfctlyximprct @93boomer @Courtney6682 @MySmallWorldof4

Okay....Ready now....Here We GO......

So the vacation actually started on March 2, but late. I had parent-teacher conferences that night and our flight was early Friday morning so we decided to stay the night up in Minneapolis so we wouldn't have to get up so early. We only live about an hour- to hour 15 minutes away from the airport but we wanted to be close to the airport for that early flight. So when conferences got done at 8pm my husband was waiting outside the door ready to pick me up.

We spent the night in a Homewood Suites and connected to it was a Chevy's restaurant. All during conferences (which I only met with 8 parents that night in a span of 3 hours and I have 150 students) I was thinking about a margarita at Chevy's. So what did we do once we checked in? That's right headed over to Chevy's, it was a little after 9pm by then so at least we got late night happy hour! We also got their sampler platter which was pretty good.

With my margarita!

After margaritas we went back to our room and watched the 10 pm news for a couple minutes and then headed to bed. Our flight was leaving a 6am so we were going to be up early!

Our journey to the airport was pretty uneventful (thank goodness) and security wasn't too bad, about a 15 minute wait. I had bought us mini-muffins from our grocery store at home so we had those and I had a coffee that was finally cool enough to drink once we started boarding!

If you have flown Spirit before you'll know that they have their Big Seats Up Front for an extra charge. I think that charge is worth it for extra space, so I booked those seats for us. The flight was good we both slept a little, read magazines, and I listened to Disney podcasts.

Goodbye Minneapolis!

Somewhere between Minnesota and Florida

Hello Orlando! I was able to spot the Swan & Dolphin and Spaceship Earth this time from the air. I was pretty excited about it but I don't think it really shows up in my pictures.

When we landed at MCO I saw a really big Air Force plane and I thought to myself "That's weird and so big. Hey wait I've seen that type of plane before when I saw..." and then I saw it....Air Force One. Our president was also visiting Florida. I'm not going to get political, but I think it is pretty cool seeing Air Force One. The only cooler Presidential experience I had was when I was near the Washington Monument and I was facing the White House and Marine One rose up off the lawn and flew right over my head. I saw AF1 before when we landed in Minneapolis a few years ago and it was exciting then (except for the 2 hour traffic jam we had because President Obama was touring the city) and I was excited this time too but now worried about the traffic. I had a fast pass to get to. Luckily this time we didn't have bad traffic as the president had already left the airport area.

Anyway, we got to our gate and because we were in the front we were off and to Magical Express pretty quick. I was a little nervous about the wait for ME especially after some people's recent experiences (@Tuvalu ) but as we arrived it wasn't bad at all. The total time of check-in, boarding, and leaving was about 10 minutes. Excellent!

We have arrived HOME!

Walt even welcomed us on the METV!

 

[ajrwdwgirl]

Hubby had never stayed at the Movies before so we wandered around a bit and he thought the Toy Story area was pretty fun.

Of the All Stars we both like Movies and Sports the best. Sports because it is the first stop if there are shared buses and Movies because of all the fun Disney touches.

 

[ajrwdwgirl]

After a short nap we headed over to Animal Kingdom. We had a Rivers of Light dinner package at the Tusker House at 3:15. It wasn't ideal, but it worked. We hadn't done Tusker for dinner/lunch before but we had enjoyed lunch. It turned out we enjoyed dinner too!

The View was going to be filming at AK so all that was set up in front of the Tree of Life.

We had some time before Tusker so we looked around in the shops.

And we checked out the Rivers of Light merch, some was kind of cool. I ended up buying a pin. This shirt design was interesting but totally not my style, so a picture would do.

Into Africa....

We were still a little early for check in and they wouldn't let us check in yet. Which was a little annoying because once we did check in at our time, we expected a short wait. Nope it was about 20-25 minutes later we actually got seated.

So as we waited to check in we watched a little of the band.

And finally we got seated and this was my first plate. It is a little heaped up but there was a lot of interesting things to try.

And we were in one of the back rooms. But it was fine, I could easily see if the characters were coming.

 

[ajrwdwgirl]

A little more of our Tusker House lunch/dinner

The characters are coming! Yes, we are adults, but we still love getting a hug from the characters.

Now that the characters have come around, it is time for round two of the buffet and then dessert!

I thought the ceiling was pretty cool with all the different drapes.

These flourless chocolate cake bites were fantastic. There were also some 7 layer bars that were pretty fantastic too.

And the main reason we were at the Tusker House....Rivers of Life fast passes. I know that reviews are a little mixed about the Tusker House lunch/dinner but we enjoyed our meal. Hubs liked the salmon from the carving station and the pork from the carving station was great too. There were some "exotic" flavors but regular stuff too. It isn't something we would do every time, but it was a good meal, we got to meet characters and get the ROL passes, so overall for us it was a decent deal.

 

[ajrwdwgirl]

After filling up at the Tusker House, it was time to hit our first fast pass of the day....Expedition Everest. In hindsight it may have been best to wait a little longer after eating, but we survived.

We did take a little time to admire the tree as we walked over to the Asia section.

As we neared the Asia section we saw them filming a segment for the View and there was a little bit of a crowd. I don't watch the View and I'm not that interested in it but I was interested in getting this picture. I was excited to see the Lotus Blossom on the water. So we edged around the crowd taking pictures of the filming and of Joy Behar.

As I looked to my right I saw the View crew so I thought, well, might as well take a picture. It isn't every visit I see TV production in the parks. I never ended up seeing the segment shown on the show. Once I did get home I did set the DVR to record some of the episodes, it must of been on one that aired while I was still at Disney. The only person I recognized in the picture was Joy.

And then this was also to my right, which to me was again more exciting than the View crew.

Like I said going on EE with a full stomach was not the best decision. Even I, who could ride the teacups all day, felt a little bad afterwards. But it was still fun, I guess.

We had some time before our safari, I scheduled our fast pass so we could ride during the actual sunset time. It wasn't a great sunset, but anyway we decided to walk one of the animal trails to walk of some of our Tusker House food. Walking was my idea actually, hubs wanted to find a bench. I wanted to do the trail in Asia to see the tigers, hubs wanted to do the one in Africa (if he had to do one) so we would be close to the safari when our fp time came. So we did the Africa trail. Usually when we do the trails they aren't very crowded but today it was packed! And hardly a bench to be had, maybe it is the Asia trail that has more benches or perhaps it was my imagination. Anyway there was still some fun stuff to see.

Gorillas!

We then headed to the safari.

I can never get a decent picture of these guys, they all kept turning out blurry even when we and they weren't moving. Ugh, I guess I'll have to try again next time!

 

[ajrwdwgirl]

So we are on safari and the sunset isn't what I'd hoped for but it ended up being a very good safari. The bummer was that we didn't see any elephants but it was the best lion experience I've had.

Not a great view of the cheetah, but still cool to see.

So I was bummed with no elephants but I knew the lions were around the corner and I thought it would be cool to see on on the rock. Well as we came closer to them I saw there was a male and female close to each other.

Then we got a little closer....

And little closer...

And then voila! I was able to get this....

I was pretty pumped at getting a picture of the male and female, just hanging out. Some might say "lion" around.

 

[ajrwdwgirl]

This didn't turn out well (we were moving at this point, and I was excited about the close up lion shot) but there was a zebra in the lion's view range. So part of me wondered if Mr. & Mrs. Lion were viewing the zebra with longing, wishing they could "invite" him to dinner.

We passed some rhinos, and soon we were back to civilization.

After the safari we made our way over to the Rivers of Light theater. There were still plenty of open spaces when we got there. We had a pretty good spot and then a lady with mouse ears sat right in front of me. I didn't think she was planning to take the mouse ears off, and they blocked some of my view, so we moved down a couple of rows and sat behind some kids, so it was easy to see over their heads.

So the next couple of posts will contain Rivers of Light stuff. I will say that both of us enjoyed the show and really liked the music. I was able to make a nice audio recording with my phone (since when I tried to buy the cd in store and on the app it was unavailable). I have listened to it frequently in recent days and I still like the music. The show isn't super flashy, but without fireworks it is hard to provide flash, and that was fine with us. There are some little surprises and really cool moments. I am looking forward to seeing it again this summer.

We liked that there was a bit of a "pre-show" with projections of the bank of trees behind the river and that the lotus blossoms were lit and floating around.

 

[ajrwdwgirl]

More Rivers of Light. I was a little torn watching the show, as I wanted pictures and I didn't want to watch it through my camera lens. I think the pace of the show allowed me to do both which was nice.

One of my complaints for the Jungle Book show was that the projections were a bit blurry and they were a little on this night too. But when we saw the Jungle Book show there was no breeze but on this night there was, so I was more understanding this time.

 

[ajrwdwgirl]

More Rivers of Light...

After the show we went over to Everest, the standby line was getting flooded with people, but the single rider line was short. We waited under 10 minutes and we ended up a row apart from each other. It was a much better ride than after dinner.

Then we started to make our way out of the park. We thought about sticking around for the 2nd show of ROL as there was a bench outside of these bathrooms that was free and would have given a decent view but we didn't know about the sound. So we headed out.

 

[ajrwdwgirl]

On our way out I took some pictures, in the next picture the red burst is the fireworks from Hollywood Studios. In person it kind of looked like there was an explosion on Everest.

We also stopped to watch some of the awakenings on the Tree of Life. I think these are pretty cool. I just wish there was a nice bench to watch them from. It was also a little annoying that all the stuff for the View tapings was in the way of the tree too.

We headed out then for the night, it was the end of our last full day. We had thought about heading to Disney Springs for a snack at Homecoming but we were still pretty full from Tusker House, and neither of us wanted anything big. So we had some chocolate back on our room that gave us a small snack when we got back.

 

[ajrwdwgirl]

Our last day, we had until about 4:30 pm to play and then we would have to head to the airport. So time to make the most of it! We of course arose early so we could be at MK park open. We took our bags to bell services and then did the red carpet photo op in the lobby. I guess I should have checked the picture Brad took of me as it didn't turn out the best. Maybe his blood sugar was low, that is usually my excuse when a picture is blurry, because I usually get shaky when my bs is low.

Time for breakfast and then the parks. We got each got a kid's mickey waffle meal. These were the views from our table. We hit the food court at the right time. As we were about to leave we were surrounded by a huge group of teen age girls, probably a cheer team. They weren't annoyingly loud but just had that excited teenage girl energy but times 20 as it was a lot of them!

We made it to the Magic Kingdom about an hour before the park opened.

We were sad that there was no old Welcome show, we were curious about the new one though. But we were excited that the train station wasn't covered with tarps any more and we were hoping that meant the trains would be operational. They weren't, .

 

[ajrwdwgirl]

Even though we were bummed about the normal welcome show not showing, it was nice to walk around Main Street and the hub with low crowds. So of course I spent the hour taking pictures.

 

[ajrwdwgirl]

I was a little jealous of the duck, because it gets to live here!

 

[Figgy1]

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I was a little jealous of the duck, because it gets to live here!

I want to come back as a WDW duck

 

[MinnieM123]

Wow, so many great pictures!!! That close-up of the lions was outstanding--very hard to get a photo like that with them looking right at you and and posing like that! The ROL light photos were really fun. I like all your pictures and I especially like the one that PhotoPass person took of you and brad holding the lantern, and looking at each other. I thought that one was really sweet.

 

[ajrwdwgirl]

I want to come back as a WDW duck

Me too, really any animal (not rodents or insects though) that live at WDW.

 

[ajrwdwgirl]

Wow, so many great pictures!!! That close-up of the lions was outstanding--very hard to get a photo like that with them looking right at you and and posing like that! The ROL light photos were really fun. I like all your pictures and I especially like the one that PhotoPass person took of you and brad holding the lantern, and looking at each other. I thought that one was really sweet.

Thank you very much, you are very sweet!

 

[LisaBelle]

I am finally getting caught up on TRs. I am loving all the food photos! Rivers of Light looks beautiful. Can't wait to experience it. Sad that it's already your last day .

 

[ajrwdwgirl]

I am finally getting caught up on TRs. I am loving all the food photos! Rivers of Light looks beautiful. Can't wait to experience it. Sad that it's already your last day .

Thanks! It is always sad when the last day comes, that's why I like having another trip date set so I can console myself with that!

 

[fractal]

Enjoying the report! A few observations;

I didn't know you could hold a lantern at Tangled restroom area. Very cool.

Your fireworks and castle projections photos are good. To get any better you need a tripod (or top of a trashcan?) and ability to control camera's shutter speed, ISO and aperture.

That backwards drop of EE does get tough on a full stomach.

Great photos of the lions - especially the male & female. Bummer about the elephants. I can't remember ever not seeing them. Next time, if you have a "sports" setting on your camera use that. The higher shutter speed will help with the blurry pictures.

Double bummer about the welcome show. Make me sad knowing I won't be seeing the old one.

Love the daytime castle photos!

 

[PineapplePrincess]

I LOVE that shot of the castle with the fountain!
Every time we're at WDW I say "If I was a bird, I'd live here!"