Friday, December 14, 2012

Trip Report Part 2




After very little sleep, we woke up early to catch the bus to Animal Kingdom for our 8:00 AM pre-rope drop breakfast at Tusker House. We arrived in plenty of time and got a chance to hang out at the entrance for a bit.  I got a few shots of the AK Christmas tree which was just beautiful.


I have to admit that while I am not a morning person, being one of the first people to be let in AK was amazing. We had to hurry through, but we still got to enjoy it briefly with no crowd, which was lovely.

Tree of Life
Almost empty park











We made it to Tusker House and had our picture taken with Donald Duck. Donald was great....as usual. He kissed my hand, kissing sound included. He hugged the girl. He was just great. I really enjoyed it, but would have loved it if he actually circulated through the restaurant like the others. Guess you can't have everything.



Breakfast was really good. The kids loved interacting with Mickey, Goofy and Daisy. Even I got excited when they entered the building. How can you not?!

One little incident that I wanted to bring up, only as a helpful tip for any future trips, is one we had with tipping. We were on the Disney Dining Plan. Since our reservation was so early, and Tusker House is right next to the Kilimanjaro Safari, we wanted to get out ASAP. Instead of waiting for our waiter to process a tip on our room card, we just left him a $20.  We noticed a few days later while going through receipts that he had also written in $20 on the receipt.  We called the front desk and they confirmed that we had a charge for $20.  They were great about reversing it, and we aren't sure how it happened, but we know it wasn't either of our handwriting.  We even questioned if we had left the $20 bill, but I remembered my hubby commenting that if I kept tipping with our cash, we'd run out of cash before the trip ended. I hope it was a misunderstanding, but wanted to let you know that you should keep track of your receipts just in case there is an issue.

After we ate, we ran over to Kilimanjaro Safari. It was great! The lions were out, the giraffes were eating, we didn't see the black rhino, but we saw all of the other animals. The girl loved how rocky the ride was and loved the animals. I won't bore you with all of our pictures, because we took a lot!

The rest of our day was pretty hectic. I lost our Touring Plan and it was hard to keep track of it on the phone without stopping or risking running into people. We did get to see Finding Nemo, which I'm not a huge fan. I just feel like the actors try to insert themselves too much into the show so you focus on them more than the puppets. I do love how beautiful it is and my favorite are the jelly fish. We also saw Festival of the Lion King which I love. I embarrassed the boy by singing the entire show. The only character meet we did was with Pocahontas. She was really sweet and the girl's first face character. She loved it.

We of course rode Expedition Everest which I loved. The guys rode Dinosaur and Primeval Whirl while the girl and I waited. They enjoyed them, but didn't rave about them or insist I ride too.  I am not a fan of getting wet unless it's really hot so we didn't ride the Kali River Rapids. The boy is still not happy with that, but we'll ride next trip. 

We found a spot to watch the Jingle Jungle Parade, and even found a great family to share our bench.  It turns out that if you go past Pizzafari,, towards the bridge to Africa, you are at the end of the parade. We did get to see the floats as they came out of the big doors, which was fun.

AK had extra magic hours and was open until 8 PM that day, but we were finished by 6 PM.  We took the bus back to POR and ate dinner there. 

POR has really good food. The build your own pasta bar and salad bar alone are wonderful, but the other items like burgers, sandwiches, etc. are great too.  They have cookies, cakes, etc., but also have ice cream including shakes and sundaes so the boy was in heaven.

We let the boy swim at the main pool, the girl roasted her first marshmallow, and the husband and I had a drink at the pool bar. It was a nice end to a long day.

The next day we planned to get up and hit the Magic Kingdom for rope drop then hop over the Hollywood Studios.

More about that day soon................

See y'all real soon,

Wyndie

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