Mooooooooove! An Irma-centric first Disney trip - COMPLETED

Epcot really was a ghost town on that Thrs for you. Magic Kingdom was low crowds too, but not that low (I guess MK will always have more regardless). We did the halloween party that night too and it was lower crowds than last Septembers party. For our situation, we were lucky in that we drove from TN. So we just had the stress of figuring best time to leave without running out of gas, etc. Our friends that were with us parents left Wednesday (they freaked!) and took them quite a bit longer to get back to TN. We ended up leaving at 2:00 AM Saturday (on 2.5 hours of sleep) and it only took an extra 1 hour and 20 mins to get home. It was a total of 12 hours driving. We did have a little trouble at some stops of no gas or long lines, but it all worked out. DH wanted to stay extra days (more for the fun of it I guess???), but I didn't want the extra cost or our girls missing more school. They are 11 and 7. Now that it is over, the extra days (and of course knowing Orlando didn't get hit too bad), would have made for an adventure. Our DDs were really hoping we would stay:).

I feel so bad for all your flight drama and long times on the phones.
 
Day Four, Part One: Hurricane Happenings

This post will strictly be about how we handled the impending hurricane Friday morning. If you just want park touring, that'll be my very next post!

After an admittedly restless night, we woke up pretty early to get ready to go to Animal Kingdom. This was Friday morning, and our Monday flight hadn't yet been cancelled. But the hurricane path was still over Orlando, and it had picked up strength. We were being told to (by CMs, not "official" Disney channels) to be prepared for a category 3 hurricane directly over us. We discussed having to move the pack'n'play into the bathroom area, and all of the same financial concerns we talked about the night before. I told Jeff, "Our relaxing Disney vacation is turning into a stressful mess. If there's a way I can call Southwest and get us out of here on Saturday, it'll cut our trip short (wouldn't be able to use our water park tickets for Saturday) but will at least allow me to enjoy today. Are you OK with that?" We knew there were no flight options to St. Louis, but I wanted to explore all possibilities. He gave me the OK.

Thankfully, it was really early (not yet 7 am Eastern), so the phone lines were happily uncrowded. AND I got an actual helpful agent, which never happens. So the pixie dust was flying today! (Other than me being hunched in the corner of the bathroom with the door closed and fan running trying to un-ruin our vacation... ha). I went over the situation and asked her to confirm that there were no Saturday flights that could get us to St. Louis, which she re-affirmed. I then asked her to check Kansas City, Chicago, and Memphis. All are within about 5 hours of home, and we had lots of family from home checking in with us constantly and telling us they would help however they could to get us home and safe. She told me it was very unlikely, but she would check ...

No KC flights. No Memphis flights. (insert lengthy pause) I think I can find you something to Chicago. Eee! It was a long connecting flight. Jeff and I were also booked on separate reservations, so it was going to take some work to change around. I authorize her to make the switch for us. She works for about 10 minutes and said the availability disappeared while she was re-booking us. :headache: "But wait!" (imagine angels singing here) "While I was working on that, 2 spots opened up on a direct flight to Chicago Saturday afternoon." I nearly yelled "BOOK THAT FLIGHT!" but instead excitedly whispered. 10 tense minutes later, she had booked all three of us on a flight that left Orlando at 3:35 pm Saturday (Southwest ceased operations at 4 pm that day) and arrived in Chicago at 5:30 pm local time.

The hard part was over (or so I hoped) - already a huge weight was lifted off of me. We would be avoiding the hurricane and any financial impact that would have on our vacation. I got out of the bathroom, told Jeff what was up, and headed immediately down to the concierge desk. I brought a little breakfast with me and settled in for an expected wait. I told Jeff to get E up and ready and meet me in the lobby so we could catch the bus to AK, hopefully by 8:30. While in line for the concierge, I called my mom. I believe I said something like, "How do you feel about a nice, quick road trip to Chicago and back tomorrow?" She didn't even hesitate to agree once I told her that was our closest flight out. What a nice mom! 10 hours of driving all in one day. Yuck. She said she'd check to see if there were other options like a rental car for us to get back or a flight on a different airline that she'd pay for, but she was willing to make the drive (even though it meant we wouldn't get back to St. Louis until about 11 pm that night).

Eventually it was my turn with the concierge, and I explained that I needed to cancel not only the extra night that I had just booked (oops), but also Saturday night's stay from my original reservation. The lady there was not incredibly helpful or kind. I understand that the situation was stressful for everyone, so I didn't fault her. She said she cancelled the extra night, and said not to worry about the Saturday night - just come check out Saturday morning and they would take care of it then. :confused3 I also asked her to update our DME with the new flight info, which she did.

Jeff and E met me right as I was finishing with the concierge, and we made it to the bus stop by about 8:30. Yay! While on the bus, I realized that we would also need to cancel our Boma dinner reservation for Saturday. I asked Jeff if he would like me to change it to a Boma breakfast reservation instead since our DME wasn't until 12:40 (for now). He agreed, so I quickly made the swap on the app. Wouldn't it be nice if all of the hurricane impacts could've just been handled on the app?? Much better than standing in line or being on hold.

There will still be a few more tweaks made based on the hurricane, but that was the bulk of it. We stuck with this flight and headed out of Orlando at 3:35 on Saturday. I'll do a post for the trip home, but it went as smoothly as could be expected. Check-out/billing/refund was a mess, but I'll go over that in due time ...
 
Day Four, Part Two: Isp!

Now we were ready for the fun to begin. We officially knew this would be our last full Disney day of the trip, and we were determined to put everything else out of mind and enjoy it to the fullest! We got to the park around 8:45 before the 9:00 opening, and once again it was very uncrowded. I was setting up to take a picture of Jeff and E in front of the TOL, and a kind couple offered to take a family photo for us. Thank you friendly strangers!
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Our plan was to avoid Pandora immediately and go do things in other (less crowded) areas of the park. We had FP+ for FOP much later in the afternoon, and figured we'd catch the boat ride at the same time. We figured lines wouldn't be an issue this day, no matter what time. But ... Pandora really does sort of lure you in. Especially when it opens a few minutes early and is basically empty. For the first time in my Disney-going life, I figuratively threw the touring plan out of the window and decided to somewhat wing our day. Let's go crazy!

We took the path toward Pandora, and were greeting by teeming throngs of people everywhere in hours-long lines to experience all of the new things:
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Just kidding. I mean, seriously. Not a single other person even in that picture. Are you kidding me?! My Mom visited Pandora in the week after it opened, and I sent her this picture just to torment her (maybe not smart considering she was our chariot home the next day?).

The River Journey had a 15-minute wait posted, but the CMs at the front told us it was a walk-on. No need to twist our arm ... away we went!
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There may be one other person in that picture, but it was still basically a ghost-town. Two notes about our ride. E has never seen Avatar (it doesn't seem to be popular among the 1-year-old crowd :confused3), but when the little woodsprites (I had to look up what they were called) were floating all around the boat, E (who has seen Brave once or twice) started pointing to them and exclaiming, "Isp! Isp!" So apparently they look like the wisps from Brave. This was definitely her favorite part. She made very sure that both Dada and I saw all of the wisps each time they were around. It was adorable.

Pro Tip: In general, I think River Journey is an awesome ride for the younger set. Assuming they can withstand the wait (if there is one), there is lots of movement and color that seems to hold attention very well.

Second note is that I had heard/read a lot about the Shaman animatronic at the end of the ride. We get to the end and the Shaman is ... a video screen! Are you kidding me?! I literally thought perhaps the Shaman had already Yeti-ed (that's a verb, right?) and they had to replace it with a video screen. I was so disappointed! (We rode this again later in the afternoon, and the Shaman was magically back, working, and appropriately impressive)

After River Journey, FOP still had very little wait, but we wanted to stick to our resolution to only do one non-E ride in each park, and we had FP+ for later, so we held off and instead headed toward Africa to find some wildlife, while stopping to see this beautiful sight on the way.
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We really like the animal trails at Animal Kingdom. Normally I would suggest leaving these toward later in the day when ride lines are long, but we kinda figured ride lines would never be long this day, and honestly we just didn't do that many rides at AK anyway on this trip. Anyway, we discovered that the crowds expected in Pandora had obviously all come here instead ...
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Just kidding again. That never gets old. I mean, that was the biggest bright spot of all of the hurricane mess - such unusually deserted parks! It was just after 9:30 at this point, and we were literally the first guests on the trail. This meant lots of animals to ourselves, and lots of CMs willing/wanting to talk to us about animals, about life, about the hurricane ... it was so much fun! I don't want to overwhelm with lots of animal pictures because I think we've all seen plenty of them. But, I have to share a couple. First, in the bird area, we had a CM that was very friendly and informative. Jeff is a bird-enthusiast, so he really enjoyed that interaction. My favorite part was this set of three birds. The CM told us the first two were ducks and the third was a small goose. Our very own Duck, Duck, Goose moment!
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Apparently the goose is a female who isn't particularly fond of the male, and just tags along with the two ducks all day. Ha!

We kept moving along, and encountered many more friendly CMs. Seriously, the people behind the desk at AKL were showing their stress and somewhat taking it out on guests. All of these CMs must have had at least the same stress levels, but they were all so friendly and concerned and helpful. They just wanted to make our time there special, and it really showed. They even convinced us to let E do the Wilderness Explorers. She's obviously too young to do *any* of the activities, but she loves stickers, so they said she could just go and get stickers from people. It was so sweet. I wanted to give them all big hugs. :hug:
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Only one more animal picture to show from the trail, just because I don't think I've ever seen such a majestic-looking gorilla! :laughing:
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I think that's a good stopping point for now. It was about 10:30, and our day was already SO much better than it had been at 7:30. We had so many good interactions and good vibes! I think my last post probably came off as a downer, so I wanted to get this one out quickly to show that it wasn't all bad, and Disney is still magic even when the world is going crazy :cheer2:
 
Wow I'm glad you were able to resolve your trip home and get out of there before the storm hit!

What an amazing and empty morning at AK! You had the place to yourselves!
 


Oh I was so spoiled with the low crowds! We got there on Thursday night (2 days ahead of schedule), had to work Friday morning (well, my sister worked and I goofed on disboards then explored Pop and Art of Animation), then did Epcot Friday afternoon/evening. No crowds whatsoever! Walked onto most everything or was able to get same-day FPs; we also walked up to a great railing spot in Norway right before Illuminations! Saturday was AK morning (after transferring bags to POFQ), again with no crowds. We ended up getting to go on FOP with a 50 minute total experience time! Then MK, where we did almost every ride in 5 hrs (including a 1-hour dinner at CRT)! Amazing! Crowds continued to be low the few days after the hurricane, but by the weekend they were back up there, but by then we had done everything! So could relax and just do favorites again/wander around!

I'll be trying to get a full trip report up soon!
 
Duck, duck, goose!! lol...:rotfl:What a fun morning so far!! Glad the CMs at AK were so awesome and friendly!! :thumbsup2

I love that E thought of the Wisp idea! We haven't seen Avatar either and we have been on NRJ back in June; but when we ride it in Nov. I will be thinking of the wisps!! Love Brave!! ::yes::

Glad everything worked out with the flight home! That's alot of pixie dust! pixiedust:
 
Epcot really was a ghost town on that Thrs for you. Magic Kingdom was low crowds too, but not that low (I guess MK will always have more regardless). ... Now that it is over, the extra days (and of course knowing Orlando didn't get hit too bad), would have made for an adventure. Our DDs were really hoping we would stay:)...

Agreed - once everything was over and Orlando had come through mostly unscathed, I was actually wishing we had stayed. The resort entertainment offerings on Sunday looked so fun, and it was one of those "I Was There When ..." type of experiences. BUT - if it had been bad, we would've desperately wanted out, so I think in this case it was better safe than sorry. Glad you were able to make it home without too much hassle!

Wow I'm glad you were able to resolve your trip home and get out of there before the storm hit!

What an amazing and empty morning at AK! You had the place to yourselves!
It was a great morning! I was so happy I could enjoy it with most of the hurricane-related stress relieved.

Oh I was so spoiled with the low crowds! ...
I'll be trying to get a full trip report up soon!

Sounds amazing - looking forward to your report!

Duck, duck, goose!! lol...:rotfl:What a fun morning so far!! Glad the CMs at AK were so awesome and friendly!! :thumbsup2

I love that E thought of the Wisp idea! We haven't seen Avatar either and we have been on NRJ back in June; but when we ride it in Nov. I will be thinking of the wisps!! Love Brave!! ::yes::
Glad everything worked out with the flight home! That's alot of pixie dust! pixiedust:
It was a great morning. It's so nice to have really personalized CM interactions. That's when they shine! And glad E could spread some Brave love :) It took me a while to figure out what she was saying, but once I latched on to the idea, I couldn't get it out of my head either :)
 


Day Four, Part Three: Oofs

Our Friday was already going very well - we had visited Pandora and seen quite a few animal friends. Next up was our (admittedly worthless) Safari FP+. I say worthless, because we walked right on, along with everyone that didn't have a FP+. We expected E to love this ride because the scenery is constantly changing, but she was actually pretty bored by it. I guess she used to the whole zoo set-up where you walk up to an look-out, find the animal and move on? To her it seemed like the train at the MK - just another form of transportation, so she didn't quite get it. We had thought about immediately going on this again because Jeff and I love it (we've even done the Wild Africa Trek in the past), or at least coming back and doing the sunset version, but we quickly decided it would be a one-and-done for this trip. We saw all of the normal wildlife, so I'll just share a couple of pictures. First, a cute baby pelican!
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He's so fluffy ... And of course the normal pose for the lions. They lead a difficult life.
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After the safari, we caught another view of the gorillas. They were more active this day than I've seen them before, so we spent a few more minutes watching them walk around and find things to munch on.
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Jeff had never been to Rafiki's Planet Watch, and I hadn't been for years and years and years. But we knew that it had the Affection Section, and thought that was something E would enjoy, so we hopped on yet another mode of transportation :)
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This was a great decision. There's not much back in this part of the park, and it does eat up some time to get there and back with the train ride and various necessary walking paths. But, it was even MORE deserted than the rest of the park, which meant E got to wander and roam and be in charge of where we went and what we did for a while. In general, we did more of the E-led touring this day than any other day, and it was obvious that she blossomed when she was allowed to be in charge. Ha. So, even though I'm a rigid touring plan follower, I now realize there's something to be said for being flexible and following the whims of a 1.5-year-old. E quickly made a Rafiki friend.
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When we got to the main building, it was practically empty. E saw Doc McStuffins in her little set-up to one side, and got really excited and wanted to go over there. I was admittedly confused because that girl has never seen or heard of Doc McStuffins before in her life (Disney Junior was not part of her pre-Disney training :laughing:). But since we were letting her be in charge, I let her wander that way. Doc McStuffins started waving at her, and E ever-so-politely totally ignored her and bee-lined for the little houses at the side of the meet set-up, saying "Oof! Oof!". Background: E got a little indoor playhouse for Christmas last year, and my brother-in-law sometimes puts her on the roof of the playhouse, and she thinks it's the most hilarious thing ever. So now she is obsessed with roofs, and wants to climb on them.
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Doc was very confused, so I quickly explained that E likes roofs, and then Doc caught on and told E all about how her animal friends sleep in those little houses, while E continued to ignore her and tried climbing on the tiny roofs. :jumping1:

After our unique Doc encounter, we headed to the Affection Section, where E was the only person under the age of 25 in the enclosure. She could pet/brush whoever she wanted! She mostly gravitated toward Sheldon (awesome name) - an incredibly tall and friendly goat.
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The CMs here were again very friendly. One of them came over to us and said something like, "Isn't this so exciting? I bet she's never been able to touch a pig before!" I had to inform him that we were from Missouri and actually have family friends with a pig farm, so she had touched pigs before, and had just fed some goats from her hand 2 days before we left for Disney ... ha. Poor guy didn't have much to say after that, but E had fun hanging out with the animals. Unfortunately, there's not much shade over this area, so we quickly started over-heating and opted to head back to the mainland :)

Once we rode back, it was about 11:30. We usually eat lunch around this time in the parks because it typically just barely beats the lunch rush. Since it was right by the train station and we hadn't tried it before, we headed to Harambe Market. This was such a good move. The area is very shady, somewhat removed from the chaos of the park (if you happen to attend on a chaotic day), and with lots of fans to keep the air moving. Plus, the food is different than what you get a typical pizza-chicken-burgers park restaurants, but still approachable. Now that our budget worries were out the window, we were able to get whatever we wanted, and even got a kids meal for E! (Side note: I had pre-calculated based on which restaurants we would likely be going to how much food money we would need for our original trip, and we bought Disney gift cards from Target with our 5% discount to cover that amount, so now we had a LOT more left on our gift card than we would actually need since we switched from Boma dinner to Boma breakfast, and would be losing a whole day of planned meal expenses).

This food was delicious. Jeff and I split the Beef and Lamb Gyro Flatbread ($10.99) and the Beef and Pork Sausage ($9.99). The sausage is *basically* a corn dog, but Jeff doesn't like corn dogs, and he loved this. Each entree comes with the same sides, so we asked for the entree only on the sausage, but got two sets of sides anyway. The sides are ... different (Green Papaya Slaw and and Black-Eyed Pea Salad), but they are cool and refreshing, so go out on a limb and try them. E had the Chicken Skewer. We were really excited because we had been struggling to get her the normal amount of vegetables that she eats in a day. Most times kids meals at Disney offer applesauce as their "healthy" side, which is fine, but Harambe had broccoli and carrots as options, so we got her those.

Can you tell I'm a foodie now? Almost half of this post at this point is dedicated to our lunch. Ha! But it was a major life event because E got to discover the joys of food on a stick.
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Pro Tip: Try Harambe Market while in Animal Kingdom. It's relaxing, a change of pace from other Disney restaurants, but still approachable and with good kids meal options.

While E was finishing up her chicken-on-a-stick, I sent Jeff across the path to Zuri's Sweet Shop to get us some desserts to share. He knows that E and I love anything chocolate, so I trusted him to pick out good stuff for us. He comes back with a bag and says, "Get your camera out before I take dessert out of the bag." Oooooooookaaaaaaayyyyyy... so I get my camera out and snap a picture of this:
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Ha! He was hoping it would be bigger than her face, and it mostly was. Maybe now instead of referring to her as E, I can refer to her as Cookie Face :thumbsup2 Honestly, this was a pretty good dessert choice. The cookie itself was a little on the dry side, but the chocolate coating compensated for that. It was a LOT of food, and we struggled to finish all of it. Such a struggle :)\

After lunch it started drizzling, which actually felt pretty good ... but I got one of those "it's going to unleash" feelings, and we headed under the covering for the Tusker House check-in. Just was we got under, a legitimate downpour started. It only lasted about 5 minutes, but we were glad we were protected and didn't have to get our ponchos out. When the sun peeped back out, we headed along to our next stop. That was the only time it rained that day - hooray!

I think I've explained before that we prepared E for this Disney trip by getting her the Disney Encyclopedia of Animated Characters. She takes after her Mama, and studied that thing hard and could name almost every one of the 150 characters in there (even Basil from the Great Mouse Detective!). Then we brought it with us on this trip to use as her autograph book when she actually met the characters. That way she had a familiar picture of them to go along with the less-familiar in-person version of them. This worked out VERY well. You also know that E's favorite character, by far, is Kristoff. And on the page opposite Kristoff in this book is John Smith (it's alphabetical). E calls him "Smiff" and hadn't even ever seen his movie - we've since addressed that issue ;) But also on that page is a picture of Pocahontas, who E calls "Hanas". Because of that very random association, she had been asking to see "Hanas" all week. After the downpour, we were finally able to fulfill her request!
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After all of that excitement, it was time for E's stroller nap for the day ... but did I mention she was in charge today? She really took that to heart ... to be continued in my next chapter!
 
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Just found your report and I'm enjoying it! We are also from St. Louis! I have a former student who works at AKL and was posting tons of FB pics of people riding out the storm at AKL, looked like everyone was having a good time all things considered. I'm glad you were able to make it home before the storm actally hit. As a fellow one income family I totally understand your budget concerns!
 
Great AK update. Looks like such a productive day so far. We didn't eat at Harambe market this trip but did last trip. So very good!
 
Another fun update! I love the Doc meet...so cute with the roofs!! And "Hanas"...lol adorable! :goodvibes

That is a tall goat!! ::yes:: Sounds like a great lunch!! :thumbsup2
 
Just found your report and I'm enjoying it! We are also from St. Louis! I have a former student who works at AKL and was posting tons of FB pics of people riding out the storm at AKL, looked like everyone was having a good time all things considered. I'm glad you were able to make it home before the storm actally hit. As a fellow one income family I totally understand your budget concerns!
:welcome: Thanks for joining in. Love finding another St. Louisan on the boards :)

Great AK update. Looks like such a productive day so far. We didn't eat at Harambe market this trip but did last trip. So very good!
Isn't it funny - the one day we let the baby be in charge, we were very productive? It helps that the park was very empty ...

Another fun update! I love the Doc meet...so cute with the roofs!! And "Hanas"...lol adorable! :goodvibes

That is a tall goat!! ::yes:: Sounds like a great lunch!! :thumbsup2
That E is a funny one. She definitely makes our days enjoyable!
 
Day Four, Part Four: Bums

After we met "Hanas", it was a little after 1, so the plan was for E to take her stroller nap. Well ... girlfriend was in charge today, and was not feeling the nap situation. OK ... where to burn off some toddler energy? Somewhere I've never actually visited:
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I had planned on spending some time here at some point during the day because I knew from our Tom Sawyer Island experience that E would enjoy having some freedom and running around and being a kid, so I figured now was as good a time as any. This would be pretty much our only activity in the Dino area of AK. Something I didn't consider was that after the *very* brief downpour around 12:30, nearly everything in the Boneyard was closed! We literally had passed CMs wiping down benches on our walk over here, but no one was making any effort to wipe down slides so that the area could open back up :confused3

Nevertheless, E had a great time literally dragging her Dada all around the place (you can see some of the closure signs in this picture too).
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Thankfully, E has a sixth sense for dirt/rock/sand pits, and had dragged her Dada over to this one pretty quickly. And that's where we spent the next 6 hours ... I'm only kidding, but we totally would have if E had her way.
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This girl loves dirt. We take her to the playground/park near our house about 3 or 4 times a week when the weather is nice, and she always spends at least half of the time digging through the dirt and rocks around the playground with her fingers. We never saw another little girl in this area. Ha. And at its most crowded, there were 2 other little boys in there with her. At one point we had the whole pit to ourselves. E is an only child, and stays at home with Jeff all day, so her only interaction with other kids is at church once a week. As a result, she can be a little ... "independent". Not great on sharing (but getting better). She calls herself "Neenee", and her interactions with other kids generally involved her running up to them and yelling "NEE NEE" right into their face. Sometimes it seems like she's trying to introduce herself - but most-times she's laying claim to whatever/wherever she is and declaring that it is HERS and no one elses. *sigh*

All of that to say, at one point a little British boy came into the pit to play. E walked over near him, very politely sat down next to him quietly, and started to help him fill up his buckets. I was a proud Mama!
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Until about 2 seconds after I snapped the picture, the little boy looked right at me and said, "I don't need her help." :sad: I told him that it did look like he was doing an excellent job by himself, but I was sorry because she is little and would probably still try to help. Ha!

Eventually we convinced E that we could all move on with our lives. Jeff and I had taken the chance to reapply sunscreen while E was content in the pit, but we had to de-pebble and re-sunscreen her. I took her into the nearest restrooms (should've gone to a Baby Care Center - shucks!), literally stripped everything off of her, including diaper, and shook everything out. Reapplied diaper, clothing, and then slathered her in sunscreen. Phew. At that point she was thankfully exhausted enough that she didn't fight the stroller, and fell asleep almost immediately.

Jeff and I are big fans of several of the AK shows. Flights of Wonder is our favorite, but we always make time for Lion King and Nemo too. But ... throughout the trip it was obvious that E was at her best when kept busy and moving, so shows were pretty much out of the question. While we stroller napped her, I dropped the FP+ we had for Finding Nemo and picked up one for the Mickey/Minnie M+G, knowing she would enjoy that. Jeff and I considered doing Everest while E napped since it wouldn't break the spirit of our "only one non-E ride per day" rule, but it was so hot that we ended up strolling E round and round the big gift shop near the front of the park. The AC ensured that E stayed comfy, and therefore slept longer. It was also VERY calm and quiet in there that day.

Eventually E did wake up, and met our 4th and final Mickey of the trip. FP+ again a total waste because there was NO ONE in line - we walked right up. Thankfully, that also meant we got as long of an interaction as we wanted to have because no one else showed up even up through the time that we eventually left them!
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We hadn't yet walked through the Maharajah Jungle Trek, so that was our next to-do. On our way we stopped for a frozen Coke because we were melting, and because we didn't have to worry about saving our monies anymore :) At the start of the trek, we watched this lovely dragon guy for quite a while. It took me an embarrassing number of attempts to catch his tongue out in the picture.
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I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but our girl E is obsessed with scents. Don't know why, but you can literally take her to a candle store and she will be entertained for over 30 minutes just picking out different candles and smelling them. Same goes for any flowers that she encounters anywhere. So when she found this one, she obviously had to bury her head in it and get a good smell.
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After sniffing, she proclaimed, "Chocolate!" I had to take a sniff for myself, but I definitely didn't identify that same scent. :laughing:

As you can see, the crowds were still very heavy throughout the trek:
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Since the female tiger had just had cubs, none of them were in the enclosure, so it was a pretty disappointing tiger encounter. Still, we saw a lot of other animals and got more fun interactions with CMs. We still had about 45 minutes until our FOP FP+ opened up, and E spotted these drums (which she calls "Bums") and wanted to jam. Go for it, girl.
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She had a blast and had all of the drums to herself for a pretty long period of time. Dada even decided to join in for a while:
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Side note - look! That last picture actually had other people in it! We didn't have the entire park to ourselves! :jumping1:

I think that's a good place to break for now - I'll be back tomorrow with the conclusion of our day at Animal Kingdom - as always, thanks for following along!
 
Cant wait to hear what you thought about FOP. We LOVED it. It's also interesting in that at MK this day it rained pretty hard from 5-7 (the move it shake it parade was going on and they stayed in character while being pelted. I have never seen floats move that fast. They also took the short way around the hub). But I think you said the rain was done for the day. If that is the case it really is scattered storms.
 
We were there last year for Matthew. Very stressful morning trying to figure out how we wanted to get the most of the shorter time we had. It never dawned on us to see if we could extend a day or two longer. We ended up spending about $200 more by adding on the Hoppers so we could get back to EPCOT for one more night. After the morning chaos at Guest Services, it ended up being one of the best nights with the kids.
 
It sounds like you guys were having an amazing AK day! Such a great photo with Mickey & Minnie!
It was - I wanted to say it was my favorite day of the trip, but that first day at MK was beyond anything else. Maybe they tie :)

Cant wait to hear what you thought about FOP. We LOVED it. It's also interesting in that at MK this day it rained pretty hard from 5-7 (the move it shake it parade was going on and they stayed in character while being pelted. I have never seen floats move that fast. They also took the short way around the hub). But I think you said the rain was done for the day. If that is the case it really is scattered storms.
OK, so I'll say that when we got out of dinner around 6, the ground looked wet. So it may have done some downpouring in the 5:30-6 range. And then, spoiler alert, we left the park after that. We did some outdoor resort exploring the rest of that evening, and it was sprinkling but nothing major.

We were there last year for Matthew. Very stressful morning trying to figure out how we wanted to get the most of the shorter time we had. It never dawned on us to see if we could extend a day or two longer. We ended up spending about $200 more by adding on the Hoppers so we could get back to EPCOT for one more night. After the morning chaos at Guest Services, it ended up being one of the best nights with the kids.
I think that's the way it goes - once you get through the chaos of figuring everything out, the fun of just enjoying your remaining time seems even sweeter. Glad you were able to make lemonade out of Matthew's lemons!
 
Just wanted to say how much I'm enjoying your trip report. Love your style of writing, in addition to your tips and good humor. I'm sorry for the stress of the hurricane, but I love how you made the best of a bad situation. And I'm so happy you got to experience the magic of the AKL for E's first visit!

Your sweet E reminds me so much of my daughter at that age, it's uncanny. So sweet and adorable, but also very much her own person. :lovestruc It really makes me wish we'd taken our daughter to WDW at that age!
 
Just wanted to say how much I'm enjoying your trip report. Love your style of writing, in addition to your tips and good humor. I'm sorry for the stress of the hurricane, but I love how you made the best of a bad situation. And I'm so happy you got to experience the magic of the AKL for E's first visit!

Your sweet E reminds me so much of my daughter at that age, it's uncanny. So sweet and adorable, but also very much her own person. :lovestruc It really makes me wish we'd taken our daughter to WDW at that age!

Wow, your response means so much to me! Thank you for the kind feedback!
 
Day Four, Part Five: Un! Un!

When we left off, we had finished entertaining the crowds with our wonderful drum playing. It was almost time for our FOP FP+, so we headed back to Pandora. The wait for the River Journey was still under 20 minutes, and we knew E would love experiencing it again, so we decided to buck up and wait in our longest line of the trip :)
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This is actually where the title of the trip report comes in. As you can tell, we had really good luck with basically waiting in zero lines all trip. However, during the few times we were lined up for 5-10 minutes, E would start saying "Moooooooooove!". Not screaming it, not upset. Just saying it like she legitimately thought it might help things along. And if Jeff was holding her and I was in front, she'd push my shoulder and say "Moooooooooove!" Ha. Perhaps in her baby brain everyone was just being sillies and standing around, and someone just needed to politely remind them to move along so we could get on the ride :rotfl2: Anyway, since this was the longest wait of the trip (it really did end up being just about 20 minutes), we heard lots of "Moooooooove!"
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This time the Shaman was on-stage and working, and appropriately impressive :) As soon as we got off, my FP+ was open for FOP. I loved it, just like everyone else in the world! The pre-show was annoying and long, but that's understandable with the way they ahve things set up. With my FP+ I was literally able to just walk up and immediately into one of the waiting chambers. I'll admit that I was ever-so-slightly disappointed with the Nav'i matching part. I legitimately thought they'd use some facial recognition software and create an avatar that resembled you. Oh well ... maybe in a future upgrade.

So, the was the day was originally planned, we were going to be sticking around until after dark. I had one FP+ for now (late afternoon), and one that was active 8pm-9pm. I figured we could both ride once with child swap now, and once late at night so we could experience Pandora after dark and see the Tree Awakenings. It was getting pretty apparent that E was wearing out from our 3 park days, though. We had had an awesome day, and didn't want to push our luck. I was disappointed, but we decided Jeff would ride FOP on child swap, we would release his later FP+ for it back into the wild, we would eat dinner and then head back to the lodge.

While Jeff was linking with his Banshee, E and I explored the area. I wanted a selfie with her, and I said, "Say Banshee!"
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We had dinner at Satuli Canteen. I got a beef bowl with the hash, and Jeff got a chicken bowl with the rice. We also got the chocolate dessert. E shared with us and had some of her leftover chicken/broccoli/carrots from Harambe. I think these are overall a good value, and definitely pretty adventurous in their flavors and components. My beef wasn't over-cooked, which was good. But next time I would definitely order the rice rather than the hash.

After dinner, we made our way to the front of the park and onto a waiting bus. Our time in the parks was over :sad1: I made my way to the concierge desk to try to take care of a last few details. I first asked if we could move our Magical Express pick-up time forward by an hour. I know they pick you up 3 hours before your departure, but with the airport shutting down that day, I was worried it was going to be chaos, so I requested they pick us up at 11:40 for our 3:35 departure. That was fine and squared away. I asked at that point if the additional night (Sunday night) had been cancelled, but it hadn't. They said they would take care of it when I checked out in the morning. :confused3 I also asked if we could have late check-out and they said no because they needed all available rooms for people evacuating up from southern Florida. Totally understandable, but if you need the rooms that badly, why aren't you just cancelling my Saturday night and Sunday nights now instead of waiting until the morning? Oh well. While I was handling all of that, Jeff and E were hard at work ...
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Someone's gotta watch those lobby movies, am I right? We headed up to the room to change into swimming gear and saw this guy right outside our window!
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At this point it was drizzling, and we realized that the time we had budgeted for just exploring and enjoying the resort on Saturday afternoon/evening wasn't going to happen. So we called an audible and decided this was the night we were going to enjoy AKL to the fullest! And since this day had gone so well being E-led, we let her lead again. And boy, she had the time of her life running as fast as she could down those halls. It was so much fun to watch her run (Un! Un!) and explore.
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I think people might think it's totally weird that one of my best memories of this trip is just a little girl going as fast as she can down some empty hallways. Ha. To be sure, her haircut and first view of the castle and meeting talking Mickey will all be important too. But hearing those squeals of delight and little giggles as she bolted down the hall just brought joy to my heart. It's the simple things in life that are the best, I think.

After running through many, many halls and exploring the gift store for a bit (plotting out purchases to make in the morning), we headed back outside. E was still enjoying making "splash" out of the residual puddles, which we gladly let her do.
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We spent more time looking for wildlife at various locations, and got to talk to the CMs about how the animals would be housed and protected and cared for during the hurricane.
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We eventually happened upon a cornhole set that no one was using. E, being the clever girl that she is, quickly figured out how to score points every time. Just run the beanbag over to the other side and stick it in the hole!
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Eventually it got dark, so we headed to the Mara for some evening treats to bring back and enjoy on our balcony. I had the Zebra domes (naturally), and Jeff and E split an oreo cheesecake. We opened up the balcony, sat out there, peered through the darkness to see some animals resting, and really relaxed in the calm before the storm. Tomorrow we would have to leave our Disney bubble earlier than expected, but tonight was perfect.
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I took a LOT of pictures of our lodge this night, but I think I may save those for an "Exploring AKL" type of post at the end of the report. Our next day was our marathon travel day with a flight from Orlando to Chicago followed by a 5-6 hour drive to the STL airport parking and another 30 minutes to home ... but first we had one more morning of magic :)
 

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