Friday, December 2, 2016

Disney Trip 2016 - Animal Kingdom & Hurricane Part 1!

This is the 5th post of my Disney trip report! To start from the beginning, click here!

It was a bit rainy as we got up to head to Animal Kingdom early. On the bus ride over, we heard that all the parks would be closing at 5 pm and would be closed all day on Friday because of the impending Hurricane.

While we were still on the bus, I canceled our dining reservations for Friday and managed to get a Crystal Palace reservation for Saturday morning. We were leaving on Saturday and I had planned on just checking out and driving home in the morning. But I didn't want to miss out on the last park ticket we had, so came up with a plan to spend the morning in the Magic Kingdom on Saturday, provided that it was open.

Even with the Hurricane coming, I was determined to have a good time while we were in Animal Kingdom. Thankfully for us, Animal Kingdom has always been a half day park especially since neither Emily nor I wanted to ride the roller coasters and Dinosaur was down for rehab.

We went straight to Kilimanjaro Safari which was excellent even in the rain. We still got to see lots of animals! After that, we went to see Festival of the Lion King which is thankfully indoors. It's a great show and we had really good seats!

After the show was done, we booked it to Finding Nemo: The Musical. We had fastpasses for that and we made it into the also indoor theater just before the show started. Neither Emily nor I had ever seen it before and it was so cool! The songs were great and the puppets were very unique! I think it's now an Animal Kingdom must do for both of us.

Emily wanted to go on TriceraTop Spin (which is basically Dumbo with dinosaurs) and then play some of the carnival games at Chester & Hester's Dino-Rama. She actually won
two of them and got some stuffed animals as prizes! She was really excited about that!

She played in the Boneyard for a little bit and then started on her Wilderness Explorers trek! There are different stations around Animal Kingdom where kids can do activities and earn badges. Emily thought this was a lot of fun.

While we were in Dinoland, the rain had stopped. But it looked as if it was going to start again anytime. We had a reservation at Yak and Yeti for dinner but both of us were hungry so we went to see if we could get seated several hours early. It wasn't very crowded and they honored our reservation.

We had a great table on the 2nd floor. We were able to see all the people out in the rain since the rain had picked up at that time. The food was very good and once our tummies were full we went back out into the rain for one last ride.

I had to convince Emily to ride Kali River Rapids, which is one of my favorites. We were already
wearing our ponchos because of the rain so when we rode the first time, she hide her face in the hood of her poncho. But she decided she liked it!

We rode it again because it was getting to be in the afternoon and the park was getting empty. We had no line and we even got to stay in our raft after that to ride it one more time. Emily was especially geeked about that!

After we got very wet on Kali River Rapids we headed out. We stopped to get our picture by the Tree and Emily did one more Wilderness Explorer stop. We got back to our resort about 4:30-ish.

We went right to the food court because I wanted to get us dinner and something for the next day as well. The lines for all the stations were super crazy but there was also a spot that was selling box lunches. The line wasn't very long so we got four of them with some of our dining plan credits. We also
got four drinks as well to go with them.

The box lunches had a sandwich (we got 3 ham and cheese and one peanut butter and jelly), a piece of fruit (all apples I think), a cookie and a bag of chips. It was $8, if I remember correctly. The sandwiches all were good with a decent amount of meat and cheese and the fruit was fresh as well.

We only waited in line for maybe ten minutes. It took longer to get to a cashier to check out. From there, we headed back to the room. I went back to the food court and got our refillable mugs filled up and then we started to do what we could to get ready for the hurricane.

I filled up the bathtub and the sink with water just in case the power went out. I made sure the tablet and my phone had a full charge and also charged up my portable chargers. The cable went out that afternoon but we still had internet access so we watched some of Tangled on the tablet.

Someone from the resort came around and gave every room a flashlight, which was nice. Though it
scared me when he knocked on the door. I also put a bunch of towels in front of the door as well.

I stayed glued to the disboards.com because there was a huge thread about Disney and the hurricane. From there, I learned that the resort TV was showing Disney movies so we turned off the tablet and started watching that. Emily ate her pb&j bagged lunch but I was starting to get a pretty wicked migraine because of the incoming storm.

When we went to bed, we still had power. It was very windy and rainy out, and the whole area was under a curfew. We had been instructed, via a voice mail, to stay in our rooms until the curfew was lifted.

I had no idea what we were going to face the next day but there wasn't anything we could do but get some rest.

Up next - Hurricane Part 2!

2 comments:

  1. Glad y'all had fun, even in the rain.

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    1. Thankfully we did have a bit that it didn't rain and did a lot of indoor shows :)

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