The "Years in the Making" Trip - Day 5 (AK, Tusker House, AoA and Pop Resorts)

[Caroian]

We were up pretty early again today as we were aiming to get to Animal Kingdom during EMH…. and we had a surprise in store for Thomas! We had a very quick breakfast before we left - largely because Thomas can’t really function without eating something as soon as he gets up, and we didn’t have any actual plans for breakfast!

Today was the first day that I drove to a park. I’d already driven the car… hang on, it was really a bit of a bus! I drive a VW Tiguan at home, which is not exactly a small car, but our seven seater Chrysler Town and Country was in a different league! I probably could have done with some reversing sensors, but I guess at least there isn't quite so much reversing to be done when parking in the US as there always seems to be in the UK. Anyway, I’d already driven around OKW a couple of times, so this time I volunteered to get us to Animal Kingdom. You'll be pleased to know that we made it in the same number of pieces as we started out!

We were through the gates not too long after 8, but then we need to wait a little for Thomas’s surprise. We had some Photopass pictures taken and spent a lot of time taking pictures o the tree of life and picking out all of the different animals in the trunk. We had told Thomas that he was going to meet a surprise animal and had him guessing what it might be. The guesses ranged from a hamster to an elephant and everything in between, but nothing came close.

The surprise was held up at the gates with some magic band issues, but eventually appeared behind Thomas…. it was my brother, also known as Uncle Simon!

My brother has lived in San Francisco for more than ten years, so obviously Thomas does not get to see him that much, but he absolutely adores him when he does. When we were first planning the trip, my brother had said that he would definitely try to plan to meet us there for at least part of the time. He’s laid back to the point of horizontal though, and so plans did not get made with any great speed! As a consequence, we didn’t tell Thomas that he would be coming, in case it all fell through. As it turned out, the plans weren’t made until about two weeks before. Despite living in SF, his girlfriend and her son currently live in Fort Lauderdale, so the original plan had been that they would all come for the weekend, and then my brother would stay for the remainder of the week. Unfortunately his girlfriend’s son was ill, so in the end only he made it up. This meant his plans had been more closely aligned to ours for the rest of the week and he hadn’t even attempted to sort out the same Fastpasses or dining reservations as us for today, so we'd be winging it a bit.

But no matter, he was here (and this was the first time we’d seen him since last summer). Thomas doesn’t look all that happy in the photo above, but I think he was just really surprised as it obviously hadn’t occurred to him at all who might be coming!

We headed off to start our day over at Kilimanjaro Safaris. We did have a FP for this a bit later on, but as the standby wait was currently only 10 minutes, we jumped on so that Simon could also join us. It was actually pretty much a walk on. Our guide seemed very good (although we had nothing to compare it to!) and we did see quite a few animals. Giraffe are my absolute favourites, and sadly there weren’t too many of them about this morning. My other favourite animal is the giant anteater, so obviously none of those either. But I am also rather partial to a zebra, and we saw plenty of those. Plus we did get lucky and see not one, not two, but three lions out on the rocks, including the male who was busy “chuffing”. Nope, not throwing up chunks of meat. Apparently “chuffing” is the sound they make that isn’t a roar. It sounded a lot like a bark. We also got the bridge shaking effect. Thomas really enjoyed this, spotting all the animals and pointing them out to us in case we hadn’t seen them.

(Sorry for the photo overload here, I'm sure you've all seen the animals all before, so feel free to scroll right on by.)

We next headed through the Pangani forest trail, where we saw lots more animals. So of course there are a few more pictures!

By now we were pretty hungry, so headed for some refreshments at Kusafiri Coffee shop. We had coffees, juice, croissants and elephant ears between us. In total 12 snack credits worth of stuff. My brother was staying at AoA for the weekend, but didn’t have the dining plan, but we used our snack credits for him too. When I told the CM on the till that we wanted to pay with snack credits, she raised her eyebrows and said “for all of it?” When I then scanned my Magic Band she laughed and said “Oh yeah, you need to use those credits”. At this point (on day five) we still had around 90 snack credits left (we started with 102 - we were not in our eating stride at all!) Commenting on the number of credits we had was a bit of a reoccurring theme!

The elephant ears were pretty good, but now that I’ve had one I’m not sure I’d be desperate for another, if you get what I mean! Thomas really enjoyed his chocolate croissant though!

Next up was our Fastpass for Kali River Rapids. Thomas was a bit reluctant, but surprisingly easily persuaded to try - we reminded him how much he liked the Congo River at Alton Towers. Simon didn’t have a fastpass for this, but we decided to see if they would let him on anyway. I’m sure that quite a lot of people on the Dibb would be up in arms about our cheek! The thing is, I find it funny that the people who get all upset about people asking for an extra person to join an ADR or FP are the same ones who enjoy “Disney Magic” as much as the rest of us. And I view this as just another form of Disney magic, the same as being given an extra chocolate cake or chosen to ride the tea cups with Alice and the Mad Hatter. We asked with absolutely no expectation that we would get a yes, but because it couldn’t hurt to ask. At the end of the day, we were a group of six with five fast passes - it’s not like we had one fasts and wanted to bring a huge group on! I get that if everyone wanted to bring an extra person, it would be unworkable. But the truth is, most people don’t. And that means sometimes the CMs can sprinkle a bit of pixie dust on those who ask nicely. And in this case it was a yes.

Anyway, Thomas was measured and made it above the height required for the wristband to indicate that he needed the special seat. We popped his poncho on, as we weren’t sure ho well he would take to being soaked. It took a few minutes and we were loaded up. In actuality, my brother being with us made no real impact as we were loaded with another group of six, wo there would otherwise have been one empty seat anyway! Although Thomas hadn’t been given a wristband, I’m really glad that he got a seat with a pull down bar anyway. I honestly think that kids quite a bit taler than Thomas, especially the more nervous ones, could all benefit from having this bar to hang on to to be honest! Thomas was quite nervous, but sitting with his Uncle Simon to encourage hm seemed to help and he definitely enjoyed it all, other than the splash of cold water to the face! Mum and Dad ended up facing backwards going down the slope, so they got the worst of the water, whilst Ian and I stayed pretty dry!

[Contd...]