Mountains, Zombies & Disney Roadtrip - Day 13 - Shopping Disaster, AK at Night & Caught on Camera!

[miss_mouse]

Trip Report Index


US ROADTRIP – TENNESEE – ALABAMA – GEORGIA & FLORIDA

Day 13 – 18th July – Wednesday – Shopping Disaster & Animal Kingdom at Night – Caught on Camera!



Just to start, I'm Lisa - the planner and reporter. Ade is my hubby and he's our driver and there's Hollie who turns 19 on this trip and Louis is 16.



We were starting the day slower.

Coffee, me catching up with work. We let the kids sleep in.
The morning was lovely and clear.

We decided to go shopping, but Ade and I really couldn’t be bothered with a mall.
We though that we’d head to Winter Garden Village which was around 15 mins away from us. We hadn’t shopped here since 2014 but really liked it.



We arrived and it had become very dark. Everything is outside here so we were hoping it wasn’t going to rain.
We got out of the car, we realised that Sephora was no longer here despite showing on google maps and Bath & Bodyworks was closed for a refurb. There was nothing else we really wanted. They were our main stores.

Family meeting in the car.
Ade and I couldn’t be bothered, Hollie really wanted to shop.
Louis really didn’t.
The weather forecast was crap for the whole day.
It made sense to get the shopping out of the way now.
We had fastpasses for Animal Kingdom tonight.

We stuck Mall at Millenia in the Satnav and headed there in what became one of the worst storms we’d ever experienced.
It was so scary on the toll road.When it rains so hard that it’s pointless having wipers on and everyone comes to a standstill.
It’s so scary.
We finally go to the Mall. Ade parked as close as he could so Hollie and I could run out. I opened the car door and immediately closed it again and in those few seconds got soaked.
There was no way we were getting out in this.
Ade drove round and managed to park up right outside some doors. We legged it in and in that time were drenched.
My feet were sliding around in my very slippery sandals.
Queue the air con.
And now we felt freezing cold too.

Hollie shopped, I went along with her.
She had a list, I just wanted to pop in to Bath & Bodyworks.
Most of my stuff I’d bought online in the sale and had shipped to Dad’s.
I’d told Ade to wait in the car until it died down.

It was so loud in the Mall with the loud rain.

The boys caught up and Hollie had shopped quickly.
We headed to the food court for lunch.
We struggled to find something that veggie Hollie fancied.



We ended up at Chick fil a.
My stepmom loves this place and always says how clean it is and despite them being a religious company (I think she’s one of the few Americans that isn’t religious) she says the staff are always kids and so polite.



Hollie got a slice of pizza.
I think she got the best pick.

I was so disappointed with ours.
The waffle fries were really undercooked.
Pale, damp and floppy…..no one wants a damp floppy one do they?!
And the chicken had a gherkin in it?!
Who wants that?
I removed it and all I could taste was gherkin.
Yuk!



I got over it by treating myself in Bath & Bodyworks.



Once we left the mall it was dryer thankfully.

We had a lazy afternoon back at The Grove.
Snoozes, showers and then we were rushing out to Animal Kingdom.
It was still raining.
We left The Grove with 35 mins left on our fast pass for Dinosaur.



We arrived and thankfully the rain had stopped.
We walked in rather than taking the tram and headed straight for Dinosaur.
It was a really muggy afternoon.




I’m watching our evening back on YouTube as I type this and as we walk through the park and in to Dinoland there’s the typical animal kingdom music playing. A lady singing with live music and everyone around dancing.
This place has the most amazing atmosphere. You can’t put it in to words.
I can’t dance to save my life and yet it has me wanting to dance.
Love it!



We get to Dinosaur and we start playing one of our favourite Disney games.
There’s been a few games over the years that we’ve made up…

Sick or leaves in carparks, thong or wedgie in the water parks is popular one as it dodge the band aid in the pool and the most popular ‘spot the brtis’.

We are so easy to spot….either very very white or red, often a combo of the two, dodgy primark clothes and these days we really give the Americans a run for their money when it comes to weight too. And many of the British teens girls wear very little clothing.

So we had this one or actually 2 British families in front of us as we were going on Dinosaur. Older parents with teen girls, but this one girl was wearing lingerie as a top. It just want not Disney friendly.
You just wonder as a parent, were there heated discussions leaving the villa?
Did they play the ‘pick your battles’ game?
Or did they just not care?



We were then blessed by having to ride with them and them appearing on our ride photo. Thankfully the ‘top’ actually looked more respectful and less revealing in the photo when sat down.

We came out of Dinosaur, enjoyed the little store nearby and then came out in to Dinoland with lots of music playing and a dance party going on. It was so much fun. Such a great atmosphere.



We hopped on the Triceratops Spin ride as there was no queue.
Whilst on the ride it was quite amusing watching this huge group of teenage group of girls, all dressed the same start up a dance right in the middle of the walkway with their group leader leading them at the front. The CM’s was nicely trying to move them to one side to let other people come and go.



Chip & Dale then appeared dressed in dino costumes.
How cute!
They started dancing along at the dance party.
We came off the ride and snapped a couple of shots.



We then walked past the ‘Tough To Be A Bug’ entrance and as we haven’t been on that attraction for soooooo long, we thought we’d stop.
It felt good being spontaneous!
We enjoyed looking for all the carved animals on the tree of life.





We’d all forgotten how much fun this was and particularly enjoyed the bits when kids start to cry and watch families leaving part way through.



Afterwards we walked in the direction of Africa.
It’s such a beautiful park.
By the way, I get asked so often about the quality of my photos.

Here’s my edited version.



Most of my photos are taken with my Canon G7X Mark II and then I edit them all in Paint Shop Pro.



We walked to Pandora and went to the Pongu Pongu stand outside by the quick serve.
We ordered 2 of the Night Blossom drinks between the 4 of us. They are so sweet we couldn’t manage more.





The drinks are apple, pear with mango balls.





Next stop Safari.
We were taking a very slow pace this evening.



We had a fastpass but the standby was only 20 mins.
I wonder if all the rain earlier put people off?



This was our first evening safari.
We always ask to wait for the back row.
You get the best view as you can turn around and look out the back. But it’s very bumpy!
We had a really good safari.
The lioness was roaring really loud.
I do have a YouTube video (the channel is lollipop box club) if you’d like to see how it is at night.



We love Animal Kingdom at Night. It’s so beautiful.



We were so excited about riding Everest in the dark. It’s our favourite!
But the ride was down.



We headed to Dinoland hoping that Everest would come back up again soon.

There was only a 10min wait for Primeval Whirl so we rode that which is fun in the dark and then headed out.

A little tradition after leaving the parks late is the drive thru at McDonalds. We all get something small. Just a cheeseburger, hollie had fries and it feels so cozy sat in the car late at night. We really enjoy it.

Now we arrived back at the Grove around 11pm.
As usual the kids were messing around. You will see lots of this in our videos too. Louis seemed to come to life in the corridors for some reason.

This time he was reinacting the scene in Epcot the morning before.
The one when the fat kid was chasing the white bird and it flew off. The mum shouted at the kid, grabbed him, pulled him away and hit him. The kids found it so funny.
So seeing this big picture on the wall Louis re did the scene.



The kids were laughing so much and just being really silly.

Then We got to our room and the door was open.
It felt very unnerving going in.

Everything seemed fine, but Louis made us check all the cupboards, under the beds etc.. It really bothered him.
Ade and I went down to reception to speak to someone.

We had noticed that the extra hangers that we had requested 4 days ago (we only had 5 per person) had been left, so we just guessed house keeping hadn’t closed up after them.

We spoke to Stephen the manager and he said he would watch the video footage back for us.
He called back and let us know that house keeping had in fact popped the hangers in at 5pm. We must have just missed them. But he could also see that they didn’t close the door. He checked the video right until we got back to make sure no one had entered our room.
We felt reassured but then it also occurred to me that he would have seen Louis reinacting the bird scene.
We all laughed so hard at this.
Still makes me laugh now.

We saw the manager a few times after this and he was lovely and told us that he worked for Universal for years before and worked on Harry Potter when it was all being made. He told us to take Louis to see him and he would tell him all about it. We’d mentioned how much Louis loves Universal.
I’m sure after seeing the videos he must’ve thought we had a teen with special needs. Louis as much as he wanted to, never did meet Stephen the manager.
I think he was too embarrassed

Thanks for reading along.
It’s a fab morning in Magic Kingdom tomorrow.

[Jules32]

Ha Ha great Blog poor Louis I bet he was embarrassed, funny though. I watched your vlog last night ...… congrats on the new booking

[miss_mouse]

Originally Posted by Jules32

Ha Ha great Blog poor Louis I bet he was embarrassed, funny though. I watched your vlog last night ...… congrats on the new booking

See more...

Thank you so much.
He was horrified

[Melbatb]

Too funny! No more chasing birds for Louis then

[miss_mouse]

Originally Posted by Melbatb

Too funny! No more chasing birds for Louis then

See more...

Certainly taught him a lesson

[Mad Hatters]

The manager really seemed like he would do anything to ensure you had a great stay, good to see 👍

A lovely day, Animal Kingdom all lit up truly is beautiful.

Thanks for sharing.

[DISNEYNIC]

Haha that did make me laugh - love being silly! Looked live a loving evening in AK.

[flo-tinka]

Smiling at your kids having fun late at night. We have had some good nights just like that. I think they get a bit drunk on lack of sleep and all the stuff going on: even teenagers 😀
Thanks for sharing