We woke up a little later than originally planned (but still pretty early for vacation in my opinion). Luke started his morning with a coffee in the room while I got ready for the day.

We headed out, and caught a bus to Animal Kingdom – my favourite park! By the time we arrived, the park was already open, but the lineup to scan your Magicband was huge – luckily we remembered a tip we had read about going through the Rainforest Cafe! So, we veered hard left, entered the restaurant, walked through the gift shop and came out into a little courtyard with a scanner and a very bored looking cast member. There wasn’t a single other person in line ahead of us, so we quickly scanned our bands/fingerprint, and into the park we went!

I just love the tree of life, but I didn’t get a picture of our first sighting of it since I decided to Facetime my mom, who was still in New Brunswick visiting my grandmother in the hospital. I showed my Nanny the Tree, and then as we walked along towards Africa we came upon the monkeys right across from Creature Comforts (the Starbucks in the park). Luke decided to use that time to run into Starbucks to grab his “You Are Here” mug for his collection, while I let my Nanny watch the monkeys for awhile.

By the time Luke waited in line to buy his mug, and I said my goodbye to my mom and grandmother, we realized our original plan of a ride on the Safari wouldn’t be possible. So, instead we just headed towards our first reservation of the day – Tusker House!

Tusker House is on our must-do every time list, the food is great, the characters are great and I love the look of the restaurant itself. We were a few minutes early for our reservation, but we checked in anyways. We were told to have a seat in the outdoor waiting area, and we only waited about 5-10 minutes before being called and led to our table. The rest of the review can be found here.

After stuffing ourselves full, we decided to do something low impact to let our bellies settle from all that food – so off to It’s Tough to Be a Bug! I just love walking underneath the tree and seeing all the detail they put into it.

The show itself doesn’t change, and we’ve seen it multiple times now, but it’s cute and worth doing at least once. I always lean forward during the poke in the back part though – I honestly don’t even know what that feels like since I can’t bring myself to sit back for it haha.

The park was insanely busy this day – like way busier than I’m used to at Animal Kingdom. We took our time walking around, until we realized we were already in our Fastpass window on Expedition Everest – my favourite ride at WDW!

We stopped for a few Photopass pictures on the bridge since the line was not very long. I also love the shirts we were both wearing that day – people kept stopping to ask Luke where his Flash shirt came from. I don’t think many people understood what mine was…

From this picture, the park doesn’t look too busy, but trust me, it was insane for some reason!

We slowly made our way over to DinoLand, had a pee break and then it was time for our 2nd Fastpass of the day – Dinosaur!

Shortly after we entered the Fastpass line, the line came to a complete stop. So we waited. And waited some more. People around us started checking the app, and we found out the ride was temporarily closed. Since we were already in line, and wait times for everything were much too high for our liking, we decided to just stay put. It ended up not being too terrible, and about 20 minutes later the line began moving again.

I definitely don’t love this ride, but I don’t hate it either. I just think the Indiana Jones ride in California is so much better (and they are similar ride systems). We seem to go on Dinosaur at least once every trip though!

Due to the delay (from the time we entered the Fastpass line until we exited the ride was ~45 minutes), we didn’t have time for any other rides if we wanted to make it to the 5pm Festival of the Lion King show. So, once again we crossed the park to get back to Africa.

We had used our third Fastpass of the day for this show. We had watched it on our trip in 2016, but we were seated in the very back. We were hoping for better seats, since we loved what we had been able to see last time, and it worked out well for us!

I love this show so much! It’s definitely a can’t miss for us on every trip! The singers, the acrobats – everyone in this show is so talented.

Once the show ended, Luke decided he needed to grab a little snack for himself – and stopped for a Dole Whip with coconut rum, one of his favourite WDW treats.

He ate it as we walked out of the park and to the buses – we had a supper reservation to get to!

As we left the park, I had to stop to snap a picture of the Animal Kingdom tree:

We ended up waiting a few minutes for a bus back to Old Key West, which had me quite worried. We had a reservation at Olivia’s, and I just knew we were going to be late. We did end up getting there late, but it ended up being fine, and you can read our review of our supper here.

Originally, we had booked this supper as a way to ensure we were back at Old Key West so Luke could get a good night’s sleep before his half marathon the next morning. While we were eating, we found out the race had been cancelled, so this was no longer a necessity. Once we finished our meal, we caught the internal shuttle bus back to our room, and noticed these signs at all of the bus stops.

It wasn’t very late when we got back to our room, not even 8:30pm. We each showered, I checked the DisBoards, Luke drank some of the beer we had ordered from Garden Grocer, we watched a bit of TV. Eventually we realized we were tired, and called it a night by 10pm. It was also nice falling asleep knowing we had no alarm set for the next day 🙂

Next: A Non-Park Day

This was our earliest day of this trip, we had to be out of our hotel room and calling an Uber by about 6:45. Obviously at that time of day, the security lines at the parks were not bad at all, and we were through fairly quickly. We had a bit of confusion trying to actually enter the park – we tried the first line we saw, but turns out that one was for Extra Magic Hours (for the guest staying at one of the three Disney-owned hotels). We needed the line for early morning dining reservations – which we found.

This meal was one of the must-do’s for me on this trip – breakfast at the Plaza Inn! You can read all about that experience over here, in it’s own separate post.

We finished breakfast minutes after the park officially opened for the day, so we saw the mad rush of people entering. Once we left the restaurant, we turned into Tomorrowland. As we were passing Star Tours, the wait time was listed at 5 minutes – yum, yes please! So we walked on to that, I think it takes almost 5 minutes just to simply walk through the queue line to get to the loading zone for the ride anyways. It was awesome, as per usual.

From there, we headed towards our plan all along – grab fastpasses for Hyperspace Mountain! With Fastpasses in hand, we checked the wait times on the app and saw that the Matterhorn Bobsleds were listed as a 20 minute wait (one of the lowest we’d seen) – so we headed off in that direction. The wait was probably closer to 25 minutes by the time we got into line, but since there was no option for Fastpasses for that ride (at the time), we were fine with that and waited.

That is a rough ride! Fun, and the animatronic Yeti is pretty cool, but my poor back! Luke was fine on that ride, he was the perfect size for the seats so he didn’t move around too much, but since I’m smaller I was being tossed around a bit. Still worth it though!

We checked the app again, and Hyperspace Mountain had a 20 minute posted wait time! So, back over there to go through the standby line. The posted time was pretty much exact, and 20 minutes later we had this picture:

I love Hyperspace Mountain so much! The Star Wars theme just works so well for that ride!

From there, we stopped to use the bathrooms before  heading over to Buzz Lightyear to help in the fight against Zurg since the posted wait time was 10 minutes on the app. I believe it ended up being closer to 10 minutes, but still no complaints from us!

We were now finally close to our Fastpass window for Hyperspace Mountain, so back over there to use up our FP’s.

Yes, I am force-choking Luke in this one…

We stopped to grab a Fastpass for Star Tours so we could ride that again, and then headed to the other side of the park – Big Thunder Mountain was listing a 20 minute wait. We arrived just in time, a huge line formed behind shortly after us but we were boarding the very back of the train about 20 minutes later.

We walked over to Splash Mountain, and again – a crazy short posted wait time! So, into another line! We ended up getting soaked on that one, and the storyline really doesn’t flow as well as the Splash Mountain in Florida. I also prefer the side-by-side logs in Florida as opposed to the single-file logs in California.

By this point, we were in the window to grab another Fastpass, so we stopped by Haunted Mansion and picked up a pair for later. We actually couldn’t find the Fastpass kiosk at first, and we had to ask a cast member for directions – it’s kind of tucked out of the way.

If you were keeping track – it was now only a little after 11am, the park had only been open since 8am (so 3 hours), and we had already been on:

• Hyperspace Mountain (x2)
• Matterhorn Bobsleds
• Star Tours
• Buzz Lightyear
• Big Thunder Mountain
• Splash Mountain

That is what I call a successful morning! And, we still had 2 Fastpasses in hand! We were now in the window for our Star Tours Fastpass (seeing as we were able to get the Haunted Mansion fastpasses), so we headed once again across the park.

This is where our amazing timing ran out…as we approached Star Tours we saw a giant line of people snaking through Tomorrowland – and it was the Fastpass line for Star Tours! Apparently, two of the simulators for the ride were broken down, so it was only operating at half capacity. I hate waiting in line for rides, even more so when I have a Fastpass for it, but we decided to stick it out. It ended up being over 45 minutes before we boarded the ride!

I was a little bit cranky about it, but we’d already accomplished so much that morning, and the ride is one of my favourites so I quickly got over it.

By the time we got off Star Tours, we were over halfway through our Fastpass time for Haunted Mansion, so once again we crossed to the other side of Disneyland to use that Fastpass.

The park was now crowded, and it was a warm day. It was after 1pm by now, and we were starting to feel a little hungry again. We also realized we did not want to be in the giant crowds, and decided it was time to leave the park, so off we went to Downtown Disney.

Next: Eats & Drinks, and a Break

 

Once we finished the 5k and we had race medals and snack boxes in hand, we started heading towards the buses which take you back to your resort. But, our plan all along had been to not return to Old Key West where we were staying right away – we had Fastpasses to use! Originally, the plan was to jump on the bus heading to the Polynesian Resort so we could eat breakfast at Capt’ Cook’s ($8.49 for Tonga Toast there compared to $15 for basically the same thing at Kona Cafe), but once we finished the race we realized we were a little too late for that to work. So, we changed our plan on the fly and hopped on the bus to the Contemporary instead! The RunDisney bus let everyone off right in front of the main doors for the lobby, but that’s not where we were headed! We had a bit of confusion at first about exactly where to go, but before too long we managed to find the walking path that leads to the Magic Kingdom. There were only a few people in line ahead of us at the security check-in point along the walking path, and we entered the park within the first 5 minutes of rope drop. Success!

While I was being cranky about our early morning wakeup, I took a screenshot of our plans for the day and set it as my lock screen on my phone. Seriously – such a great Disney hack!

We followed the rest of the rope drop people down Main Street, but then instead of following the crowd turning right to Tomorrowland or onto the path to Fantasyland, we swung a left into Adventureland. First things first – a visit to the Adventureland bathrooms for a pee break! We were walking past a shop, and I decided to ask if we could have a plastic shopping bag, since we were both carrying our snack boxes from the race, and we both had on little running fanny-pack style things that we did not want to wear anymore. That was no problem, the cast member was really excited to see our medals and talk about the race.

As we continued along our way, we figured it was the perfect time to go on something we’d never done before – the Jungle Cruise! Since it still wasn’t even half an hour into the park opening, the wait time was under 10 minutes. It was still operating as the Jingle Cruise, so we still technically haven’t been on the Jungle Cruise…

Oh the cheese! The terrible puns! I couldn’t hear everything because of our location in the boat, but I laughed like an idiot at the things I could hear.

After our silly cruise, we continued on our journey to the first Fastpass we had made – Splash Mountain! Our reasoning for this was that if we were sweaty from our run, it would be just like a shower as we went over the big drop haha. (Don’t worry, we actually did go for real showers later).

Of course, we got stopped right by the little waterfall at the end and Luke was getting splashed pretty good from it. I just love this picture, he was laughing so hard!

And of course, our on-ride photo:

After Splash, we were close to being within our window for our next FP, so we walked over to Big Thunder and went on the Wildest Ride in the Wilderness! For some reason, I didn’t take a single picture of this – so just believe me when I say we did it.

By this point, we were starting to drag. We’d been up for hours, and we were getting tired and hungry. We checked the app, and saw that Peco’s Bills was opening soon, so we slowly wandered over there. By the time we arrived, it was open and in we went for one of our favourite quick service meals 🙂 The review can be found here.

Once we sat down to eat, we realized how tired we were . We ended up sitting there for almost an hour.

Eventually, we were in the window for the third Fastpass we had made – to meet the Talking Mickey on Main Street. It’s a bit of an unconventional FP to grab, but we wanted a picture with Mickey with our medals and we didn’t want to wait in the standby line.

This was a really cute meet and greet, Mickey did a few magic tricks for us and was very chatty. It was worth the use of a FP, even if we were both exhausted. I just love our expressions in these following pictures haha.

After talking to Mickey for a bit, we headed out of the park and caught a bus back to Old Key West. Once we were back in our room, we showered and changed into clean clothes, and then set out again to catch a bus to Disney Springs. We had a reservation at 2pm for T-Rex, which was probably not the greatest idea looking back. We were both so tired, all we wanted to do was have a nap, but it was too late to cancel and we didn’t want to pay the $10 no-show fee. So, we went, and you can read all about it here.

Once we finished up our meal, we decided to take the boat back to Disney Springs. It’s such a nice, relaxing way to travel around the Disney property 🙂

The boat lets you off by the main building at OKW.

The internal shuttle pulled up almost immediately, and we headed back to our room. It was pushing 4pm by the time we got back to our room, so we both fell asleep almost instantly.

After one of the greatest, much-needed naps ever, we woke up around 8pm. For this trip, we did not purchase Park Hopper tickets, so we knew we were going back to Magic Kingdom. While we were sitting at T-Rex, we had actually managed to grab our fourth Fastpass of the day – for a late-night ride on Space Mountain!

By the time we got up and got ready and actually got to the park, it was well into our Fastpass window. We did stop to take some pictures of the castle, and watch the projection show they were offering at the time (I want to say Celebrate the Magic?).

We checked the time and headed over to Space Mountain, making it before our Fastpass expired. I’m just realizing now that we didn’t get our on-ride photo from that, but that’s ok – I hate that on-ride picture, it’s taken from a really awkward angle.

We headed over for a ride on Winnie-the-Pooh.

I just love the dump shop the ride exits you into. The honey pot cash registers and drink cooler are too cute!

I also had to bring this guy home with me 🙂

It was getting late, but we saw a short wait time for Buzz Lightyear, so of course we had to battle it out there. We’re so serious in our ride photo haha.

Luke somehow managed to get his highest score ever:

By the time we finished our Galactic Battle, the park was closed so we started making our way towards the entrance. I had to take a picture of the pretty castle all lit up

We also stopped for Photopass pictures along Main Street (facing both directions!)

We headed out of the park, caught a bus and went back to OKW to go to bed.

Next: An Animal Kingdom Morning