August 2018 - "Best Day Ever" Trip - Day 9
8/18 - Day Nine
Cast
Me - Jen
DH - Joe
DS - 5
DD - 2
Grammie - my mom
Grandpa - my dad
K - my best friend
J - her husband
J - their daughter, 5; my son’s best friend
X - their son, 2
Today started with… you guessed it, another breakfast. They really did seem like a good idea when I started planning this trip. Ah, well.
We actually made it out of the room about when we wanted to for a change, and were on a bus on our way to Animal Kingdom within the realm of when I’d planned. We had breakfast at Tusker House. I love their food. And the character interaction is always great.
After breakfast, we met up with my local friend and we walked through the Asia trail for K, J, J5, and X2 who were not with us on our last walk through. Unfortunately, the tigers were not nearly as active as when we were there earlier in the week, but the birds were very active. We rode the safari again, and were treated to some great giraffe viewing, an elephant much closer than usual and more active than usual, and seeing 6 of the 7 white rhino all together by a mud wallow. We stopped by Tamu Tamu and the nearby seating area for a break and some dole whips and popsicles (DD slept through these).
DS absolutely *loves* the Tam Tam Drummers of Harambe. He watches videos of them. He has a drum. He gets up and dances with the videos. He talks about getting his picture taken with the dancer and one of the drummers on our last visit. He talks about getting to dance with them. As we came out of the seating area, they were in the middle of a set, so we went right over and enjoyed them, and enjoyed him and J5 and X2 dancing. Then the dancer pulled me and DH and another person celebrating their birthday over and had everyone celebrate us (DH and I had anniversary pins on… our anniversary is in July, but we decided we weren’t doing anything special for our anniversary this year and that our trip and dinner at Jiko were our celebration).
After the drummers we head over to Pandora for our Flight of Passage fastpasses. We didn’t realize how long it took, even with the fastpass, and K and J went first, with the intent that they would leave when they got off and we would send my parents and then when they got back DH, my local friend and I would go...unfortunately because of our fastpass window, when K and J got back, we ended up leaving them with all 4 kids and the 5 remaining adults went. What an amazing ride. I’m pretty sure I was grinning for a solid 10 minutes after I got off. After FoP, K, J, J5 and X2 left. The rest of us grabbed lunch at Pizzafari and then were off to Dinoland. DS loves the new Ducktales, so I wanted to make sure he got a chance to meet Scrooge and Launchpad. He was super excited. The last two trips, I meant to bring him into the Dig Site play area. This time, I finally did. I’m so glad that we did. He absolutely loved the climbing and sliding part, but then they crossed the bridge and discovered the digging area. They spent a good hour in that area, digging and pouring the “dirt” and just generally being kids and being happy. All together we spent probably 1.5 hours in that area. It was a good mid day break. The adults could sit and chill a bit, the kids were resting compared to the go go go of moving around the park, but were still feeling entertained and active.
When we finally gathered them up out of the dig site, we hit the Dino dance party for a song with Chip and Dale in their dinosaur costumes (super cute) and then rode triceratops spin. We got some great pictures and had a great interaction with Goofy before we head over to Satu’li Canteen for dinner. I do not usually go to the same restaurant twice in a Disney trip. I would have willingly gone to Satu’li a third time if I’d been in the park another day! So tasty.
After dinner we had to say goodbye to my local friend, which was sad. We did a little bit of shopping .. DS wanted a banshee (even though he didn’t ride Flight of Passage) and a panda and then we went to see Rivers of Light. We’d done the dining package at Tusker House, so we were able to arrive at about 8:30 for the 8:45 show and have decent seats. What a visually appealing show. I thought it was beautiful. Afterwards Grammie and Grandpa headed bak to the hotel and we brough K, J, J5, and X2 over to Pandora to see it lit up at night. We watched the drumming at the end of the day and then head back to the hotel.
DH and I wrapped up our evening on the balcony watching some sleeping ostriches. It was quiet and peaceful. We could hear hushed conversations from other balconies. All of a sudden sprinklers began turning on … including one that was underneath the sleeping ostrich. They bolted up and ran a few feet away. Then from further back on the savannah a chorus of squawking / honking birds took up … almost reminiscint of a car alarm. It was a bizarre moment. Exhausted we fell into bed, grateful that I had not planned a breakfast for the morning and debating whether we **really** felt that strongly about the Alien Swirling Saucers in order to make ourselves crazy getting to our 9am fastpass.
