February Vacation 2022: A Non-Solo Disney World Trip: Day 7 part 1

Day 7: Friday March 4, 2022

It’s the final park day. No!!!!

I got up early and dragged Nick out of bed earlier than he would have liked. We’ve got a Flight (of Passage) to get on! I had a breakfast bar while he got ready and offered to throw something in my park bag for him to eat later. He declined. Remember that.

We got ourselves to the bus stop at 6 am. To Nick’s surprise, we were not the first ones there. It was awhile before the bus to Animal Kingdom showed up, and for some reason 3 Epcot buses showed up while we were waiting, despite Epcot opening later than AK, but…a bus to AK showed up eventually, and we were off! And we were on the pretty 50th anniversary wrap bus! At this hour of the morning, I don’t remember there being a scenic tour through Riverside.

 
This was another one of those park hour changes that happened quietly, but this one wasn’t quite as dramatic as Epcot’s had been. Animal Kingdom was now officially opening at 8, which meant Early Entry for resort guests started at 7:30. Hence the 6 am bus stop arrival.

The ride to Animal Kingdom was uneventful and pretty soon we were walking to the gate. Like this summer, I pulled my dSLR out of my backpack for security (this was the only park I brought it to), and the security guys directed me to hold it up by my face. Tip: if you’re carrying a big camera, it will almost definitely trigger a bag check, so remove it from your bag and make it visible to the dude by the walk through scanner before you get to the checkpoint. Don’t get stuck at the bag check table!

Once we cleared security, we headed for the left side of the entrance and joined a line. We waited here for a bit and then SLOWLY made our way forward when they opened the tapstyle. Obviously, I had picked the line that didn’t split into two, so…it moved slowly. But we made it eventually. Then resort guests headed left to be scanned in. BUT…we got the dude who’s tablet wasn’t working so he was asking each group how many in the group and what resort we were staying at. Another slow down!

Eventually we truly made it into the park and it was off to Pandora, with absolutely no stopping for pictures. We were not held at the bridge at all, so we were able to go straight for the line to Flight of Passage, which was moving. We wound our way around and around Pandora and through the queue it seemed, and in the end, waited about half an hour, most of which was spent moving. Not bad, all things considered.

While in the link chamber, systems went down, but thankfully it was only a temporary delay. Flight of passage was awesome, as always! I, ever distracted, did notice that this time I could actually see riders to my right. The system looked a bit like Soarin honestly. It was interesting.

When we got off Flight of Passage, we made a stop at Pongu Pongu, because guess who needed food… Good news is, Pongu Pongu has handheld breakfast foods that seem to be pre-made. Nick had his sausage egg and cheese sandwich in hand very quickly, and ate it as we walked over to Navi River Journey.

I think Navi was posted as a 20 minute wait and we were on in under 15. Phew! Even bigger phew…while waiting, we received an email from the district that, while they hadn’t met with the bus company yet, they’d had enough offers of help from other districts around the state already (that bus barn explosion was BIG news in NH) that it was very likely we would be all set to go to school on Monday.

Navi is excellent, but we both wondered why they made the load zone so small. I mean seriously…they can only load like 4 groups at a time. That’s ridiculous! That’s why the waits get so long!

Navi complete, we booked it to Africa, where the posted wait time for Safaris was only 25 minutes. The queue didn’t seem to be extending out the front or anything that would suggest otherwise, so we joined it. 25 minutes was plenty reasonable for making our breakfast reservation.

That wait time was a lie. And not of the deflated wait time nature either. As soon as we realized the line was being sent through the woods essentially (is this new?), I knew we were there for awhile. It was a VERY stressful wait, knowing we had that reservation, and also knowing that the wait time would only build.

While waiting we figured out dinner plans and made reservations to eat that night at Trattoria Al Forno. Yeah, breakfast was that good that it was time to try dinner!

In the end the wait was 50 minutes…the time that got posted shortly after we joined the line. It was an excellent safaris, which got a little stressful (time crunch here) when the baby rhino held up traffic playing in the road, but at least he was cute.

Safaris complete, we booked it out of the park to the ride share area and requested a Lyft when we got there. Thankfully that arrived about 4 minutes later and we walked into Jambo House just in time to get the alert to check in for breakfast at Boma. Phew! We made it!

Breakfast was excellent! The food was great (no pics, because buffet), and our server quickly realized we are POG juice fans and left the pitcher at our table. Winning!

After eating our fill of tater tots, bread pudding and other horrifying things, we headed for the bus stop, where we discovered we were not crazy. The parks WERE crowded this week!

A bus came along to Animal Kingdom quickly, and pretty soon we were back. It was time for a few pictures around the Tree of Life, and of course, of the statues!

Picture taking done, we headed for Asia, catching glimpses of Kite Tails on our way. Nick immediately understood why I wanted to see the next showing of it. He was definitely in!

Our first stop was Maharajah Jungle Trek to see the tigers. Only one was out, and not in the most photogenic spot, but we saw her. We saw other animals too, but let’s be real…the tigers are why we do this one!

After stopping for water, we headed toward the water. We got to see a floatilla or two go by in pretty quick succession and Nick agreed with me that this was something good to come from the pandemic.

Then we headed for the stadium, extremely sad to see that they were running empty trains on Everest. It’s closed for refurb right now and that was such a tease!

We grabbed seats and enjoyed watching the jet ski dudes prep for the show. They were having a ton of fun! We also got to see some floatillas leave and return while sitting there. Kite Tails runs hourly and it’s not a show that you have to show up in advance for. We were early, but like 10-15 minutes before showtime. And that was earlier than necessary.

We both really enjoyed Kite Tails. It’s just pure Disney. And because it’s relatively short (15 minutes), it’s a nice way to take a quick sitting break. They have two different shows (Lion King and Jungle Book) and I think they alternate which one they’re showing.

 
After Kite Tails, we both were pretty well done, so we headed for the exit by way of the stores. A bus came along about the time we got to the bus stop, and we were back at the hotel fairly quickly.

Back at the hotel, I think we both napped for a change. It had been an early morning after a late night!