My alarm went off about 5:00. I did a bit of facebooking to wake up and then started getting ready for the day, which of course included a picture of this morning’s shirt of the day. Let’s see how many parks I can conquer today!
On my way out the door at 6, I shoveled a granola bar, for first breakfast. It will come as no surprise that I was the first person at the bus stop, but that changed pretty quickly.
Minutes after I sat down, a British dad came along. He looked at the bus time monitor and then looked confused. I spoke up and said that they’d start updating the times once the buses made their first stop at the resort. He said it was the first day of vacation so his kids had already been up for hours. So I asked him what park they were going to and told him what time I personally would get to the bus stop and why. He looked relieved to have both the information and the logic behind it, wished me a good day, and headed back to the room to kid wrangle for another hour. As he was leaving a couple showed up, clearly ready for Animal Kingdom, and a bus pulled up just after that. I think I was on a bus about 6:10.
No one else was at any of the other bus stops, so it didn’t take very long to truly be on the road to Animal Kingdom. I think the bus pulled in just about 6:30, so we didn’t have to hold anywhere. The driver let us off at one of the bus stops, and I made my way to the security lines, thoroughly enjoying making this walk before the sun even came up. As I got to the security lines, a CM signaled that they were creating lines at the other security set-up, so I headed that way, and got to be first in line for my security machine. Go me!
According to the time stamp on this next picture, security was opened about 6:48 am. I went straight through and then paused ever so briefly for a picture of the sign before continuing on to the tapstyles.
My pause cost me time so I was about 5th in line at the tapstyle I settled on, but that’s good enough. I’m in a solid position. Lines built steadily behind me. Guys, bus stop 90 minutes before early entry to be on the first bus out of the resort is SO worth it.
The wait at the tapstyles passed quickly enough. I’d woken up to an email that my flight home for February vacation had again been changed by Southwest. There’s a good story here. Basically, due to prices, I’d originally booked our round trip as BOS-TPA. But no one in NH actually wants to fly in and out of Boston unless it’s really necessary (or unless the flight is something special, like a nonstop to somewhere good). Sometime this summer, when Southwest had changed my flights, I’d been able to change to roundtrip MHT-TPA, but for the flight home, I’d only been allowed to change to a flight that had a nearly 5 HOUR layover in BWI. Not ideal, but…it got us back into MHT. So, with this flight change this morning, it again made me eligible to change my flights at no cost, even though the schedule change they’d made was just 15 minutes. So while waiting, I tried changing flights, and was successful in doing so. We are now booked on the nonstop home from TPA to MHT at the end of our February vacation. WOOHOO! Keep tabs on your flights folks! The amount of money I saved is astonishing (and an amount of money I never would pay for a roundtrip between Florida and New England). Make the system work for you!
They opened up the tapstyles probably about 7:10. Getting through that went smoothly enough. The resort guest check, though, was another story. Most lines moved well, but I got stuck behind the person who insisted on using their apple watch as a band, but didn’t know how to use it, so I had to stand there and wait while they found their hotel reservation information in their app. You know people, for the cost of an apple watch, you can buy a LOT of magic bands. Needless to say, when it was finally my turn, my band was efficiently scanned, and I was off.
I beelined it as quickly as my short legs would move to the bridge to Pandora. The wait here was just a few minutes and then the entire wall of humanity headed for Flight of Passage. From here, though, I never stopped moving until I was in one of the lanes to be sorted into the loading rooms.
Flight of Passage was awesome, as always. I was off of that just about 8:00, wishing again that early entry would return to an hour long thing. I thoroughly appreciate the opportunity to knock off one headliner with little wait, but at Universal you can get through multiple headliners in that first hour. And I remember that being the case at Disney back in the day too.
Off my soap box and onto the next soap box, I mean, attraction! Navi River Journey was up next. Surprisingly it was actually about a 10 minute wait. On the plus side, this allowed me to check Nick in for his flight, which I’d forgotten to do (but we had EBCI, so it wasn’t the absolute end of the world, and in fact he had a very good boarding position), and to catch up on some texting. Have to tell people about my success with that February vacation flight you know!
So, my soap box. WHY ON EARTH did Disney design a boat ride where they can only load 4 rows of 4 people at a time?! So stupid. Really hoping they’ve learned from their mistakes and they will do better with the coming Encanto boat ride. If people are standing in line over an hour for a boat ride, they’re not spending money in the gift stores, Disney! Also, Navi River is well done, but not an hour plus in line well done.
Having completed my journey through Pandora, I headed for Africa. The wait was already posted as being 25 minutes for Safaris. I thought this was the slow season! Good news is, the wait was less time than that and would have been even faster if the family ahead of me knew how to take their kid and belongings out of a stroller in an efficient manner. WHY do people need the entire contents of their house for one park day?
It was a great safari, complete with sitting in the same spot for about 10 minutes because of some animal in the road up ahead and getting to hear the lions roar (and see one of them awake)!
After the safari, it was time for second breakfast. I went over to Tamu Tamu and ordered myself a guava cream cheese danish. It was delicious!
From here, I headed towards Asia, but then detoured in the direction of Discovery Island. Time to begin this trip’s “challenge”. You see, 4 parks 1 day has gotten…stale… I’ve done it before…many times. So, I decided to challenge myself to see how many different Mickeys I could get pictures with in a trip. So here we go. After a little confusion as to which entrance to use thanks to unenthusiastic cast member pointing, I entered the very short queue to meet Mickey and Minnie. It was posted as a 40 minute wait, but it definitely was not that. Maybe 15 minutes? While waiting, I had a great view of Kevin, and as the queue progressed, a view of some really cute pictures on the walls. And then, of course, the most important picture was taken.
Picture taken, I checked the time and started working my way towards my next rope drop. But first, I popped into Discovery Trading Company where…I found the shirt I’d wanted from Disney Springs, in my size! And even better, the CM at the counter taught me that the Disney Visa merchandise discount is now on all purchases, not just when your purchase is over $50. YAY!
Shirt acquired, I headed for my next rope drop. And although I was almost 20 minutes early, there was already a decent line…like at least 10 tables of people in front of me. So…I joined the line for Nomad and texted my way through the wait. They started seating people shortly before 10:30, so just after 10:30, I was sitting at a table outside, overlooking the river. It would be a great view of the steel drum floatilla if I managed to drag my time here out that long!
This was my first time at Nomad Lounge. I ordered a Leaping Lizard and the sliders. The sliders were excellent. The service was excellent. The atmosphere was great. The Leaping Lizard was strong, so the price was fair, but…there was some flavor that I wasn’t expecting, or the flavor balance was off or something. I had to work to finish that one. I really wanted to get the churros too, but, I ended up full by the time I finished the sliders, so that was a no go. And I did manage to catch the drummers, JUST as I was getting ready to leave.
So, would I go back to Nomad? Maybe. I think if Nick and I went it would be for just drinks and churros. I’m not sure he’d eat any of the real food on the menu. I’m not sure it makes my must do list. But I didn’t dislike it.
From Nomad, I made my way towards Dinoland, taking pictures along the way. I wanted a few pictures of what’s left of Dinoland, and figured I’d see if the wait for Dinosaur was reasonable. It wasn’t, and Dinoland was chaos thanks to an AP magnet release, so I did some picture taking and got the heck out of there.
That meant it was time for Everest! The single rider line for this was about as long as I’d ever seen it, but I probably waited less than 15 minutes. Everest is still my favorite!
Everest conquered, it was time for some decision making. I really wanted the pineapple crisp sundae from Tamu Tamu, but I was still really full from Nomad, so I decided to just take a few pictures and head for the exit. It was time to work my way to another park.
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