The Fabulous/Terrible Disney World Trip, Part 2: Dave Arrives!

A few years ago I wouldn’t have wanted to do any part of a Disney trip without Dave. It would have seemed like a lot of work for a lot of payoff for the kids, but not so much for me. So I was pleased discover during the first, Dave-less, part of this trip, that I genuinely had a great time being on vacation with just my kids. The big kids were a huge help with Abe and with all the car/bedbug disasters and were just generally fun, likable people to hang out with. It works out pretty well, because the kids and I love Disney way more than Dave does; I can definitely see us doing something similar again in the future, where we go for a week long trip and Dave joins us for a long weekend.

But I was still very glad to see Dave when he showed up late Tuesday night.

We’d thought he would drive down, but then I discovered that a one way flight to Orlando from Atlanta was around $60….i.e. probably about what he’d spend on gas to drive there and back. And of course, it would be much faster and we’d all be able to be in one car for the drive home at the end of the trip.

If we’d known we’d be at Art of Animation already Tuesday night, we could have booked in advance so that he could take Disney’s Magical Express bus from the airport, but, as it was, he just took a Lyft. We couldn’t start Dave’s part of the vacation first thing Wednesday, because we still had to go return the rental car and pick up my minivan from the dealership. But by late morning we were finally finished dealing with car stuff and ready for Epcot!

I never get tired of taking golf ball pictures:

We had to do a lot of running back and forth from Future World to World Showcase because of the way our fastpasses were set up. We didn’t redo everything from Future World, just the things Dave especially cared about, like Soarin’.

And we stopped by Club Cool (where you can try samples of Coke products from around the world) to introduce Abe to Beverly:

Right after this picture, he spit his Beverly all over the floor, which we probably should have guessed would happen.

We stopped by to see Mickey and friends and get some autographs. The lighting is so awful in this space….it will probably mean I’m going to end up buying some of the overpriced Photopass photos; there’s a nice one of all of us with Mickey. But you can’t see it, because I haven’t bought it yet.

We spent a lot of the day in the World Showcase. We had fast passes for the new to us Frozen ride:

Mariachi band!

the Food and Wine Festival was going on, so we did a bit of snacking at the assorted booths. And just wandered around looking at the countries. We saw the Canada movie and it made us miss Canada. We saw the France movie for the first time ever. The kids did one of the Phineas and Ferb mission things in the UK.

And then it was Illuminations time. We had a fastpass for Illuminations, so we got to hang out in an extra special viewing area. I don’t know that the viewing area was really that extra special, especially since it wasn’t a particularly crowded day, but I always feel kind of overwhelmed about figuring out where to go for Iluminations, so it was nice to have someone make the decision for us.

This is the only nighttime show we made it to on this trip, partially because the consequence for keeping Abe out this late was a monster tantrum when we got back to the hotel. He was very nervous before the show started that the fireworks would be too loud, but he hung in there and did fine, as you can see in the last picture:

Our next day was our one full day at Animal Kingdom. This was actually supposed to be our only day at Animal Kingdom, except I wasn’t able to get fast passes for the relatively new and still very, very busy Flight of Passage on this day, so we decided to come back for a few hours on our last day before driving home.

This was a long day, and we did a ton. We did the safari two times in a row first thing in the morning. I’ve long known you’re supposed to the safari early on for the best views of the most active animals, but we’ve rarely managed to actually do it. It paid off this time, though! So many animals!

We got the best view of the lions we’ve ever had:

Then we headed to Asia. I feel like anytime we’re in Animal Kingdom, we spend a whole, whole lot of time trekking back and forth across the park over and over and over again. I love looking at everything at Animal Kingdom, though; it’s so ridiculously well-themed.

Everest was a step up in roller coaster intensity for Abe, but, again, he totally loved it. He insisted on riding with Milo for all the roller coasters. “Milo is my crazy ride buddy,” he told us:

We saw “It’s Tough to be a Bug,” which we hadn’t done in a very long time. I’d forgotten how terrifying it was. Much scarier than Everest for Abe. The best part about it might be how you get so up close and personal with the Tree of Life in the queue:

We had fast passes for the OTHER Pandora ride today, Na’vi River Journey, so we headed that way next and got our first glimpse of the perpetually crowded Pandora:

And then to Dinosaur Land, where Abe was not at all scared by Dinosaur. Or maybe a little, he admits reluctantly.

We ate in the Airstream at Restaurantosaurus:

Triceratop Spin is definitely not scary, and you can ride it while your taller brothers go on Primeval Whirl next door:

SO hot and sunny!

We spent the hot afternoon checking out some air conditioned shows, like Finding Nemo: The Musical and the Lion King (our favorite; we never miss Lion King!)

And we walked through the Maharajah Jungle Trek to see cool animals (well, hot animals on this particular day).

Fans are better than animals:

One year I made everyone pose for a whole series of photos like this about how scary tigers are, but this year I let them off with just one:

We had an early dinner reservation at Tusker House. We didn’t have the dining plan on this trip (if I’d realized earlier that we’d be staying in a hotel instead of the campground I could have gotten free dining. Alas), so we only had three table service meals booked for the week. We’d never tried Tusker House before (not since it was a quick service place a very long time ago, at any rate), and it has characters. This is likely/possibly the only year we’ll be there while Abe is still into characters, so I wanted to take advantage.

We were kind of done with wandering around Animal Kingdom by then, so we turned up about half an hour early for our 5:30 reservation, but they were able to seat us right away.

Tusker House is a buffet with African inspired food (and also plenty of not so African inspired food, if you have picky eaters), and Mickey and friends come around to visit, decked out in safari gear, while you’re eating.

And then we did a bit more wandering and one more ride on Everest before calling it a night early:

Next up was our Magic Kingdom with Dave day. We’d already been there two full days, so on this day we focused on repeating favorites and on making sure Dave got to ride everything he was interested in. 

And on brunch at Cinderella’s Royal Table, in the castle. Despite our many Disney trips, we’d never done this before, so we took advantage of Abe’s affection for characters and booked it. Six months in advance, and we had to pay for it then, too, so even though it’s the most expensive breakfast we’ll ever eat, it was pretty much like it was free by the time the trip rolled around.

I can’t say eating at the castle is worth it, exactly, because I don’t know that any meal could possibly be worth that much. But we did have a great experience and a really nice brunch (everyone except Abe and Gus ordered the steak with frittata, and that made it seem a little more worth it).

Abe got a lot of autographs and met some of his favorite princesses:

Abe wanted to do Enchanted Tales with Belle again so that Dave could see it, and this time he got to be Chip:

Our new thing for the day was seeing The Muppets Present Great Moments in American History in Liberty Square, which was a really fun little show:

This was another early evening (the park was closing early again for yet another Halloween party), but we were up very early the next morning for our lone Hollywood Studios day.

I couldn’t get Slinky Dog Dash fastpasses, so I was determined to get here super early. And we did! Like a full 45 minutes before opening. We were very close to the front of the line at the turnstiles, but we still managed to end up toward the back of the crowd at rope drop, even though Dave carried Abe. There are just too many of us! We cannot hurry! We went right to Slinky Dog and waited maybe 25-30 minutes in the very hot standby line. I think it had been getting progressively hotter and more humid as the week went along, and a Disney cast member confirmed for me that even Floridians were feeling the same way (and speculated that it was a side effect from the not at all close by Hurricane Florence).

So my verdict on the new Toy Story land? It’s hot, and I wish the queues were inside! Oh, but aside from that? Slinky Dog Dash was really fun–much better than I expected. I thought it’d be basically a kid coaster with some cute theming, but it had some cool little quirks that made it a really fun ride. And the theming was not just cute but SUPER cute:

But then we went over and waited ANOTHER half an hour for Alien Swirling Saucers or whatever, and that was a total waste of time. A less fun version of teacups.

Also there’s an adorable camper:

I thought for sure Tower of Terror would be the ride that finally freaked Abe out, but no. He was fine. Too short for Rockin’ Roller Coaster, but I’m sure he’d have loved that, too.

Abe’s favorite thing of the day, and one of his favorite of the trip, was doing Jedi Training Academy. Word is this used to be really hard to get into, and you had to rush over first thing in the morning to sign up, but that it’s calmed way down since Toy Story Land opened. We went over to sign up right after we did Toy Story Land, and we had our pick of slots for later in the day. This was adorable. All the kids get robes to wear and light sabers to use, they get some “training” and then they all take a turn fighting Darth Vader:

“I think I took the Jedi Training the most seriously,” Abe told us earnestly, “because I hit the hardest.”

We finished the day with the very funny Frozen Singalong:

And ran into these guys on the way out:

That night we met up with my brother and sister-in-law at Boma at the Animal Kingdom Lodge–Dave’s favorite restaurant anywhere. They just happened to be doing a Disney week right after ours, so this night was the only one where we overlapped.

And the next morning we loaded up the car, checked out of the hotel, and then headed to Animal Kingdom for our very last morning. The only thing on the agenda here was using our Flight of Passage fast passes, and this much hyped ride did not disappoint. It was fabulous! A great end to the trip (okay, the seven hour drive after that was the real end to the trip, but that wasn’t as fun).

So, despite the rocky beginning, it was a great trip and I can’t wait to go back! (but I have to. Because it was also a very, VERY expensive trip, especially with the unexpected add ons like the hotel and the car repairs).

Next up I’ll talk planning and what’s changed in the years we’ve been away and that kind of thing.