Are fireworks the best from the Skyliner?! An April 24 Trip Report - update 5/25

Sounds like a great morning at AK. Can’t beat afternoon pool time with a drink 😁

I love AK and Dinosaur 🦖 is a favorite ride! You had a great chill morning at AK.
I also love listening to the band across from Flame Tree! I love watching all the littles dancing and having such a wonderful time!
Yeah, instead of going slow every day, we start off fast and wild and then slowly slow down as the week goes on, hah! I think if we went more often it would be more like this pace... maybe!
Wow, your daughter really loved Everest! A morning at Animal Kingdom sounds wonderful - it’s such a great park. An afternoon swim sounds great, too!
She is adventurous! Pool afternoons make it an official vacation!
I love "Yes" days. It seems like such a fun time.
She was sooo looking forward to this day!
A great morning at AK, and a great start to the “yes” day! I too would ride Everest twice if the wait wasn’t too long. It’s a fun coaster!

I love the “ears” on the Primordial Booze, though I admit when I first saw I thought “Mickey doesn’t qualify as primordial!” Still, it looks cute!
Hahaha, that is true! Maybe he went into the ooze... :oops:
 
Great idea for the yes day!!! We might have to implement that on our next trip 😊
Yes, it works good for the 5th day, or after you've tackled all of your personal goals for the trip, ha. Probably in a couple years she can plan the whole thing though... but would she get up at 7am for LLs?!
I love the idea of a yes day! Seems to have gone well so far. I love AK too.
Thanks!!
 
Day 5 - Yes Day continues...

DD was agreeable and let me keep my Narcoossee's reservation for this evening. After a quick change and refresh we headed out at 4 to get to GF by 5. We took a bus to MK first.

Pic from the walk between the bus stop and the monorail, taken at 4:30:
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DD laid down on the monorail and actually took a nap! It worked out, we had two delays for some reason so it took about 20 minutes. She had been getting progressively more tired each afternoon, but wasn't able to nap in the room.

At 4:59 we took this photo:
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We were checked in and waiting on the patio! We did step on it to get through GF over to the restaurant, but I guess we didn't really need to.

This restaurant is beautiful and we got an amazing seat.

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There was a lot to look at out the window. Also, DD got lucky, no colouring pages here, but she happened to have her little sticker book scavenger hunt thing we grabbed when we were at the Seas aquarium the day before! This was perfect to entertain her. She also read the menu and chose and ordered on her own, so her nap must have done her good. "Seasonal fish, fruit and Nemo cupcake please". I think she took the server by surprise.

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I loved the plates, napkins, glasses here. It is a nice comfortable restaurant, but not really fancy or upscale. Made me feel like it could have been located at home (West Coast Canada).

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We had sparkling water, all around. DD had a chocolate milk, I had a glass of rose, I loved the glasses with the symbol on the side... now these are the kind of souvenirs I'd bring home! DH had the Old Fashioned and he made a face when he had a sip, I thought he didn't like it, but he said it was the best one he's ever had!!!!! Which is a high compliment from him.

Very very good sourdough bread with Himalayan pink sea salt butter:
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I decided to have two appies since I really wanted the lobster bisque ($19), but knew I couldn't have a whole entree after that!
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It was very nice, it could have been one degree warmer, and the lobster "chunk" in mine was more like minced, so that wasn't quite what I was expecting!

Then I ordered the bbq shrimp and grits ($19)
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The shrimp were a bit overdone for me, but maybe I prefer mine on the lighter cooked side! These were a bit more grilled and dark on the edges than my preference. The microgreens saved the dish!

DH had the Blackened Red Fish ($49) which is one of their specialties. He is a sucker for anything that lists chorizo as an ingredient and generally likes all fish. He liked this and I think it was the winner of our dishes!

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We were very sadly too full for dessert and I didn't want to carry an almond cheesecake through MK for the next 3 hours. But that might be my biggest regret from the trip!

DD did get her Nemo cupcake to go though and was very happy about it! She ate it the next morning for "breakfast"

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That reminds me that I didn't mention that for our first breakfast this morning her and I had some Les Halles baguette with butter and DH had his apricot pastry.

Fun fact: Empress 1908 gin (in their Empress Lime Gimlet cocktail and others around the resort) is actually made in our city, Victoria, BC. I can't believe that it's made it all the way to WDW in Florida from our small town!

Next update, very successful night in MK!
 
Day 5 - evening

After our very nice dinner, we hopped back on the monorail to MK. We considered taking the boat because it looked like such a nice transportation option, but we thought it would take too long and we had rides to ride!!

We were all full and it was still pretty hot and it was 6:30, so we opted to hop onto the railroad to get over to Frontierland for BMTRR. It was a full train!

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The first 3 rides were LLs I booked earlier in the day, BTMRR at 6:40 is where we went first!

Then we hit up Peter Pan's Flight at 7:12 after a bit of a mom's-lost-detour, but it's ok because it's golden hour and we're already "land hopping" anyway:

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I was also spending this time googling where to watch fireworks if we didn't want to watch on main street (because it is SO packed with people and we didn't want to have to stand around waiting instead of riding rides).

From Fantasyland we headed to our next quick turnaround LL at Space Mountain via the castle:

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After Space we took some time in the gift shop, DH custom made a Spiderman phone case, and then we went to the people mover (finally! we wanted to ride it the last time we were in MK, but it was oddly busy).

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DD got pixie dusted in the people mover line and was given a Cinderella keychain for her backpack by a nice grandma. We all enjoyed this one!

We kept our mission going to ride as many rides as possible before the fireworks! DD had been dying to drive the cars at the Tomorrowland Speedway, so we headed that way. DH went to pick up his phone case.

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This was my first time on this ride and it is so dumb, I can't believe it still exists, it's way too hard for a 6 year old to drive and then even hard for me to drive from the passenger seat! But we can say we did it! At this point it was 8:30 and we started thinking about where to watch the fireworks. We all needed a bathroom break, so we did that, and we knew we wanted to ride BTMRR and/or Pirates afterwards, so we decided to watch from the bridge in Frontierland. We stopped for a few minutes at the shooting gallery, DD loved this, haha.

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We were hitting all the old school rides and activities this night, one good (Peter Pan), one great (People Mover), one terrible (Speedway) and one fine (Shooting Gallery). These are the official rankings, you may challenge me though if you have a good argument!!!

I staked out a spot and DD and DH went for Mickey ice cream sandwiches, I was still full from dinner. Most people talk about getting ready for Disney by walking more, I need to get ready for Disney by eating more!

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We liked the fireworks from this viewpoint, you had to turn your head a bit because some were right from the castle and some were over towards the left.

Obviously it's best from in front of the castle, but this worked great for us, we got off our last ride at 8:45. And from here it was easy to hit BTMRR as a walk on and then Pirates walk on afterwards. We also took the opportunity on the way out to ride Aladdin's carpets as that had been on DD's mental list too. We (or maybe just unlucky me) got surpringly wet on Pirates AND Aladdin, damn camel.

We were all doneee at this point, one pic on the way out at 9:50 and back to the hotel by 10:30! Ok, fine, I won't post that pic because I'm at the limit of 10.

Next up - our last full day! AK and Disney Springs. Then a very nice last morning at Animal Kingdom Lodge, and a hot tip for MCO airport.
 
Day 6 - part 1

Ok, this day was our most relaxed by far. DD was starting to feel the effects of the go go go we've been doing and so we let her sleep in even more this morning. We wanted to go to AK to finish her WE book and ride Flights of Passage again. Then we thought we'd finish out the day at DS since we had pretty much, more or less, done everything we'd wanted to do!

I bought an ILL for FOP for 9:45 and we headed to the park around 9.

First we stopped to check out the flamingos for DD to get another WE sticker:

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Did you know flamingos turn white as they age just like humans get white hair? This is an old dude:

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DD searched for the flamingo numbers on their leg tags:
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Then we headed to Pandora to ride FOP as per DD's request. She was definitely tired today, so tired she created her new alter-ego, Noodles the goat where she started communicating only in "baa"s. But she was happy to keep going around the park at least.

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We liked FOP, DH was in a better position so he didn't feel sick and also got the feel the water spray this time.

DD spent some time in the gift shop, making a necklace we definitely weren't going to buy ($$$$$$$x100) or maybe it would have been $50! So she was a bit mad about that. I told her I'd take a pic though.
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From here we were going to head to the Gorilla Trail that we hadn't been on yet and grab some breakfast on the way.

Sadly, we couldn't spot any otters
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But we did manage a dance break in Africa before our snack of pastries and iced coffee. I had still been drinking a not good, but inoffensive in every way coffee from the room each morning and DD had her Nemo cupcake from Narcoossee's and we finished up the baguette as well.

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No breakfast pics, but the guava cream cheese pastries were pretty tasty!

Off to the gorilla trail, we watched the meerkats for ages and DD enjoyed taking some pics and videos. They are a very fun animal to watch.
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The gorillas were a bit harder to find, but we did spot some towards the end of their area
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And took a very serious drum break
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It was 11:15 at this point and we had just a few more things to tick off her list! DD wanted to ride Dinosaur and go the play area again so we headed there next.

... continued in next post
 
Day 6 part 2

Off to Dinoland, one last hurrah before the change it entirely, we will miss it!

Hi Mr. Alligator
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We didn't have Genie+ this day so we had to wait a pic, good time for some photos though!
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I do love the character costumes in Dinoland, but the meet lines were all very long
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DD had another play in the Dinosaur dig playground, she made a friend this time so it was fun for her to show him around since it was his first time there! I had a bathroom break and grabbed a beer. DH and I shared a lot of drinks in the parks. It worked out well, they would get warm too fast and also we didn't take that much time to rest between rides so we had to get through them quickly.

It was only 12:45 but we decided to head out and get a longer dip at the hotel.

DD had to stop by the WE Headquarters to get her final badge:

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Again we got pretty lucky with the buses! I really can't complain too much about transportation this trip.

We grabbed some lunch at Pop food court, it was just OK, we both had the sesame chicken with rice and green beans, we had to wait for them to make fresh chicken, so that was nice, but other than that, nothing to write home about. DD had some sort of kids snack pack.

We finally decided to hit the main Petals Pool, and DD and DH got out ahead of me because I stopped after lunch at the bar for a drink before heading to the room to change. By the time I got back to the room, changed myself and out the door they texted to stay at the computer pool because there had been a "code brown" at the Petals pool! Go figure! Anyway, we had a good hang at the pool this afternoon again.
 
Day 6 part 3 - Disney Springs including T-Rex Cafe

After a good break we headed to the bus to get to Disney Springs. This was probably one of our longer bus waits, and I was pissy because my water bottle was empty, haha.

We got to DS at about 5:45 and headed to World of Disney. We had only a few to-dos here: Lego store, World of Disney, dinner, mayyybe Gideons.

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World of Disney is SUCH a fun store and one could spend hours in there! None of us bought anything this time, DD had a bit of a tummy ache, so that cut our time short. and I told her I'd buy her a small lego to play with at dinner so she held off on asking for anything here.

She was feeling pretty blah and just wanted to sit for a bit. We were right next to the Joffrey's cart though so we asked if she wanted a smoothie and this was the thing to help her turn the corner!

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We were trying to think of where to go for dinner, and thought we'd pick something fun for DD since she was feeling a bit blah. Rainforest wasn't taking walk ups, but her sister T-Rex was, so we put our name on the walk up list there. We took some pics outside the Lego store while we waited.

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The ogopogo is such a classic, I think people will really revolt if he ever goes away! I can barely recognize Disney Springs from the old Downtown Disney now, it has changed so much.
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We got called for our table, but had to wait in a bit of a line still
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We were seated next to this dude which I thought was a pretty good location!
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DD enjoyed her colouring menu again. She chose a corn dog and corn. I convinced DH to split the nachos with me because I wasn't that hungry, they were pretty good! It's hard to mess up nachos.

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DH just had a coke and I had a couple beers. Needed to relax after worrying about DD not feeling good for 5 minutes, lol. We also chatted with a couple at the table behind us who lived just an hour from our city at home, so that was nice!

After dinner we headed to the Lego store and to do a bit more browsing.

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DD wanted one of the lego Disney storybooks, but they only had one that i think was Peter Pan that she wasn't really interested in, so we went outside and I ordered her one from Amazon that would arrive the day we got home, modern times!

We did some more browsing and we bought DD an Ariel shirt at Uniqlo. Wish we had this store at home, it looked like my style.

We finished the night at the rooftop Coke bar, DH and DD had a coke float (one of the few food/drinks I find gross!) But it was a nice view! I had just finished my second beer from dinner that I got to go anyway, so wasn't in need of anything else.

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We headed to the bus after this and DD finished the night falling asleep and being carried back to the room (thanks DH!)

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It was 8:50 at this point. She woke up when we got back to the room to get ready for bed and we watched a bit of TV before we all crashed. This was a good final day, we were all tired by this point and could have got by with a 5 day park hopper I think. Probably we should have taken the past days a bit slower, but that is hard for me! It was hard getting up and heading out early each day (especially with the 3 hour time difference) and DD was never able to take a nap during our afternoon rests. I think next time we'll take one full break day mid-week as well to just hang at our hotel, visit another hotel and go to DS.

One more post to come - our last day visit to AKL!
 
Seems like a great time at Narcoossee’s! DD’s cupcake looks yummy! Glad it made a good breakfast. :)

Looks like lots of fun at AK! Your DD’s experience with Wilderness Explorers makes me think our own DD would really enjoy it, so I think the next time we make it to AL we’d have to make that a priority.

Also lots of fun at DS! Sorry DD was feeling a little sick, but glad the smoothie helped her feel better.

The full break days are nice, IMO! Even though we never had any late nights, it was still lovely not to feel like we “had to” get up early to RD or whatever.

Looking forward to your final AKL visit!
 
Loved following along.

We have 3 littles and the mid week break is a must for them and my husband! I highly suggest giving it a try.
 
Breakfast of champions - cupcake and baguette. What drink did you get at Petals? My go to is the Pina Colava. Can't pass it up. This drink is one of the reasons I stay at Pop!
 

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