dawnmichele
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- May 20, 2010
Hello, and welcome to my mostly photos trip report for my family’s visit to Disney World in mostly April of 2014. It’s kind of late, but better late than never, that’s my motto.
It was a birthday trip for both Danny and Hannah, who I will introduce in just a second. We spent 6 nights in the Jambo House at the Animal Kingdom Lodge in a DVC suite. We had a great time.
So who are Danny and Hannah? My usual partners in Disney crime, that’s who.
Hannah is my kid. I often call her H because that’s much less typing. I call her my kid but she is actually an adult. This picture of her is really old, but she approves of it and is usually pretty crabby about having her picture taken or me sharing a picture of her online. She is a huge Disney fan and this will by her 8th trip. Lucky girl. Her favorite park is the Magic Kingdom. Her favorite ride is Haunted Mansion. Her favorite Princess is Kida. She excels at sarcasm and spends large amounts of her free time playing video games. I love her.
Some popular Disney blog used this picture in a Tusker House review. They don't want to give me credit so I'm posting it again here. Hello Danny!
Danny is Hannah’s dad. He probably likes going to Disney World the most out of all of us. He’s really uninterested in going anywhere else on his vacations. This is partly because he has serious mobility issues and Disney World gives on a rented scooter gives him his mobility back. He’s a genius software engineer, a huge nerd and a really good person. We’re not together any more, but we’ve taken family vacations together for many, many years.
I’m Shelly. My first trip to Disney anything wasn’t until I was 30 years old. I’ve tried to make up for that since! I have always been a kind of crazed theme park fan, and Disney World? I wanted to live there! And so last January, I moved to Orlando and participated in Disney’s College Program - even though I was the same age as most of the other participants moms. It was a super amazing time. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done and I can not possibly say enough good things about it. My favorite park is the Magic Kingdom. My favorite ride is impossible to say. My favorite Disney movie is the Hunchback of Notre Dame, but there’s a big soft spot for the Aristocats which was my favorite as a kid. Also, Buzz Lightyear is my boyfriend.
Ok so that’s us.
Here’s the basic story of our spring of 2014 Disney trip.
Our last trip before this one had been in December of 2013 (there’s a trip report about that over here if you’d like to read it), and we had bought annual passes on that visit. We used them that (long) visit, and planned to use them on another trip in October of 2014.
When we decided to buy them, I mentioned maybe could squeeze in a quick low budget trip in the spring on the same passes as well. Like so many travel plans, at first I was just kind of joke/kidding, but as time went on it started to seem like more and more of a good idea.
One day, my brother mentioned he was going to sell some of his DVC points. Hmm, really? I started thinking more about that extra spring trip, and one night while we were all having dinner together, I brought it up again. Danny and Hannah have their birthdays in the same week, and maybe it would be fun to go to Disney and celebrate together?
Of course it would be!
Points were secured, rooms, were booked, all that stuff.
Detalls:
When: April 27 - May 2, 2014
Where: Animal Kingdom Lodge, Jambo House
Tickets: Annual passes bought in December of 2013
Dining: Trying to cheap it out
Memory Maker: Of course, you can’t be too cheap
- but! I can’t find the photos. I’ll keep looking.Special Events: Flower and Garden!
And the most special - The birthdays!
Danny only wore his birthday button one day, but Hannah wore her’s all of them. And she got some great pixie dust because of it. It was super fun and I loved watching her be surprised every time it happened. Things like a free soda or an extra dessert, a phone call from Mickey at our resort’s gift shop, and even just the constant birthday wishes from so many cast members was so fun and made all of us feel special.
This trip was also nice because it really felt like a extra special treat. Visiting Disney in December of one year and October of the next seemed like a huge luxury in itself, but getting this trip in too? That made 3 trips in a 12 month period and we were feel super grateful and lucky.
It wasn’t the best trip though, and I think it turned out to be everyone’s least favorite (keeping in mind that every trip we’ve had has been fantastic overall and a terrible day at Disney is better than a regular day at home).
A major reason this was no one’s favorite trip was the rain. It didn’t just rain every day, it monsooned. A lot. There were several days we spent more than an hour sitting in a park trying to wait out the downpour. After a couple days we just trudged through the rain, but even then a lot of attractions were closed. And it meant no picture taking, which for me is a lot of the fun of being at Disney. The other weather issue was it was so very hot. Not compared to how hot it gets in Orlando, but we had only visited in December before this trip and we weren’t really prepared.
We were also not in love with Jambo House. At all. There’s nothing wrong with it, it just wasn’t for us. The balcony with the animals to watch was marvelous, but we’re not the type to spend any time at all in our room, so we didn’t see a lot of animals. We’d give it a try in the morning while we got ready and a couple times we got lucky and saw some giraffe, but always by the time we came home it was dark and there was nothing to see.
We all thought it was way too dark inside, too. It makes sense to go along with the theming for sure. I get it. But we didn’t dig it.
It’s definitely gorgeous in there, though. We had great service and loved having a microwave and toaster in our room. The towels are better in a deluxe. What else.
So it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t as fun staying there as we had been hoping.
There are plenty of great memories from this trip. And a lot of good photos. I hope you’ll enjoy them.
I hope you'll enjoy the rest of it!
. There will be more.
