January 24th:
Up around 8 with our daughter out on the patio looking around the savannah and being disappointed that there were no animals.
Eventually did see some Roan Antelope (3) and a couple of them butted heads – got pictures of that.
We had bagels for breakfast in the room watching for animals.
Short tour of parts of the hotel and kids took part in one of the conservation activities that you can collect beads for doing. They did the jenga block type one talking about the ecosystem.
We had a couple of old Samsung S4 phones that still function for wifi and as cameras, etc – so let each of the kids use one to take pictures with. It was pretty fun watching them decide what they wanted to take pictures of during the trip. It was also cool to look at the pictures later to get a view from a different perspective.
We took the bus to Disney Springs and did a short wander there. There we checked to see if Planet Hollywood was open or not – we had gotten a reservation for that day a few weeks back but it had been cancelled as they weren’t quite ready yet and we wanted to check to see if maybe they might be open after all – they were doing a private event instead. Oh well.
During this walk we got a call from our DVC client rep and we sorted out the timing to head over to Saratoga Springs DVC center to sign the paper work in a couple hours.
We ended up having a good lunch at T-Rex without any real wait. T-Rex is always fun.
After lunch and a decent walk around Disney Springs and Saratoga Springs Resort we were at the DVC center and finished up the paperwork and got our add on points. With the changes Disney made to DVC the previous year prior to us buying our points on the resale market we weren’t able to take advantage of some of the benefits that members that bought from them enjoyed. But with the add on points we now have access to the full benefit set. We had our new blue DVC cards saved to our phones and the points banked for next before we left the building!
We got some ice cream for the kids before we left and they also gave us 3 special fast passes to be used how we liked over the next few days. Bonus!
We walked back to Disney Springs and did some shopping through several stores and then headed out to the buses.
Back to the hotel and took some time to rest at the hotel. We ended up missing our planned Nemo musical fast pass and Primeval Whirl fast pass because of the afternoon events but we wanted to make sure we got to our night safari right fast pass.
Once we got to the park we had to wait to get Heather and the kids’ annual passes set up and then we were in the park for a quick walk to the safari ride. Along the way we saw the lit up Tree of Life for the first time in person – very cool!
We made it to the night safari ride with a half hour to spare in our window and it was a very different experience at night – but a lot of fun!
After that we saw we had about 35 minutes until the park closed – so we hit up Expedition Everest for our son and I to ride in the dark – that was a lot of fun – you can see so far at night. The night safari ride was fun but I think the dark ride on Expedition Everest was cooler.
Then we made it over to Dinoland to make up for our missed Primeval Whirl fast pass and quickly got on the ride (well, all of us but Heather who can’t handle the spinning).
Then all 4 of us got on Triceratops Spin and then a sprint to Dinosaur and we just made it in before the clock changed to 7:30 to indicate the park was closing.
We were the only riders getting on and got an entire car to ourselves (we were the last to ride that night).
At the end the staff had been doing a final inspection of the ride cars and we were left out in the final time tunnel for a few minutes as the cars were backed up. It was pretty awesome and a definite cool first for us but by the end the kids were getting a bit scared.
After that, it was a quick bathroom break and a walk to the front of the park – along the way we managed to catch the animated show on the Tree of Life. Fantastic. Leave it to Disney to turn an oil rig into a tree and then turn around and turn it into a movie screen.
We left the park and caught the direct bus to Epcot as that park was to open to 11 that night.
The bus driver for that ride had a lot of fun joking around with everyone – made for a shorter ride.
After bag check we were into Epcot – we ended up walking right onto Spaceship Earth.
Heather and the kids had only had their annual passes for a little over 3 hours at this point and we were in our second park and had ridden 6 rides. We can be efficient at Disney World sometimes!
We then decided we needed to eat and hit up Electric Umbrella and got a partial view of Illuminations while we ate.
We checked out Test Track but the wait had jumped to 45 minutes, so instead we went over toward the Nemo ride. Along the way we looked at stopping for the Joy and Sadness meet and greet but the wait ended up being 20 minutes and the kids were a bit punch drunk so we needed to keep moving.
Onto Nemo and then did Soarin’ after a short wait. (again Heather did not ride) It was the kids’ first time seeing the updated Soarin’ so it was fun to watch their reactions.
After that we wandered out of the park and onto a bus (after a short wait) then on our way back to the resort.
Back to the room and then bed!