I said I would try the African coffee at Kusafiri in the Animal Kingdom, and I did! Here’s my report: YUM!!!
Get the African coffee. It’s just strong coffee with some kind of creamy liqueur. So sweet, I didn’t need to add sweetener! (But I did add one creamer to help cool it off.)
Ahem. On with the trip report! I went to visit my son Woody, the CM, who is now working as a Coordinator of Training backstage. It’s a temporary assignment while a full-time Coordinator of Training is on leave.
I learned a lot of valuable lessons from this very short trip, the most important of which I shall now list here… 
- Stay onsite.
1.a. Traffic outside the bubble is awful!!! I had not stayed offsite since July 2000, when we had a week at the Summer Bay timeshare “resort” on 192. I didn’t like Summer Bay, but I didn’t dislike staying offsite back then. Now? Oh, hell, no. I am not doing that again if I can avoid it. The traffic was a nightmare. Woody lives in Champions Gate, a subsection of Davenport, which is not too very far from Ye Olde Summer Bay timeshares. But even though many roads have been built since 2000, and even though 192 itself has been widened and I-4 is in a constant state of flux, the traffic is just a freakin’ nightmare. Friday nights are the worst!!! Woody tries not to go anywhere on a Friday evening. No wonder he has no social life!!! He’s stuck in traffic all the time!!!
1.b. Offsite is not as charming as onsite. The televisions do not greet me by name. I cannot watch the Happily Ever After fireworks over breakfast (on the TV in the room). There are no spitting-frog fountains, no Dixieland jazz tunes at the bus stop, no cheerful CM’s wishing me a good day everywhere I turn.
1.c. Offsite has no Disney transportation. I barely got to ride the monorail. I only rode the ferry twice. Oh, wait, no, three times. That’s hardly anything! I didn’t step foot on a Disney bus or a Skyliner or a Friendship. Is it really a Disney trip if you don’t hear the Skyliner chimes once while you’re there?! I don’t think so!
1.d. No early entry for offsite visitors. This really impacted our ability to get any attractions done. OK, I seriously intended for this to be a super short trip where I just wandered around the parks and enjoyed the atmosphere, which meant NO RUNNING FOR A QUEUE and no trying (in vain) to figure out those horrid, impossible-to-understand Lightning Lane things. Unfortunately, now that there’s no virtual queue for Guardians, I won’t get to ride it until I can rope drop it. (And I’m an old lady! I can only hope I won’t get mowed down when I do get to rope drop it!) Sooooo… at Epcot on a Saturday in April, I only rode Spaceship Earth – and I had to stand in line for it!!! 
MK? Um, PeopleMover, Pirates, HM, and PhilharMagic. And honestly, those are my favorites, so yay, but when you consider that we spent all day (on a Friday) in the MK, that’s officially classified as – I checked with a mathematician – “diddly/squat.”
-
Always check before you give up on a popular restaurant with a line. We got a divine Sunday brunch at Summer House on the Lake in Disney Springs. The large family in front of us had reservations but showed up with only part of their party. Woody and I snagged a lovely table next to the window. Get the lemon curd pancakes! They’re delicious! (But the super thick bacon tasted burnt. They took it off the check.)
-
The corn on the cob at the Flower & Garden Festival – which all the vloggers just looooooved – was not all that and a bag of chips.
-
CM’s loved the little trinkets that we gave out, mostly tiny plastic ducks but also tiny plastic bunnies and dolphins. However, the German CM was confused by it and wanted to know the significance. He just couldn’t take a “thank you.” But he had been so nice by making one of the cuckoo clocks chime for us. I am very late to discovering the cuckoo clocks, but now they are a don’t-miss delight for me, up there with the model trains outside and the waterfalls in Canada (which are not working right now, grrrr).
-
Neither Woody nor I remembered the band A Simple Plan, but their fans were lovely and happy to experience that concert twice that night! Cheers to happy music lovers, and I’m so glad Disney has that venue outside the American Experience. It makes for such a nice walk around the World Showcase (unless you run into the getting-out-of-the-concert foot traffic – but don’t worry, that traffic does die down eventually).
-
Just a repeat of #2, really: Don’t hesitate to check for last-minute ADR’s of your favorite restaurants at your favorite monorail resorts. We had a light dinner (with no wait) at the Kona Café my first night in Orlando. Then we moseyed outdoors and watched the MK fireworks from the beach behind the Poly. I cried! So did a toddler right in front of us! For many minutes, his harried mother tried in vain to figure out why he was crying! But she made no move to leave with sobbing tot! Dad was nowhere to be seen until nearly the end of the fireworks, at which point he handed a dinosaur toy to the child who immediately stuck it in his mouth and stopped crying! I thought we were going to witness a murder! I was willing to testify for the mother!!!
-
(really 6) b. I was very surprised when CM’s opened the volcano pool gates to let the spectators pour through the pool area to get off the beach. I didn’t know they did that! And here I thought I knew everything…
-
(really 7) Watching Happily Ever After behind the Castle is wonderful and so much less stressful than watching it with 40,000 strangers in the Hub or on Main Street. We got spots on the bridge between Tiana’s and the Rivers of America and watched the fireworks and their reflections. And sniffled. I’m glad I got to see it before the water is drained.
-
(really 8) Last really great lesson learned: If you have a car, go to the original Gideon’s at the East End Market. The market itself is really cool and interesting. We got amazing food at Hinckley’s Fancy Meats. (The smoked duck & potato pastie – “hand pie” – was divine!!!) And there was no line at all at Gideon’s, so we got to talk to the employees for a nice, long time. We bought a ton of cake. Srsly. I got the pineapple dream cake slice; Woodrow got an Andes chocolate mint slice and a peanut butter and jelly slice. We snacked on those slices for the entire long weekend! They’re huuuuge. But I really loved the East End Market and the neighborhood in which it exists. Highly recommended!
Annnnnnnnd… I think that’s it. I’m sure I’m forgetting something; it’s been almost a month. I loved it! I miss it! I wish I were back there! I actually already ran the numbers on going back in July, tempted by the rumors that there were steep discounts because of the fears of the recession and competition from Universal. Can’t afford it! But oh, I wish I could.
which is from Africa!
