Loving your trip report, so fun! Question on your flight out debacle. We fly out of Detroit, as well. Did you fly out on Delta? I’ve never had a flight cancelled on me like that and would love to learn more about your rebooking skills. When a flight is cancelled, are you refunded and then have to purchase a new flight whenever you find available? Or how exactly do you maneuver rebooking through the app?
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We did fly out on Delta. As soon as they cancel the flight, in the app you can look under your itinerary and there’s a link (in words, not a button) that says something close to “find alternate flight.” Hit it and choose a flight. Be quick, because the flights will fill fast. If you think the flight might be canceled or really delayed is a good idea to check out the other flights in advance so you know which ones you’d like to choose.
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Thank you!
I’m back with the rest of the trip, but not all in one post. Something in my charging port got damaged so my phone would only take a very slooooow charge off and on, and never really got above 50% after the 14th. I ordered a replacement, but sent it to my office so I reserved the phone for taking pictures and timing waits until I got home.
Day 5 - MK & HS & more MK
These early mornings are when I could never do without at least the microwave! DN likes dry cereal or yogurt and fruit, but I’ve got to have my eggs (scrambled and cooked in the microwave).
Our bus ended up not departing until about 6:50 (for an official 8:00 open), but we still arrived at the temp check before they started letting people in at 7:15, and we lucked into being pulled over to start a new line at the passholder taps. Even if we had joined one of the other lines I don’t think we’d have been any further back than we were the day the bus left at 6:40, and the people ahead of us the first day were bus people, so I think that the bus vs. walk issue is really kind of a non-starter. Maybe a couple of the walkers were first in line at other taps, but there really didn’t seem to be anywhere near enough of an advantage to bother with jumping through a ton of hoops with mobile ordering and such.
At any rate, we walked in and headed left. The plan was to walk by Pirates to see if it was open early, and if not just head back to the mountains. Pirates was, in fact, not open yet so we headed back only to find that neither Mountain was either. We stayed back there until about 7:40 (with the CMs telling us they had no idea when they’d be opening), until I heard one CM tell the other that Pirates was opening (it totally pays to eavesdrop), so we ducked out and were halfway over the bridge by the time they made that announcement to the people lined up.
They had just opened when we got there, so the there was no wait at all. No Barbossa head mist thing, but it was a good ride anyway. After that we decided to see if Jungle Cruise was open yet, and it opened just as we arrived. Our driver was… not the smoothest, but the backside of water was a titillating as ever.
Poor timing struck again, and Aloha Isle wouldn’t open for another hour, but the Mountains finally did! We went back and did them both, twice and it was time to leave for our Beaches & Cream lunch. Our server Herlina was so sweet, and Mia the Chocolate Fiend loved the Mudslide sundae.
After lunch we did a little schoolwork, and then went to HS. Not really a ton to report there… we rode RnR a couple of times (and were ahead of a very tipsy couple in line one of those times, who stayed very close behind us until one of them actually sort of leaned on me, at which point I succinctly told them to back off), and had some popcorn.
DN wanted a Rey costume, so we went to the Market in Galaxy’s Edge, which turned out to be the longest line we waited in all day. I was pretty sure she wasn’t going to like it, so I insisted she try it on right away. I was right, so it went back but she fell in love with a shoulder porg on the way.
We were pretty much done with HS, so we decided to ride Star Tours one more time and then go back to MK for a few rides on BTMRR before they closed. I think we made it about 4 or 5 times through before 9pm. As we walked out it struck me again how busy the park still was, and I realized how effective the fireworks are at getting people to leave.
Once again we waited a really long time for a bus, and this time we (and most of the line) finally just went over and got on the second Yacht & Beach bus that nobody was actually waiting for.
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Oh, and OBNurse’s report just reminded me that we had Sleepy Hollow breakfast that day, right after Jungle Cruise.I had the sandwich, and DN had a strawberry waffle. Her first one was burnt. Not just well-done, but actually burnt and tasted bad. I know this because at first I thought it just looked a little dark but still fine, so I gave it to her, and told her it was just extra crunchy, not actually burned. Then she wouldn’t eat more than one bite, so I tried it and it was definitely burnt.
The was the one CM interaction that wasn’t great last week was when I took it back and asked for a new one. Once I lifted it up you could clearly see that the bottom was straight up burnt and I was nice about it, but the CM acted like I was being totally unreasonable and gave me a really dirty look when they brought me the new one.
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I’m finishing this tonight, I promise. Or, if not finishing, then doing at least a few days.
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Day 6 - AK day
Today was going to be another early RD morning, but my feet were killing me and with the low crowds all week and the predicted CL of 1 at AK I decided that we might as well sleep in a bit and rest our legs for the morning. We ended up heading out at about 11:30 and walked right onto a bus when we got to the bus stop.
Despite our constant woes in getting a bus back to the resort, we had some really good departing bus juju going and we only waited for one bus to a park the entire week. Somehow the bus we wanted was just waiting for us when we go to the stop all but one time. It was kind of bizarre. The busses to the parks were also never full, though we were only ever on them either 90 minutes before opening or at a random middle-of-the-day point.
We hit the Joffrey’s cart for a humongous donut for DN and some rocket fuel for me, and then began our day with a tree selfie. It was overcast and really not the best day for photos, since someone turned the humidity up to 11 and it was that weird sunlight where it’s bright enough to make me squint, but not quite bright enough for sunglasses.
We headed into Pandora and waited about 35 minutes for FoP, and DN was very excited to see the Navi in a tank in the queue area again. After that we went up and got in the short line for NRJ… I think we waited maybe 10 minutes. That was DN’s first time riding it, and she was pretty impressed.
Even with the low crowds, Pandora was as crowded as usual so we left the area and decided to see a few of the animals on the way over to Asia. Being Detroit Zoo members, we’re pretty spoiled when it comes to getting to see cool animals in great habitats so TBH we don’t usually spend a lot of time looking at the animals at AK, but we’ve gone a lot less in the last year, so it was nice to do more of the zoo stuff too this time.
On our way we crossed Discovery Island just in time to have the birds do their fly-bys over our heads, which was fun. When we got to Asia DN was dying for a ride on Everest, so we waited on the (relatively) insane 10 minute line. By the time we got done the line was longer, and we had lunch coming up so we decided to ride the rapids instead, because who doesn’t like to get wet before going into the a/c for lunch?
Kali river had a posted wait of 30 minutes, but I don’t think we even waited 10 so when we were done we hung out and watched the macaques a bit, and then skimmed the Maharajah trek, mainly just for the bat house. I have a bit of a bat phobia in general, but I love the giant ones they have at AK! Unfortunately they weren’t positioned very well for photos.
For some reason mobile check in never enabled for Y&Y, so I had to go in to check in but our table was ready almost immediately. I got miso salmon, like I always do and it was good but we all know that the real reason I go there is for the fried wonton dessert.
By the time we were done with lunch it was around 4:00 and we immediately did Everest again because DN has been gifted with the same iron stomach as her aunt. I wanted to ride FoP again so back to Pandora we went. This time we waited about 25 minutes, even though the area in general felt far more crowded. Around 5:30 I thought it was high time to do a safari, but for some reason DN was less enthusiastic and I had to bribe her with ice cream.
We waited longer for that ice cream than anything all day except FoP. It was just one family group of about 7 ahead of us, but the one adult dude kept trying to get everyone else to get more things, or change their minds (yes, he was actually saying things like “are you sure you want that, and not this other thing instead? You don’t want both?” to all of them), and then another adult wouldn’t let him pay but he really wanted to pay and that was another 5 minutes of my life I’ll never get back.
We sat and ate ice cream (well, DN did… I was still full) and we also stopped to see some animals on that side of the island as we went, and then finally got to Harambe around 6:45. We did a quick tour of Gorilla Falls, and then walked right onto the safari. It had its highs and lows… the lions were very active, and noisy but the giraffes were all crowded into a corner by a rock.
When we finished the safari it was about 7:10. The evil elf child once again denied me a Dolewhip, and begged to go ride Everest again. We trekked to Asia for the third time in a day, and went looking for the Yeti 5 times before they closed.
This was the night we sat at our stop (the one all the way at the end) and looked at 5 busses just sitting there waiting at empty stops, while none came to ours until finally one of the transportation CMs told all of us at the BW stop to just get on the AKL bus that has been sitting there awhile. We filled the whole bus, and left some poor souls behind, even!
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I can’t tell you how often I’ve wanted to shout at people “do you see that I’m right behind you and I’m only one person?”
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I just wanted to say “Look dude, they’re kids. If they actually wanted ice cream and pop, even a little bit, you’re not going to have to convince them, but if you’re that set on spending more money then just go ahead and add another Mickey bar on there for this one”
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