Ok here goes.
We stayed on track with our touring plan all day today - not following it exactly, but everything was taking the right amount of time to finish on time.
But we arrived to our last ride (FoP) just a little later than I had hoped. Since we have to do rider swap, we always need a bit extra time. Unfortunately, the queue was exactly how long Disney said, not shorter as TP was indicating. We had a Sanaa reservation for 5:05 and I was hoping to be heading for the bus stop by 4, but in reality we didn’t head there until 4:20.
We walked as fast as we could but with four kids, a stroller, and throngs of people it was quite a hike. The AKL bus stop was the very last one. There was a bus there. I ran ahead of my family and arrived at the queue just as the driver closed the doors. I tried to flag him down but he pulled away. My family walked up behind me and we rued our bad luck.
We waited another tortuous 35 minutes before the next bus came, all the while ticking down the minutes till our ADR. The kids were growing impatient. Thankfully a thoughtful CM told us a bus was coming and even pointed out which on it was (it was turning around to go the right direction into our queue). The wait was made a little longer by two ECVs that needed to be loaded. The driver was a rookie being trained so he had help, but was also kinda slow doing things.
We were finally able to load and were seated and it was a few minutes after 5:05. I knew we had a 15-minute grace period. At about 5:11 we pulled away from the station and made the short drive to Kidani. All the while I was watching the clock and waiting for the very last minute to check in.
At 5:19 (the last possible minute) we were pulling into the Kidani bus stop (thank goodness it is the first one they come to). I checked in via the app (and was able to add the 8th person to my 7-person ADR! You can add up to one more upon Checkin) and we got off the bus.
As we were walking into the hotel, I got the “table ready” notification. We rushed to the elevator and went down the hall to Sanaa and were taken to our table. Phew! I sat down exhausted after a stressful hour.
On the one hand, if one thing had gone a little faster today (maybe not losing DD’s shoe?), we would have made it on that first bus. On the other hand, if one thing hadn’t gone as smoothly, we would have been late to our ADR and may not have been let in (who knows?). Two minutes one way or the other.
The bread service was totally 1000% worth it though.