Parks lite, scoping resorts, AKL fun - thoughts from liners?

Walt Disney World
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Would love for y’all’s expertise (yeah I said it), personal opinions and wild ideas about my initial plan below.
Trip: March 4-10, the 4th and 10th are travel days
Resort: AKL Jambo house, we couldn’t pass up the chance to stay in it empty! We’ll miss Jiko, but oh well (we did Boma for my 30th bday)
Us: Me, designated FOMOm and overthinking overplanner. DH, works 14 hour days, takes overnight call, the only reason we’re building in relaxation time. DS, 7, is starting to be too cool for everything. DD, 2, had a minnie themed bday party, obsessed with “Duwaf” and “AnnaElsa”, her rendition of “Weh it go” will make you cry. All of us are early risers (the kids by choice, DH and I by force)
Our last trip was right before COVID hit (we’re fairly certain DH got covid on the trip, testing was unreliable back then. Both kids got strep on the trip but he was strep negative), and it was totally epic. This will be less epic but still awesome, and we’re going to do more outside of the parks - scope out moderates with cool pools for future stays, catch some gators, etc.

Friday 3/5 –
Breakfast in room
At AK by 8 or 815 depending on early entry (personally I think it’ll start by then, opinions?)
Lunch at tiffins and finish up park
Pool or stay in park
Dinner at Sanaa

3/6 – resort/gatorland day
Drive to OKW, Breakfast at Olivia’s café, see pool
Mobile order SSR snack, see treehouse villas and pool
Gatorland
Disney springs – M&M store? Any other suggestions? Amphibious car? I am a little nervous about DS on a Saturday in terms of crowds but want to have something planned in case we need to kill an hour or two before dinner
Early Homecomin’ dinner

3/7 – Topo terrace breakfast (come on, res finder! do your thing!)
skyliner to CBR to see pool (do I need a mobile order if taking skyliner?)
Blizzard beach opens at 11
afternoon break in room if time
3 bridges for dinner at CS - unsure about this. We want to see the pool at CS, and the view looks great from 3 bridges, and that’s the only thing open here… thoughts? I mean if Toledo was open…or we could just mobile order a snack so that we could drive through, and get dinner elsewhere?

3/8 – DS & DH Legoland
DD & me - MK/Epcot depending on Remy timing. We’ll start at one and hop to the other, probably MK first just because of hours unless we want to RD Remy. Overall goals for the day: Ride FEA and Remy if open, eat epcot snacks, soak in atmosphere and calvacades at MK
Pool afternoon, take out dinner

3/9 – HS am, try for ROTR bg
Lunch at Scifi
Back to animal kingdom or stay at HS depending on desire, crowds
Sanaa dinner (I know it’s on here twice but it’s our kind of food and we’ve never been so)

Liners, what do you think? Would especially love y’all’s thoughts on the resort hopping choices. We saw Epcot (minus CBR) and MK resorts last time.

Thanks!

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Yeah. This. I would avoid DS in the evening…and most definitely on weekends. It was insanity, frankly. Normally we love the DS vibe. But if you can come up with a time to be in DS NOT on the weekend and not in the evening, I will highly push you to do so.

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Maybe we switch and do homecomin our last night? Thats a Tuesday. Good point.

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No, you do not. WDW transportation is open to everyone.

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Since you’re resort hopping via Skyliner, and with your kids, you might want to also take it from CBR to AoA/Pop, to see the larger than life decor at Pop and the themed areas of AoA.

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OH yes, I agree w/ this!!! My kids, when little, loved All STAR movies resort… SO much, the love bug car to sit in, the little green army men on top of a building etc.

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If you can, I definitely would!

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This is a good idea. I had ruled it out because we stayed at aoa when ds was 2. But DD hasn’t seen any of it!

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Aside from pictures you may have taken, I assure you your DS will have no memory of AoA for himself. We have always been surprised how our kids have no memory of our vacations before they 5 years old other than from pictures!

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3 Bridges was one of our favorite meals on our trip last month. First time we’d eaten there - great supper. We’d love to repeat 3 Bridges.
We also did a first at Kona - lunch; had always done breakfast. Liked our desserts best - entrees uneven; but would eat lunch here again.
First at Whispering Canyon. Lunch here. Food good - service uneven. We might be interested in eating here again.
Definite highlight was 3 Bridges.

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Not sure it’s worth taking the Skyliner from Riviera to CBR unless you want a 2 minute ride. Although I think you can cross the lake to the main pool and lobby area from near to the CBR station. Or you can walk around the lake the opposite direction from Riviera.

I’m also not sure what parking there is near the treehouse villas pool, since I believe there is parking outside each treehouse. The nearest parking lot is the Grandstand.

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Oh yeah, we can just walk! :woman_facepalming:

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Thanks for this! The menu at 3 bridges looks great. We stayed at poly last time and visited WL, only reason those aren’t on the list.

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Oh he doesn’t, but he’s also on this super annoying I’m not a baby kick. Lightning McQueen is now for BABIES, mom.

However, he is dying to go back to Legoland, which, imo, is boring for anyone over age 5. But he is a lego nut. :woman_shrugging:

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We love Legoland, and we’re all well over the age of 5.

But you do have to be Lego fans to really enjoy it. DH and I are bigger fans these days than the “boys” but they still ask to go. Miniland on it’s own is a good enough reason for me.

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I’m wondering now if I should just swap my HS and blizzard beach days. Going to BB on the first day it’s been open in almost a year seems… bold. And I keep reading that HS is the same amount of crazy whether it’s a Wednesday or a Saturday, so why not swap my Tuesday for Sunday? We will save DS for Tues instead of Sat, thanks for the warning.

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After a lot of reading recent trip reports, tracking line times, etc., here are our updated plans:

3/4: Arrive MCO 5pm, rental car to AKL-Jambo, eat delivery in room
3/5: Arrive at AK parking gate at 7 am
RD Pandora rides, then do KS. Take the time to do animation experience for my art/animation crazed DS.
We have a Y&Y res at noon (I called directly, and they asked for our Landry’s #), and we plan to do Maharajah and Everest before leaving.
TP tells me we’ll be done by 2. Head back to the resort, relax
Drive to DS
T-REX reservation at 5:30, check in for GIdeon’s line. If we aren’t out of the VQ by the time we’re done eating, we’ll skip it. I’m sure my son will just NEED to go into the LEGO store, but not if there’s a line.

DS on a Friday makes me nervous, but our other choices are… Saturday and Sunday. So.

3/6: breakfast in the room OR I have a res finder set for Homecomin Brunch at 930. If we can get this, we will move T-REX to Tuesday early afternoon. That would be ideal, but no ressies available yet.
Gatorland
Back to resort to relax, sitter comes around 3.
This was originally going to be our date night, but AK is now open until 8p, which means it’s the only night we could see Pandora lit up. So, DD will stay with sitter, DS, DH and I will head back to park around 530/6, and try to snag an 8pm Tiffin’s reservation. If we can’t get tiffin’s, we’ll go between Nomad wait list and satuli and stay til they kick us out.

3/7: For this day, I have plans for early BG, afternoon BG, evening BG and no BG. Just going to put the evening BG one below for simplicity’s sake, but alllll the scenarios have been analyzed lol

Going to risk driving to HS for RD, arriving at parking booths at 8. I don’t want to add 2 extra miles to our walking, we are only trying to do MMRR and TSM early.
Ride MMRR, TSM, maybe slinky depending on how things go.
10:30 Frozen sing along for DD
11:15 Sci Fi res
Figuring it will be crazy crowded by then, so back to resort.
Sitter comes for DD
Head back to HS when BG is called, and then ride what we can depending on lines
7:50 Oga’s res so that we can walk through SWGE at night

3/8: DS/DH to Legoland
I still haven’t decided on this day. I may have the sitter come all day so that I can have the whole day solo, and just start at MK, enjoy all the details, shop, snack, and then hop over to Epcot (dang monorail) for more of the same. Or I may have sitter meet us at TTC around noon and then I’ll take the afternoon to myself.
6:15 Sanaa reservation for all of us, last time they were back around 4

3/9: Topolino’s res at 8:30
RR skyliner to EP RD
Head to Soarin or FEA first, depending on what our TP says when we optimize. Depending on how RD goes, we may ride TT and SE. Definitely want the kiddos to see the aquarium. will do LwtL while Soarin ride swap is happening. If we are hungry, i’ve scoped out good snacks along our route. We’ll miss most of WS, but I’m the only one that cares.

Right now, we have a 3:05 Homecomin’ res for this day. I would love to move the Homecomin’ res to Sat brunch so that we can avoid DS on Fri night and do T-REX and LEGO store this day, but we’ll see. Res finder has been good to me so far, so fingers crossed.

I basically built the plans so that we can keep going in the parks if the crowds are surprisingly light, or we can bail even sooner still having done our favorite rides first. DD gets both Frozen rides, DH gets two AK visits, DS gets legos and dinos.

Where do you guys see problems? What would you do differently?