I will ask you not to look further up thread to the morning of our AK day on 7/3, nor to be distracted by the rant that may come in the next 48 hours 
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I think you are doing pretty well and can be excused an occasional rant!
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Snagged a second Oga’s visit for late this afternoon. I think DH will want to go again even if the kids might not.
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Love those night time photos from such rarefied air.
A pretty amazing night overall.
Nice way to celebrate, again. 
Have a great day at HS.
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One more birthday celebration to go and then we’re fresh out!
Today we celebrate DS13 who only had to wait about 5 months to celebrate his milestone. He loves ice cream cake so that’s his treat!!
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Happy Slightly Belated Birthday to your DS!!! 
Love that you and your family have been making up for lots of lost time on this trip.
Have also enjoyed the sightings of the ever mysterious King Kat, too!!
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Now you can celebrate your new-found knowledge out in the open!!
This is the way.
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Love that magic band!
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Me too. Gotta switch it out today though. This one doesn’t quite match what I’m wearing. 
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Day 6 Top Ten: Animal Kingdom
(I know the numbering keeps getting AFU but by now it’s funny and I’m gonna keep going with it as the ultimate FYAC ) OK but I did find a fix and now it’s fixxed.
-10. Being at Walt Disney World for my actual birthday. If we can say that the pandemic brought about anything good, it’s the fact that I was here over my birthday. Knowing that Independence Day is one of the top busiest days here at Walt Disney World I have always said that I would never have the opportunity to spend my birthday here since I had no desire to deal with that level of crowd. When our trip needed to be rescheduled and rescheduled and rescheduled and you get the point, we landed with two weeks this summer that worked for our family’s schedules. This was one of them. I figured with continued limited capacity that, although it might be very busy, it certainly wouldn’t be to the normal level of busyness. It was very magical to be here during my birthday and to be in The Best Park of all was the most fantastic thing ever!
-9. A magical break in the rain for pictures. Although it was pretty fantastic to be in Animal Kingdom on my actual birthday, it was rainy for pretty much the entire day. It almost never stopped raining, and when it did it didn’t stop for more than a couple of minutes. Except for the time right when our capture your moment photo session was scheduled! The whole time we were making our way through the flight of passage line, I was certain that this extra special thing I had planned was not going to go off. But to our very pleasant surprise the rain stopped for just long enough to get our pictures done. And what better place than in front of my favorite tree ever.
-8. Capture your moment photos. since we were all for celebrating our birthdays, and our long awaited return as a family to the world, I thought this was a perfect way to mark the occasion. We had three photographers with us for the 20 minute session and we could have gone, I think, anywhere we wanted. For $50, plus the cost of memory maker so as to be able to download all of the images, this was worthwhile. It would be even better on a day with better weather but I’m very happy with the images that we have to mark this extra special trip! The ones that were foggy I have been able to correct to my satisfaction so there is no need to contact Photopass about them. I would definitely do this again and recommend it to anyone looking for something a little extra special.
-7. Active animals on safari. If the rain was good for one thing it was bringing all the animals out. We saw an absolute ton of animals all throughout the entire safari. They were very active, moving all about and really enjoying themselves in the cool rain. We even had some delays as several of them stopped in the path along the way, so we got to really slow down and enjoy a little bit extra long experience. I have always heard that riding the safari during the rain is the best time, and since you’re under cover there’s no reason not to!
-6. Active animals on the trails! The animals were very active in their habitats as well, all along both exploration trails in the park, presumably thanks again to the rain and slightly cooler temperatures. It was fantastic to see so much tiger activity as I often miss them entirely. In fact, I think I’ve only seen them one other time and that was an April. The bats were active, the colobus were silly, the birds were crazy, and the gorillas were absolutely wonderful!
-5. Tusker house. Another wish granted for this trip for me! Tusker house has been one of our restaurants to visit every single trip since our first visit back in 2010 so when the announcement was made that it would be open in time for our visit I couldn’t have been more excited! It’s definitely not quite the same, since the buffet offered over 30 different selections to choose from, but it was a great breakfast and the family style option is way more relaxing than fussing over a buffet. We enjoyed eggs, bacon, sausage, potatoes, and of course waffles - both Mickey and Simba. My kids swear that the Simba ones are just not as good as the Mickey ones! We also had chicken curry which I could have just eaten exclusively. It was absolutely delicious! The characters came around and spent plenty of time socially-distanced visiting with our table and we got plenty of pictures with each of them. I will say that the service was lacking. It was all the more noticeable because the server at the next set of tables away from us, who has served us at least two other times, was practically jumping through hoops to give his guests a fantastic time. It just shouldn’t have taken us 10 minutes and two wait staff to get syrup for the second round of waffles that had already taken 10 minutes to come out from the kitchen. Still, we were overall very happy with the experience and look forward to coming back again, hopefully when it’s back to its usual full spread of choices!
4-. Popcorn! Go on with your Mickey bars and dole whips and pretzels. Those are all fantastic, but one thing that I absolutely never get enough of here is the popcorn. And for whatever reason I just hadn’t had any until today. It was fantastic! We got a bucket and have already had some refills as well! It is, for me, the perfect snack that doesn’t fill you up too much but is plenty tasty! I’m definitely a salty/crunchy kind a girl over sweet any day!
-3. Celebration Of the Festival of the Lion King. It was so great to be back in the theater in the round. I didn’t think we would get to see the show at the time that we did but we asked the cast member upon arrival if we would make it into the show that was being seated at that time and she assured us that we would. We were seated in one of the back rows of the theater, but if you’ve been in the theater before you know that there’s not a bad seat. It’s more a matter of whether it’s important to you to be close and up front or not. We were perfectly happy with our seats in the back but if you want something more to the front I would arrive 30 to 40 minutes ahead of the show time that you’re planning to see. We arrived 10 minutes before and got in easily. The show is fabulous, albeit lacking some tumble monkeys and aerialists, but it was still a lot of fun and was absolutely fantastic to see! Are you do look forward to the return of the full show at some point in the future, but the show definitely can stand on its own two feet without any trouble at all.
-2. A smorgasbord for dinner. Taking a bit of a page out of @amvanhoose_701479’s book we took everything out of the refrigerator that we had for leftovers and just made ourselves quite a feast for dinner. We all agreed that we didn’t realize that we were quite as hungry as we were until we started to prepare our plates, but we ate and ate and ate! We had Sanaa, we had Homecoming, we had Nice Guys Pizza, and we had Olivia’s. And in so doing we pretty well cleaned out our refrigerator! But still, I’m thinking I might want some more Sanaa to go
-1. A quiet evening in. Touring around Animal Kingdom all day was fun but in the rain it was pretty exhausting and we were quite happy to be home in our villa and just relax and enjoy our quiet evening in. We had our smorgasbord dinner, we sat out on the patio, we played cards, we took a little walk down to Conch Flats General store, and we had desserts of all sorts including hummingbird cake with plenty of ice cream, Gideon’s cookies, and birthday cake remnants. Relaxing in this way is some thing that, unless you’re a solo traveler, is just not really that possible in a smaller unit or traditional hotel room. It has been so wonderful to have space to spread out on our own as well as to have time together. We really do feel like we’re at home here 
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When guests show up unexpectedly to breakfast on the patio. Yes he jumped right onto my table and was less than three feet from me.
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My daughter’s favorite snack is popcorn as well! However, she still loves showing me all of the floats and ice cream treats that she sees online. It is a sad moment when the last kernel of popcorn disappears from the bucket on the drive home.
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My daughter decided she wanted to start a display of Disney popcorn buckets in her movie room. I said I’d send mine to her. I had NO idea how many I had until I started looking to send them 
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Out for a walk on the path from OKW to DS. It’s about a 12 minute walk from where the path starts at OKW, near the Southpoint Bus Stop, to the West End entrance which opens at 3pm. Very pretty and quiet.
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Super cool about the photo shoot! Does everyone get 3 photographers or was it because you had more people? Three would be awesome but seems overkill for 1 person.
Question… Did you tip them? I’m trying to figure out if this is one of those “not required but…” things.
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That magic band is gorgeous. For the first time, I wish I had a fancy magic band. Mine is just plain periwinkle blue. Dang. I’m so jealous!
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How were the Natives for your rainy day at AK? They’re one of those things I have sitting in my cart but just haven’t pulled the trigger.
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Everyone gets at least two. A head photographer and an assistant. They sent out two assistants - rather than just one - with our head photographer I think because of the rain there was some discussion alluding to that so everyone gets at least two.
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