Day 7, August 09

Lazy day gone busy - Part 1

We slept in.

By 9am we were up and roaming about, looking out onto the Savannah and watching the animals.

Thankfully we had done some shopping the day before, so we had some in room breakfast before we finally got out the door at around 10.30. Got into the car and drove over to Animal Kingdom. When we arrived we joked about how we would start a new row charging by the cars ahead of us and guess what. We did start a new row, right at the VERY end of the parking lot.

Oh fun, start your day with a hike across the parking lot.

There was the short moment when we thought of going around, but knowing our luck we would have just ended up right around the same area. So we parked, got all our things out of the car and started the long walk to the tram. Needless to say, right when we got to the end of our walk they called for no further boarding and pulled the stop for the tram even further up. We sighed, took a photo of the row we were parked in and walked to the new tram stop. It didn’t take long for a new tram to arrive, but it took quite some time until we pulled away again. But luckily we quickly found ourselves at the entrance of Animal Kingdom with short lines at security and the turnstiles.

It was pretty hot, so we slowly walked up the hill and then the Tree of Life came into view. We had Fastpasses for Everest and we still had a little time to spare, so we walked through the stores and then finally made our way over to Expedition Everest. The standby line was pretty long and we were so happy to see that the FP line was moving nicely. We soon found ourselves in the museum

and then while in the last room before going out onto the platform we were stopped in front of some posters, which we then realized spelled out the names of the explorers in line. I was too slow to catch a photo but it definitely was a fun surprise. Once we were out on the platform Tom peeked how many people were in line for front row and since there was only one couple, he asked for front row, we went to the right and were next in line. The people in front of us walked out, the next train was filled and it was our turn to take those front row seats. Soon we were on our way and as always we enjoyed the view from those seats,

as at the broken track point you can see so much of Walt Disney World.

And then the train went backwards, turned around and off we went.

All too soon we had to get off, but if we took our time we could right get in line for our second FP of the day. So we slowly strolled over to Kilimanjaro Safaris, but not without a little detour over to Kali River Rapids. There was a path we had either missed earlier, or it was something new, but it just walked you over towards Kali and then we had to go back all the way. But a few minutes later we had made it to Harambe, explored the village shops and then it was time to head to the Fastpass entrance of Kilimanjaro Safaris. And while there was quite the standby line, the Fastpass one really walked all the way up to where the lines combine and then we were stuck a little bit. Thankfully for us as this gave me a little time to pick a Fastpass for lateron in the day at Epcot. Needless to say that Frozen ever after and Soarin were a no go, but at least we were able to pick up one for Mission Space. In the meantime at Kilimanjaro Safaris they had a bit of a struggle with one of the cars, people had to get off again and then were walked back to our car. But we were already organized into rows and we soon got on the next safari vehicle and off we went.

There were a lot of animals out and about and we got some really good photos.

The driver then pointed out that the island in the flamingo pond looked just like his boss and only then we realized that even though we had gone by that island so many times, we had never realized it.