Disney 2021: Animal Kingdom

Our last full day at Disney was spent in the Animal Kingdom. We arrived at rope drop and were able to get into the park pretty early!

Our first stop of the day was at Flight of Passage. Having never ridden this ride without a fast pass, I hadn't yet experienced the full queue line and I was excited to do so!

Seeing the full queue all lit up was really neat and something I'm glad I had a chance to experience, for sure!

After Flight of Passage, we jumped over to the Na'vi River Journey. 

I realize this is incredibly silly, but if you actually pay attention to the surroundings on this ride, you'll notice that the Na'vi are actually going along on the journey "with" you! (Hence the name "Na'vi River Journey"....serious face palm here.) How I missed this before, I'll never know!!

Up next was a ride on Kilimanjaro Safari, while it was still morning and the animals were out and about! 

We saw plenty of giraffes and elephants! It was great as always!

Such a gorgeous day!

As a mid-morning snack, I stopped at a cart near Asia where they offered fried pot stickers. These are my FAVORITE on Disney Cruise Line and were taken off the pirate night menu - I'm still bitter about it. 

 

When I saw a friend on instagram ordered these for herself a few weeks before our trip, I added them to my must do list and they did not disappoint! 

While our friends took a ride on Everest, Brayden and I hung out and enjoyed the atmosphere. 

We did a quick rider swap and somehow ended up on the very FRONT of Everest! This was my second time to ride up front and if you haven't done so before, you need to! It's so much fun!

For lunch, we had the pulled pork mac and cheese from Flame Tree BBQ. This is a favorite of ours and almost always an every-timer! While eating, we also saw a boat pass by with Mickey and Minnie on board! So fun!

After lunch, we walked over towards Dino Land and secured our Annual Pass magnets. We love this cartoon and thought the magnet was so fun!

One of Brayden's favorites in Animal Kingdom is Triceratops spin, so we all hopped on board for a quick ride!

Notice the now-gone Primeval Whirl in the background. I never had a chance to ride it as I tend to shy away from spin-type rides. Rest in peace!

I love how we still had a chance to see characters throughout the park without actually being up close to them.

It's Tough To Be a Bug was up next!

When we excited, we saw a beautiful hidden Mickey made of flower petals on the ground! 

I love the creativity behind this one and saw that Disney recently featured a cast member on their instagram who makes these beautiful icons throughout Animal Kingdom! So fun!

Dinosaur is one of my favorite rides in Animal Kingdom and we decided to make it our last ride of the day! Somehow, we were fully finished with almost every attraction in Animal Kingdom by 2 p.m.! 

Poor Brayden was scared to death! Hah!

Before leaving, we decided to grab a few snacks on the way out. I really wanted a few snacks from Pandora, so we meandered back over in that direction. 

On the way there, we spotted a few friends! 

Jason's favorite is the Night Blossom (I don't care for it as much) and my favorite is the Pongo Lumpia! 

This decadent treat is made with cream cheese and pineapple, wrapped in a flaky crust. SO good!

We also ordered Starbucks on our way out!

Our evening plans included a tour of the Copper Creek cabins at Wilderness Lodge (for our friends to see) as well as a dip in the pool!

This kid should have been born a fish. He would swim all day every day if I let him!

Our beautiful day turned into a beautiful evening.

Brayden LOVED the water slide at the Wilderness Lodge and still talks about it to this very day!

After swimming for a few hours, we returned to our room to change for dinner at Geyser Point.

While waiting, we also had a chance to see the Electric Water Pageant! This brings back such awesome memories of my childhood!

We all ordered the same thing - the bison burger. It was delicious!!

After hanging around the restaurant and enjoying our final evening in Disney, we walked over to Roaring Fork for dessert! :)

Brayden enjoyed a Mickey Bar...

...Jason LOVED this magic cookie bar... (I did taste it and it was amazing!)

...and I had a Mickey ice cream bar as well! Our friends also ordered ice cream! Perfect end to a great trip!!

Back in our room, Brayden played with his bubble machine out on the patio and then we drifted off to sleep with another amazing day in the books! 

Up next: Our final day (1/2 day) at the Magic Kingdom! 

Disney World Travel Day (November 2019)

Happy frosty Tuesday from the winter tundra of the south! Although it's been a hot second since we returned from our Wine & Dine Disney trip (with Disney Dream cruise), I figured it was high time to share a recap of our trip with all of you!

This trip was a combination of several of our friends and in total, there were 7 of us. We've always talked about doing a friends trip together, and I couldn't believe it was actually happening. We were the only one from our group with a kid, but it didn't matter to anyone and I loved it! 

For starters, I'm going to share our itinerary and link each post as it becomes available.

Disney Travel Day: Wine and Dine Expo & Animal Kingdom
Disney Day 2: Wine and Dine 10K & Kids Races & Hollywood Studios/Epcot
Disney Day 3: Wine and Dine Half Marathon & Magic Kingdom
Disney Day 4: Boarding the Disney Dream
Disney Day 5: Castaway Cay
Disney Day 6: Nassau
Disney Day 7: At Sea Day
Disney Day 8: Disney Springs and Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party

Our trip began with a late start. First of all, Halloween happened to fall the night before we were flying out to Disney. Since we couldn't let Brayden miss one of the best nights of the year for a kid,  we decided to hang back around a bit longer in our home town to let him do a little trick or treating. We had a blast (so did he) and I do not regret it one bit!

We did end up getting on the road about 7 p.m. and because our flight was an early morning one, we decided to spend the night at a hotel near the airport (which was about 2 hours from our home). 

After about four hours of sleep (literally), we were at the airport, through security, and on the plane in no time. We purchased TSA precheck about a year ago and haven't regretted that decision yet. It's so easy and smooth, especially with a little one! On this trip in particular, we were told at first that the precheck line at the airport wasn't yet open (I didn't know they had a time cap?) and we would have to go through the regular security line. There were several of us with precheck, kind of milling around for a minute, and somehow (miraculously), they decided to open the precheck line a few minutes early! YAY!

The flight was smooth and we landed in Orlando without any issues. You could definitely tell it was a race weekend, though - Magical Express was crowded! Thankfully we were at the beginning of the line for Pop Century, but check out that line behind us!

Front(ish) row!

After arriving at Pop, we decided to check our bags since our room was not quite ready yet. While waiting in the bag check line, I literally received a text that our room was ready, so off we went! We were in the 50's building with perfect access to the Skyliner! So much fun!!

We dropped off our bags, then said goodbye to our friends who weren't running any of the races that weekend and headed over to the Expo. (See link for expo recap.)

After browsing the expo for a while, we decided we were hungry and made our way to Animal Kingdom to meet up with our other friends.

Lunch included a stop at Flame Tree BBQ for a little brisket mac & cheese. It was so filling and delicious!

Brayden was WORN out from all of the traveling, so he napped in the stroller while we ate. After lunch, we rode Expedition Everest (dumb, I know) then walked over to see the Festival of the Lion King!

This is one of our favorite shows at AK.

Before long, a local friend of ours joined our party and we all rode Kilimanjaro Safaris together.  (Brayden is here but he's not in the picture.)

For dinner, we hopped a bus to Disney Springs and I made a bee line to the Christmas store to check out their specialty Wine & Dine Half Marathon Weekend ornaments. I've seen this display for many races, so if you're running a race and want a special memento to remember it by, these make for a great souvenir! They often have the year, distance, or even the race name hand painted on them!

Dinner that evening was at Earl of Sandwich and it was oh so delicious! 

We called it an early evening because four of our six adults had the 10K to run the following morning! 

...and that's a wrap on our travel day/day one at the most magical place on earth! Stay tuned for more! :)

2019 Wine & Dine Half Marathon Recap

Last month, I participated in the 10th Anniversary of the Wine & Dine Half Marathon. I had so much fun running throughout the parks and loved running a different race route from the typical Princess and Marathon Weekend!

At first I wasn't going to dress up for this race at all, but then I remembered I had a costume already made from a friend's birthday party (years ago), so I went with it!

What team? Wildcats!

We stayed at Pop Century during this race weekend and when I arrived at the bus stop, there were buses galore!

In no time, we were at the starting area. Since I was a bit early (the corrals weren't open yet), I stood around and listened to the guys on stage. Y'all, they were cracking me up about the hummus vs cheese in the post-race boxes from the 10K the day before!

Yay! That's me!!

I was happy I arrived early because I was able to jump right in the front of the corral once it opened. Another favorite of this race weekend? Not having to walk a mile to the corrals before starting the race! WIN!

The theme for this race was colonial Mickey and I LOVED it!

Before I knew it, it was time to run. We were off!

I knew my IT Band was going to be an issue here, so I made up a game plan of doing run/walk intervals throughout the course. Another idea was to run the straight parts of the course and walk the curves/inclines. Oh yes, and stop for characters, of course!

The first character I spotted was Louis and although I already have a photo with him, his line was super short so I stopped!

 
Lotso was out on the course too which was a first for me! Yay!

 

The Mickey golf cart was out there as a filler without characters or a photographer, so a lovely race volunteer took our photos! She was so sweet and told us she doubled as a photographer (for real) on the side!

Around mile 3, the IT Band was really starting to bother me. I stopped at every single medical tent to pile on the BioFreeze. The fully stocked medical tents are something I honestly appreciate about runDisney and haven't seen at other race events. You need BioFreeze mid-race? It's at every medical tent in a huge pump bottle.

Life. Saver. Seriously.

Before long, we were at our first park - Animal Kingdom!

If you're wondering what a typical character line looks like, there you go! I didn't wait in line for Russell as I already have a photo with him, but you can see the crowd there. Thankfully, although these lines look really long, they actually don't take much time at all to get through!

Into Animal Kingdom we go!

As the sun rose, it became easier to see people's outfits and for real, people were cracking me up with their "Wildcat" cheers! I LOVED it! One girl even asked to take a picture with me as she said High School Musical was one of her favorite movies! So fun!! (I'm just glad people recognized the outfit!)

I. Was. So. Excited. To. See. Kevin!!!

This race course took us through Pandora. Although I've visited Pandora, I've never actually run through Pandora, so this was a very cool experience!

The sunrise over Animal Kingdom was absolutely beautiful! Seeing the sunrise was a big change for me with the Wine & Dine Half as I haven't run this race since it switched over from being a night time event.

Running through Animal Kingdom made me smile because it reminded me of the last time I ran the full marathon during Dopey a couple of years ago!

Another new-to-me stop were Chip and Dale in Dinorama! Of course I had to stop here, too!

After looping through Animal Kingdom, it was time to say goodbye! We ran out behind Animal Kingdom which led to a pretty nifty view of the backside of Expedition Everest.

Almost half way!

Running to Hollywood Studios was pretty much all highways without anything spectacular going on. I do have to say that I love Disney's overall immersive theming, though. Growing up, I was a huge fan of the Yankee Doodle Mickey album and I'm not even joking - they kept playing songs from that album throughout the course! It seriously made me so happy! If you haven't heard that album, you should look it up. It's so cute for kids and full of patriotic songs with Mickey and friends!

As we approached Hollywood Studios and mile 10, my IT Band really began to act crazy. It started shooting these sharp pains down my leg and into my foot. Remember my plan of walking the curves and running the straights? Yeah, well I guess I never really noticed before, but there weren't many "straight" parts of this course. The roads either banked right or left or went up or down. I finally found a walk/run pattern of some sort that worked for me and just went with it!

I loved how there was specialty signage near mile 10 for the 10th Anniversary of this race weekend! Fun times!

Our time running through Hollywood Studios was seriously SO short. Jason and our friends were planning on visiting the park that day and just so happened to be in the vicinity. They found a spot right after security and camped out while waiting on me to run by. I figured they would be waiting a while but no - we literally ran down Sunset Boulevard for 30 seconds and turned out near Once Upon a Time...

...which meant my friends and family were literally only waiting for maybe 5 minutes for me to run by! Perfect timing!

After leaving Hollywood Studios, we ran along the Boardwalk towards Epcot.

Team Daisy was there to cheer us on!

We looped through the back of Epcot and around World Showcase...

...where we hit mile 12!

I almost missed Lady Liberty with her 10th Anniversary sash - I'm so glad I spotted her before it was too late!

There were a few characters out and about in World Showcase, so I stopped for some pictures.

Honest John and Gideon from Pinocchio...

...and Dopey from Snow White, of course!

The Big Bad Wolf was also out and about for pictures and this one holds a funny story. 

As a child, I was super scared of the Big Bad Wolf. Like so scared I wouldn't go anywhere alone. Yes, I realize it's ridiculous, but I was a kid. It has also become kind of a running joke with my family as of late. So, as an adult, the first time I saw Big Bad at a Not So Scary Halloween Party several years back, I had to do a double take and kind of giggled at the stupidity of my childhood fear. (But I never stood in a line for a picture.) I knew when I saw him here (for the first time ever at a race), I just had to get that picture. 

I sent it to my husband, brother, mom, and dad with the tag line "No longer scared..." :)

Oddly enough, this was the final character stop on this race course!

Just like that, the finish line was near!

Mile 13! Despite the ridiculous IT Band pain, I made it!

Another runDisney Half Marathon and Challenge done!

I didn't hang around long after this one because I knew my people were all at Hollywood Studios and I wanted to join them as soon as possible.

However, I did take time to eat a little breakfast before then! The Mickey waffles were worth every bite!

I run for Disney food, seriously!

Did you run in this Wine & Dine Half? If so, what were your thoughts on the race? Did you enjoy it? Like the course?