Ok, finally, the important part of this trip ..
Park Day #1 - Animal Kingdom - 12/21/2021
PART 1:
Our first park day has arrived and it's... Pouring down rain... That's ok, my wife scheduled a 9am chiropractor appointment to try to fix her neck/back issues. Looking at the radar, maybe there's a chance Disney World area will be clear by the time we arrive.
At 7am, I'm on
Genie+ ready to make our first selection. I started refreshing as I knew we'd probably want an afternoon time slot to ensure we had plenty of time to arrive. It seemed to take awhile, but finally, Na'vi River Journey finally reached 1pm, so I selected that. After a bit, I noticed all the times went back to earlier in the morning. 10 minute rule coming into effect, so at least I had that time.
I had taken my computer to work a little on my part time job while there. Since it's be a few hours before we came close to leaving, I pulled that out and started working to keep my mind busy. Official park opening for the day was 8am, so I'd keep an eye on Flight of Passage as it hasn't sold out yet. The FoP return times just slowly creep along as the time gets closer to 8am. I'm thinking I have a chance as an offsite guest to grab this, woohoo... Until 7:58, the final pass goes. I am now realizing the last pass return time is 30 minutes before park closing. Ok, no big deal, it would have only been me riding as the kids not ready to try it and wife, even though she rode in January and loved it, doesn't think she can with her neck issues.
I keep working, wife slowly gets ready for her 9am appointment. It's only a mile up the road from our new hotel, so that worked out that we found one near by. I periodically refresh Genie+ just seeing if something opens, due to 10 minute rule. Fingers crossed, but nothing pops up. I eventually give up hard core checking, but due to fidgeting would occasionally open the phone and let Genie refresh. And then it happened, at about 9:06, 66 minutes after park opening, at least one time slot is available. I clicked on it and noticed several hours available to click, 10, 11 and 12 I believe. Not sure why but I just clicked 11 and then 11am thinking we'd have plenty of time to get there. Then immediately realizing our other Pandora ride is at 1. Too late, I already purchased, but I have a time!
At 10am, chiropractor was still hassling with insurance, but was close to being done. I make our second Genie+ picking up Festival of the Lion King at noon. All return times are slowly creeping along. Rain must be keeping people away. I then start getting myself and kid ready as well as our Disney bag, the bag where we'll keep everything we think we need for the park. We stuff it full, including a towel in case we need to wipe and seats down.
Wife finishes at chiro at 1015 and stops by CVS on the way back to the hotel to grab umbrellas and ponchos. We head to the lobby and hop in the car when she arrives. It's still raining. We get to Animal Kingdom around 10:45. Maybe we have time for me to get to go to Flight of Passage before our Lion King return time. We get the stroller out, loading it up while trying to control the umbrellas so things aren't getting wet. Somehow, my wife loses her phone in this madness. She had it right up until we parked. But we cannot find it. In the car, under the car, stroller, bag, nowhere to be found. Tried calling, nothing. After 15 minutes, we give up and start walking to the park. Surely we'll find it eventually.
By the time we're in the park and people use the restroom, it's between 11:20 and 11:30. Basically enough time to get to the Lion King check-in, so I decided skip FoP. Our shoes are already nice and wet by that time, barely being out of the car and in the park. Oh well at least we'll be inside for the show. Prior to Covid, we had only been to WDW once and never to Animal Kingdom. This was our second Covid trip, but first time with shows, so this is going to be our first opportunity at seeing the Festival of the Lion King.
The show was a lot of fun. Between the journey of the animatronic characters and the singing and dancing by the actors the show was very exciting to be a part of. I would love to watch it again to get more out of it, but the fire scene was probably my favorite part of the show.
As we were waiting to exit the show, we created a mobile order at Harambe Market since it was near by and we hadn't eaten much food. We make our way back to where I thought it was, find someone getting up from their table in a covered seating area. We sit down and wait to get notified the food is ready. Then I notice we're at the lounge outside of Tusker House. We decided to keep the table since it was covered, even though the rain had stopped for a bit. I walked to Harambe Market and grabbed our food. I had a chicken and rib bowl, my wife had a bowl of some sort and kid had chicken tenders with fries. I forgot the ketchup, so she had a rough go eating it, but survived. The chicken and ribs were pretty good, though a bit dry. They still had a good grilled flavor that made the meal enjoyable.
While we dined, I made our next Genie+ selection at 12:45. I technically could have made it as soon as we were in the theater for the Lion King show, but the times were still barely moving and I wasn't satisfied with the return times for anything. At lunch, Dinosaur had moved out past 5, so I grabbed that even though we really wanted to do safari, I just didn't think the return time was convenient, I think it was 1:30 and we were going to Pandora next, so we'd have to head to the front of the park and right back.
After lunch, we headed to Pandora... But I made a wrong turn! We found ourselves in front of the Tree of Life with a Winged Encounters show just about to get started. Perfect timing! We hadn't seen this before either, but it was really quick, almost hard to capture good pictures, but it was fun seeing so many colorful birds flying around.
we were sort of far away, but I was able to capture some great zoomed in images on my new phone. I ordered the Google Pixel 6 pro when they were first announced in October because I wanted a phone with better zoom. Those birds look pretty good, so I'd call it a success. The new phone has 20x zoom while the old was only 7x.
We also spotted our first golden statues of the trip in the area.
oh hello Tree of Life! Tried to get it centered between us, but failed miserably. We decided to hit up a gift shop to look for clean/dry socks for everyone as the rain had stopped, and our feet were soaked. I got themed socks. The birds from Nemo, with the word Mine all over them and some Incredibles socks. My daughter got Mickey and Minnie socks. It definitely felt good replacing wet socks with dry ones.
alright, this is a good time to end Part 1 of the Animal Kingdom day. My blog for Animal Kingdom mostly covers things that happened after this, so you can get a sneak peak on what we did after Pandora here:
https://the360ofdisney.com/2022/01/04/animal-kingdom-africa-360-photo-report/
I'll have part 2 including our time in Pandora up hopefully later today, but maybe tomorrow, depending on time available. Thanks for reading!