Wayfaring Day 16

July 16, 2025 Wednesday

We realize that not every family is a ¨Disney family¨, but I suppose we are. But, even if you are not, maybe some of the ideas and experiences related here will inspire you in other ways. Those of you have plans to go to Disney World or have been many times will hopefully enjoy our insights and experiences as we navigate our way around the World for the next few days. Both David and our younger son have visited Disney World over 10 times over the years so they both have a good feel for each of the parks here. This particular trip is geared toward doing our favorites while enjoying being a Disney foodie.

To start the day we walked over to Saratoga Springs to eat breakfast at their quick service restaurant. The motivation here was more to do with visiting another of Disney´s many resorts than it is with food. Part of what we will do on this trip is visit some of the resorts we have not visited before. After returning to the Wyndham we checked out and took an Uber to the All Star Sports Resort. Disney does not allow luggage on their buses and it would have been more difficult to use the buses anyway. When we arrived at the Disney resort we checked to see if early check in might be a possibility but it was not. So we stored our bags so that we could go on to Blizzard Beach. Disney properties are great about storing your bags. They will even store your orders from delivery services like Instacart. We did this later in the day and they even stored our cold items in a refrigerator.

We packed a backpack with our swim wear and some necessities and waited for the bus to Blizzard Beach. On our last visit in 2024 Blizzard Beach was not open and we did Typhoon Lagoon on that trip. This year both parks are open but we had not been to Blizzard Beach since 2010. We were able to get in the park not too long after opening and enjoy the best rides before crowds began to build. Usually crowds don´t really get too heavy until about 1:00. We were ready to get a snack and head back to the hotel by about 1:00 which was basically our plan since we planned to go to Animal Kingdom for the afternoon. We felt we had really received a great bonus in getting to go to Blizzard Beach for free. By the way, we had no issues with getting in the park with our MagicBands. It was completely automatic (like magic) and we did absolutely nothing to get the free entry info on our MagicBand. If you don´t have a MagicBand you should be able to do the same thing on your phone.

We made the bus ride to the resort and picked up our bags. I failed to mention this before but they notified us our room was ready when we got on the bus to Blizzard Beach. We went straight to our room since we had set our check in to skip the counter. Our room was pretty far from the lobby, gift shop and dining room but that was as expected. Even so, the room was not that far from anything. Our MagicBand got us in the room and we did some unpacking, showering and getting ready to head to Animal Kingdom.

A note on staying at a Disney property.

We started staying at a Disney property when the Caribbean Beach resort opened and have never gone back to staying anywhere else. Staying inside the World means enjoying amazing Disney themed resorts and having the use of the Disney Transportation System.

When we have been here with a group it has been a great thing for everyone to be able to go wherever they want anytime they want. We took both our boys and a few friends here for their high school graduations. They were able to enjoy the parks at their own pace and in whatever way they wanted while we could do the same. So going back to our room on this trip; The reason we knew we would be in one of the most distance rooms is that we did a standard room using a special promotion with our Disney+ account. There are some misgivings people have when it comes to the costs when staying at a Disney Property.

We paid $130 to stay our one night at the Wyndham while our rate at the All Star Sports Resort was $99 per night with the Disney+ promotion. There are a myriad of ways to put together an Orlando vacation so you have to do your research and look for specials for Disney or Universal. Typically they all have the best promotions through about September.

If you have a huge number of Marriott or some other hotel points it may be a better idea to stay at one of their nice properties. With Disney you pay $200 to hold a reservation and if a special comes out after you book they will let you change your reservation to take advantage of the new deal.

We made it to the Animal Kingdom park with about 4 hours left until park closing. One of our goals for today is to ride Dinosaur since it will be closed and refitted as an Indiana Jones ride sometime soon. A trip to the Nomad Lounge is also on the must do list today. We will pay for a Lightning Lane for Flight of Passage for sometime close to closing. In the time in between we want to ride Expedition Everest and Kilamanjaro Safaris. Once we were in the park we got on the waiting list for the Nomad Lounge and then headed straight to Dinosaur. The Nomad Lounge wait was 40 minutes which would work perfect for us. But, after only 15 minutes we were notified that we could be seated. So we cancelled our spot on the waiting list and while we were in line for Dinosaur we joined the waiting list again. We road Dinosaur and unbelievable we ¨made it¨ again. As we walked back toward the Nomad Lounge we received our notification that we could be seating. We were at the entry and seated shortly after. We had an outdoor seat overlooking the water and lily pads and even though it was quite hot we were marginally comfortable. It began to rain after we had been there for awhile and by the time we were done the rain had stopped which was nice. We chose 3 small plate items and some specialty drinks. We had the Tiffins Bread Service , Bangkok Chicken Wings and the Churros. These are all favorites according to our research. Everything was good but the service was extremely slow so our time here was more than we could ever had anticipated. We made our way to Kilamanjaro Safaris and then to Expedition Everest with plenty of time to make our time for Flight of Passage.

After riding Flight of Passage and doing a little shopping it was time to leave AK since our very full first day included reservations at Boma - Flavors of Africa at the Animal Kingdom Lodge. We caught the bus to The Animal Kingdom Lodge and made it to our reservation time. Boma is one of my Disney favorites. This is a buffet and therefore one of the higher priced restaurants we will visit on this trip. The buffet is loaded with many African inspired choices along with some more common items with an upscale twist. The stew choices were excellent as were most of the main dishes and vegetables. Even the chicken bites were exceptionally good. The price is a little under $60 per person for adults. Dropping a $140 for a meal is not something we do often but at Disney we make exceptions for some of our favorites or maybe for one new experience.

One issue we were dealing with this evening was the delivery from Instacart to our hotel. There was some miscommunication with our shopper and she ended up at the hotel before we could get there after dinner. She asked about leaving it with the concierge station and we agreed. We were concerned we might have cold items not survive if not refrigerated. This is when we discovered that they hold the cold items in a refrigerator. Our worries were forgotten and we made it back to the room. David decided to go sit in the pool for a little while before it closed for the evening. David took the pull down bed which makes a table during the day. It had been a long day so we went to bed before midnight in preparation for another Disney Park tomorrow.

Normally we would send a number of pictures to family but this time we had to be a little more careful. There was a concern that if our grandson found out we had gone to Disney World without him he might be very upset with his Pops and uncle. I really had to fight the urge to send him a picture of our baseball themed pool and a number of other things I knew he would love. Sadly, he is home hanging with Mimi completely in the dark about how he has been left out of the fun.