Day 5 – Orlando Trip Report, September 2018

Here was our basic itinerary for the day:

• Morning Park: Animal Kingdom
• Evening: Monorail Resort Hopping with a dinner reservation at ‘Ohana
• Fastpasses: Na’vi River Journey (10:10-11:10), Dinosaur (11:40-12:40) & Expedition Everest (12:40-13:40)

Day 5 – Saturday 8th September 2018

Today’s original plan was to wake up super early and ride Flight Of Passage [FOP] during extra magic hours [EMH] (mostly so I could experience the “normal” queue line), however my mum and sister were feeling the effects of our jam-packed holiday a little and so we decided to have a slightly more relaxed morning. We still headed to Animal Kingdom for EMH but without the stress of making it there in time to ride FOP. We made it to the Animal Kingdom turnstiles for 8:15am and headed towards Africa to ride Kilimanjaro Safaris – this whole situation ended up being one of the best moments of the trip which goes to show just because something doesn’t go to plan it’s not worth panicking about. We saw loads of animals on the safari but one of the best bits was not only getting to see all the lions roaming about instead of sleeping but also getting to hear them roar. After our exciting safari we took a bit of time to wander around Harambe Market checking out the Instagram walls and just appreciating all of the little details Disney have put into the area. We still had some time before our first Fastpass and the park had only just opened up to non-resort hotel guests so we took a little stroll through Asia to ride one of our favourites Expedition Everest before heading over to Dinoland to ride an attraction we’d never done before: TriceraTop Spin, it’s basically the same as Dumbo but it was cute and I’m glad we’ve checked it off the list.

It was then time for our Na’vi River Journey [NRJ] fastpass so we headed over to Pandora to see the Floating Mountains in all their glory once again, and once again it’s a breathtaking view, I will forever be in awe of the work Joe Rhode and his team create. NRJ is a visually stunning ride. There is so much to look at for the entire duration of the ride and the shaman animatronic towards the end of the ride is amazing. Definitely worth riding at least once – although it’s no Flight of Passage. After NRJ we headed over to Dinosaur for our second fastpass, another firm favourite of ours. After this we decided to go to Flame Tree Barbecue for lunch as we’d never been before but had heard good things. I won’t lie I wasn’t overly impressed – I love BBQ food and this was just a little dry and lacking BBQ, however their spicy BBQ sauce was rather tasty. After lunch we headed over to Expedition Everest for another ride before perusing through the shops on our way back to the parking lot to head back to the hotel. When we arrived back at the hotel Mousekeeping had left us a few lovely surprises – we seem to be very gifted with extra magic this holiday.

After relaxing and freshening up, we left the hotel around 4:30pm and headed off to the Transportation & Ticket centre to get on the resort monorail. Even though we’ve been to Walt Disney World twice before we had never set foot into any of the deluxe resorts so this trip we decided to spend a little time exploring them before our dinner reservation. We started at the Grand Floridian and all I can say is wow. The view you get from the second you step off the monorail is incredible, this hotel is definitely on the bucketlist (although let’s not lie, it’s been on the bucketlist ever since Adam Hattan posted his Club Level StayCay video). After Grand Flo we headed over to the Contemporary dodging the spots of rain in order to get our pictures in the Mickey outside. After exploring the ups and downs of the Contemporary we headed back through security onto the monorail (the only annoyance of monorail loop resort hopping) and onward to the Polynesian for our 7:30pm ‘Ohana reservation. I think this is the reservation I was possibly most excited for, I have never seen or heard a bad review about ‘Ohana and having now eaten there I fully understand why. All I’ll say for this post is if you’re heading to Walt Disney World, make sure you get your reservation for dinner at ‘Ohana. Our 7:30pm reservation allowed us to also get to see the fireworks right just in time with dessert.

After dinner we realised Magic Kingdom was open until 11pm so we decided that we would hop on over on the monorail to spend a bit of time in the Kingdom. We grabbed a fastpass for Buzz which is one of our favourites, still no galactic hero just yet, then took a ride on the PeopleMover before taking some castle pictures and perusing the shops along Main Street. We made it back to our hotel around 11am ready for a good night’s sleep after a successful day exploring. Have you eaten in ‘Ohana before? What hotels are on your bucketlist? Until next time…