A Tale Of Our Super Spontaneous Last Minute Trip - SEPT 2014 TR *UPDATED 01/24!* PICS

[Off to Neverland 7]

Hello DISer's! This is my very first trip report. I've been learning more and more everyday on the boards with anticipation for our upcoming trip and thought, "what the heck, I might as well write one up since I'm here everyday."

The Cast:
DBF: Kevin (25)
Myself: Dea (Prounounced: "Day-uh") (26)

Our Friends:
Mama Cheyenne (prefers not to disclose)
Davin (17)
Christa (16)
Alex (16)
Maris (2)

This is sadly the only picture we got of all of us together. But here we are.. from L > R = Kevin, Dea, Cheyenne, Maris, Davin, Christa, Alex

Our Favorites:
Characters: Mickey & Minnie, Simba, Genie, Donald
Disney Movie: Tough one but to narrow it down to 3: Toy Story, Lion King, Aladdin
MK Ride: Peter Pan
Epcot Ride: Test Track ** Favorite ride in all of WDW! **
HS Ride: It's a close tie between Rockin' Roller Coaster and ToT
AK Ride: Expedition Everest
WDW Restaurant: Boma


A little bit about ourselves:
Kevin and I don't have what we would consider "normal" jobs that require us to be at work from 9-5. We're dancers, teachers and choreographers. We teach every level of hip-hop dance from ages 4-adults, and aside from teaching at our "home" studios, our job requires us to travel to teach international conventions, classes and workshops. Check out this dance video we made at AoA in the Elephant Graveyard our first year together at WDW. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_BzgCymF8I

DBF and I are Disney enthusiasts (okay, myself more than DBF but he goes with it) and absolutely love giving experiences for gifts rather than material things. We were longtime Disneyland Annual Passholders but recently stopped renewing to make annual trips to the world instead (way better value in my opinion and more exciting to make one big trip instead of a lot of mini trips).

How This Trip Happened:
Last year during our annual trip to Disney, we ran into our awesome friends while watching my brother, Kyle, perform at the Festival of the Lion King. It was awesome running into them and we all had a fun Disney moment together supporting Kyle.

Over the course of the next year, we saw Cheyenne and Dav at dance events and shows and couldn't stop talking/thinking/dreaming about Disney. One day in the summer, I received a message asking if Kev and I wanted to join her and her family for their Disney trip in Sept. As tempting as it was, we were already committed to going to Australia and New Zealand with our dance team and it was already taking a BIG chunk out of our wallets.. So we had to figure out the whole money sitch out.... well, with the power of the Internet, SW rewards and Disney rewards, we made it happen! Ahh, it was such a last minute, impulse decision but we made it work! We had enough SouthWest points (frequent flyers for work) to get two free flights.. we just had to pay taxes and fees which costed us $22.40. I used Chase points to get a free night at Cabana Bay Beach Resort. Our stay at AKV was taken care of (but we weren't going to NOT find a way to pay them back.. we attempted several times throughout the trip.) & our Disney park tickets were taken care of by brother Kyle, Gosh I love him to death. Not only for helping us out TREMENDOUSLY but for just being an amazing soul in my life.

So check it out..


The Plan:
When?: Wednesday, September 24 - Monday, September 29, 2014
Hotel?: 1 Night at Cabana Bay Beach Resort - Standard Room & 4 Nights at Animal Kingdom Kidani - 2 Bedroom Villa
Flight: 6:00am San Diego > Denver, 11:45am Denver > Orlando = arrive at 5:20pm

Stay Tuned...


Day 1 - We're Leaving Already?!
Day 2 - Part 1: Wizards, Diagon Alley, Butter Beer.
Day 2 - Part 2: How the Heck Did We Get So Lucky??
Day 3 - Part 1: Animal Kingdom, FAIL!
Day 3 - Part 2: Perfect Timing, HS Characters Galore!
Day 3 - Part 3: Eating Our Way Around the World
Day 4 - Part 1: Blizzard Beach
Day 4 - Part 2: It's raining? Let's go to BOMA then work it off at MK EMH
Day 5: Wake Up! It's time for the Wild Africa Trek!


Dancing our way over to our happy place - Jan/Feb PTR 2015

Disneyland Resort 1993-2000 Passholder 2004-2014 Caribbean Beach Resort 07/2001 Paradise Pier Resort 2009, 11/ 2014 Grand Californian 04/2010 Pop Century 09/2012, 09/2013 Disneyland Hong Kong 07/2013 Animal Kingdom Villas & Universal's Cabana Bay 09/2014 Pop Century & Disney Dream 02/2015!! Beach Club Villas 09/2015!!

 

[Off to Neverland 7]

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Packed and ready to go!

We flew out of San Diego at 6:30am. Our first flight went by super fast since we were tired and slept through pretty much the whole flight to Denver. I woke up a few times and got a picture of this view

Our second flight from Denver to Orlando felt like forever. Kevin knocked out and I was just full of excitement to fall back asleep. I did everything I could think of in my little sleep and before I knew it, we landed! We landed around 5:20pm, went to pick up our bags and tried to figure out this Uber App.

This was our first experience using Uber. I was kind of nervous from the mixed reviews we've read about it, but it turned out to be the most amazing thing ever! ** What is Uber? Check it out here http://uber.com ** I had a $30 off coupon on my first ride for signing up so we decided to try it out since Universal doesn't offer a shuttle service like the amazing Disney World does.

Our Uber driver arrived within 5 minutes of ordering and we were off. As I sat in the car, I was a little nervous and google mapped the hotel just to make sure the driver was taking us to where we requested to go. The gentleman who picked us up was very nice and easy to talk to. He gave us a bunch of tips on the parks since his wife works as a ride operator for Universal. We arrived to Cabana Bay within 30 minutes and our ride costed us $6 total including tip! Ah, this was amazing!

A very nice man opened my door and welcomed us to Cabana Bay. He lead us in to the lobby and showed us to the line queue to check in. Check in process took us only a few minutes. The woman who helped us was very nice and gave us directions to our room in the Continental building.. now mind you, her directions were misleading. She told us to past the starbucks, past the food court then turn right. We did as she told us lugging all of our suitcases and bags and we were lead to the completely wrong building. Frustrated, tired, and craving a shower, we turned around and worked to figure it out. There were no obvious signs stating which elevators lead to what building and yada yada, but we eventually found it.

Room Pro's:
- Colors and design is cute.
- More than enough room for the two of us.
- Outlets near table had USB ports
- Mini fridge came in handy

Room Con's:
- The view outside of our window was of the parking lot (we booked a standard room)
- Shower curtain smelled sour every time the shower was turned on.
- It was quite a trek from the room to transportation and food

After settling in the hotel, we were STARVING! So we left and headed straight to City Walk. We totally skipped the hotel food court to get that first night feel of being away from home.

We had a nice dinner at Bubba Gump. I don't have any pictures from dinner because we were so consumed with devouring our food.

We walked around City Walk, window shopped souvenirs and headed back to the hotel. We walked around the hotel and compared it to Disney resorts.. Our opinion? We LOVE the atmosphere Disney creates. While Cabana Bay was visually beautiful, we didn't like the lack of "magic". It was always awkwardly quiet while waiting for transportation and while walking through the hotel lobby. The bowling alley was small and expensive. We just went straight back to our room and prepared for our early morning at Wizarding World!

 

[Off to Neverland 7]

Thursday, September 25, 2014

We woke up at 5:30am to get ready for our big day at Diagon Alley. Man oh man, I'm not gonna lie.. waking up that early for us Califonians (especially because we're night owls) was definitely a struggle! Haha, we were a mess for a little bit but we got ourselves up and out the door by 6:15am. We took the empty bus to City Walk and walked over to US for our extra hour at Diagon Alley. I know this is a Disney forum so I'll keep the Wizarding World, US & IOA to a minimum.

We got in the park right at 7am! It was amazing! (We usually never do morning park hours but this day was the exception to the rule only because of our extra hour). It was still dark out while we got to the park.

We passed by Kings Cross on our way over to Diagon Alley.

We walked straight to Escape from Gringotts.

We thought that the ride itself was just OK. I don't know if it's because we were probably one of the first riders but the sounds were very low, background music wasn't on so we could hear ourselves breathing and the quality of the footage wasn't nearly as clear as the Forbidden Journey. We were thoroughly disappointed.

After Diagon Alley, we still had about an hour to kill before IOA opened so we rode Despicable Me and Transformers. We absolutely loved both rides!!

At 8:45am, we decided to cross over to IOA via Hogwarts Express.

Not gonna lie, the Hogwarts Express was pretty awesome, despite Hermoine's voice.

After finishing up at IOA, we left to check out of Cabana Bay. By this point we were EXTREMELY exhausted from the heat and just being up. When I called to check out, I asked what the latest time we could leave was and they extended our check out to 1pm! We were dying for a shower and a nap and that's exactly what we did to make it through the second part of our day.

We went back to US and IOA to ride rides. We only lasted about 3 hours before we were checked out.. we left and picked up our bags. Called for an Uber ride and left for AKV.

 

[Off to Neverland 7]

"Welcome Home" - I LOVE THAT! The moment our ride pulled up to Animal Kingdom Kidani Villas, I was immediately in love. We had seen pictures online but it was way better in person.

** Prior to this trip, we have only stayed at Pop Century (Value) and I've stayed at Caribbean Beach Resort (Moderate) once with family so staying at AKV was such a dream and a real treat that we are so so so SO SO grateful for. It was definitely a once in a lifetime experience because Lord knows we could never cough up the price to stay there. So every moment at this resort was very much treasured and we noticed during this particular stay, we didn't mind at all just simply hanging out at the resort. **

The cast member who checked us in was really nice and informative. He gave us two boxes of Magic Bands and headed on over to our room. (We arrived a few hours before our friends who were flying in that day.)

I don't remember the room number but I do remember we had a view of the Pembe Savannah. Our suite was GORGEOUS! So beautiful. It was everything you could ask for, 3 full bathrooms, 2 bedrooms, living room, full kitchen and a long balcony that connects all the rooms together. The balcony was my absolute favorite spot in the room and I had my morning coffee and breakfast out there every single morning until we had to leave. I didn't get pictures of the room but I did get a video if you want to check it out here.

I would say the only cons were the limited availability of the animals from our room. It seemed as if only 4 animal species would linger in front of our balcony.. none of which were giraffes, zebras or wildabeasts. But we did get to see them while walking through the halls and from the lobby. Now I know that totally sounds like a first world problem so I'll just leave it at that hahah. This was all free for us so we didn't mind a thing!

These were the toiletries provided. I'm not a fan of grapefruit but the bottles were cute

Our friends arrived right as we were leaving to get a bite to eat. It was so nice to see them. They were exhausted and we were hungry, so we all parted ways. Kevin and I took the bus over to Jambo to eat at Mara. This side was BEAUTIFUL! We had to stop for a picture.

Mara was CROWDED. It took a good 20-25 minutes to get through the single line to order, then another 15 minutes to wait for our food. We get a little impatient when we're hangry (hungry and angry.. angry only because you're hungry.. you get it hahah) so DBF checked Boma's wait time while I stayed in the Mara line, but it was just as long so we decided to stay at Mara. Food was okay, we were just happy to be eating because we were STARVING!

After dinner, we left for DTD. Now I didn't do any research prior to our last minute trip so I had no idea the amount of construction we were walking into. Oh my gosh, it was CRAZY! We window shopped a little but just got overwhelmed. We didn't last long at DTD and actually didn't even realize how exhausted we were from our long day. We headed back to Kidani and knocked out.

 

[Off to Neverland 7]

Friday, September 26, 2014 - Morning

I slept in until 9am and went out to make morning coffee. We found a sweet note from our friends who left early for US/IOA. I enjoyed my morning brew on the balcony. This was going to be my ritual the entire trip. It was amazing watching the animals in my pajamas! I spent a good hour on the balcony until I woke Kevin up around 10amish (he's a bear and likes to hibernate.)

We got ready and left for AK around 11amish. Our first meal of the day was this platter of greatness from Flame Tree BBQ. It's our favorite QS in AK. The portions are generous and we love ourselves some good BBQ and the wonderful view of Expedition Everest

After lunch, we headed over to Africa.

There was construction going on in different parts of AK.. we ran into this sign and I just had to capture it.

It was crazy crowded, not sure how this happened since I did extensive research on the crowd calendars but we didn't last long at AK. The line for Kilimanjaro was 40 minutes and we agreed to try again later.. we don't like waiting for anything over 20 minutes. The humidity is a little much for us Californians.. So we walked around and saw this guy chillin out..

We were overwhelmed by the heat and the amount of people so we headed back to the hotel for a cool down sesh and a bit of rest to ice Kevin's knee & put some bengay on it (didn't think to bring it). On our way out, we stopped for a funnel cake treat. It was soooo yummy!

On our way to the room, I snapped these awesome photos of the giraffes and wildabeasts from the lobby viewing areas.

Going back to the room was probably the smartest thing we did for ourselves because it started to POUR right as we walked in the room. We waited for the storm to pass which took about 20-30 minutes, then we headed back out for HS.

 

[Off to Neverland 7]

Friday, September 26, 2014 - Afternoon

We met up with Kyle at HS and took this obligatory pic on the way in.

We walked over to Fairfax Fair to try the Truffle Mac & Cheese Hot Dog. It was just A-OK. Definitely something I could've made at home and not worth the price ($8-9 I think?)

After we ate, we went on Rockin Rollercoaster & ToT since we were in the area. We didn't get any good pictures but I do have to say, they're both awesome rides! We love the ToT at HS way more than DCA! The HS version seems more well thought out and it's a much better experience in my opinion.. not so abrupt.

Kyle had to leave so we parted ways. Kevin and I headed toward animation courtyard to see if we could score some good photo ops.. man, were we right! These two fellas were waiting for us with no line!

Then we walked down the way and we bump into these two!

After, we walked through Pixar Place. Toy Story had a looooong line so we passed. We walked toward Light's, Motors, Action to check it out and noticed there was a show in about an hour so we walked around trying to kill time..

We walked through the Streets of America and were very excited to see that NO ONE was there! We took some fun photos... then one by one, characters appeared. It was such a cool moment!

First was this green army guy.

Next was Pocahontas and we snapped this awesome selfie with her.

Then Hook came walking toward us.

Then we had this awesome interaction Stitch! By this point, people filtered on through and the street was packed. But man, were we stoked. It was such a good character day for us.

After all the pictures, we went to go watch the show. The show was fun and entertaining. It started raining in the middle of it and it gave a nice suspense feeling now that there was added unintentional stress to the show. The performers did wonderful. After the show, we walked out of the park and headed for Epcot!

 

[Off to Neverland 7]

Friday, September 26, 2014 - Evening

By the time we arrived at Epcot, it was pretty dark. We met up with Cheyenne after her long day at US/IOA. The kids were exhausted and stayed behind at the hotel which meant drinks were on us!!! But first things first, we had to take this picture on our way in.

Eating around the world is by far one of my favorite things to do at Epcot for Food and Wine. Our first stop was Puerto Rico. We were super excited to see a Puerto Rico booth as it was brand new this year. We ordered the Carne Guisada con Arroz Blanco (slow braised beef with white rice) and Flancocho (Vanilla caramel custard with chocolate coffee cake). O.M.G. It was sooo good! The beef was so tender and just melted in my mouth. & the Flancocho?!?! Oh my goodness, it was to die for!! It was like a waaay better Flan and the chocolate/coffee cake is on point! ** Side note, I'm a HUGE fan of dessert.. it's my ultimate favorite part of every meal. So desserts will come up frequently in this TR ** Sad we didn't get a lot of pictures from this night. The food was so good and the lighting was so bad.. so we just inhaled our food. I've borrowed these food pictures from DisneyFoodBlog.com just so you can have a visual of the yummy goodness we tried.

Carne Guisada con Arroz Blanco

FlanCocho

Next we went to France and got a brioche ice cream sandwich from L’Artisan des Glaces. Now, I know this is not a part of the Food and Wine Festival but it's definitely something I look forward to having at Epcot. I put coffee ice cream with chocolate syrup. They take brioche bread and cut it in half, put a scoop of your choice of ice cream in the center and chocolate/caramel syrup and press it down in what looks like a waffle maker or panini maker. It's sooo yummy and I crave it every once in a while!!

After the brioche ice cream sandwich, we got drinks in Ireland. I tried the Bunratty Honey Wine, Kevin had the Guinness, and Cheyenne had the irish Coffee. The honey wine was actually really good. I didn't like Kevin's beer at all.. too dark and bleh for me. We toasted and continued on our way down.

Next we went to Brazil and tried the Crispy Pork Belly. Ugh, it was soooo delicious. The outside was crispy and the inside was so tender and perfectly cooked.

By this point, Illuminations was starting up so we stopped and watched. It was my first time watching since my first visit back in 2001 so I really had no idea what to expect... I was a little excited about it at first but it was sadly pretty lame. We didn't really enjoy it at all.. could've totally done without watching. We kept waiting to see if it would get better and it just got worse at it progressed to the very end.. I had high expectations for Illuminations, especially since we have World of Color back at home.. Now World of Color is a show every guest MUST watch at one time or another.. Illuminations, eh. It was lame..

After the show, we tried to get another drink but all the booths were now closed and the CM's were trying to kick us out. We headed on out and got one last picture of the golf ball.

It was a great end to a successful, fun day in the parks. We dragged ourselves back to the room, got cleaned up and collapsed in bed for another fun filled day.

 

[Off to Neverland 7]

Saturday, September 27, 2014

Alright so Saturday morning, I woke up around 8:30am to the smoke detector going off and the delicious smell of bacon cooking. I went out of our room to go see what was going on and helped Cheyenne air out the living room. I made my usual coffee and sat out on the balcony with Maris as we watched the deerbra's (they're actually called Okapi but I prefer deerbra.. they have zebra behinds and legs with the rest of it totally looking like a deer) and gazelle looking animals eat their breakfast.

When breakfast was done cooking, we all pulled a chair onto the balcony and ate out there. It was such a great moment finally being able to relax with everyone before our crazy park day.

Kevin and I had tickets for Blizzard Beach while the rest of the family headed out to HS. We quickly got ready for the day and were out of the room around 10am. The bus arrived just as we were walking up to the stop and we got to Blizzard beach around 10:30ish.. this was our first time here and I've got to admit, IT. WAS. AWESOME!

We loved the atmosphere and the lazy river. We probably spent the most time in the lazy river. The water slides were cool, it just got pretty cold every time we waited in line. For a Saturday, the lines weren't too bad and the longest we waited was about 20 mins, but we definitely should've reconsidered going to a water park on the weekend and maybe do a weekday trip instead. Melt away bay was just okay for us. We got a little bored after a while and just went right back in the lazy river.

Kevin was brave and went down Summit Plummet. I was way too chicken and have this fear of my bikini top flying up or something. I patiently waited for Kevin and waited for him to go down.

Overall, we really liked Blizzard Beach. I loved the theming, just felt like it was a little small and could have better food options. We had lunch at Lottawatta Lounge. The cheeseburgers were just okay, nothing special. It was definitely a meal I could've made at home. After lunch, we went one more round on the lazy river then headed back to the hotel around 3pm.

 

[Off to Neverland 7]

On our way back to AKV, it started to POUR! Omg, it was the heaviest rain thus far on our trip and we couldn't have been happier to have been heading back "home". We were in disbelief of our awesome timing and kept talking about "what if" we were still at Blizzard Beach with that downpour. It would've been INSANE! Anywho, Kevin and I headed back up to the room and received a call from Cheyenne told us she made ressies for dinner for Boma for us.. EEK! How exciting!! We got ready, relaxed on the balcony again as we watched the animals bathe in the rain.. Man, for being at WDW, we just LOVED that balcony and our whole room set up. I could sit there for hours on end and be content, and that's exactly what we did. We usually stay at Value resorts and could totally see the contrast between the two. At the Value resorts, we were more inclined to just get up and go and not really hang out at our room because there wasn't much to do/see whereas at the Deluxe, we noticed we didn't mind hanging out at the room and didn't feel like we were wasting "precious park time". This was hands down, the most relaxed trip we've had at WDW.

After hanging out on the balcony, we cooked up a snack (more bacon haha) in the room to hold us down until dinner..

* Side note, this was our first experience having a kitchen in the room at WDW and it was bittersweet. While I did enjoy having it (full size fridge, coffee maker, stove, oven, etc), I did not like the cleaning afterward.. Cheyenne is a DVC member and it wasn't our turn for mousekeeping until the next day so we would constantly have to keep washing dishes after using them.. Yes, first world problems.. But I'm on vacay! I don't want to clean, cook, blah blah and stuff while I'm supposed to be soaking up every ounce of vacation.. okay, enough with that tangent. **

Cheyenne and her clan arrived shortly after we were done cooking. We offered them a snack but they were all too excited for Boma. Having 3 bathrooms is SO efficient! I cannot tell you enough how easy and quick it was to all simultaneously get ready and out the door. So so nice. We headed down together (this was our first time all finally hanging out together) and took the shuttle/van to Jambo. While Kidani is beautiful and quaint, Jambo is absolutely stunning. We checked in for our 6pm reservation. We were seated shortly after checking in around 6:15pm.

This was our first experience at Boma and our first time trying African food so we weren't sure what to expect. Cheyenne raved on and on about Boma so we knew it was going to be a great culinary adventure for our taste buds. It was DELICIOUS! Our favorite were of course the grilled chicken and ribs (we're big meat eaters). Of course my favorite and highlight of the entire meal was the Zebra Domes. I probably had about 5 before I couldn't take it anymore. Sadly, none of us got any pictures of our awesome meal because we were too consumed with stuffing our faces. But we did get this one and only picture of all of us at the table.

Kevin and I saw this dinner together as a great opportunity to show Cheyenne our gratitude for inviting us on this trip so when she took Maris to the potty, Kevin and I took care of the check for everyone. It was the LEAST we could do considering we didn't have to pay a dime for the resort.. Cheyenne got a little upset but quickly got over it. There was no way we were NOT going to try to treat her out.. We tried so many times but with everyone choosing to go every which way, we saw this as OUR moment to do something nice in return.

After Boma, we walked back to Kidani.. yes, WALKED.. because we were soo stuffed from the buffet. During the walk back, we saw on MDE that MK was having EMH so we all decided to go for it! Even little Maris was up for the adventure. We all got back in comfy clothes and shoes and headed on out to MK.

We got there in time to catch the end of the Electrical Parade. I totally relived my childhood through the parade.

The crowd cleared quickly after the parade and the park was ours. We separated from Cheyenne and Maris to ride the "big kid" rides and Maris insisted on seeing the "little babies" (It's a Small World".

Our first ride of course was Space Mountain. We waited no longer than 15 minutes to get on. TBH, we much prefer the Space Mountain at Disneyland than DW only because the DW version seems less stable and I just don't really feel safe in there.

Shortly after we got off the ride, Cheyenne called us and told us to meet her at 7DMT for a surprise.. and boy, what a surprise she had for us! I don't know how she did it but she scored FP's for all of us to ride 7DMT! Ahhhhh! We had to do child swap since Maris was too short for the ride so first the big kids went up.. We don't have any pictures from the ride but it was nice and smooth and a little short IMO. We got out and I rode it again with Cheyenne and the girls while the boys watched Maris. We loved it but all agreed we would never wait more than 20 minutes for the ride.

After, we all parted ways. Cheyenne and Maris went on Peter Pan. Davin, Christa and Alex all wanted to ride Splash Mountain and I'm NOT a fan of water rides so Kevin and I just went for a stroll to see where we would end up. We took some pictures with the famous Cinderella Castle.

We walked through the deserted streets of Frontierland. We had no desire to ride anything else at that point. We were in awe of how empty the roads were and sat at a bench to take in the quiet of the park. We then decided to head back "home." On our way out, we couldn't resist and took these photos at the end of main street. It was the perfect end to our day.

 

[beckyx3]

Just popping in to say hey!

Loved the video. It’s awesome that you guys made a career out of something you love. And you get to travel the world a lot? Awesome!

I’m happy to hear that Uber worked out. I’ve seen a lot of questions being asked about it, it kind of freaks me out so I don’t blame you for mapping the route to make sure everything was good.

I’m hoping to get to the Wizarding World on our next trip. Been in FL 3 times since it opened and still have yet to see it! Love the marauder’s map mug, by the way!

All of your character pictures are great. You guys look like you’re having so much fun.

DBF loves Summit Plummit. I refuse. I also have the irrational fear that my top’ll come off or I’ll just fly right off the slide.

Looks like an awesome time. Can’t wait to read more!

 

[Off to Neverland 7]

Day 5: Wake Up! It's time for the Wild Africa Trek!

We woke up around noon from a call from Cheyenne asking if we were still ok for Wild Africa Trek. I said yes of course as long as they still honored the BOGO (buy one get one free) for me and Kevin because we didn't go into that trip with that kind of cost in mind.. Cheyenne said the only time they had available was at 1:15pm. OMG! We had to get everyone up and ready to go and be at the desk at 1:15pm so we all hustled to get our booties up and out the door by 1pm. That was the most hectic commute EVER! We ran from our room to the buses. The bus took a while, stopped at Jambo, and we made it to AK at 1:10pm and had 5 minutes to spare to go to the potty and be at the desk. Granted, we were all late but we made it!

We put all of our belongings in a locker with a 4-digit code we selected ourselves. They let us bring sunglasses and our gopro, it all just had to be tied to ourselves. They gave us these strings to attach to our sunglasses so they could hang around our necks and the gopro was tethered to my vest. We got pins with our names on them, canteens to fill with water and we were all set to go!

Our first stop was to view the gorilla's (pretty much where EVERYONE can go) and after 15 minutes, we entered a secret door and were off on our trek.

We went to the hippos! It was awesome seeing them up close. It was very informative and we learned a lot about the hippos.

After the hippos, we went to the bridge crossing and sadly, the alligators and crocodiles were out since they were renovating.. it made the bridge seem less intimidating but we had fun. Everyone had to cross the bridge one at a time and were told when to go next. The photographers took some awesome captures & all the photos they took were included in the price of the trek!

There were plenty of water stations available throughout the trek (it was HOT!). After everyone individually crossed the bridge, we were taken to a truck that would take us to our next stop. They gave us cold towels to cool off.

We went on pretty much the route of the Kilimanjaro Safari route and looked at the giraffes, elephants, and rhinos. We stopped off at an area in the middle of the Savannah where we had our "snack" which was more like a light lunch made from Tusker House. There were binoculars to view the animals.

The food was delicious, I wish I had pictures of it.. Overall, we had an awesome time on the Wild Africa Trek. It was definitely a highlight of our trip. Honestly, I wouldn't pay the full price of the Wild Africa Trek but definitely recommend it if you can swing it!