Winter Break. Part III - Day 12: How Is There a Part III?
Sunday morning we were up bright and early, since it was disembarkation day and they want you off the ship very early.
By 8:15 we already saw crew members knocking on doors to move people along. I think we were out of our room by around 8:15–8:20 and headed to the buffet, which was still packed—so it wasn’t like everyone had already left the ship.
By 9:00 though, everything was basically shut down. I tried to grab a water bottle from the bar and they wouldn’t even give me one. Then we headed down to disembark, and still—no water bottles. Not ideal.
We got off the ship, said our goodbyes, and headed to the luggage area, where we found our bags pretty quickly since there wasn’t much left by then. We had a very nice porter who walked with us, and then we got to customs. The customs officer asked, “what fruit are we bringing in today?” That was kind of accusatory. We said no, and then he asked if we bought any medications in Mexico. I said no, but Hallie piped up and asked, “What about the Silvadene we got at the medical center?” Thank you, Hallie, for keeping us honest. I explained that it didn’t really count, and we were waved through. Then the porter told us that was a “low-key strange” interaction that he hadn’t seen before.
Next challenge: our driver. We tried calling him and quickly realized he only spoke Spanish. Thankfully the porter spoke a little Spanish, so we handed him the phone. It still took a while to locate the driver because no one could quite understand where he was. I understand it’s Florida, but it feels a little crazy to send a driver who speaks zero English to pick up cruise passengers. Eventually we spotted our ride, and it turned out to be basically one of those access-a-ride minibuses, the kind that fits wheelchairs and has about ten seats. Plenty of room for us, but no air conditioning. And did I mention that after last week’s cold spell Florida turned to a heat wave and it was around 80 degrees outside? To make things worse, it seemed the driver couldn’t get his minibus over 60 mph (the Florida highway speed limit is 70), so our hour ride turned into an hour twenty-five minutes. Even coach buses were passing us. And just when we thought we were almost there and this ride was over, the driver almost pulled into Disney’s Animal Kingdom. At the last second Tzvi started yelling “left, left!”—which, of course, he didn’t understand—but somehow from the frantic gesturing he figured it out and turned. Thank God.
We finally arrived at Animal Kingdom Lodge, which is a beautiful hotel. It really reminded me of the Grand Californian in Los Angeles—very brown, very woodsy, very Lion King-esque. We checked in, and surprisingly our rooms were already ready even though it was only around 11:15. Our rooms were technically on the ground floor (which is actually the third floor), which initially didn’t thrill me—but then we realized we had been given a savanna view. I definitely did not pay for that, but we looked outside and could see animals, which was very cool. We also realized that Tzvi and I were given an accessible room, so the bed was lower and the shower had a seat and a curtain for wheelchair access. But we booked this only two days ago, and I guess beggars can’t be choosers.
We dropped our stuff and headed straight out for our EPCOT day. We took a Minnie Van because we wanted to get there as quickly as possible and knew it would drop us closer than a regular Lyft. We had a lovely driver who used to be a safari guide at Animal Kingdom.
We arrived at EPCOT around noon and immediately headed to The Land pavilion since everyone was starving. The plan was to do The Land and Soarin’, but The Land was down, so we went straight to Soarin’. We bought the Premier Pass for the day because we knew our time was limited and wanted to get as much done as possible—but even with Lightning Lane, Soarin’ still took about 35 minutes. We soon realized four major rides were down at the same time. That meant everyone with Premier Passes or Lightning Lanes were funneling into the same few rides, and since EPCOT doesn’t have that many rides to begin with, every open ride had long Lightning Lane waits. Even Figment had a long wait!
Also, I should mention the park was incredibly crowded. It may have been because people were stuck in Orlando due to the snowstorm, but we also noticed that we were hearing more non-English languages than English. Last weekend was a U.S. holiday and the parks were full of Americans—this weekend felt like the opposite.
We did Guardians of the Galaxy, then Mission: Space, which we never do—but it had no line. We chose the less intense version, and honestly, it was really nice and I’d do it again. Thankfully Test Track reopened, so we did that too. It’s been redone and is better than the previous version, but still not as good as the original.
Spaceship Earth was still closed, so we headed to the countries and started with Ratatouille. Two notable things: it’s no longer 3D (which didn’t really matter), and they now cram six people into each ride vehicle—which is not great. We watched a tiny French cast member trying to politely instruct much larger adults to squeeze into these little cars. They looked extremely uncomfortable. We had a pre-dinner snack in France: the five of us shared an entire baguette, Tzvi had a cheese plate, and we had a few pastries.
With about an hour before dinner we walked around the countries a bit and then I took the kids back to try Spaceship Earth again—and thankfully it was open. We missed it last year and really wanted to do it this time.
During that time, Tzvi and Shir walked around on their own (separately), and then we all met back up for dinner in Mexico, inside the pyramid—our favorite. It was delicious as always. I basically had tortillas, beans, veggies, and guacamole, which never disappoints. We skipped dessert there and instead opted to get caramel treats at the Werther’s stand in Germany (a milk chocolate caramel and a dark chocolate caramel, both excellent).
Before leaving Mexico we did the Mexico ride, which has been refurbished but looks exactly the same, then hustled over to Frozen and managed to ride just in time to grab a spot for fireworks. As previously documented in this blog, I find these fireworks to be subpar and nowhere near as good as the old one. But still nice. After the show, we headed out of the park. It was a long but great day—my feet really felt it, and I ended up with blisters between my toes.
When we got back to our room at Animal Kingdom Lodge, there were four giraffes just casually hanging out outside our window. Nice end to the day.
