Lesley Wake
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2017
Day 8, Part 4 - The longest safari...ever...
When we left Pandora, it was another time where I let Lauren lead-rather than taking us up the Africa pathway, she took us out of Pandora and by the Tree of Life to get to Africa. It was funny when she realized we could have taken the “shortcut”! But we did get to see the detailed Africa door, which I hadn’t seen yet!
When we left Pandora, it was another time where I let Lauren lead-rather than taking us up the Africa pathway, she took us out of Pandora and by the Tree of Life to get to Africa. It was funny when she realized we could have taken the “shortcut”! But we did get to see the detailed Africa door, which I hadn’t seen yet!
Next, onto Festival of the Lion King! We were able to get into the standby line and almost immediately were let into the show. Ended up picking the Lion section (totally random). Loved this show! It and Finding Nemo (which we would see the next day) were probably my favorite shows. Loved the tumbling monkeys. And at the dance at the end, Timon decided to just start running around and around and around and around one of the stiltwalkers. Even the dancer was looking down, like, what are you doing? Timon just shrugged and kept going!
Next, another safari ride. It was only a 15 min standby wait (so I guess this answers my question about whether we had a FP for it), which basically means a walk-on; I think we were only delayed by people moving their strollers into the parking area. We ended up in a row with a mom and her young son, who was very excited to see all the animals.
It was a good trip, getting our first view of zebras and cheetahs, who weren’t out on our previous safari. The African Ox (what are they called?) came up right next to our vehicle and if I had wanted to get kicked out of the park, I probably could have reached out and touched them! We also got a good look at the baby Mandrills (though the photo doesn't show it very well), and an elephant taking a shower! For some reason though, that Zebra photo reminds me of a Google Street View shot.
We did notice a lot of trees down and more flooding than our previous time.
One thing that was super annoying, was when the safari was over we were in the lineup of trucks waiting to unload. For some reason it was taking forever (we think maybe it was a shift change). Finally we were able to go forward, but to make room behind us, our truck was directed to go off to the side instead of to the first unload platform. So multiple trucks behind us would come up and unload. Then those guys would get to alternate with trucks in the bypass to go forward and pick up new guests. At one point we were finally the first truck in the bypass, but then they let 3 empty trucks go in front of us! We were all getting really frustrated. It literally took 20 minutes for us to unload! And our ADR was coming up so I was stressed (though I didn’t really need to be). When we finally got out we also didn’t have time to do the Gorilla Falls trail, and never went back to it.
Cont - An awesome dinner!