January 2020 – The Full Dopey – Day 6

REWIND: I forgot to mention that before going to bed on Sunday, we did slip down to the pool at Kidani for a cool and soothing dip. Cool water really brings relief to sore muscles! It’s a relatively quiet pool, but it has the LONGEST resort hotel water slide on property! So long in fact, that I can gain enough speed and almost come off the end inverted! Yes, we took a few trips down the slide too! It was a nice thrill to cap off the day!

It was Monday…indisputably! We were able to wake up at a nice and late 8:00am! The unfortunate thing was that the first thing we had to was pack up So, with reluctance, we got our things together, took one last look out at the Savanna from our room, and went to the airline check-in desk. While we were there, we also left our carry-ons with Bell Services, and then caught the shuttle to Jambo House for our ADR: a breakfast at Boma – Flavors of Africa. Our appetites were back…with a vengeance! We were looking forward to all the delicious food we could eat!

Not breaking from our WDW tradition, we always book an ADR for a breakfast. We used to have a short list of favorite breakfast spots, but as things change around the property, Boma has solidified itself as our #1 favorite and we tend to book it in the early morning hours before heading to DAK for the day. To get to Boma, the main way is by a grand stair case toward the back of the Lobby at Jambo House. We thought nothing of it until we took the first step down. OUCH!!! Not desiring to turn back toward the elevator, we proceeded downward…slowly. We texted Chloe and Heather about our plight. Heather sent us a meme that was spot on. I’ll clean it up a bit for D-COT, but it said,

“Standing up: No problem. Sitting down: Shoot me in the face. Going up stairs: I got this. Going down stairs: Screw it. I’m just gonna throw myself down and hope for the best.”

Well we made it…and in time for our reservation too! Thank goodness we had 30 minutes to get down there! Ok, so I exaggerate…slightly. Boma was very busy…with plenty of like-minded runners there. At 7:30am, when we usually go, it’s pretty slow. Rather than give you the full spread of the buffet (which was far more than I sampled, believe it or not), I’ll just tell you what I ate:

2 glasses of Jungle Juice
2 cups of coffee
Wood fire-roasted Ham (hand carved)
Wood fire-roasted Turkey (hand carved)
Wood fire-roasted Tomatoes (2 helpings)
Cheesy Scrambled Eggs (2 helpings)
Bacon (2 helpings)
Frittata
French Toast Bread Pudding with Pecan Praline Sauce
Custom omelette with bacon, green pepper, spinach, and swiss cheese
Fried Plantain

After breakfast, we were prepared to stop in at DAK for a couple of FastPasses, but ultimately decided we just wanted to linger around Jambo House for a while. As we went up and down stairs a few times, it got easier, but not much easier. One time we passed a fellow runner getting assistance going up the steps as we were going down. We said, “It’s OK, we ran too! You got this! You can make it!” She seemed to appreciate our positive thoughts

We passed by the DVC desk in the lobby and the DVC rep saw my hat and bag and said, “Am I correct in saying, ‘Welcome Home’?” I said he sure was and we chatted for a bit. He asked about my favorite resort. I said Kidani, and he said he understood that choice. He also saw the DVC slider on my wrist band and said to hang onto it because they’re selling on ebay for $50-$60 each! Those and the AP sliders too! My guess is that people buy them thinking they’ll be given discounts on property, but every time I used my discount they carded me (photo ID and all)…so that theory isn’t valid unless you come across a careless cast member.

Christy found out that both Jambo and Kidani have activities (mostly for kids, but adults can join too), where they hand out beads for participation. One unique bead for each activity. She did 3 of them – she really becomes a kid at heart on vacation! We were made for each other, especially in that regard I joined her for 1 activity. I know they have kids activities at other resorts, but at AKL, they are really special, because they deal with African/Asian culture and the animals thereof. The activity we did together was an animal enrichment activity. They have small food puzzles they put out for the various antelope species. One is a jar with holes to try to dig hay out of with their tongues. The other is a stacker of 3 small food compartments with chopped veggies. They can get the top tray easily enough, but have to use their heads to get the food out of the bottom 2 trays. We filled these up and then watched as they carted them onto the savanna and hooked them on trees. One antelope really used his head well! He used his antlers like a fork to grab the stackers and flip them over until the food fell out! The whole purpose of it was to keep the animals using their brains to get food rather than settling into a pet mentality where they just lie around and the food comes to them. It seems to be working well It was a lot of fun taking part in that.

While we watched the animals we were able to chat with some other guests and 2 cast members on 1-year visas working at AKL. One cast member was from South Africa. The other was from Zambia. It’s always fun to talk to cast members and learn more about them, especially when they’re from other countries! One of the guests we talked to was an EMT and told us a fun story about how he asks patients questions to distract them from the pain. The question he likes to start with is (try to play along yourself and see if you can figure it out), “Name 9 basic body parts that are spelled with 3 letters, and keep it G-rated.” There are more than 9, but it still took us a while to get to 9. He said he asked a woman in labor that question, but later she was still so focused he had to tell her to forget the question and push!

In the early afternoon, we left Jambo and shuttled back to Kidani to pick up our things and wait for the Tragical Regress Our bus was on time and got us the airport in a jiffy…just a little too fast though, since we couldn’t go to our gate yet. We did some shopping in the main terminal a while. We were keeping in touch with Heather and Chloe. Chloe and her husband, Jon were at their gate, flight delayed but she clued us in that security was fishing through carry-ons to verify that runners’ medals were, in fact, medals. Ours were buried at the bottom of our bag and wrapped up in our shirts – all 12 of them! I used some time to fish them out and put them in a place more easy to access.

When we got through security, they actually didn’t open our bag to verify them. Oh well! Seeing there was only 2 delayed flights and ours wasn’t boarding for a while, we reasoned which gate Chloe and Jon were at and strolled down to visit them one last time. When we got there, 2 other Dopey Challengers were waiting with them. We congratulated each other and chatted about the weekend for a while. It was good to get that last farewell in before parting ways since we didn’t get that chance after the Marathon.

Christy and I then got a quick lunch and went to our gate to board. We got back to Baltimore at 6:30pm. Somehow both our checked bags were damaged in transit We went to the Southwest service desk to complain and they gave us a $200 travel voucher. That was the first time we actually experienced that on a Disney trip. And I’ve been doing this regularly for over 10 years! Unfortunately they chose to break a good streak on my brand new bag! Oh well. At least the contents were intact and nothing was really lost.

My parents picked us up at the airport and we went home, filling them in on everything that happened. They had faithfully tracked our runs…my dad, who teaches Sunday morning Bible Study for some adults at our church, had it on the big screen TV in his class room during the Bible Study, so a bunch of friends from church were actually tracking our progress on Marathon Day