November 4 – 14, 2020 day 8 – Should have been Wine and Dine races

Wednesday 11/11/20

Happy Veterans Day to all our veterans! The alarm actually woke me this morning. We had breakfast in the room and caught the first bus to AK, arriving at 8:40 for a scheduled 9:00 am opening. We were quickly through security and to FoP, reaching the start of that queue by 8:45. A 15 minute walk later (that queue is LONG!) and we were going into the rooms to load! After flying on our banshee, man I do love that ride!, we found a spot to meet up with Steve outside Pizzafari! He was here to spend the day with us! We usually just get a brief visit with him and sometimes the family so we were really happy to do this! We headed to Safaris for his first ride of the day. The posted wait time was 50 but it was really closer to 20. And that was starting outside the queue and the whole auxiliary queue being used! All three lions were sleeping out in the open. Towards the end an ostrich decided the road belonged to him! He even looked behind him while standing in the middle of the road, directly at our truck, just to make sure we were still there! It was a little drizzly/sprinkly so we walked the Pangani Forest Trail, where we saw lots of gorillas! Including the model for Ivan! The drizzle had ended but wait times were really elevated, it was a much different crowd level than Monday! So we took the train to Conservation Station for a bit. I really liked how they handled the train and seating. They assigned everyone to a spot. No crowding or people stepping right in front of you at the last minute. They can keep this as far as I’m concerned! We saw the top half of the baby rhino in its pen with momma! Oh my goodness! We walked around for a bit and saw the exhibits. It’s too bad there wasn’t a veterinary procedure going on but that was ok. Still a nice place to see. On the way back we ordered Flame Tree for lunch. We got the pulled pork with mac and cheese and a drumstick kids meal to supplement. We got a table close to the water so we could see the boat cavalcades as they came by. The view and the food was so good as always! It was Steve’s first experience and he just loved it! We were so glad to show him something new to him! It was such a great time too, talking with him and we saw most of the boat cavalcades while we ate, almost like a character meal!

After lunch we decided to take a chance on Everest. It was a posted 45 minute wait and the start of the line was way back at the Theater in the Wild! Wow! So we were even across the bridge! But that’s okay, Kathy said she’d stay with us and then use the chicken out exit so we had some great company, and we got to say hi to Chelle and their daughter on the phone as Steve Facetimed with them while in line. It wound up being only about a 20 minute wait! EE in the afternoon with a 20 minute wait? Yes please! Now the top of it all was we got front row! Steve Facebook lived the ride! It was so awesome! Thanks to Heather’s tip on Monday I looked back and to the left on the lift hill and saw the Contemporary! That was the first time I was able to do that! Our final ride of the day with Steve would be Dinosaur. It was listed at a 45 minute wait but it couldn’t have been more than half an hour, with the queue all the way back in the dinosaur trails! Honestly we lost track of time just having a good time! The nice thing about the social distancing is the lines never really stopped moving much even though they were long. On Monday I had found a neat Easter egg where the time rovers load. On the wall and to the right forward of the rovers is “Sector: CTX WDI AK98”. What a great nod to Countdown to Extinction by Walt Disney Imagineering in Animal Kingdom 1998! I made sure to point that out to Steve today, he thought that was pretty cool! We made our way back to the Tree of Life and got some photopass pictures with Steve so he will be forever immortalized in our trip pictures! He stayed and sat with us while we had a Mickey bar before we had to say goodbye, with hopes and plans to see the whole family Friday evening at DTD. Kathy and I walked some of the Tree of Life trails and checked out some shirts in the Africa shop. We walked up front and got our two missing ride photos loaded in our account, but found out later that the Splash one didn’t take. Fortunately Heather was able to get that loaded at a later date! Kathy went home to rest her foot and left me to spend some solo park time. The winds had really picked up and weather from the hurricane was threatening, so I just spent some time walking around and observing the elaborate theming along with many of the small details that are easily missed when the park is more crowded. People had really thinned out with the weather threat. I spent a little time in the Maharajah Jungle Trek also. I do love AK! By far the best themed park in WDW in my opinion! It was breezy Saturday too, and with the winds of this afternoon I discovered that bamboo sounds scary as all heck in the wind! I would be freaked out to live where there was a lot of bamboo when it was windy! A couple other things I learned today, a black nosed zebra is black with white stripes and a pink nosed zebra is white with black stripes. I’m sure we all know by now that the okapi is a cousin to the giraffe, but did you know that they are the only two animals on the planet with ossicones, the cartilage horns on their heads? I was quite tired by this time and it seemed like the weather was getting closer so I headed out, making sure to say goodbye to the Tree of Life on exiting, and was home in short order. We had dinner and then a pina colava in the evening! Mmm mmm!

Steps: 24,057
Miles: 10.84