October Meet-Up Trip 10/10/18-10/16/18 Day 4

Saturday October 13th:
6am alarm. Down to breakfast by 7:30am for waffles and cinnamon baguette French Toast (holy cow that is insanely good!!!). We got out to the bus stop and the AK bus was pulling up! We were on our way by 7:55am for the 8am EMH. Dropped off at 8:15am. We were in the Everest line by 8:30am and rode it twice with minimal wait. Then off to Dinosaur just before the park opened at 9am. We then used our Safari FP at 9:20am. We had a great guide and saw lots of animals. The lion was up pacing and low roaring. We saw the young elephant and the baby giraffe. Very unusual for the morning! I noticed that the driver has a timer to show how long the tour lasted and it said 28 minutes. Teri met us at the exit of the Safari!!!!!! Big giant sister squishy hugs!!! We had brought her her favorite licorice that she can’t get by her. Ryan also swapped her magic band puck to the red band we brought for her. She was so excited to get a red band back after losing hers in April. We stopped to meet Launch Pad and Scrooge McDuck. Scrooge was very proud to show off the statue he received in his name for his GENEROUS financial contribution to the dinosaur area. Ryan and I used our Everest FP at 11am. We all had lunch in Pandora. Ryan had the shrimp noodles. He said they were okay but not his favorite. I had the cheeseburger pods, always yummy! Ryan and I used our Flights of Passage FP. This ride is always amazing! We stopped for some pics in Pandora and then at the Tree of Life. We walked the shops together. Teri needed to get heading home because they had an event to attend that evening. So we all walked out together. We had just missed our bus. She we chatted with Teri for a few more minutes before she walked to her car. I think we waited about 15-20 minutes for the next bus.

We went back to our room to cool off and rest for a bit before heading to the D-Cot meet up at Disney Springs! We left our room and got to the bus stop just before 3pm. The bus time to DS kept getting pushed back. We waited 20-25 minutes for the bus to show up. We had to then circle around Riverside to do drop-offs and pick-ups. And then we stopped back at French Quarter!!! There was a guest on the bus that needed to get dropped off there bus didn’t get off the first time because she claimed it was too early to get dropped off. So the driver made an extra stop to drop her off. So this delayed us even more. We had thought of taking a boat but we would have been dropped off on the complete opposite side of DS and that really would have taken much long to boat the 20 minutes and then walk to the meet up. And no telling when the boat was going to arrive. So the meet up started at 3:30pm and we arrived promptly at 4pm! Better late than never!! I had fun meeting some new people and catching up with others I’ve met before. We played a Disney Trivia game and I won!!! We visited with folks until around 5:30pm. We were a bit crunched for time so we stopped in a few shops really quickly with Scott and Kathy. I grabbed some gluten free treats in Erin McKenna’s. Ryan tried on some shoes at Fit 2 Run. We saw the updates to World of Disney. They would fully open it next weekend so we missed seeing it fully open. But I really like the updates! It’s a lot more open feeling and easier to walk around. We made our way to the boat dock to FQ. On our boat ride we saw Stephen cruising by heading towards DS on another boat!!! So we got to wave at him in passing! Such perfect timing!!! Back at FQ we refilled our pack and drinks. Ryan checked out Kathy’s knees for her and put some Rock Tape on to see if it would help her out. We all then caught the bus to EPCOT so we could get a few more food booths knocked out and get us our 3rd Epcot check in to get our Annual Passholders Cutting Board (you need to enter EPCOT on 4 different days during the festival to get it). We had all managed to snag Soarin FP’s earlier for 8:20pm. Holy cow, it was a Saturday night during Food & Wine! It was just a wall of people everywhere! We did try the awesome Tostada at the Mexico booth. And the Cheesy Noodles in Germany (wow those were good!!). We then worked our way to Soarn to use our FP around 9:30pm. We were all pooped and called it a night after that. We got to our bus stop at 10pm and were on a bus by 10:15pm. We missed the Illuminations crowd! The driver turned one turn too soon and we ended up at Old Key West! He even said “this isn’t right! LOL” He was able to quickly get back on track and promptly had us home at FQ. We were in our room by 10:30pm and lights out just after 11pm.
Miles Logged 13.7