Bring on the Wilderness: An adults only no parks getaway to the lodge

DisneyRegulars

DIS Veteran
Joined
Oct 20, 2011
I already have a trip report in progress, but this one has to be started in a timely manner or I will forget all the awesome mundane details that I love to write about. Right now I'm flying on a Southwest plane headed down to Wilderness Lodge for three kid free days of adult fun and games with my Grizzly.

For those who don't know me, I'm a college professor in upstate NY. I've got a six year old son who we are leaving at home this trip in the caring hands of Nana and Pepere. When I'm not writing lesson plans, trip reports or planning Disney vacations I can most likely be found racing on a BMX track, finishing a large 4000 piece puzzle of the earth (the water part is proving tricky!), or more recently capturing Pokemon and annoying my husband playing Pokemon Go. I have zero idea what to do with my pocket monsters, but they are super cute and I like collecting things, so for the moment I'm a little intrigued (just shy of obsessed).

Grizzly is my husband, and when we bought our DVC we started a tradition of taking a yearly trip for our anniversary. It's often our favorite weekend of the year. We will be married 14 years this week, and have managed to still like each other quite a bit, so I feel very lucky. Grizzly likes to cheer on Tigger and I on the BMX track, watch shows with zombies, and implement my crazy do it yourself ideas for our house. Latest escapade is refurbishing the pool table given to us for free that we played together on when we were first dating from my college dorm.

This trip we have a short three night stay at Wilderness Lodge in a studio. It's our first time at the resort, I will try to ignore the construction in my judgements of it. I love the national park lodges, so I'm pretty excited about this stay.

Also new this trip... We don't have park tickets!!!!! There will be no crazy antics in the parks as on past anniversary vacations. Don't worry though, there is plenty of fun in store. While we don't have many plans, we have thought up our yearly challenge. This trip we are going to go bar hopping (I know right!? It's bound to be fun!), but the catch is we can only purchase drinks that have an animal in the name. I'm pretty excited. We'll see how many we can find. My guess is 15.

So come along and join on us on three day kid free park free vacation, I'd love to have you along.
 
I was pretty psyched to take the Magical Express and watch the propaganda video about all the magic in the parks. Turns out that wasn't in the cards for us this trip. We did get to ride the Magical Express, but it was a not quite as magical Yellow Mears bus, and then they played the wrong movie, so our whole trip we got to learn all about the Orlando International Airport!

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Travel through the airport was quick and easy. Grizzly got our checked bag, and he let me run down the terminal checking in at poke stops and catching some pokemons. I had just enough time to go down to the end and return before our bag arrived. We walked over to the B side of the terminal and hopped right on our mildly magical backwards bus.
 
We stepped into the Wilderness Lodge Lobby around 1:00am and were instantly transported back to Yellowstone. This place is amazing. We had visited once before, but it has been at least 10 years, and since then we have visited Yellowstone and the Old Faithful Inn twice. I love the Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone National Park, but I think Disney's version might actually be even more impressive. We had received our room number earlier in the day, so we wondered around the resort in the direction we thought our room might be. It was strange that there was no one in the lobby to talk to. We found our room, a very convenient 1503, on the ground floor, not more than 15 feet from a construction fence masquerading as bushes. We never noticed any construction noise during our trip, but then again we were there on a weekend, so maybe there just wasn't as much construction going on. Based on angry heartbroken reviews I had read about the chopping down of trees, I was so worried the Lodge would be completely lacking wilderness, but we saw tons of wilderness. Even a deer, but that's a story for later. To my unseasoned Wilderness Lodge eye, there seemed to be plenty of Wilderness for me. Bottom line is, if you've never been to Wilderness Lodge now is absolutely the time to score those elusive reservations as people are avoiding it during construction. The place is fantastic, and the construction didn't bother us at all. The room was great, and looked pretty much identical to our Boardwalk Villa studio room with the exception of a wilderness color scheme instead of a beachy color scheme. I would definitely want to come back here someday.

Some Lodge Pictures:
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Saturday morning began day one of our animal drink challenge. We woke up on our own, a first for a Disney Vacation as we are normally itching to get to the parks. We leisurely made our way to BLT to play bocce. We asked the community center attendant for a bocce set, and she took out this huge form that asked for all sorts of information like room number, next of kin, life goals, etc... I asked her what we should put down for a room number since we were staying at Wilderness Lodge, and she just threw the whole form out, and handed me the bocce set. Never even asked to see our DVC cards or anything. What I took away from this is that they have a major bocce set theft problem specific only to BLT guests. So we played some bocce. Turns out I'm really bad at bocce, and I lost miserably both games. We returned the bocce set, because really who on earth would want to lug around a ten pound bocce set all day?, and made our way to the Wave for our first drinks. Up first on the docket was:

1. A Kentucky Mule- Ginger beer and bourbon in a special copper cup. Tastes a lot like alcohol.
2. Moscow Mule- Ginger beer and vodka in a special copper cup. Tastes a lot like vodka and lime.

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Neither mule was particularly tasty, but then I'm not really sure what I was expecting from a half horse half donkey creature. We did a blind taste test, and to my untrained tongue I picked out the bourbon one as the vodka one. Perhaps this was not the best challenge for me! We met many a nice bar tender on our quest. This first one told us about a super secret drink they used to make at the Outer Rim Bar called a Space Monkey. After we heard all about his messy kitchen cabinets and drawers and decided we needed at least ten infomercial items, which all become more amazing as you've been drinking, we headed up to the Outer Rim to try and find a Space Monkey.

Wow! One mule each and we were already feeling it. Not just in our heads either, those mules were expensive. Every drink we had was a little over $10. This was going to be a pricey quest, but if there's one thing I'm not, it's a quitter. We were committed, so from then on I tried not to look too closely at the bill, until we got to Trader Sams, and then I felt like an idiot.

So anyways, up we trotted to the Outer Rim, and the bar tender looked older so we were certain he would know about Space Monkeys. He was aware of them, but said they used Tang, which they don't have anymore, so he couldn't make us one. We settled for smoked turkeys:

3. Smoked Turkey- A red drink that tastes like cough syrup got left out overnight by a campfire.
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Grizzly insisted that the three black round things on a stick were olives, which I thought was hilarious because they were clearly black cherries, the most redeeming part of the drink. This bar tender was also super friendly, and when we told him about our quest he gave us a glow cube to change our drink's colors. We only remembered to use it once that day, but we felt loved, and very much tipsy when we made our way down to the buses. Before leaving Grizzly made the astute observation that any bar that doesn't have an animal drink will always have Grey Goose Vodka and Parrot Bay Rum, luckily we would never need these options, as we wisely chose to skip bars that did not meet our animal needs.

We made our way to Disney Springs and made a rookie drinking error. Grizzly let me go into stores that had cute things when my judgement was impaired. This one for example, the Sugarboo Trading Company was a trap!

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We walked out of the Sugarboo Trading Company with not one, but two goat heads. I don't even know where I'm going to put these goat heads, but they are magnificent, and I'm just going to pretend that I didn't spend ridiculous amounts of money on them.

The random yet awesome goat heads:
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We meandered around Disney Spring while we passed time waiting for the Hangar Bar to open. We took a quick look around the Star Wars shop, and there was this Magic Eye looking poster with storm troopers on it. We kept staring at it trying to make it become 3D. I'm not sure if it even was one of those 3D things, but Grizzly felt the need to enlist help because neither of us could get it to become 3D. So in his infinite wisdom, Grizzly grabs the first guy he sees and announces really loudly, "Can you help us with this? We've been drinking." Now this would normally embarrass me, but it was made even worse because the guy he chose was wearing a shirt that said "Jesus Saves" and I just wanted to crawl under a rock and hide. The stranger couldn't get it to look 3D either, so we all gave up and left.

Disney Springs has sure transformed since we were there in January. It's really magnificent. The color of the water in the springs (or the paint on the bottom) just looks amazing:

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Before we headed to the hangar bar we looked into a few more shops, and each picked out a chocolate at the chocolate shop across the street. I'm not sure how Disney does it, but they somehow make paying $3 for a single bite of chocolate seem like a good idea.

At Jock Lindsey's Hangar Bar we were hungry so we got the calamarion and the tuna tacos. The calamarion was so good we went back our last day to get some more. We also got animal drinks number four and five:

4. Cool Headed Monkey- a clear drink served In a souvenir monkey head (who on earth is buying all these souvenir glasses?). Grizzly thinks it tastes too sour, but I like it.

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5. Safari Sangria (ok, not quite an animal, but a heck of a lot of animals live there, so we counted it). Tastes mostly like red wine, Grizzly got to drink this one.

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Grizzly really loved that the napkins used by the Hangar Bar were "rags in a box", a detail that might be missed by the average non-handy person.

As I'm working my way through my notes from the day they are filled with a bunch of things we said that made us giggle. I'm editing out most of them because I don't even know what they mean, but there was one note that said "hydromousse" and I'm really curious what that one was all about.

We rolled out of the Hangar Bar and straight on over to the Lava Lounge which is attached to the Rainforest Cafe. By now, even though we've each had one more drink the effects of our first two are finally wearing off. Man the Wave guy made strong drinks!! I feel like all the other drinks we purchased combined we still less strong than those two mules. At the Lava Lounge we enjoyed two more animal drinks:

6. Mongoose Mai Tai- A creamy orange colored coconuts drink. By far my favorite of the entire weekend. I would go back just for this drink.
7. Cheetahrita- basically a margarita.

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This whole trip, me and about every other guest in the park were playing Pokemon Go. I work on a college campus, and our campus is full of Pokestops and Gyms and Wild Pokemons to catch. Disney was great too!! Pokestops and Pokemons everywhere. EVERYWHERE! Except bus stops and parking lots. I think Disney has wisely asked to remove Pokemon sightings from these locations. Actually seems like a great thing to occupy kids with in lines and on buses. I spent my time at the Lava Lounge catching my first water Pokemons while Grizzly rolled his eyes at me. By the end of the trip though he was pretending to be enthusiastic when I caught new ones because he's sweet and he loves me.

I have many many pictures of this trip of pokemons:
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After Llava Lounge the day was still young, so we went over to Boardwalk to get some ice cream at Ample Hills. Grizzly thought the name of this place was very suggestive, but one of his main goals in life is to turn anything I say into something with some sort of sexual connotation, so I'm really not surprised he was able to do it with an ice cream shop too. The Ooey Gooey butter cake makes an amazing sundae bottom!!!

Here was a venonat hanging out at the shop:
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We grabbed a piece of pizza before walking over to HS to catch a bus home. This entire weekend we had amazing luck with thunderstorms. We arrived back at Wilderness Lodge just before a huge storm rolled in. We showered, and lay in bed watching the lightening. It was around 8:30pm and I had the hardest time prying myself from the bed, but it just seemed too early to sleep given our few precious days away from home. I pulled myself out of bed and we went to the front desk to pay down our bill with gift cards, and then stopped by the gift shop for a movie we never ended up watching. Instead, Grizzly said we could go on Pokewalk.

Not knowing too much about where Pokemons like to hang out (hint hing, not on dark lonely trails as night), I took us down the trail to Fort Wilderness. The 2.5 mile trail to Fort Wilderness at 9:30 at night in the pitch black. Through thick trees. In the dark. It seemed like a good idea at the time until about half way through Grizzly mentions that this would be a great place to get mugged. It would be. There was no one around and dense bushes on either side of us. Suddenly our lighthearted poke hunt turned into an on edge walk through the woods. There weren't even any Pokemon to find in the woods, so really we were on a scary walk in the dark woods trying to avoid being mugged by muggers who we were certain were hiding in the bushes. And then suddenly Grizzly starts freaking out. He's hopping around, unsure of where exactly he wants to go and starts shouting "DEER DEER DEER!!!!" Well, I was looking down at my phone, so I'm pretty much blind, but since Grizzly is freaking out so insanely I'm certain that what he means by "deer" is "REALLY ANGRY 102 POINT BUCK". So I just about leap into his arms, and start looking all around only to see the world's smallest deer standing right next to the trail. He was less than five feet from us, but not at all scary. Here is the culprit:

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Grizzly calms down, I scold him for overreacting, then we concentrate on figuring out how to take pictures of the deer in the pitch black night. We settled on Grizzly blinding the deer with his phone flashlight and me taking pictures with my phone. Worked great until his flashlight lit up that there were two deer, and then we scurried away before they attacked us. We got the very last boat back to Wilderness Lodge, and collapsed into bed at 11:32.

End of Day 1:
Number of Animal Drinks Found and Consumed: 7
 
Day 2:The Animal Drink Challenge Continues

Both days this trip we had zero plans, and it was tons of fun to just let the day evolve before us. We were able to be much more spontaneous than normal, and the change was refreshing. We spent a heck of a lot of time on Disney transportation this trip, but without any concrete plans or reservations to make, the leisurely boat rides, monorail trips and bus hopping didn't bother us one bit. Plus each wait was an opportunity to collect Pokemons. (I'm a little nuts about them.)

We started off day two with an itch for swimming. The Wilderness Lodge slide looked completely pathetic, so we headed over to Grand Floridian instead (via boat to Magic Kingdom and monorail) to try our hand at pool hopping. Our first task was to eat some lunch. We were frustrated by the number of tables that were occupied by people's things with no people nearby!!!!! Aaaargh!! It's so frustrating. I can see taking up a lounge chair because there really is no other choice of a place to put your things, but to take up a whole table when there are so few places to eat drove me bananas. Disney could really solve this problem of holding lounge chairs and tables by providing cubbies. I can't be the only one that doesn't want to do any lounging, I just want a place to keep my shorts dry while I swim. If they had a bank of cubbies at each pool where I could stash my shorts, book, and flip flops, I bet the lounge chair saving problem would go away completely.

We ate, then took three trips down the slide before hopping over to the Contemporary pool to try their slide (boat to MK and walk to Contemporary). Between the two, the Grand definitely had the better slide as the Contemporary one was a bit slow. After three slides we were ready to hit the road. As we approached the boat dock lightening struck across the lake, and the boats and pool were shut down. Instead of waiting, we opted to walk back over to the Magic Kingdom, and grabbed the bus back to Wilderness Lodge.

Today was the day of musical Disney Transportation, so far we had ridden 2 boats, a monorail, and a bus and all we had done was go swimming. After showering and putting on dry clothes we headed over to Trader Sam's Grog Grotto via Magic Kingdom bus and monorail. When we arrived at 3:40 there was already a line outside the Grotto waiting for it to open at 4:00pm. The line included many families with small children. I know I've read threads with people on both sides of the fence on whether kids should be allowed in bars at Disney, and I think I'm finally able to choose a side. Are you ready for this? I choose the side of the fence where no little kids are hanging out in bars. I would love to see a minimum age, like at least 15. These kids outside Trader Sam's were maybe 4, they didn't belong there. It's a bar. Just because it's Disney, doesn't make it not a bar. It ruins the atmosphere for the adults trying to have a good time. It's a little less fun when you have to watch everything you say because there might be a four year old next to you at a bar. The atmosphere is a little less magical when with every cool effect you hear a mommy going "Oooooh honey do you see the volcano?" in a baby talk voice. Sigh...I will stop ranting now. So to continue, Trader Sam's offered plenty of animal selections including:

8. Mosquito Mojito- A pretty basic mojito. Nothing to rave about.
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9. A Hippopotamaitai- Hands down winner for the best name. Definitely not the best tasting, but it did come with animatronics and effects and screaming bar tenders. Don't take pictures with the flash on or you will be chastised by the bar tenders. "No FLASHING! This is a Disney bar!"
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10. A nautilus- a very yummy and very large selection of just about every alcohol on the shelf. This was very tasty and was served in a submarine. We chose it because a nautilus is also a sea creature. It was also ridiculously expensive.

Goodness only knows how much the drink is with the souvenir glass:
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When we got our bill I saw that the nautilus was listed as $29, so I reminded our skipper that we didn't want the souvenir glass. He said "No that's right, that's without the glass." And then I nearly passed out. Or rather felt rather foolish for ordering such an expensive drink. $29!!!!!! And I didn't even get to keep the freakin glass?! They should really warn you when you order it, there is no price listed on the picture above. I think more people would think twice about it if they were told the price.

Overall we liked the Grotto, it had some similar gag's to the adventurer's club (seats that sink down), and most signature drinks came with some prescribed antics by the skippers which you heard over and over again while you were there. So many hippos were shot out of the trees!! "Two shots of rum!" That's exactly the type of chant I want my four year old learning. (Sorry that rant slipped out.)

Here I am gibbering on about the drinks and I completely forgot about the food. That's because the food was completely unremarkable. We ordered Chicken Lettuce Wraps, the sushi roll, and the fried dumplings. They were each ok at best, although to be fair all three items cost less than our one nautilus drink so really they were a bargain. Moral of the story, don't bother with food here. Go, order one drink that doesn't cost thirty dollars (any drink would do, it doesn't have to be on their specialty menu), and listen to the antics produced by the other people ordering pricey drinks. Believe me, there will be plenty of pricey drinks ordered around you. Leave before you think it's a good idea to order a nautilus. It's never a good idea!

The days are long when you don't have park tickets, there's still so much story left to tell for this day, including two more bars, a round of minigolf, a small world story to blow your mind, and Grizzly getting sent on a 90 minute bus tour of WDW. Let's get started!

We left Poly and we were going to head over to Animal Kingdom Lodge to try a zebratini. What animal drink challenge would be complete without a trip to Animal Kingdom Lodge? We had to go. We hopped on an Animal Kingdom bus, but it was also a Blizzard Beach bus. Upon seeing the Winter Summerland golf course we hopped off the bus for our very first game of Disney minigolf. Now, I've been going to Disney since 1988, and have been at least once, if not 2-3 times per year since 2002, and I have never once played a game of minigolf at Disney. And I LOVE minigolf, the cheesier the course the better. Well...the Winter side of Winter Summerland did not disappoint. It was amazing!!!! Unlike most minigolf courses where the one moving windmill never actually moves, every piece of equipment that was supposed to move, spin, make noise, or squirt was in perfect working order. I also loved that many of the holes were very forgiving, so I could see kids really enjoying it and not getting too frustrated (aka my son will not throw a fit from continually getting 6's). I can't wait to bring Tigger mini golfing next trip. For the record, I destroyed Grizzly 42 to 46.

After minigolf we hopped a bus back to Animal Kingdom to get a transfer to the lodge. Unfortunately, Disney has a bit of an oversight with this transfer system. Everyone coming from Blizzard beach gets dumped at Animal Kingdom, and then they need to find a bus back to their resort or other park. Except, you are dropped off in the middle of the bus station, and the sign that tells you where all the different buses are, is wasaaaaay back near the actual Animal Kingdom park entrance. So we trek waaaaaaay over there, only to find out that the Animal Kingdom Lodge bus is pretty close to where we started. And worse yet, we see the bus sitting there. Oh the agony of seeing a bus at your stop and being too far away. We know there's no running allowed, but I haven't heard any rules about galloping. So I'm galloping swiftly to catch the bus, and Grizzly in his infinite wisdom decides this would be the absolute best time to give me one of those playful side kicks in the butt. Except he misses my butt, but nicely catches my phone which I have been holding down by my side awaiting Pokemons. My phone goes flying, thankfully doesn't break, but in the mayhem and ensuing "what were you thinking!" growling we missed the bus. I gave Grizzly my best glare of disdain as we waited for the next bus, but didn't stay mad for long, how could I, it was actually pretty funny.

We realized on the bus ride over to Animal Kingdom that Jiko, the restaurant serving the zebratini has a dress code, and we were collectively breaking all of the rules including wearing flip flops, tank tops, and shorts. There was not a collared shirt to be had between us and definitely no sports coats. We decided it would be best to avoid Jiko, and instead stopped by the lounge above Jiko. We told them our sad tale about wanting to try the zebratini, but not meeting the dress code. The waitress told us to go right down into the bar anyways. The dress code only applies to the sit down restaurant, not the bar. Nobody will care she said. And so we did. And the we enjoyed our 11th animal drink, and no-one cared that we looked like tired grungy disney tourists:

11. Zebratini - A creamy drink including espresso (I asked for decaf), Amarillo, frangelico, and other creamy things served in a martini glass swirled with chocolate.

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Grizzly and I looked longingly at our chocolate swirled glasses once the drink was gone and wondered who would notice if we stuck our snouts right in to lick the chocolate off. We kept it classy, avoided licking the glasses, and were soon on our way back to Animal Kingdom where we transferred to a Yacht Club bus. From Yacht Club we trotted over to Ample Hills for another sundae before heading over to Todd English's Blue Zoo in the Dolphin to sample their menagerie of animal drinks. And this is where the evening's fun really starts, or ends depending on how you judge fun. If fun for you is spending 90 minutes frantically riding buses, then hold on to your hats boys because you're in for a treat.

So we pull up to the bar and order a Swedish Fish and a The Local Bee's Knees:

12. Swedish Fish- an amazing drink made especially for alcoholic five year olds that tastes exactly like Swedish fish. It even comes with three Swedish fish and a very tasty Swedish fish foam.

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13. The Local Bees Knees- a drink involving alcohol and honey and another tasty fancy foam layer.

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About two sips into our fancy drinks Grizzly notices the register. It has a bunch of credit card symbols on it, but no Magic Band symbol or devices are in sight. Oh noooooo! We ask the lovely bar tender if they take magic bands, and she says they don't. She also says she normally warns people who she sees wearing magic bands, but since I had a purse she thought I must have had my wallet with me. Nope! I only carried my purse in order to carry my backup battery for my phone so I could play Pokemon Go all afternoon. My nerdiness really burned us this time. Who carries around a purse and only puts an extra battery in it? Grizzly agrees to "run back to the room" and I stayed and held down the fort at the Blue Zoo. After about thirty minutes without Grizzly's prompt return, the bar tender asked where our room was, and when I told her the Wilderness Lodge she felt horrible.

I passed my time chatting with the bar tender, writing my trip report, and catching Pokemons. Then the strangest thing happened as I was talking with the bar tender. Here was our conversation:
Bar tender: Everyone in my family went to school for different things.
Me: Everyone in my family is a teacher, and I swore I'd never be a teacher, but now I'm a teacher.
Stranger who just walked up to order food: Where do you teach?
Me: Upstate New York
Stranger- Oh my brother goes to college at (Insert specific university and specific program)

And to make a short story even shorter it turns out her brother was my student this past fall. How cool is that? He even happened to be one of my sweet students who gave me a card at the end of the semester that I put into my "This is why you teach folder" that I keep for those rainy days when you need a pick me up from all the BS that comes with teaching sometimes. So I got to know my student's sister a bit, we sent him a selfie, and then off she gallivanted with her salad and I remained at the bar feverishly catching Pokemon. I talked quite a bit with the bar tender. She was a performer for five years for Disney, but she didn't really like the company culture and said the girls were really nasty to each other, especially if you had a role they wanted. I don't know if she's right, but she also said that Disney charges rent based on sales for stores and restaurants, and that the rate is 40% of sales. She said she used to work for Raglan Road, said it was the highest grossing restaurant on property and would often pull in $150,000 in a single night, and Disney would take 40% of it. Those numbers are mind boggling to me.

While Grizzly was away I ordered a Mexican Mule to round off my mule choices for the weekend.

13. Mexican Mule - Another mule, this time a blend of tequila and ginger beer, also served in a special mule copper mug. This mule was by far my favorite, and actually tasted yummy.

I caught this rattata trying to take a sip:
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When grizzly finally returned we had a zooberry ready for him:

14. Zooberry - A red drink that Grizzly thought was the best drink of the weekend.

The drinks at the Blue Zoo were much more expensive than the average WDW mixed drink, running $13 instead of $10, but the quality was much higher, they definitely felt fancier, and they were by far the best tasting. I would definitely stop back here sometime for a cocktail, but next time bring a credit card. We checked out shortly after Grizzly finally returned after walking to and back from the HS to catch buses to Wilderness Lodge. The sweet bartender felt so bad for Grizzly's extended effort to get us a credit card that she comped us our first round of drinks. What a sweety.

We made our way back home via Disney Springs and were in bed by 1:00am.

Stay tuned for our last and final day. Will we make it to 15 animal drinks?
 




How did it take me so long to find your latest trip report? :badpc: Anyway, I wanted to add some likes to your total like count just in case the like count matters and again, I appreciate your writing style and your trip reports. Thank you!
 
We woke up our final morning and still had not tried out the Wilderness Lodge's dinky slide. Being a water slide lover I just had to give the slide a shot, so I dragged Grizzly out at the crack of dawn to try the slide. Surprisingly we were not the only weirdos out so early sliding down the slide. Turns out even though the slide was short it actually packed a good punch. The slide was a speedy little devil and we went down 3 times before running back to our room to pack up our things. This was our last day, so we dropped our bags off at the bell services and headed over to Disney Springs for a leisurely morning of shopping and eating before catching a movie in the afternoon. First stop was the Hangar Bar for more calamari and our last two animal drinks. We chose our drinks from the beer menu, and I ordered a Black Bear and Grizzly ordered a Saint Bernard. Oh yeah, we were doing amazing, and these two drinks would make a total of 16 animal drinks!

Well when Grizzly's arrived I got to make tons of fun of him because his Saint Bernard wasn't actually the Saint Bernard dog as we both had thought, but was the actual St. Benard which we both thought was down right hilarious, so we were down to 15 animal drinks because we weren't giving ourselves credit for falling for decoys.

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When my Black Bear arrived it was called Xingu, which obviously was chinese for Black Bear. I happily sipped away at animal drink #15 until Grizzly noticed that it didn't say Black BEAR, it said Black BEER!!! Ha! Fooled again! We were back to only 14 animal drinks.

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And 14 is the total we would stay at for the remainder of the trip. Not too shabby, and we had lots of fun on our quest.

After the Hangar Bar we went over to one of the fancy dessert places. I'm sorry I don't have the name of the place. All their desserts were very fancy though, and it took a paragraph of text or a five minute speech by the pastry picker upper to describe what each one was. I went with the one that had a really long description that included peanut butter somewhere in the list. Grizzly chose one with a really long description that mentioned several fruits. They looked pretty fancy, but in all honesty I felt like I would have just assumed eat a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. They tasted fine, but they were not out of this world, and certainly the taste didn't reflect the enormous amount of effort it took to describe the darn things. My verdict: Avoid the fancy dessert place at Disney Springs, and instead head to Ample Hills for a third time.

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After our dessert we headed over to nap, I mean watch a movie. Grizzly watched Now You See Me 2 (I think), I paid for a $15 nap, and it was worth every penny. After the movie we sadly made our way back to the Wilderness Lodge for our trip home.

This was one of my favorite trips to Disney. I definitely would not hesitate in the future to plan a park free vacation. We had an absolute blast. We also loved the Wilderness Lodge, and can't wait to go back some day.

Thanks for following along. I'm sorry about the long delay but this semester kicked my butt. We are headed down to Disney in 2 days, and I haven't even started that trip report yet!!!!

Have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone.
 

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