MyWndrlnd
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2010
We just got back from a 5 day trip to SoCal that included 2 days at the San Diego Safari Park and 2 days at DLR/DCA. It was an amazing trip.
SAFARI PARK - brief recap
We celebrated my uncle's 60th birthday at the park. My aunt rented out all of the premium tents next to the elephant enclosure for the Adult Night Roar and Snore event. It was amazing! The "roar" portion of the Roar and Snore wasn't an exaggeration. We heard the lions roaring during the night and it was really cool to experience.
Our tents were perfect. They came with one queen sized bed and two cots. The bed came with all the necessary bedding and pillows. We didn't use the cots but if we had kids or other people in our tent that used the cots they would have needed to bring sleeping bags. It was a great "glamping" experience!
The Roar and Snore started after the Safari Park closed and we were given a safari tram tour as our luggage was taken to our tents. We saw so many beautiful animals and many of them had adorable babies. One of the baby water buffalo we saw was only 30 minutes old!
After the tour and settling into our tents, we had a buffet style dinner that was very tasty and a dessert of apple cobbler. With our bellies full we started off on our behind the scenes park tour. It was really amazing to see several of the animals that aren't typically shown to the public.
We then returned to camp and had champagne and birthday cake followed by tasty smores around the camp fire. At this point I was pretty tired. We'd been up since 4:45am and the temperature hovered around 104 degrees Fahrenheit for most of the day. Plus, I wanted wake up at 6am the next morning to see the lions when they were most active.
Seeing the lions in the morning was really fun. They were super active and playful. It was also pretty amusing to watch them sit on the hill and stare at the gazelle that were in the next enclosure. The park does this intentionally so that the gazelle maintain some of their instincts regarding the predator/prey dynamic.
After breakfast we went on the Caravan Safari and had the amazing opportunity to feed giraffes. It was so much fun.
After the Caravan Safari, as we reconvened to take one more group photo and say good by to those in our group that were going home, I managed to unknowingly touch the touchscreen on my new camera and format the SD card. Erasing all of the nearly 1,200 photos I had taken. I was not a happy camper at that point.
I was able to let it go and enjoy our last day in the park, but in that moment I was so sad and angry. Fortunately, I popped my SD card out and used a new one and we were able to recover nearly all of the photos.
Here are a few of my favorites!
Having seen most of the park the previous day, and the weather still hovering about 102 degrees Fahrenheit, we ended up leaving about 2pm when the heat got to be too much. From there, my sister dropped Ean and I off at our hotel at...
DISNEYLAND!
We stayed at the Clarion Hotel again and I am tempted to say it might be the last time we do so. While the price vs. location can't be beat ($270 for 3 nights/breakfast/parking and 0.7 miles from the park entrance) the last two rooms we've had left a lot to be desired. The staff are always very nice and the breakfast is tasty but, as we discovered this trip, there are no rooms with 2 queen beds!
A single king bed is great if it were just us, but my fellow Disney addict and BFF, A, was joining us. The first room the Clarion put us in was on the 3rd floor and had what appeared to be black mold in one of the ceiling corners. We changed rooms. We ended up in room 920. It had 2 full sized beds and a pull out couch.
Ean and I are used to our king sized bed at home and adjusting to a full was hard for me. One night I even ended up hitting my forehead rather hard on the corner of the nightstand right next to the bed. Ouch!
We spent Sunday and Monday in the parks and got quite a bit done. Here are a few notes that might help you on your next trip:
SAFARI PARK - brief recap
We celebrated my uncle's 60th birthday at the park. My aunt rented out all of the premium tents next to the elephant enclosure for the Adult Night Roar and Snore event. It was amazing! The "roar" portion of the Roar and Snore wasn't an exaggeration. We heard the lions roaring during the night and it was really cool to experience.
Our tents were perfect. They came with one queen sized bed and two cots. The bed came with all the necessary bedding and pillows. We didn't use the cots but if we had kids or other people in our tent that used the cots they would have needed to bring sleeping bags. It was a great "glamping" experience!
The Roar and Snore started after the Safari Park closed and we were given a safari tram tour as our luggage was taken to our tents. We saw so many beautiful animals and many of them had adorable babies. One of the baby water buffalo we saw was only 30 minutes old!
After the tour and settling into our tents, we had a buffet style dinner that was very tasty and a dessert of apple cobbler. With our bellies full we started off on our behind the scenes park tour. It was really amazing to see several of the animals that aren't typically shown to the public.
We then returned to camp and had champagne and birthday cake followed by tasty smores around the camp fire. At this point I was pretty tired. We'd been up since 4:45am and the temperature hovered around 104 degrees Fahrenheit for most of the day. Plus, I wanted wake up at 6am the next morning to see the lions when they were most active.
Seeing the lions in the morning was really fun. They were super active and playful. It was also pretty amusing to watch them sit on the hill and stare at the gazelle that were in the next enclosure. The park does this intentionally so that the gazelle maintain some of their instincts regarding the predator/prey dynamic.
After breakfast we went on the Caravan Safari and had the amazing opportunity to feed giraffes. It was so much fun.
After the Caravan Safari, as we reconvened to take one more group photo and say good by to those in our group that were going home, I managed to unknowingly touch the touchscreen on my new camera and format the SD card. Erasing all of the nearly 1,200 photos I had taken. I was not a happy camper at that point.
I was able to let it go and enjoy our last day in the park, but in that moment I was so sad and angry. Fortunately, I popped my SD card out and used a new one and we were able to recover nearly all of the photos.
Here are a few of my favorites!
Having seen most of the park the previous day, and the weather still hovering about 102 degrees Fahrenheit, we ended up leaving about 2pm when the heat got to be too much. From there, my sister dropped Ean and I off at our hotel at...
DISNEYLAND!
We stayed at the Clarion Hotel again and I am tempted to say it might be the last time we do so. While the price vs. location can't be beat ($270 for 3 nights/breakfast/parking and 0.7 miles from the park entrance) the last two rooms we've had left a lot to be desired. The staff are always very nice and the breakfast is tasty but, as we discovered this trip, there are no rooms with 2 queen beds!
A single king bed is great if it were just us, but my fellow Disney addict and BFF, A, was joining us. The first room the Clarion put us in was on the 3rd floor and had what appeared to be black mold in one of the ceiling corners. We changed rooms. We ended up in room 920. It had 2 full sized beds and a pull out couch.
Ean and I are used to our king sized bed at home and adjusting to a full was hard for me. One night I even ended up hitting my forehead rather hard on the corner of the nightstand right next to the bed. Ouch!
We spent Sunday and Monday in the parks and got quite a bit done. Here are a few notes that might help you on your next trip:
- The new FROZEN show is decent. I really loved the Aladdin show and in my opinion that show was better. We lucked out and saw the 5:10pm show. We were lucky because we didn't know FP were needed and ended up getting the last few that were available. I assumed this show would operate like the Aladdin show as a first come, first serve. Nope. It is more like WOC in that you get a FP and return for the showing time that is on your FP.
We sat in the orchestra area, toward the back on the right. Our view was good. I wouldn't recommend sitting front and center because some of the set is designed to come out and hover over the crowd at certain points and if you sat there you wouldn't see anything that was going on.
There were 3 different times the show was stopped mid production due to technical glitches (audio system wasn't working). This show is VERY TECHNICAL. It relies on massive immersive projections to tell the story so I hope these glitches/bugs are worked out. - As most of you know, the smells from SOARIN were MIA in preparation for the new video that will be shown on the ride starting later this month. The ride was still fun but it was definitely missing something without the smells.
- We did the WOC DESSERT PARTY. The servers were EXCELLENT and the desserts were ok. We were at table #3 which is a low/front table on the far right just in front of the steps. Our view was decent but it would have been better if were were at one of the taller tables behind us. We checked in at 8:15pm for the 9:00pm show and those tables were already taken, yikes!
The $80 price tag was a bit steep since I am not a big fan of the current 60th Anniversary WOC show. It reminds me of the "Holiday" WOC that was just an advertisement for Frozen. I'll be happy when another version comes out and will probably do the Dessert Party again just to have a chair to sit in.
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I'm sorry it was so hot for you though, it's back down to the 70's today, very unusual to be in the 100s so early.
