Thanksgiving Week Trip Report 2022 Completed 1/22/23

[DisneyMountainWoman]

Hello Everyone!

We have just gotten back from Disney World so now is the time to make my trip report. Man do I miss it already luckily I am going back in Jan for Marathon weekend.

Basics:
Sat Nov 20th - Sun Nov 27th, 2022
2 Bedroom Suite staying on DVC Points at AKV Kadani (in laws stayed in a near by hotel but we put them on our room so they could use our pool)

Who are we:
6 adults and 1 child
Me: The mom and planner of the group. I am the Disney obsessed person. (In the red cape and ears)
My Husband: Likes Disney but not obsessed (but is a huge star wars and marvel fan) he goes along with it and loves it. (Tallest Guy in the back)
My son: 5 years old... loves dinos, Disney and Star Wars. He has lots of energy. First trip to WDW. (the small one in the front)
My mom: She loves spoiling her grandson and likes Disney but again not Disney obsessed. (To the left of me in bronco Santa hat)
My Dad: He just likes spending time with grandson and relaxing in places with a view. Give him a drink and a view and he is happy. (in Colorado Santa hat, with the awkward smile)
My Mother in Law and Father in Law: Took their children to WDW when my husband and his siblings were growing up and wanted to join in with grandson first trip to WDW. (To the right of me, elf hat and regulars Santa hat)



I will slowly update this, so keep checking in and I hope you enjoy this!

 

[DisneyMountainWoman]

Table of Contents
Day 1
Arrival Day
 Views
Lego Store
Trex
Trex part 2
Day 2
 AK
Dino Land
Everest
 Snacks
Tusker house
Characters!
Safari
Lion king show
Heading back
Hot tub and bed
Day 3
HS
Toystory Land
Rise of the Resistance
Lightsaber
SANTA
Photos!
Star wars characters
More photos
Hollywood and Vine Part 1
HnV part 2
Frozen
Slinky dog
Fantasmic
Nighttime pics
Goodnight
DAY 4
run and xmas decor
Workout room
Boma
Resort fun
DAY 5
MK day
Fun rides
PoC
Parade
Cavalcade
Fireworks and Desserts
Jingle Cruise
Castle Pics at Night
Extra Magic Hours
DAY 5 Thanksgiving
Run
Pool time
Boma 1
Boma 2
Boma 3
Day 6
Epcot
Remy
Figment
Food and Frozen
Allears
Donuts
Photos
Fireworks
Day 7
More running
Story Book Dinning
Story Book Dinning 2
Story Book Dinning 3
Story book Dinning 4
Day 8
Fly home​

(Umm the link function is not working on cell phone... so there could be delay for links, I have do it on my computer)

 

[MaleficentMe]

Holy cow, I'm first! Looking forward to the TR!

 

[MinnieFan4ever]

Great family picture!

 

[DisneyMountainWoman]

Day 1: Nov 19th

Part 1: Flying day. We live close to the airport so an easy trip on Lyft to the airport.

My son is sooo excited.

We flew united, nothing bad happened. We flew economy plus extra room was nice. My parents flew first class not jealous at all.



We landed and made our way to pick up our luggage. Luggage was surprisingly quick and then Tiffany's limo service picked us up and drove us to Disney. It includes grocery pick up... next time we need to order grocery ahead of time. It is hard finding what we want in a short time.
Then we see the sign!!

Check In was easy and we were able to go strait to our room around 3:30.
Lots of room in our room with great African touches.







Continuing on next post and saving the best part of our rook the view!

 

[DisneyMountainWoman]

Holy cow, I'm first! Looking forward to the TR!

Yeah! Thanks for joining in!

Great family picture!

Thank u!! It is infront of Jambos gorgeous tree.

 

[DisneyMountainWoman]

Part 2 of the room tour... saving the best for the last views!!!

Our deck is huge too!! We have three, yes three doors to the deck.


And yes there are giraffes
My son is sooo happy!!!






We stayed on the deck for a bit because as Pete says it is a freaking savanna!

We unpack and we head to Disney Springs for our dinner reservations.
Continuing on to the next post.

 

[DisneyMountainWoman]

Part 3: Disney Springs

So we unpack and we all a bit hungry. We grab some snacks from the grocery run, the wings were actually preety tasty and that should hold us off till we get to disney springs. We head on down to the bus and as we walk down we see the disney spring bus started to close their doors. I try and run down to catch the bus but no the driver did not see us and now we ha e to wait for the next bus we look to see if we can grab a lyft and the minnie vans ans lyft will only beat our next bus by a couple of mins... so we decide to wait it out. My son gets hungry again and I feed him some snacks. Good thing I always have snacks on me and wait and wait....
The bus finally arrives yeah!!! And we get on.
Our reservations are at TREX since my son is dinosaurs obsessed but we still have some time to kill. I first check to see if we could meet Santa but times were already booked up. So next we shop. We head to the lego store and the line is short so we hop in.
While waiting I take a quick pic of the cute xmas trees.








My son is freaking out and loving everything. He finally picked out a Lego set that was under 40. (that was the budget we gave him) He picked out star wars one of course.







Continue on to the next post

 

[StarWarsMomofGirls!]

Following along! Love the pic of your son with the thumbs up and the giant smile!

 

[footballmouse]

 

[DisneyMountainWoman]

Following along! Love the pic of your son with the thumbs up and the giant smile!

We all know who the star of this is.... lol

Welcome!

 

[DLo]

Following along. Looking forward to reading more.

 

[DisneyMountainWoman]

So we have some time to kill to our reservations... my in laws arrive and my parents and then head off to TRex to go drink at the bar early. We take some more pics and slowly head over there.



We noticed they have a digging area in the trex area so we go and check it out. My son in heaven right now. Digging away.


We sit and relax for a while. As we get to 30 mins before the reservation I go check in early. The outside line is long but if u have a reservation in the inside line is much shorter. Good news when I get up to podium they can take us right away! Nice. I round up the adults at the bar and we head on over to our seats.


We order our drinks and food.

I got a cotton tini drink, suger and yummy.
My son loves what his drink came in, a dinosaur! He still drinks with it to this day and loves it.

Grilled shrimp Alfredo. It tasted good, Nothing special but not bad either.


Me mom had coconut shrimp she said it was tasty.
My son had the pizza, he loved it.

Continue on to next post...

 

[StarWarsMomofGirls!]

TRex is a restaurant we never went to. But my girls never were obsessed with dinos. If they were, we def would have gone there.

 

[DisneyMountainWoman]

Following along. Looking forward to reading more.

Yeah, welcome!

TRex is a restaurant we never went to. But my girls never were obsessed with dinos. If they were, we def would have gone there.

Yeah, we never went there before too. But now that I have a son and he looove dinos we had to go there. Looking around everyone had a small kid with them who was at this restaurant.

 

[DisneyMountainWoman]

Continuing... my husband order the shrimp plate. He looves shrimp and thought it was good.

Father in law got the meatloaf. He said it was a nice classic meatloaf.


Then mother in law got a chicken sandwhich.
She was it decent.
So overall the food is nothing special but nothing was bad either. It is a solid middle of the road with the food. But u are not coming here for the food u coming here for all the dinosaurs!

For dessert we had to get this crazy volcano brownie creation. It is super shareable. They bring little plates so split it up. And now we are super, super full.

While eating there was a couple meteorites strikes. I tried to take a pic of it but my camera sucks at it. My son freaked out and loved every second of it. While eating the Manger came to talk to us since I am a landery card member. He chats about how the whole restaurant goes through the whole cycle so that is why it starts in the water then moves through dinos to meteorite to ice age. Pretty cool fun fact.

We head out...or would it be more accurate to say roll out since we are so full and we head out. Cool fun fact, my inlaws rented a mini van so we walk over to the parking garage instead of taking the bus. Yeah no waiting for a bus!

While rolling out I am loving all the xmas decor but it is really crowded right now. Like super crowded.


Ohh forgot this pic from earlier.

The walk to the parking lot was far. They had to park in the 2nd back garage. Then they drive us back to AKV and we are back home. We asked my son how was his first day and disney and here was his response.

Also had to stop in the lobby shop... and there was a ton of dvc items... ohh this is dangerous. I ended up with this cute hat and wine cup!!

Okay time for bed... my son does not want to go bed... suprise, surprise. But we finnally get all tucked in and bed time. Tommorow we wake up to go to AK!

 

[DisneyMountainWoman]

Day 2 AK!!

So we wake up early since AK is the earliest park and I am just super excited.
I check out the weather and it is looking not good... a very rainy day it is actually nice temps for even though some may so it is cold. We like the cooler temps being Coloradoans. But the rain all day sucks. So I wear my rainy outfit, not my nice cute "Up" skirt.
My parents make breakfast. It is nice having our own kitchen and we head out to the bus.
We are the first people out here. This will become a theme. The bus came and look we are the only people on the bus!


And we get first in line!

We chat with the staff. They are so nice but they are all bundled up for the "cold"... we even see people with hand warmers.
My son also loves maps so we entertain him with the maps.

Our goal hit the avatar ride first. Probably like everyone's goal....
And then they open up the gates and yes everyone is going to the same ride. They have staff along the way to direct the traffic.
We drop off the stroller and the bag with my dad he does not want to ride it.
Then we make it in to the line. The line is long but it is always moving.



So slight issue.... when we make it into the inside part my son starts having issues... my son has sensory processing disorder and we have headphones to help him... and guess what we forgot... the headphones they are in the bag we left with dad!!! Bah.... so I put on my sons fav songs to distract him. He is on the edge of melting down but the songs take the edge off. I feel like a bad mom forgetting his headphones. But we make it on to the ride and he enjoys it but says he does not like the beginning part with the creepy noises in the beginning. The rest of the group looved it. I would so recommend doing it early like we did. We were just walking the whole time the line was quick.


We went next to Dinosaur land because my son is obsessed. Lol. We have DAS pass beacuse of my son and we DAS dino while in avatar line. My son freaks out seeing the dino sign!!


Continuing on to next post.

 

[DisneyMountainWoman]

We head over to the dinosaurs ride.
My son is all excited.

We scan in and walk right on to the ride. My son loooves this ride.

Next we hop on the triceratops spin, no wait. We walk on. My son again soo happy he loves controlling it up and down.



Then we head to the boneyard! This is my sons favorite place... a dinosaurs playground. This place is huge!!! And the details are amazing!!! Even if u do not have a kid take a look around, there are just cool details everywhere.



You need to cross the bridge to get to the digging area... so u know where we are headed too..



So we where here for a bit. Giving my son just time to run and around was fantastic. Also not crowded yet since it is still early in the day. I know a lot of people do not like Dinoland but man does this place hit their target audience well. If they update this area I hope they do not touch the boneyard and dinosaurs ride. The carnival area they can update though.

Continue on to next post.

 

[DisneyMountainWoman]

So next we head out and I ask my son if we want to do the everest the roller coaster ride. We watched all the rides a few times to see how he would react and this was one of the rides I was thinking we would need to skip but when watching the videos he said he wanted to do it. So confirmed he wanted to do it and we set up a das pass. And we walk on over..the rain is still holding off soo far. We drop off our bags and stroller with a couple of grandparents not wanting to do the ride and this time I remember to grab the headphones!!

Ahh yeah happy son with headphones!



We got on to everest with no meltdowns this time, everyone was very happy!! And we are off. So my son said he loved the ride but he did not like it as much when it went backwards so he only wanted to do it once. I said fair enough.
But sadly it started to rain... and now que meltdown. My son does not like getting his face wet.... soo he does not like rain. So we put him in the stroller and put a cover on it. And he is okay for now. We decide to check out the animals before it starts pouring and it is just light rain. So we go on the tiger walk. My son loves animals.

He talks to an animal keeper they have a map so of course he must check it out.

Next the bats... my son was not liking there was no barrier. So we went in and out quick.



Next we check out the birds and my son was all about this. He decided he wanted to do the wilderness explorer book now and got one. He had to pick our certain birds on the chart. Then they said look for bird while we went out. So we went hunting for that bird.... and of course it was the only bird we could not find, lol. We saw lots of other birds though.

Continuing on next post.

 

[Dotluvsdisney]

Love love love all of those happy faces!!! We were just at AKL too. Such a fabulous time of year to visit!