Disney by Sea and Land - Day 10

Day 10 - January 26

Today will be our first "official" day in a park. As has been our routine for years, since we are here so often, we get a late start to our day. However, this day (and this trip) are different than those before it. My wife has now joined me in retirement after years of being a teacher, so this time we are able to both be here when it is not a school vacation! We were here in October, but the crowd levels did not seem any lower than when we had been here in the past. This trip, however, does see a reduction in crowds from the busiest times.

When we wake up, we have breakfast at the Pop Century food court. It is still cool this morning, though the forecast calls for it to warm up to the low 70's by mid-day. It is, however, a picture perfect morning and we are quite happy with how the day looks.

After breakfast we head back to our room for a while until our daughter text's me that she is leaving her apartment and heading to pick us up. Today's plan includes starting the day with lunch (I told you we no longer rush into the parks) at Sanaa in Kidani Village at Animal Kingdom Lodge. We will meet my son-in-law there for lunch. We get there early so I can take some pictures of the savannah at Kidani.

When it is time for lunch, we get a table right by the window and can look out onto the savannah as we eat as well. After lunch my son-in-law has to head to work - my daughter still has a few more days of vacation, and comes with us to Disney's Hollywood Studios.

At the studios we do the Great Movie Ride and then head to one of our favorite things to do in this park - the Animation Academy. If you remember, on board the Wonder we drew Donald Duck, and we can't wait to see who we will draw today. Once we are seated, our animator/instructor tells us we are going to draw a character, but we will have to guess who it is as we draw it. This sounds like fun - we have never done this before. Just before someone calls it out ... I realize who it is ...

Of the three of us, my daughter draws the best Jiminy Cricket.

From here we decide to see if there are any fastpasses for Toy Story: Midway Mania. They are all gone for the day and the stand-by line is listed at 70 minutes so we check out the newest attraction, The Lengend of Captain Jack Sparrow.

The wait is about a half hour and then we get inside. It's a walk through show attraction with some pretty good effects. While I am glad that we got to see it, it is one of those things that most likely will be a one timer for us. I recommend that you see it - once.

Next we head over to the Muppets area and go to see MuppetVision 3-D. When we are done we decide it is time to think about dinner - we have no reservations today - and stop by to see if Sci-Fi Dine-In will take a walk in. (Thanks to the My Disney iPhone app we know there are no reservations available.) Sci-Fi is our go-to place to eat here, and always allows us to do a walk-in and today is no exception. In less than 5 minutes we are being shown to our car.

When we finish, we decide it is time to head back to our room so we walk back - through the stores of course - and our daughter drives us back to Pop Century.

We decide that tomorrow, Sunday, will be a good day to do Animal Kingdom. It is still going to be the coolest day of the rest of our stay here (Animal Kingdom always seems to be the hottest of the parks) and it should be less crowded than the Magic Kingdom or EPCOT.