Tuesday was our last full day at Disney for our 12th anniversary. If you missed any of the blogs, page on back and check them out (We did the Wild Africa Trek!!).
Most days we were there, we had one "special" thing. We did Cirque. Sangria University. The Wild Africa Trek. And up last? Cinderella's Castle for Breakfast! It's been on my bucket list for awhile. My family went when I was like 5 but I have ZERO recollection of the event. So, in my mind I've never been there. The thing about the castle, is the food is just pretty average. And everyone knows it. But you aren't there as much for the food, as you are to be INSIDE the castle! But, man, for average food it is PRICEY. Going for breakfast is the cheapest, but I'm hardly ever at a Disney Park early enough for breakfast. And reservations are hard to get. When you book a Disney hotel, you get to book 60 days out from the FIRST day of your stay. So, if your stay is 5 days, you can book 65 days out for your last day there. Usually that's enough to have all of Cinderella's Castle reservations to be gone when I'm trying to book 60 days out, or even 62 or 63. Notice, we were going on our last full day there!
Now, heres the thing, usually this is a character meal- complete with Disney princesses roaming the resturant for pictures and autographs. Pre-covid I think it was like 70 bucks for BREAKFAST. Dinner was more. But, when the characters disappeared from the parks from covid, character meals got a price DEcrease! Now, I'm cool seeing the princesses. But, I don't need a character meal. And now, without characters, breakfast was $42 ($38ish after my passholder discount). I really wanted to go, because there will never be a time I can eat in Cinderella's Castle under 40 bucks for probably the rest of my life!
We really mulled over whether we should keep this reservation or not. You do have to pay at the time of booking, though if you cancel the day before, you can get a refund. I know most people are paying very little attention to covid these days, but we're not those people. And covid is everywhere here again (maybe half the last wave- but you know, most people test at home these days). And we still hadn't eaten at an indoor sit down resturant since covid (February 29, 2020 to be exact!) But we decided to pack our masks, wear them until our food came, and essentially cross our fingers. Characters will likely be back at the castle soon (they're back most places already), and with it the old price (or even likely higher) will be back.
Magic Kingdom is kind of a pain in the ass to get to. You have to park at the transportation and ticket center and walk (though, I think the trams might be back there), then wait in line to go through security. Then wait for the monorail or ferry. Then wait to scan your tickets. And then you're FINALLY in. But, if you're staying at a hotel, the busses drop you right at the gates, bypassing the parking lot and the monorails. We decided to take the bus route, but man our bus was PACKED. I'm talking like 10 year olds resorting to lap sitting, people crammed in the aisles, completely packed. And, Asa and I were the only ones masked. Lame.
Also a change from covid is the "Extra magic hours". Now, resort guests get in any park half an hour before regualar guests every day. (instead of a couple hours in the am or pm at select parks). We thought we would get there at 8:30 am and have time to jump in line for a top tier ride. But, between waiting 20 minutes for the bus to show up, and then this massive line when we arrived...
By the time we made it up to the castle and waited in that line to have our magic bands scanned to prove we were hotel guests half of that half hour was up.
Real talk, it was BUSY. I can't imagine most people get much done with that half hour. ANd whats even worse is the people are pouring in, so none of the posted wait times are close to accurate. All of the "5 minute" times in the app were not even close to right. I'm sorry, but this is like as full as the Space Ranger Spin line gets, yet the sign out front and the app both had 5 minutes listed. So, I'm not really sure who this is helping. By 8:15 Seven Dwarfs was 75 minutes long, which is basically where it hovers all day long. So unless you're one of the first people there, it's really not that helpful.
Noticing the Space Ranger Spin line, and the Space Mountain line that extended practically to the Astro Orbitor (you can kind of see if down there to my right), we opted to hit the People Mover. You can never go wrong with the people mover!
Plus you can check out the Tron construction. It's really coming along!
We made our way up to the castle, hoping to visit Tiana at Fairytale Hall. I had all my homemade Princess and the Frog gear on (with my shirt and my ears), and we were going to take a picture with her. But again, the listed time was 5 minutes, but the line extended out the door and through the queue. It hadn't caught up either, it was at least 45 minutes.
And we didn't have that much time left until our reservation, so instead we hopped in line for Philharmagic. Even that had quite a line, but that was mostly because we hit the shows weird, I think. Still, I love Philharmagic, especially with the new upgrades, so I was pleased we at least made it there. .
And now it was time to check into our reservation!
When you walk through the castle, you'll notice a kind of unassuming doorway on the Tomorrowland side in the back. That's where you'll enter for the Royal Table.
When they call you, you'll follow the red carpet inside.
which opens up to the downstairs of the castle which is pretty impressive.
And to my complete surprise, they did have Cinderella there greeting guests!
ANd not even socially distanced, which is what I had last heard! So while there were no characters at the meal, you do still have Cinderella downstairs grating everyone.
After you get your picture taken with Cinderella, you have to wait until they call you upstairs. And it might be a minute (it took almost 40 minutes for them to call us, but that might be because we are a party of 2 and there just aren't that many tables for 2). I didn't mind though, I just took it all in.
Eventually they call you to head upstairs. You can either take the elevator, or the spiral staircase..
..where you'll find a stained glass window of Cinderella.
At the top of the stairs, you'll be greated with giant archways and some steps down into the resturant, which is surprisingly pretty small.
Now remember, you prepaid, so you can order anything on the menu. (I'm not sure why you'd get the "classic breakfast", but I guess if you're just there to be in the castle.... ) You also have juice and coffee included. There are some drinks you can order, but we skipped it.
You also get a little keepsake of a Wishing Star (I'm going to turn mine into a magnet!)
You also get a plate full of breakfast pastries. Nothing is particularily outstanding. It's pretty Disney-basic (ha! after all the "Disney-real" talk at Wild Africa Trek, I'm coining "Disney-basic" as a term). The mickey shaped blueberry muffins were cute though!
We did take off our masks to have our pastires so we took a couple pictures. By now, the resturant was clearing out wuite a bit. They have a little break when they change over for lunch, I think. So while people were leaving, nobody new was being seated.
It took awhile to get our food, but it finally showed up. Asa got himself some shrimp and grits. They were fine. Nothing earth shattering. You can can much better shrimp and grits around Disney (especially during the festivals), but it wasn't bad. Just... Disney-basic!
I got the beef tenderloin and egg. It was.... salty. I don't do a ton of salt. So, I'm not sure if it was me, or if it was really salty. But, still. People who say the food is just okay were not kidding. I might have been disappointed if I had never heard that before, but if you're a Disney person, you know what Cinderella's castle food is like.
By the time we were finished and ready to leave, the resturant had really cleared out, which made for some better pitcures.
And of course, I had to swing by the bathrooms just to see them (I still think the Tangled bathrooms are the best in Disney).
We made our way back down the spiral staircase..
And headed out, but not before getting our wand and sword!
I think they're supposed to be for kids, but whatever, they were just hanging out there, and I paid for my meal!
So Cinderella's Castle, worth it? Depends on what you're looking for. I just wanted to see it. I knew the food wasn't going to be the best meal I'd eat on my trip (it might have, in fact, been my least favorite). But, I knew that going in. Would I do it again? Probably not. It's a one and done, but I'm glad we did it. And, I'm glad that I did it at this price point. Anymore and it kind of seems like price gouging.
We kind of mulled around what to do next, but the park was already pretty busy. And, it was a little deflating that by this point we had been in the park three and a half hours and managed two (low tier- awesome-but low tier) rides and a meal. (Man, I SUPER miss Fastpasses). So, we headed to the front of the park, though the ducks and the piano player at Casey's Corner caught our attention for a little.
I also swung by the Emporium to try and find a magnet of the castle- since I had eaten there. This was the ONLY one that they had. How is there only ONE magnet of the castle? Crazy. This, however, was before I decided to turn my name tag from the Wild Africa Trek and my Wishing Star into a magnet, though. And on the way out, we ran into the Dapper Dans!
We caught the bus back to the hotel, and it was quite different on the way back than the way there. There was only one other family on the bus ride back with us.
The Animal Kingdom Lodge has two sections to it: Jambo House (where we were staying), and a short walk away is Kidani Village. While Jambo house has better savanna viewing, and a much grander lobby, I like Kidani's pool more. And Kidani is also where you'll find the "Community Hall" with games, pool, and foosball. So, we headed down there to enjoy those amenities.
Obligatory 6-17-10 pool picture.
The Community Hall also has some public balcony's to enjoy the savanna.
We also made our way down to the main savanna viewing at Kidani. It's not nearly as big as Jambo house, but there were quite a few animals out, and a keeper that told us all kinds of stories, including the fact that the live action Lion King crew came to the Animal Kingdom to learn all about the animals movements and such. So all those animals are done off real life Animal Kingdom animals, Simba is even the male Lion over on Kilimanjaro Safaris. He said the only thing not super accurate in the movie is baby Pumba. Apparently baby warthogs are not cute, so they modled the baby Pumba off the red river hogs on the Kidani savanna. (Red river hogs, too are apparently very mischeivious. They are the only animals houses on the first floor of the hotel technically (there are no rooms on the first floor) because the keepers can keep them from fidning ways to escape tfrom there.
Once we were sufficiently warm enough that we wanted to hit the pool, we thanked our keeper friend for the information and headed on over to the Kidani pool for while.
Later that afternoon, we left Jambo House...
...to head on over to Footgolf.
We love footgolf, especially now that it is included in our annual pass. The course has been changed a bit and updated since we last played, and they still seem to be working on it, but it's still playable while they're renovating it and the neighboring golf course.
If you haven't played footgolf before, it's just golf but with soccer balls!
Despite the fact that Asa kept finding himself in the sand traps...
He still beat me! (It helps he can kick the ball like twice as far as me!)
Still, we had lots of fun!
And we didn't even think it was that hot. But, this is where we're at in the year, 90 doesn't feel hot if it's not humid!
Still when we got back to Jambo house, we decided to go to the pool to cool off.
But not before stopping by to check out the flamingos.
And even a zebra made an appearance down by the pool savanna!
The pool was a bit crowded, so we didn't stay too long. Just long enough to cool down..
..and then we were ready for dinner. We decided to order take out from two different places. I headed down to the Mara quick serve at Jambo house while Asa went over to Kidani for Sanna to-go (It's a table service place but you can order to go!)
At the Mara I picked up our desserts, the famous Nyala Brownie and zebra domes...
..Along with the falaffal platter.
I had brought along our picnic basket we got from Wine Bar George on our last anniversary, and we had hoped to picnic at Saratoga Springs. Of course, it rained then, so we weren't able to do that. But, I thought we could have our last dinner as a picnic on our balcony. So, I set that up while Asa was still getting Sanna.
And then he came back with on of my go-to Disney foods: Sanna Bread Service. A whole lot of Naan, and the best dipping sauces ever. We also got a kids sized Butter Chicken because we wanted to try it out without spending $30 for an adult sized portion (spoiler alert, it was delicious!)
We set everything out and had ourselves quite the delicious feast.
Oh, and I even had my POG juice I had saved from the night before from CLub Level when they gave it to me to-go.
I'm telling you, this picnic set-up was the way to go for our last night. Nice and low key. We even brought our little portable speaker for Disney music!
After dinner, we did make it down to the savanna viewing, but mostly so I could roast a marshmellow. Disney resorts have these campfires almost every night, and I try and go to at least one when we're staying there, but I had been rained out or not around for of all of them, and it was our last night!
As an added bonus, when you do the campfire at Jambo House, you're surrounded by animals!
We did stop by the bridge on our way back to our room for an anniversary dip kiss picture with our little tripod.
Then we headed back to the room for a quite evening.
And once the sun was on the way down, we headed out for one more evening savanna viewing. This evening we saw the truck coming around feeding everyone too. The giraffs were so close I could hear them chewing! I love the savanna at sundown!
By now the pool had emptied all the way out, too, so we went down for one last swim before they closed. That is a downside of the Animal Kingdom Lodge, they only have feature pools, so instead of some quiet pools being open 24/7, you have closing times.
But can you really complain when that pool is surrounded by flamingos? I think not.
That's it for our last full day at Disney. Stay tuned for go home day!
