2016 August Trip Report – 30th Anniversary Day 3

Day 3 Animal Kingdom
Today we are headed to the AK but first we are off for another FREE tour offering, this time it’s the Boardwalk Ballyhoo tour of the Boardwalk Inn at 9AM. We took the bus to HS & then a boat ride over to the Boardwalk. We waited near the Bellvue lounge where the tour was to begin but when 9AM came and there was no one there to start the tour we inquired at the front desk and were told the tour is no longer being offered so we hopped the bus to AK.
We tried the breakfast sandwiches at Creature Comforts (Starbucks), with little seating outside. It's hard to believe we were there almost 12 hours and really only did one ride. My favorite show is Lion King and we saw this show twice. Once in the morning and once later in the day. I figured with 10 shows a day they wouldn't have the same cast and wanted to see how different the main characters may be.
We saw the Nemo Show, Tough to be a Bug, Safari, and both of the exploration trails. I was disappointed Dinosaur was closed as I enjoy riding it. We took a trip back to Rafikis Planet Watch & got picture with Rafiki, & then Chip & Dale on the way out. We also stopped at the Adventure Outpost for pics with Mickey & Minnie.
We stopped to see a few of the street shows during the day including the Harambe Soccer Meerkats who are the Harambe Acrobats doing some soccer tricks and involving some kids in kicking soccer balls around. We were aware that they were filming an episode of Blackish in the park that day and in the afternoon as we were walking near Lion King I looked and didn't even realize I was standing within 15 feet of Anthony Anderson and then saw the 4 kids from the show near him. It will be interesting to see what actually they filmed during their days in the park.
We had dinner at the Rainforest Café, Its been many years since we've eaten there. With it being so hot during the day neither of us had much of an appetite for something big but we still had a nice dinner and our waitress was very talkative and attentive.
We saved 2 of our FP for the evening, one for Kilimanjaro Safari's and one for the Jungle Book Alive. Sunset was scheduled for 7:54 so we got in line a little before that. We heard it was best to view it at dusk and not wait until it was totally dark. The first half of the safari we were able to see the animals, they were much more active as we actually saw animals running out on the savannah. It was almost dark when we arrived at the Lion Rock, but the Lion and both Lioness's were about and moving and the one lioness was roaring. The end of the ride was now in darkness and it was very hard to see anything. In my opinion the sunset lighting really added nothing that made it any easier to see anything.
After that we headed over towards Discovery Island to stop and watch the Carnivale, but first we stopped at the Tree of Life to watch one of the projection shows I think it was the Pocahontas one. These shows are just beautiful, very well done. Two other shows we watched that were very good were the Viva Gaia Street Band who play during the day and then are part of the Island Carnivale at night.
We were told to get in the FP line for the 10:30 Jungle Book alive show around 10. When we arrived theater were thousands of people already in line and there was no way really to stop people who didn't have FP from getting in the line. Cast members were trying to scan MB but there were so many people they were missing most of them and there were many breaks in the rope that anyone could have just merged into the line. We were still able to secure a seat near the top and almost in the middle.
People started leaving 5 minutes before the show was over to run over to EE for a ride. I waited till it was over and still had time to get one last ride on EE before they closed. After that we browsed the shops to let the crowd thin out and stopped to watch one more Tree of Life shows before heading to the bus stop.