Hollywood Studios Guide
All the “must do” things at Hollywood Studios as an adult visiting the parks. Don’t waste your previous vacation time standing in lines for attractions that aren’t on your bucket list.
Author: Northwoods Thornes
Magic Kingdom Guide for Adults
Disney World is geared towards families, but there is a large population of Disney Adults. This guide is for the Disney Adults to create their own magical day in Magic Kingdom.
Animal Kingdom Blog
The mornings seem to be getting progressively more difficult to manage, we weren’t late but we were moving fast to keep it that way. The first bus to Animal Kingdom was 6:15, we caught the 7:15 instead, and arrived by 7:40. We still got in during the early access time and made a direct move towards Avatar Flight of Passage. This was our first time seeing the world of Pandora, it was being built when we visited in 2017. I loved the concept of the ride, but it made me motion sick and I spent most of the ride with my eyes closed again.
Coffee never fails to fix me up, and Creature Comforts was on the way to the Tree of Life. It is worth it to take a minute to drink your coffee and sit near the tree, with low crowds. I was worried that we would have a hard time with the ride lines today so we opted in for the lightning lane passes. The line for Kilimanjaro Safaris was short as we passed by and we were able to hop right on essentially. Our first lightning lane is for the Na’vi River Journey at 11AM. The ride was really cool, but over quite fast. Making our way through Asia to Expedition Everest.
Reservations for the Nomad Lounge were booked out a little while, so we put our name on the walk up list and headed over to the Satuli Canteen for lunch. For being a quick service stop it was really good. Ben had the combination bowl and I had the cheeseburger bao buns. In perfect timing, we got the text that our table was ready at the Nomad Lounge as we were leaving lunch. They gave us a table outside, right on the river and it was a beautiful spot to have drinks. Taking the time to have drinks and sit for a little while gave us the charging time to tackle the rest of the day.
After break time was over, the Florida heat was full blast. Kali River Rapids was the only reasonable choice at this point. It was so hot out we dried off before we finished walking the Maharajah Jungle Trek. Our final ride of the afternoon was set to be Dinosaur. I’m so sad to see it go. We had explored everything we wanted to at Animal Kingdom, and made the transition to Disney Springs for the evening. There was no bus directly to Disney Springs, but we learned from the other night we can walk from the Saratoga Springs Resort.
Every time we visit Disney Springs we end up going to the same restaurants, but this time we were determined to finally make it to Jock Lindsay’s Hangar Bar. Our timing was slightly off, it was the transitory period between peak dinner hour and bar time. It was seat yourself so we did a couple laps around until we spotted a couple leaving the deck area. Our table overlooked the Boathouse car-boat launch, and the live music area. It was a great spot for dinner and a few drinks.
Animal Kingdom Guide for Adults
Disney World isn’t just for kids. This guide will help you create your perfect day in Animal Kingdom when it’s just you and your adult friends.
Juneau Alaska Blog
Today we are in the capital city of Juneau, Alaska. The ship is in port for a good portion of the day, and we don’t have an actual excursion planned. This could make or break the day but we’ll take it as it comes. We seem to be following a pattern this week of getting up later and later. We were up and heading to the buffet by 6:30 this morning. We didn’t make the early tender call this morning like we did yesterday. The difference for today is that we will need to tender into port, instead of getting off on the dock. The process for tendering included waiting in line at the casino to get a tender time slot and ticket. We were still among the first groups to tender into port from the Norwegian Sun. The rest of the ships were already letting guests off, and the town was already bustling.
In my research and planning phase of this trip I had read about the “blue bus” and all of the different ways you can get to Mendenhall Glacier. The excursion stall for the blue bus was super easy to find and we bought two tickets thinking it wouldn’t take long to get going. We were directed around the corner (from the excursion stalls) to the parking lot…where the line was wrapped around other bus lines. We were on the fourth bus out to Mendenhall, and about a twenty minute ride later we were there. The crowds here were monumental. It was only 8:30 AM but everyone here seems to be an early bird. We walked the trail down to Nugget Falls, and right up to the beach for a front row view of the glacier.
We shuttled back into Downtown Juneau around 10:30 AM, much earlier than I thought we would be. We were split between trying to book another excursion or just exploring on foot. The self guided tour won the race and we took off for Devil’s Club Brewing. We had a before-lunch beer, and planned out our walking tour. It shocked me how small downtown Juneau really is. You can easily walk anywhere inside the city, and there are only a few stops outside of town that you’d want to take the bus to. We walked over to Tahku, a giant humpback whale statue on the waterfront. After visiting him and walking the SeaWalk, we were at a little bit of a loss on what to do. Our initial attempt to take the bus over to the DIPAC fish hatchery failed because we didn’t have change. The weather wasn’t exactly on our side either, the fog was rolling in and so was the rain. We made another lap around town and made a pit stop at the Red Dog Saloon. Ben tried the famous “Duck Fart” shot, and people watched until we were out of beer. The afternoon was winding down and we were running out of options for last minute stops. We had already shopped, visited, and viewed everything we wanted to. That left one last place to go. Alaska Brewing Co’s location near the cruise dock is a little bit too handy. We split a beer and enjoyed being out of the rain for a little while. The tender line back to the ship was beginning to get longer and we made the journey back to the ship before it started to get too long.
The evening on the ship was slow, we are not leaving Juneau for a little while yet but we went for dinner anyway. Ben and I shared baked zitis, scollops, baked trout and bratwurst. All of that written down sounds like a bad mix but it was fantastic. After dinner we did a few laps around the jogging track with my camera. The ship was just beginning to leave port and we started seeing whales surfacing in the distance. It was magical to see them as the sun was getting lower on the horizon. Our night ended shortly after, relaxing in the room for the night.
One Day at Mt. Rainier National Park
How to spend one day Mt.Rainier National Park and still see all of must-do sights.
Leavenworth, Washington
Leavenworth, Washington is a small town modeled after a Bavarian Village. It was turned into a themed area during the 1960s and has been a popular spot to visit ever since.
Mt.Rainier Blog
This morning I was determined to squeak in as much as I possibly could. The time change from Alaska to Seattle caught me off guard again though, and I ended up getting up at 6 instead of 5 AM. I was able to film the rest of the ship tour for Youtube before the rest of the ship was up and about. Ben and I grabbed breakfast from the buffet and ate on our balcony for the last time. It was bittersweet. We had to be out of our stateroom by 8AM, and our disembarkation time was 8:15AM. The disembarkation was relatively easy, we lined up on deck 6 with the rest of the people with that time slot, headed through the check point on the jogging track, and walked off the ship. I wasn’t sure how long it would take us to get through the baggage pick up area and ended up ordering our Uber a little too soon.
We made the decision this morning that we weren’t going to stick with our original plan, to store our luggage and explore Seattle. Our new plan is to rent a car and visit Mt. Rainier. We rented our car through Enterprise again, but the pickup location was on the outside of Seattle due to the holiday weekend. We got our Starbucks and began the journey to Mt. Rainier National Park.
The views approaching Mt.Rainier from Paradise were breathtaking. We don’t have those sorts of views in Maine and I couldn’t stop staring. Our first stop in the park was the gift shop, obviously. I had to get my National Park stamp for our book, and a few stickers. The main goal for our visit is to do the Skyline Trail, so we are going to drive by the other stops on the way out there and catch them on the way back if we have time. The parking lot was already filling up and we had to park at one of the lower lots. I was thankful we were even able to get a spot. The weather today could not be better for visiting Mt.Rainier and I thought there would be more people here to be honest.
We hiked all the way to Glacier View on the Skyline Trail. I wanted to return with enough time to see some other spots. I also made the mistake of hiking in a sundress and white sneakers. The trail was a little bit muddy from snowmelt but otherwise it was fine. It also caught us by surprise that it was SO hot out, It was about 80 degrees with direct sun and no wind. We took a bunch of pictures and turned back for the visitor center. I could have hiked here all day but we were on a tight timeline. On our way out of the park we stopped at Christine Falls, Narada Falls, and the Trail of Shadows. The Grove of Patriarchs was closed on our visit, but the Trail of Shadows is the next best thing. The giant trees were beautiful, and we had the trail entirely to ourselves.
The return trip is never as fun as the trip out. We stopped at Panera Bread for dinner, with all intentions of stopping at another brewery before heading to the airport. By a stroke of luck we checked the return details for our rental car. The Enterprise drop off location at SeaTac was not actually at SeaTac. They offer a free shuttle service to the airport. We skipped the brewery and booked it back to SeaTac. This part of the trip got a little bit stressful, we were going to be cutting it close for time. Turning in the car went fine, but waiting for the shuttle to arrive, then transfer us to the airport was like waitting for paint to dry. The shuttle dropped us off at the international arrivals terminal for some reason…and there was absolutely no signage as to where we were.
After finding the Delta baggage check we were only able to take one deep breath that we were at least in the airport. This experience makes me never want to check bags again. There was one person checking people in and almost every person needed to rearrange the weight in their bags. Getting through security took almost a third of the time it took us to check our bags. We got to our gate with only enough time to get a beer at the bar and wait for the rest of the plane to board before us. Our boarding time was 10:47 PM, take off at 11:30 and landing in Boston at 7:30 AM. This was my first ever true red-eye flight and I now know where the name comes from.
