Hey, just so you know ... this post is now about 8 years and 11 months old. Please keep that in mind as it very well may contain broken links and/or outdated information.

We’re spending Mother’s Day weekend over at Walt Disney World.

We drove over from Tampa this morning and started the day at Animal Kingdom. We had scheduled our FastPasses via the MyDisneyExperience web site a few weeks ago so this was our first experience using our MagicBands and the FastPass+ service. Our morning schedule went just as we had planned, riding Expedition Everest first (my favorite ride at Animal Kingdom), then going to see It’s Tough to be a Bug and the Flights of Wonder bird show before using our FastPasses for the safari and eventually seeing the Festival of the Lion King (my wife’s favorite show) in the new theater (which looks just like the old theater, just in a different location). We noticed Camp Minnie-Mickey is gone and construction for the new Avatar-themed area is well underway.

In the early afternoon, we left Animal Kingdom to go check into our hotel room at the Animal Kingdom Lodge. I had used the online check-in the night before and on our way to the hotel I got a text message that our room was not quite ready. We tried to check in anyway though and had no problem although I was hoping to be able to try the “go right to your room” after getting a text message with our room number. The MagicBands did work perfectly as our room keys, though. The view of the Arusha savannah from our balcony was amazing!

We were meeting friends later that afternoon so after dropping off our stuff at the hotel we drove over to Epcot to see them and spent some time wandering the World Showcase partaking in some of the wonderful views and food of the Flower & Garden Festival. We tried to get a FastPass+ at the kiosk but ran into our first snag with the new system: for some reason one of our FastPasses from Animal Kingdom had not been marked “redeemed” so the system wouldn’t let us make another FP+ reservation at the different park. Even the attendant at the kiosk wasn’t able to override this, which was very frustrating. I am still not sold on this new method of getting FastPasses.

Our friends had dinner reservations at Magic Kingdom so we bid them farewell and spent the rest of the evening wandering around Epcot. I noticed the Maelstrom ride in Norway is now closed as they make way to put more Frozen-themed attractions there. Eventually we went back to the hotel, hoping to get a late-night snack at the lounge downstairs, but they had stopped food service just a few minutes earlier. So we ended up having a few drinks and watching our Tampa Bay Lightning lose Game 5 to the Montreal Canadiens.

Back in our room, before retiring for the evening, we spotted a few animals outside on the savannah having their own midnight snack!