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It’s another Labor Day weekend which means summer is over, school is back in session, and it’s time for our annual family mini-vacation. This year it’s back to Walt Disney World.

A high school football game prevented us from driving over Friday night per our usual custom and we got a later-than-normal start on Saturday morning. Despite that, we were at Animal Kingdom just before lunch time. We had FastPass+ reservations for Expedition Everest, Kali River Rapids, and the Kilimanjaro Safaris, all of which worked without a hitch. For the first time I can remember, we got “stuck” on the safari right next to the lions for about 10 minutes. It was a cooler day so the lions were actually more active than usual and I got some great photos.

It looked like rain was coming in (a usual occurrence for our Labor Day weekend trips) in the late afternoon so we left to go check into our hotel room at the Wilderness Lodge. Before doing so, we tried to get FastPasses for later that evening at the Magic Kingdom. Despite what we had heard/read, Disney won’t let you get a FastPass for a different park after you’ve used your initial ones. You must get them in the park itself. This was a little frustrating but the cast member told us this was to prevent people from taking all the FastPass+ reservations and then not going to the park to use them. Oh well! We left for the hotel …

I had done the online check-in but hadn’t received the text message confirming it so instead of being able to go directly to our room we had to go to the front desk. Check-in took a lot longer than it should have, and even involved an (unnecessary, in my view) re-linking of our MagicBands to the room key system. Once we were checked in it appeared the weather had passed so my daughter and I went for a swim in the pool and then met my wife at the campfire to roast marshmellows by the beach.

After getting cleaned up we took the Mermaid boat from our resort over to the Magic Kingdom for dinner and the evening parade and fireworks display. We’re coming back on Monday (with FastPass+ reservations) so we really didn’t go on any rides. The park was open until 2am thanks to Extra Magic Hours and we had originally planned to stay past midnight, but after the late fireworks show we were tired and took the boat back to the hotel.