Gator Bowl trip

**MarkC** · 01-04-2009, 03:05 PM

I am not usually one to post trip reports but this one is worth it. This is my first trip over Christmas after wanting to do so for years. Me (age 49) and my son (19) and nephew (22) wanted to see the Gator Bowl. Since we already had annual passes a few days at Disney was a no-brainer. We had driven to St. Louis for Christmas at my in-laws (whom I get along with quite well. After a party on the 27th, we left St. Louis at 5:30pm and the boys were bound and determined to drive straight through. I was nervous since we would be trading sleep time and driving in the middle of the night. We all managed fine and the guys were great.

We arrived at AK at 10:30 and walked right in. We went straight to Everest and rode it using the single rider line with only a 7 minute wait. The boys then headed to Kali River Rapids while I went and got fast passes for Dinosaur. We rode that and had a quick lunch. It was off to Tough to Be a Bug. The safaris had a 140 minute wait by then and fastpasses were gone, so we walked the Jungle Trek and headed back to the motel to check in and nap a little. We stayed at the Marriott World Center resort, which is very nice but I always stay on property when I can. However, this trip was planned at the last minute due to the bowl game, and the fact that I was able to use my Marriott points and stay free made it worthwhile as well. After checking in, my nephew was exhausted and crashed while son and I went to Epcot. We rode Mission Space (mild version) and watched several shows, especially British Invasion as that's the best Beatle imitation group I've ever seen. We stayed for Illuminations and went back to the motel for some well deserved sleep. I had had about three 1 hour naps in the car but held up better than I thought at the parks.