Day 3, Part 4: Dinner at Tiffins!

We wrapped up with FoP a bit after 5, but our dinner reservation wasn’t until 6. We debated what we wanted to do during that time. The animal trails had already closed for the day, we had already done our shopping, and there were no other rides we wanted to do, so we decided to see if we could check in early for dinner, so off to Tiffins we went!

At the check-in desk outside we requested an early seating, and the CM said she’d see what she could do, but it could be a while. No worries, we were super early! So she took my phone number, and then we went to go sit on the wall around the corner in front of Nomad.

I had considered seeing if we could get into Nomad, but I suspected if Tiffins was that booked we couldn’t get in early, that Nomad would also likely be a long wait. So we just sat on the wall and chatted and went through pictures we had taken.

I wish I could say we got seated early, but the text didn’t come in until right at 6! Ha! Oh well, we tried, and the wait went by pretty quickly. We spent a lot of time going through our pictures and people watching.

We headed back to the check-in desk and were ushered inside where we were brought to our table in our favorite room, the one with the totem poles, I think it’s the grand ceremony room?

It was actually a bit shocking to enter to find the restaurant almost empty! Like maybe four other tables were occupied, so a bit odd they couldn’t seat us early.

Once we settled in, we ordered the octopus to start, then spent some time perusing the menu.

We eventually figured out what we wanted, dad and I got the surf and turf, and mom got the veal. I also got the cab flight and mom got a beer.

Mom definitely won dinner this night, hers was sooooooooooo good! I was actually jealous of her meal! Not that mine wasn’t great, it was really good, but hers was just a level above.

It was a good dinner, and I’m happy to say that my dad enjoyed it! We were a bit worried about eating here with him, but the surf and turf was perfect for him!

There was one downside to dinner, and that was some very very bad parenting happening at a nearby table. This woman was at a table just on the other side of the totem poles from us with her daughter, and this woman was letting her daughter treat the dining room like a playground. This girl was trying to climb the totem poles, was throwing food at other diners and around the room, and kept running around the room screaming. The whole time the mother just sat there playing on her phone ignoring what her kid was doing. Multiple guests and the manager asked her to control her daughter, but the mom just made some snide remark that she’s “a kid so there’s nothing I can do.” Um, what?!?! I’ve seen some bad parenting, but this takes the cake! I get kids acting up from time to time and having tons of energy to burn, but to let your kid throw food in a restaurant, and at other diners, is inexcusable. Fortunately, they left about half way through our dinner, but they left a massive mess behind, I felt bad for the CMs who had to clean up after them. There was food all over the floor, all over the table, and all over the room from this kid!

Oh, and while eating we FINALLY got our room ready text, at around 7pm ! Yikes! We theorized the guests in the room before us didn’t want to leave the room on time since there was a large group of giraffes hanging out right in front of the room that afternoon so they tried to stay to watch as long as possible. (When we were out on the overlook earlier we saw this group of giraffes there and I guessed that would be our room since we knew we were on the Arusha savanna so there were only two locations our room could be!). Or it could just be it's such a massive hotel they took forever to finally get to our room to clean (although on our checkout day housekeeping was waiting outside our door by 10am for us to leave...) Oh well, at least we finally had a room!

After dinner we headed back into Pandora to see it at night!

Love being able to see it at night again, it’s been a while!

Next up: We Finally See Our New Home!