This was 100 million billion percent worth the money. I had an incredible time with my amazing tour guide Victoria!
Side note: if anything, I would say it’d probably be worth it to pay the extra money and do the 8-hour, instead of the 5. There is seemingly an almost an unlimited amount of stuff to do at Safari Park!
Here’s what’s up with the Ultimate Safari (for those of you not intimately familiar with the different safaris at San Diego Zoo Safari Park (which was me before I planned this trip – and even still kind of me, now ’cause there are a lot…)).
In the Ultimate Safari, a special day is planned just for you(!) based off of things you tell the planners.
Before showing up for my big surprise day (catered to me :-)), I got an email telling me to wait outside in the log ring for my guide – which I did.
At 9am, Victoria came on over. It was so cute. She said, “Ms. De Lucia?” I always feel so silly, yet still kinda special and cool, when people use my last name to address me, instead of Aurora.
She introduced herself and asked me how I’d like her to refer to me. As much as it would’ve been interesting to have a hoity-toihty day of being called “Ms. De Lucia” all day, of course I said, “Oh please, call me Aurora.”
We totally hit it off and I adore her. She was such a sweetheart.
I had a fair amount of stuff with me because I was doing the Roar ‘n’ Snore sleepover that night… So, since I wasn’t in a hotel that night, I had all my stuff with me for my San Diego trip.
And she sweetly carried my duffel bag to the cart. She also gave me some water, and was so cool for the whole rest of the day about reminding me to hydrate and continuing to give me water.
She also gave me a birthday button (as this trip is basically is my early birthday present to myself).
Then, she gave me a menu, and told me she’d call in my order for lunch so it would be ready at noon when we got there. She said, “I heard you’re vegetarian and we have all these great vegetarian options (which they totally did – it was hard to choose which meal I wanted… I went with this incredibly delicious salad, in case you were wondering).
Then we went in through this kinda secret-ish gate. I felt super special, and she said, “Yeah, most visitors don’t even know this gate exists.” Eeee!