Dinos a Go-go
Thursday, Sept. 20, 2007
Animal Kingdom
When we last left the Hicks,
they were journeying back to the Cretaceous Period
to try to find some lunch, and perhaps, some dinosaurs.
[Note: I only picked Cretaceous because it’s one I’ve heard of
and because my spell-checker spelled it for me.
I have no idea if there were dinosaurs then.]
Anyhoo...We walked past Dinosaur on our way to lunch,
and decided to grab a fast pass for after lunch.
Then we did manage to have some lunch at Restaurantasaurus –
you can read more about that in my food report, listed in my siggie.
Refreshed from our McDonald-esque repast,
we moseyed over to have the McNuggets scared out of us at Dinosaur.
I never get a lot out of this ride,
as I am usually helping a small child work through their fears,
or just hanging on for dear life.
I don’t recall having a big wait here with our fastpasses.
In fact, I’m pretty sure they allowed us to walk right on.
I hadn’t learned about taking Redneck ride photos,
so I have no photographic evidence of the event.
But it went something like this:
Stitch Jr. - “THIS....IS....AWESOME!!!!!!”
Everyone else - “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!”
LOL
Personally, I just shake my head when I hear adults say
they were so scared on this ride that they can’t ride it anymore.
Seriously.
I mean, these are FAKE dinosaurs.
If you are not under the age of 5, what’s to be so scared of???
It is a THRILL ride, granted. I like that aspect of it.
And I can see why someone would be scared of a ride like Tower of Terror,
because you could be afraid that your seat belt might malfunction
and you could plummet to your death.
I’m just sayin’.
Well, the Hicks survived their trip back in time,
and after delivering our “stowaway” to the lab,
we decided it was time to re-group, read the map,
and make a decision.
Mom, of course, had graciously volunteered
to watch the little ones while we were being chased in our time rovers.
We gathered our troops,
and decided to head over to Festival of the Lion King.
Have I mentioned that I detest how you have to go around the hub
to get to anywhere in AK. Ugh.
It takes forever to get anywhere!
In our long trek over to FOTLK,
we decided we were hot and thirsty,
so we got some frozen lemonades,
that we then had to gulp down,
because it was closer to show time than we had anticipated.
I love all the live entertainment at WDW,
as I have already discussed regarding MGM,
but the Festival of the Lion King is the one that in all of my follow-up trips
I have found myself thinking, “I forgot how GOOD this actually is.”
The performers are just top notch,
whether singing, or dancing on stilts,
or performing gymnastic stunts as the Tumble Monkeys.
Everyone agreed this was a must do,
even Mom who has never seen the movie.
We were hot, we were tired,
and there was only one more thing left on our list at AK –
It’s Tough to be a Bug.
It was at this point in time that my dh, a pretty patient man all in all,
had had enough of the chaos.
He decided to opt out of ITTBAB and get himself a soda.
I think he just was hot, tired,
and aggravated with the constant noise and naughtiness
that comes with traveling with 11 children,
two of whom are not your own,
and your sister,
AND your mother-in-law.
Give that man a Diet Coke on me!
Besides, he tends to be an “alone time” kind of guy,
and he had had NONE up to this point.
I have found after 19 years of knowing him,
that sometimes it is best for all involved
if you just let him be alone for a little while.
So the rest of us headed into Bug.
Poch Bug, and Bionic SIL
Chef Bug (w/ Poch Jr., and Stitch Jr.)
Bitsy Bug
I really think this movie is cute.
It can be a little scary for little ones, but ours all seemed to do ok.
Besides, it’s nice to sit in a dark, air conditioned room.
We came out to find John refreshed and ready to deal with us all again.
We were done with our touring,
and DisneyGirl announced that we had been in WDW for 4 days
and she still had not had a pretzel, her favorite WDW treat.
I got in line at the pretzel vendor,
only to find that they were done with pretzels for the day.
Why?
Well, to make way for the parade, of course.
Here’s where they story goes awry.
You who are faint of heart might want to skip ahead.
IF you are not in the right spot at the right time, there is NO way to exit the park during the parade.
I can’t tell you how awful it was.
The horror!
The chaos!
The utter disorganization!
Ok, the CMs claim that you CAN exit the park,
you just have to wind your way through every shop in AK,
go down the hidden path by this restaurant,
work your way back to the crowd watching the parade,
squeeze through said crowd,
and voila’ (Heather!),
you’re there.
In the meantime, half of our group had started ahead to get out,
while my half were stranded by the parade.
Or so I thought.
I made it around through the maze and was almost ready to escape,
when I saw the foreward group on the OTHER side of the parade blockade!
I had to yell across to them HOW to get out of this mess,
and back track myself to get them.
Let’s just say, any peace that had been achieved
by a cold coke and a moment of silence
had totally been undone at this point.
And everyone else besides John wasn’t too happy either.
We tried killing some time in a gift shop, but it happened to be a really big one, and we kept losing members of our party.
We finally managed to worm our way to the front,
and we almost giddily skipped down the path to the exit.
Well, it's actually hard to be giddy and/or skip when you are exhausted,
but we were happy to be getting out of there none the less.
We did pause a moment
to see the animals on the little paths near the front of the park.
You know,
the ones that you shield your children’s eyes from on the way in,
so they don’t get distracted and try to stop and see them?
Yeah, that’s the ones.
Then, as we were heading for the buses,
we spotted some characters out.
Poch and Stitch Jr. hadn’t met Donald yet,
and they were so excited,
so we stopped and let them meet him.
We dragged our sweaty, nasty selves over to the Pop bus stop,
and climbed aboard the next blissfully air-conditioned bus.
Ahhhhhh.
We had a 6:40pm ADR at Chef Mickey’s and we wanted to clean up and maybe rest a moment in the air before heading out again.
On the bus back,
I noticed a mom holding a WDW stroller card
that said “Heath and Javen.”
Well, as many on the Dis know,
there is a DIS-er named “Heath and Javen’s Mom.”
I had met her on the Pop Glow Party thread.
I thought to myself "what are the odds???"
So I, quite bravely and intelligently, asked
“Are you Heath and Javen’s Mom?” [Well...Duh.]
And Farrah quite graciously replied yes!
I explained who I was, and we had a nice conversation.
I think they may also have been going to Chef Mickey’s that evening!
And my family once again expressed their amazement
at me knowing people at WDW!
We made it back to Pop with plenty of time
to collapse and cool off and clean up before heading out to Chef Mickey’s. You can read all about that trip in my food report,
but here are a couple of pics:
So that concludes the Hicks 4th day at WDW.
The next day would be the Bionic SIL’s last day,
and we wanted to make it count.
Next up: An early morning at MK - cause I can’t think of anything witty, though DisneyGirl suggests "The Bionic SIL bids a fond farewell to WDW."
Um, what's up with that?
.)
