I was up bright and early this morning at 6:30. I was so excited to be starting my first full day at WDW! I looked at my window and found what would become a familiar site...a giraffe!
The only thing I really cared about seeing from my resort window was giraffes, so I was pretty excited about the view. I did have an interesting little gated area out my window as well. I was concerned that it would cause issues with my view, but it wasn't that bad.
I decided to head down to Mara to get some breakfast. The food court was almost completely empty. I got in line to order a breakfast platter and the girl behind the counter not so nicely told me they don't start serving until 7. Okay, then! I did purchase a refillable mug since I was there. I made myself a Mocha (coffee and hot chocolate) and decided to take a quick walk around until 7.
Once 7am finally rolled around, I ordered my breakfast platter and then headed back to the room. I ate out on the balcony with my animal friends. The food was okay, nothing special, but certainly edible.
Once I was done eating, I headed to the bus stop. Since it was an EMH morning for AK, there were already lots of buses running. I got on one at 7:40am and less than 7 minutes later we were at AK. Pretty cool having it be so close!
Now I had thought that I needed to go to guest relations to check in the tour, so I waited in line for the gates to open and then made my way to Guest Relations. Turns out you wait OUTSIDE the park at one of the planters. So that was a waste of a few minutes, but at least it did kill some time since I was about 25 minutes early for the 8:15 check-in.
Our guide, Paul, met us by the planter precisely at 8:15. Another guide helped to check us in and then we were given our name badges. I think there were another 14 or so people, all couples except for a aunt/niece group. When everybody was introducing themselves at the start of the tour, I was the last one to go and when Paul realized I was alone he made sure to tell everybody not to make me feel left out. I don't know why, but that bugged me.
Paul seemed like a nice guy, he was a former biology teacher from Michigan who moved to Florida a few years ago and now almost exclusively does the Backstage Safari tour. He took us towards Africa and we made a couple of stops along the way to discuss. Some of the things we learned were that the grounds that AK were built on were totally flat, the imagineers actually put in hills by bringing in something like 1000 dump trucks of dirt. Why we couldn't have done without the hills, I don't know, but whatever!!!
The first thing we did was go on the Kilimanjaro Safari, but without the regular spiel. I think my mistake was doing the tour on an EMH morning because we didn't stop along the ride like I had heard other groups got to do. It was good anyway, saw lots of animals as you usually do early in the morning.
The plan was to next head backstage, taking the train to Rafiki's Planet Watch. Well, BOTH trains were down and so we couldn't take the train. We went backstage 7 which ways before Paul called two vans to come pick us up. We had already done a TON of walking and it was barely 9:30am.
We got to see many backstage areas. At the vet we saw a big antelope thing come in for it's yearly check up. We got to see where they put all the food together for the animals. The "meat" girl talked to us for quite a while. She was really interesting and told us more than anybody would ever want to know about the kinds of small animals that are fed to the bigger animals at AK. Did you know that tigers love rabbits, but they have to remove the feet first because it poses a choking hazard?
After spending a good 20 minutes with meat girl, we spent a LONG time taking a break inside at one of the conference/classrooms. It was a water/bathroom/snack break. We had the opportunity to ask Paul some questions, but the only person who really asked them was this girl who started EVERYTHING she said with "I saw this on Animal Planet..."
From there we went and saw the Elephant and White Rhino enclosures. The elephant enclosure was boring, because there was no one there to talk to us. They were all out on the safari keeping an eye on the baby elephant who was out on display that morning.
At the Rhino enclosure we met Samson. He was pretty cool. They don't let him out on safari during the day because they don't need him for breeding anymore. Instead, he goes out at night and pees all over stuff so that when the other males come in the next day they smell him and it makes them want to mate more. I had heard in past tours that they got to touch Samson, but we didn't. I guess that's okay since he looked really dirty from rolling in the mud.
At that point, the tour was over and Paul brought us back to Rafiki's Planet Watch to take the train back to Africa. We were give a special Backstage Safari pin, like it seems all tours give out now. I was glad to be done with the tour. Some parts were interesting, I won't deny that. I think my favorite part may have been talking to meat girl. Overall, it wasn't a great experience for me, and I'm not sure I'd want to repeat it.
At this point in my day, and in my trip, I was beginning to regret my decision to come to WDW. I really wasn't having a great time and couldn't imagine 5 1/2 more days of being miserable like this. But I decided I would stick it out, the vacation was all paid off, no sense in going home at this point.
Up Next...the long day continues
That is a great ride and I loved the Single Rider lines too! Sooooo much faster!
I'm also anxious to check out the Spaceship Earth changes.
Now if only you could take some time to enjoy it instead of working so much!!
