Animal Kingdom day! Me and dad swam in the morning again, and since my mom had meetings as usual, we didn’t get going til about 12:15. I scarfed down some granola bars and water for breakfast and watched the Incredibles while we waited. I was anxious today - we had Boma reservations at 6 pm so this didn’t leave us with a lot of park time.
AK was SO hot and crowded. It is always super warm in AK to me.
My mom is a birdwatcher, and took a million pictures of all the birds at the front of the park.
I really wanted to go on EE and finally see that darn snowmonster (I closed my eyes when we rode it in May and missed it!), so I beelined for Asia to grab a FP. Mom and Dad grabbed FPs for ITTBAB, figuring they’d do that while I climbed Mt. Everest. While they waited for me to return, they found a drum circle hanging out on Discovery Island. My dad is a jazz musician, so he was delighted.
I, meanwhile, had my own discovery, which was much less pleasant - here it was not even 1pm, and the FP return for EE wasn’t until 6:30. Well, so much for that. KRR was right there so I got a FP, though I never ended up using it - it was for 5. Both rides had a standby time of 80 minutes, so I said forget it and headed back to Discovery Island.
Mom and Dad were off to ITTBAB now, so I wandered a bit to amuse myself. I went into the shops, found a wonderful Alice shirt, tried it on, liked it, looked at the price tag, put it back. It was cute, but not $40 cute. Mom always complains that I never buy anything for myself, so I did find a souvenier for myself - only $2!
Mmmm, candy-filled Donald Duck. Now I keep my vitamins in it. I think he’s pretty hilarious looking. 5 seconds after I got into the shop, it started POURING! But it stopped just in time for my parents to exit the show.
Mom wanted to do Flights of Wonder, so we ran over to catch it - I had seen this last time but once again, loved it! I love Bree and Guano Joe.
There was a very funny moment when Bree was trying to get a bird to hop up on her arm, but it was wandering around, pecking for seeds on the ground. She was like, “come on...remember me?...we work together.” I think she was nervous that he was never going to join her! But he did eventually. We sat in the far back left, which I hadn’t done before, and the hawk flew right next to us! Yeay!!
Say, it’s time for Pocahontas! Let’s go! There’s another one we just barely made and ended up in the back far right. Couldn’t see Grandmother Willow at all. My parents thought this was totally silly. Yeah, they’re kinda right. Oh well, I do love that music! Here I embarrassed myself by dropping my splendid tiny Donald capsule, and had to climb between some poor guys legs to grab it. “Uh, excuse me, I dropped my toy.” I’m the coolest!
Time for a first for me - we caught the parade! I have never seen this parade! It’s actually kind of awesome - reminds me of Tapestry of Dreams a bit. This picture came out wacky.
My dad tried to get a picture of my secret boyfriend, Chuck, for me.
Wait Chuck! Come back! Aww, you are so dreamy in your little green hat.
(Can you tell that it’s 100 degrees in Philadelphia right now and I don’t have air conditioning?)
We had a couple hours before dinner so we wandered over to Rainforest Cafe - neat! I’ve never been in this one, just the DTD one. I am not fond of the food and the atmosphere is too loud for me. There was a big wait for dinner, but we were able to sit down right at the bar. Despite my warnings that we were about to eat a ginormous dinner, my parents ordered a blue cheese crab dip. Which I then ate most of. Oh my heavens, it was really good. Almost as good as my rainbow colada.
There was a couple sitting right next to us who appeared to be on a date, and my mom kept leaning over to the guy and going, “hey, what are you eating? that looks great. is that squid?” Ten years ago I would have been horribly embarrassed, but now I thought it was funny. I guess I’m growing up!
After killing some time, we drove over to AKL. We wandered around the shop before going to Boma, and my mom tried to convince me to buy some sort of giant sarong to wrap around myself that I would never, ever wear. I talked her out of it and soon we were hanging out in front of Boma, waiting for our fancy plastic beeper thing to light up.
Which it did! And we were off - to a table waaaay in the back, by the window that looks out on the pool (sort of). I can’t for the life of me remember the waitress’s name, but she was awesome - very friendly and sweet. I wanted some tea, and all they had left was chamomille, which I usually think tastes like frog sweat
but this kind was pretty good!
The food was great, especially the salmon, and I made sure to ingest at least half a dozen zebra domes. They were much different than I expected, soft and squishy and mousse-like. Mmmmm.
While hanging out at the dessert table with my dad, contemplating how much coconut tiramisu I could take and still leave room for apple cobbler, we were approached by the dessert chef. He started talking to me, asking me how I liked the food and stuff, but I was a little distracted by the gigantic trough of sugary goodness in front of me. I think our conversation was something like:
Mr. Chef: So, are you enjoying your dinner?
Me: Yes. Indeed.
Mr. Chef: Did you have a chance to try the desserts?
Me: Some. Not all. Must. Try. All.
Mr. Chef: Great! The blueberry pastry is very good. How has your vacation been?
Me: Yummy.
and so forth. I don’t even think I actually looked at him because I was mesmerized by the various kinds of danish. I’m kind of a jerk.
Anyway, we go back to the table and start devouring our piles of dessert that we don’t even really have any room for. All of a sudden, who appears by our side but the infamous TJ! I was so in awe I actually stopped shoveling baked goods into my mouth for a few minutes. He chatted with us about where we were from, and was excited when he learned my parents live near DC because he is visiting his sister there soon, and yadda yadda. After a few minutes, he wandered back to the kitchen.
I’m delighted. “Guys! That was TJ! He’s famous!!! He is the true chefmaster!!”
My mom narrows her eyes. “He didn’t talk to anyone else. He came all the way here, to the farthest table from the kitchen, to talk to us? What the heck? We’re not so special. We're sitting behind a pole. What is going on?”
While my mother is musing on how suspicious it is that TJ picked us three weirdoes, hidden in the back behind a pole with no kids, to come talk to, he suddenly reappears. With- you guessed it - a huge bowl of deep fried oreos!!!
“Our dessert chef made these for you. You have to eat these with your fingers, that’s the rule!” he announces, then is gone again!
AUGH! I’m freaking out. Partially because I’m completely stuffed. But mostly because I never in my wildest dreams imagined we would have the honor of deep fried Boma oreos bestowed on us. Wheeee!
My mom is still suspicious. My dad says, “hey! That chef, he was interested in you! He must have set this up!”
“What chef? That guy who was distracting me from chocolatey goodness?” I try to remember. I don’t really think he had singled me out, but hey, I’ll play along, sure dad! my dad decides that he’s fine with anyone hitting on me as long as they give him free snacks. We shovel the oreos down, barely, and then waddle outside, unable to locate mystery chef man to thank him for possibly sending over the oreos.
We walked down by the pool to the little bridge that overlooks the flamingoes. This was great fun, because we spotted a flamingo that was having a bit of trouble. See, there is a medium-sized rock in the middle of the watery river area where the flamingoes hang out. It’s not a long rock. You can walk around it. However, someone neglected to tell this particular flamingo (we later learned it was a female), because she was hopping around puzzled, trying to get over the rock, and looking very confused every time someone emerged from around it.
This went on for about fifteen minutes, and then she finally took a deep breath and ran over the rock, then waved her wings around squawking wildly with pride. It was pretty amusing. We were making fun of her when a guide from South Africa came up and told us that the flamingo was pretty smart for figuring it out at all. Her name was Onx and she told us a lot about the animals and took us for a little walk around the immediate area.
It was really lovely. She told us all about the lodge and their animals, and another guide, Avril, came and talked to us for a while too. They helped us spot some giraffes, cranes, some sort of antelope type thing, and told us about the Kadu trail, which is an exploration trail that you actually follow from inside the hotel. We were off to wander around the beautiful lodge, finding all sorts of hidden little windows and balconies to spot animals from.
The sun was setting, it was quiet and lovely, I want to stay here someday!!
When I’m a bazillionaire, of course.
Soon all that chamomille tea was catching up to us, and we headed back to the hotel to watch Thank You For Smoking (awesome, by the way). Another day filled with new adventures! Which is why I love WDW - there is always many things you’ve never done!
Tomorrow - our last day, at Epcot!
(we'll have to try Disneyland). 
We poked our heads in Earl of Sandwich but the line was ginormous, so we headed to MGM figuring we’d find some sort of foodstuffs there.
: 
boo. 
