EsmeraldaX
DIS Legend
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2003
- Messages
- 14,910
Day 4
"If you care about it, you won't keep it in your pocket"
Today, we went to Animal Kingdom, which seemed like a good idea seeing as we were staying at AKL and all. We woke up to relative silence and it seemed that the child of the damned had left the premises. Yay for silence*!
*AKL is a very quiet resort, and I'm sure that the fact that we heard people in other rooms was truly an oddity. After the departure of the screamer, we heard no other noise from any rooms, the entire trip.
At any rate, we were running late, so off we went. The busses were unusually crowded today so I had to stand. Good thing it was a short ride because my feet were furious with me by this point, as I was wearing sandals.
Why was I wearing sandals? And a tankini with board shorts? Why, because we were planning to get as drenched as possible on Kali, that's why! I had not been on Kali since 2002 and Chris had not been on Kali since ever. We just tend to travel during the cold "not a good time to get soaked" times of year. Ever ride Kali in Feb. when it's 30 degrees out? Neither have I. It just didn't seem to be a wise idea that time.
But today, it was 95 degrees out and wearing the closest thing we could to swimsuits without looking tacky, we headed off in hopes of a good drenching.
However, we first hit the safari. The animals were very, very active. A giraffe walked right up to our car, he was so close he could have easily leaned in. The other animals were all moving around and I think we saw more on this trip than on all our prior ones. It was great. For once, I put the camera* down and just enjoyed.
*Several people have asked me about pictures. To be honest, I didn't take many this trip. This trip was really meant to just be relaxing (hahaha tell that to my feet) and I didn't take as many as I usually do. I did get a few though, and will post them soon.
After the safari, we hit the gorilla trails. The gorillas were also extremely active and we saw about 7 of them. More than ever before. They were everywhere. We did not, however, see many meerkats, which made me sad because meerkats are quite possibly the cutest little things at AK. I want one. Although, my dogs would probably be terrified of it.
We then headed over to the dinosaur area, grabbed a FP for Dinosaur and stood around to wait for the first showing of Lucky. I know that throughout this trip report I have described various things as astounding, amazing, techno-wondrous and the most impressive thing I've ever seen but this time I mean it. For real. Lucky is absolutely the most mind bogglingly brilliant animatronic I have ever seen. I want one. But my dogs would REALLY be afraid of that if they would be afraid of a tiny meerkat.
For those who have yet to meet him, Lucky is a free moving animatronics dinosaur who looks, acts and behaves as close to a real animal as I have ever seen any animatronic be.
Lucky walks around Dinoland with his scientist friend from the institute and performs various tricks, steals peoples hats, sneezes, burps, and takes pictures of the crowd for his scrapbook. I love Lucky. Aside from being fascinating, he is also very cute.
We followed Lucky around his route until he went back behind the scenes. He does different things every place he stops so it's fun to follow him. The way he walks and moves his eyes, and laughs, and sighs and moves his limbs, he really does look real.
After Lucky went away, we hit Dinosaur, one of our all time favorites. Then we went by Asia and picked up a FP for Kali, though amazingly, the line was only 10 minutes long. So we waited standby, prepared to go back with our FPs shortly.
Chris, standing in line turns to me and says " Should I just keep my cigarettes and lighter and wallet in my pocket"? I just kind of looked at him, pointed to the gentleman stepping off the ride who appeared like he was going to have to purchase an entirely new outfit in the park for the rest of the day, and said "Not if you care if that stuff makes it out alive". So he gave me the stuff and I held it in my waterproof* purse.
I learned it was waterproof after the Smirnoff Spilling Incident of Day 3 so at least some good came from that whole episode
Figures, we barely got wet. We walked through the trails where the Tigers and Bats are. The tigers were nifty but I really am partial to bats. I've always adored them. I was actually a card carrying member of Bat Conservation International for many years. As many of you know, I play fantasy role playing games with my friends on weekends. Well, my favorite character I play in the game has a pet fruit bat. I love bats. They get a bad rep but when it comes down to it, they eat bugs. Tons of them. Every night. Bats are good guys. They don't suck blood and they rarely carry diseases, despite the myths. They eat other creepy, icky things to. They keep ecosystems going. I designed a website about them once you know? Yada yada yada.. I'll stop gushing now.
The bats at AK are adorable. They look like small winged puppies. I want one! (I know, I know you know I want one ) I love watching them sit there eating their melon. I must have watched them for quite a while, because it was now almost time for us to go back to Kali for our FP return.
This time, Kali didn't kid around. We were soaked to the bone. We got wetter than anyone else on our raft. And we loved every second of it. We hoped the people would press the button to spray water at us. We even considered hurling PG rated medieval insults at them, so as to provoke them to drench us but then decided that would be wrong (and would probably have the opposite effect).
"You! Up there on the bridge! You are a measly pauper who smells like an unkempt troll!"
"Okay take this then! We're not going to soak you and you can just deal with being hot!"
So at any rate, we kept our mouths shut and the spray came and we looked as though we'd just stepped out of the wave pool at Typhoon Lagoon by the time we exited the ride. By then, Chris agreed, it was a wise idea to wear swimwear (cleverly disguised as normal clothes
) and take all his stuff out of his pockets. There was not a dry spot on him.
We proceeded to catch all of the shows at AK. We saw Tarzan, which was fun. The guys on roller blades kept high fiving this little boy in our row and it was really cute*
*as was Tarzan. wink, wink, nudge, nudge
.um
Chris is going to read this
Um
Fine, I admit to having had crushes on cartoon characters in the past. Everyone has. Um
haven't you? Ahem..moving on
Then we high tailed it over to Flights of Wonder, my personal favorite show at AK. As you may have guessed between the butterflies and the bats, I have a particular fondness for things with wings. And if those things start with the letter B and are not bees, even more so. Flights of Wonder might bore some people to tears, but I sit there all wide eyed and mesmerized.
I am especially interested in large birds of prey and have looked into falconry in the past (couldn't find a way to do it around this area, sadly). One of the hawks flew right over my head and I just sat there in wonder. The owl was beautiful also, and when they brought out the bald eagle, I swear, I actually said "Wow" out loud.
After that show, we went to get some food at Pizzafari. Pizzafari is an interesting place to dine. It took me over 40 minutes from the time I got in line till the time I got my food. And there were only 3 people in front of me. I don't really understand how they operate but whatever system they have in place for putting together orders, it's not very good. They only have 4 things on the menu. It should not be rocket science.
I stood there, staring at the food area talking to the people around me all of whom were also wondering why, if the food was already prepared (it was, we could see it!) and the drinks were pre-poured (they were, we could see them!) why it was taking so long to get our food
We may just never know.
At any rate, we ate our meals and made our way to Festival of the Lion King. I love this show too. This was actually the first time I'd seen it in all my trips to WDW. It was great. Unfortunately, I had the videotaping twins sitting in front me, two guys who kept blocking the spaces in front of me (between them) with their video cameras, so I mainly watched it on their quick-view screens. This made me all the more happy that I'd put my camera away.
After FoTLK we went to see Pocahontas and her Forest Friends. Again, most adults think this show is dreadfully dull, but I get all warm and fuzzy every time a cute fluffy thing scampers across the stage. So I enjoyed it.
It's weird how when you are surrounded by Tapirs, and Tigers and Gibbons and Giraffes, you still get all excited when you see bunnies, raccoons or woodland ducks, all of which you see on a routine basis in your yard and your local park. Who else ends up with like 100 pictures of ducks when they go to WDW? Every trip from WDW I have taken since I was a little girl using my first Strawberry Shortcake kids camera in the early 80's I have wound up with a bunch of pictures of mallards. Weird, isn't it?
After Pocahontas, we hit It's Tough to Be a Bug and remembered that magnifying glasses were for looking at little things, not burning them. I knew a thing or two by now about being burned, since, as a woman on a bench near FoTLK informed me, I looked like I had sun poisoning. Yeah, it hurt. Bad.
So bad that after ITTBAB, we took off back to our hotel. We were going to swim for a bit before dinner but wound up napping after I soaked in the tub in cool water to ease my pain (those pesky feet of mine appreciated it too). We needed a nap, I think. Apparently, we napped during the only time it rained all week. We woke up and everything outside was wet. Weird. We could not have made that happen if we planned it that way!
We had a PS at Boma that night. Wow. Boma is right there with Jiko. This time, I put Tamarind sauce on everything, beef, chicken, rice you name it and it got a blob of sauce. That sauce is good stuff.
The only gripe I had about Boma was that the waitress was cranky and she took my food away as I was lifting up my fork. I'd just dipped some chicken in the sauce and gotten it ready for the next bite when she came by and grabbed my dish and as I said"Hey, I'm still actually eating that" she walked away with my food...I mean, it's a buffet, I could get more, but I had quite a bit left on that plate.
She may have been distracted by the miserable people seated next to us. They were a very unhappy group of diners who did nothing but whine, loudly, that the food was "weird" all night. At one point, the woman slid over on the bench style seating and was practically touching Chris.
I still will never get how people can be unhappy at WDW.
After dinner, we went downtown where we purchased the aforementioned box of dog stuff for the pups and then headed off to our favorite place, the Adventurer's Club, where we met up with RicknNYC and his partner, Joe again. We had a great night. Rick is even cooler in real life than he is on the boards (and he's pretty darn cool on the boards so that's hard to beat). But he is. And so is Joe.
Anyway, we chatted for a bit, I had a Kungaloosh (which I did not spill, thank you very much!) and then they had to go. We stuck around for a while, but then opted to go back to AKL and take a late night swim.
The water felt great on my burn at this point. We had the pool almost to ourselves. After we swam, we walked around again and looked at all the animals. They were even more active tonight. Somehow, we got very lost in the hotel, which was neat, because we kept winding up on random stairways where we could see the animals very close up. I have no idea where we were! We actually tried to find it the next evening but had a hard time doing so.
After about 30 minutes of wandering aimlessly through the corridors, we found our way back to our room. You can probably imagine what my feet thought of me at this point.
"Hey feet, lets take a nice relaxing soak in the pool ahhhh Ha! Tricked you! Now we're going to walk around a hotel for a half hour and take all the relaxation away! Bwahahahaha!"
Yeah, they were pretty mad now. Well, their woes would be over soon. They only had one and a half more days of this peril. Good for them. Sad for the rest of me.
I went off to bed that night and tried not to think about going home. But before I could start dreaming about tomorrow's activities at MGM, I was adrift in a sea of happy Disney sleep
"If you care about it, you won't keep it in your pocket"
Today, we went to Animal Kingdom, which seemed like a good idea seeing as we were staying at AKL and all. We woke up to relative silence and it seemed that the child of the damned had left the premises. Yay for silence*!
*AKL is a very quiet resort, and I'm sure that the fact that we heard people in other rooms was truly an oddity. After the departure of the screamer, we heard no other noise from any rooms, the entire trip.
At any rate, we were running late, so off we went. The busses were unusually crowded today so I had to stand. Good thing it was a short ride because my feet were furious with me by this point, as I was wearing sandals.
Why was I wearing sandals? And a tankini with board shorts? Why, because we were planning to get as drenched as possible on Kali, that's why! I had not been on Kali since 2002 and Chris had not been on Kali since ever. We just tend to travel during the cold "not a good time to get soaked" times of year. Ever ride Kali in Feb. when it's 30 degrees out? Neither have I. It just didn't seem to be a wise idea that time.
But today, it was 95 degrees out and wearing the closest thing we could to swimsuits without looking tacky, we headed off in hopes of a good drenching.
However, we first hit the safari. The animals were very, very active. A giraffe walked right up to our car, he was so close he could have easily leaned in. The other animals were all moving around and I think we saw more on this trip than on all our prior ones. It was great. For once, I put the camera* down and just enjoyed.
*Several people have asked me about pictures. To be honest, I didn't take many this trip. This trip was really meant to just be relaxing (hahaha tell that to my feet) and I didn't take as many as I usually do. I did get a few though, and will post them soon.
After the safari, we hit the gorilla trails. The gorillas were also extremely active and we saw about 7 of them. More than ever before. They were everywhere. We did not, however, see many meerkats, which made me sad because meerkats are quite possibly the cutest little things at AK. I want one. Although, my dogs would probably be terrified of it.
We then headed over to the dinosaur area, grabbed a FP for Dinosaur and stood around to wait for the first showing of Lucky. I know that throughout this trip report I have described various things as astounding, amazing, techno-wondrous and the most impressive thing I've ever seen but this time I mean it. For real. Lucky is absolutely the most mind bogglingly brilliant animatronic I have ever seen. I want one. But my dogs would REALLY be afraid of that if they would be afraid of a tiny meerkat.
For those who have yet to meet him, Lucky is a free moving animatronics dinosaur who looks, acts and behaves as close to a real animal as I have ever seen any animatronic be.
Lucky walks around Dinoland with his scientist friend from the institute and performs various tricks, steals peoples hats, sneezes, burps, and takes pictures of the crowd for his scrapbook. I love Lucky. Aside from being fascinating, he is also very cute.
We followed Lucky around his route until he went back behind the scenes. He does different things every place he stops so it's fun to follow him. The way he walks and moves his eyes, and laughs, and sighs and moves his limbs, he really does look real.
After Lucky went away, we hit Dinosaur, one of our all time favorites. Then we went by Asia and picked up a FP for Kali, though amazingly, the line was only 10 minutes long. So we waited standby, prepared to go back with our FPs shortly.
Chris, standing in line turns to me and says " Should I just keep my cigarettes and lighter and wallet in my pocket"? I just kind of looked at him, pointed to the gentleman stepping off the ride who appeared like he was going to have to purchase an entirely new outfit in the park for the rest of the day, and said "Not if you care if that stuff makes it out alive". So he gave me the stuff and I held it in my waterproof* purse.
I learned it was waterproof after the Smirnoff Spilling Incident of Day 3 so at least some good came from that whole episode
Figures, we barely got wet. We walked through the trails where the Tigers and Bats are. The tigers were nifty but I really am partial to bats. I've always adored them. I was actually a card carrying member of Bat Conservation International for many years. As many of you know, I play fantasy role playing games with my friends on weekends. Well, my favorite character I play in the game has a pet fruit bat. I love bats. They get a bad rep but when it comes down to it, they eat bugs. Tons of them. Every night. Bats are good guys. They don't suck blood and they rarely carry diseases, despite the myths. They eat other creepy, icky things to. They keep ecosystems going. I designed a website about them once you know? Yada yada yada.. I'll stop gushing now.
The bats at AK are adorable. They look like small winged puppies. I want one! (I know, I know you know I want one ) I love watching them sit there eating their melon. I must have watched them for quite a while, because it was now almost time for us to go back to Kali for our FP return.
This time, Kali didn't kid around. We were soaked to the bone. We got wetter than anyone else on our raft. And we loved every second of it. We hoped the people would press the button to spray water at us. We even considered hurling PG rated medieval insults at them, so as to provoke them to drench us but then decided that would be wrong (and would probably have the opposite effect).
"You! Up there on the bridge! You are a measly pauper who smells like an unkempt troll!"
"Okay take this then! We're not going to soak you and you can just deal with being hot!"
So at any rate, we kept our mouths shut and the spray came and we looked as though we'd just stepped out of the wave pool at Typhoon Lagoon by the time we exited the ride. By then, Chris agreed, it was a wise idea to wear swimwear (cleverly disguised as normal clothes
) and take all his stuff out of his pockets. There was not a dry spot on him. We proceeded to catch all of the shows at AK. We saw Tarzan, which was fun. The guys on roller blades kept high fiving this little boy in our row and it was really cute*
*as was Tarzan.
wink, wink, nudge, nudge
.um
Chris is going to read this
Um
Fine, I admit to having had crushes on cartoon characters in the past. Everyone has. Um
haven't you? Ahem..moving on
Then we high tailed it over to Flights of Wonder, my personal favorite show at AK. As you may have guessed between the butterflies and the bats, I have a particular fondness for things with wings. And if those things start with the letter B and are not bees, even more so. Flights of Wonder might bore some people to tears, but I sit there all wide eyed and mesmerized.
I am especially interested in large birds of prey and have looked into falconry in the past (couldn't find a way to do it around this area, sadly). One of the hawks flew right over my head and I just sat there in wonder. The owl was beautiful also, and when they brought out the bald eagle, I swear, I actually said "Wow" out loud.
After that show, we went to get some food at Pizzafari. Pizzafari is an interesting place to dine. It took me over 40 minutes from the time I got in line till the time I got my food. And there were only 3 people in front of me. I don't really understand how they operate but whatever system they have in place for putting together orders, it's not very good. They only have 4 things on the menu. It should not be rocket science.
I stood there, staring at the food area talking to the people around me all of whom were also wondering why, if the food was already prepared (it was, we could see it!) and the drinks were pre-poured (they were, we could see them!) why it was taking so long to get our food
We may just never know.
At any rate, we ate our meals and made our way to Festival of the Lion King. I love this show too. This was actually the first time I'd seen it in all my trips to WDW. It was great. Unfortunately, I had the videotaping twins sitting in front me, two guys who kept blocking the spaces in front of me (between them) with their video cameras, so I mainly watched it on their quick-view screens. This made me all the more happy that I'd put my camera away.
After FoTLK we went to see Pocahontas and her Forest Friends. Again, most adults think this show is dreadfully dull, but I get all warm and fuzzy every time a cute fluffy thing scampers across the stage. So I enjoyed it.
It's weird how when you are surrounded by Tapirs, and Tigers and Gibbons and Giraffes, you still get all excited when you see bunnies, raccoons or woodland ducks, all of which you see on a routine basis in your yard and your local park. Who else ends up with like 100 pictures of ducks when they go to WDW? Every trip from WDW I have taken since I was a little girl using my first Strawberry Shortcake kids camera in the early 80's I have wound up with a bunch of pictures of mallards. Weird, isn't it?
After Pocahontas, we hit It's Tough to Be a Bug and remembered that magnifying glasses were for looking at little things, not burning them. I knew a thing or two by now about being burned, since, as a woman on a bench near FoTLK informed me, I looked like I had sun poisoning. Yeah, it hurt. Bad.
So bad that after ITTBAB, we took off back to our hotel. We were going to swim for a bit before dinner but wound up napping after I soaked in the tub in cool water to ease my pain (those pesky feet of mine appreciated it too). We needed a nap, I think. Apparently, we napped during the only time it rained all week. We woke up and everything outside was wet. Weird. We could not have made that happen if we planned it that way!
We had a PS at Boma that night. Wow. Boma is right there with Jiko. This time, I put Tamarind sauce on everything, beef, chicken, rice you name it and it got a blob of sauce. That sauce is good stuff.
The only gripe I had about Boma was that the waitress was cranky and she took my food away as I was lifting up my fork. I'd just dipped some chicken in the sauce and gotten it ready for the next bite when she came by and grabbed my dish and as I said"Hey, I'm still actually eating that" she walked away with my food...I mean, it's a buffet, I could get more, but I had quite a bit left on that plate.
She may have been distracted by the miserable people seated next to us. They were a very unhappy group of diners who did nothing but whine, loudly, that the food was "weird" all night. At one point, the woman slid over on the bench style seating and was practically touching Chris.
I still will never get how people can be unhappy at WDW. After dinner, we went downtown where we purchased the aforementioned box of dog stuff for the pups and then headed off to our favorite place, the Adventurer's Club, where we met up with RicknNYC and his partner, Joe again. We had a great night. Rick is even cooler in real life than he is on the boards (and he's pretty darn cool on the boards so that's hard to beat). But he is. And so is Joe.
Anyway, we chatted for a bit, I had a Kungaloosh (which I did not spill, thank you very much!) and then they had to go. We stuck around for a while, but then opted to go back to AKL and take a late night swim.
The water felt great on my burn at this point. We had the pool almost to ourselves. After we swam, we walked around again and looked at all the animals. They were even more active tonight. Somehow, we got very lost in the hotel, which was neat, because we kept winding up on random stairways where we could see the animals very close up. I have no idea where we were! We actually tried to find it the next evening but had a hard time doing so.
After about 30 minutes of wandering aimlessly through the corridors, we found our way back to our room. You can probably imagine what my feet thought of me at this point.
"Hey feet, lets take a nice relaxing soak in the pool ahhhh Ha! Tricked you! Now we're going to walk around a hotel for a half hour and take all the relaxation away! Bwahahahaha!"
Yeah, they were pretty mad now. Well, their woes would be over soon. They only had one and a half more days of this peril. Good for them. Sad for the rest of me.
I went off to bed that night and tried not to think about going home. But before I could start dreaming about tomorrow's activities at MGM, I was adrift in a sea of happy Disney sleep
We will have to check out Lucky, did you get any pics by any chance?
