Whoops and uh oh, fraid I did it again.
Working on my chapters over multiple nights and multiple times, I think I'm just doing some punching up, but what I'm doing ending up doubling them in length.
Oh well, hope you enjoy the almost double feature creatur feature tonight, heckm maybe I'm wrong on that too, not using a word program or anything, it just seems long to me.
Boy, have we got the Holiday spirit going on here:
Diane hung a picture of Jesus that she got from her dad, but after a couple of weeks, I asked her if we can take it down, and she agreed. Why? You ask?
We call it Creepy Jesus, and it is!
Sometimes when you look at it, his eyes are open, and other times the eyes are closed.
I don't want my Jesus pictures to have special effects.
On top of that, we have our tree up now, including a lighted angel
at the top.
It's lit up from the inside, but it's also holding a long, candlelike mini light in each hand.
Depending on your mood, it either looks like the spooky little doll way up in the corner at the end of Haunted Mansion that says, "Hurry baaack."
Or it looks like Ellen in Universe of Energy holding those light batons they use at airports, saying, "Universe, you are cleared for takeoff!"
Ok, for tonight we got a really big shewww, a lot of pictures
so let's get started.
We walkded out the room, eight steps later made a right, eight steps later we pushed the button for the elevator.
She pressed one and we'll see what happens.
The doors opened, and now we are not in a long corridor of rooms, but right around the corner is a door leading out to the pool. We couldn't be any closer.
We passed Mara, the counter service and mug refill station, and found a short path that lead to the pool's edge, then we walked along in search of lungers and a table. I'm guessing it's only about 11 in the morning, things had gone very smooth, very efficient.
There, in this small area recessed in bushes, is an un-occupied table, with 2 lungers in front of it!
Seemed too good to be true.
30 seconds later me and Uncle John were sharing a lunger.
10 minutes later I am back on my feet holding a camera, I gotta, gotta, gotta, walk around some and explore.
One thing I noticed right away that was different from when we stayed here in '02 was that the Uzima Springs Pool is no longer green!
The way they had it originally, in keeping with the jungle, savannah, Kenya, diptheria theme, the walls and bottom of the pool was painted green to make the water appear green. Almost all pools you ever swim in are painted blue, to give that pure, sparkling, refreshing overhead pure sky reflection to make the pools as inviting as possible.
But not here, they made it green, and did a great job conveying the "green" type atmosphere.
It felt like swimming in algae, flotsam and bacterium.
However, I"m guessing enough people complained about it, and the pool is now back to traditional blue. I pointed it out to Smidgy and she agreed it was much better this way.
It's been nine years since we stayed here, and though we 've visited to eat at Boma's twice, and Jiko once, it wasn't like staying here.
The layout here is kind of strange by the pool, you see the pool has rings.
No, not bathtub rings, that only comes after Pop Warner is here,
I mean there is the inner ring that goes along the pool's edge where most of the loungers are, but then on the other side of a ring of bushes is a thinner ring with some tables and loungers. Occasionally there may be a shallow wading pool in there, but it really seemed like this area is the runoff,,,, you know, the standing room only section.
Then there is the outer ring, the main promenade type walkway that goes to Mara and the fitness center and arcade and the small savannah view from here.
I'm walking along, taking pictures of what seemed cool to me. After the sterile, hospital style environment of CR and BLT, just about anything right now seems cool to me.
They looked like cool bushes and plants to me.
But I was also looking at what rooms we could have gotten, and boy, even though they would have been classified as Pool view studios,,,, you weren't really seeing much of anything but maybe roofs and dark trees.
Eventually I made it to the savannah viewing area, which is just really a bird spot, with a pond, see?
I worked my way around the entire pool, and I made an incredible, just amazing discovery.
On the inner ring circle by the pool, there is only ONE single table with possible matching loungers!
The one we have, right now!
There are tables near the pool bar, but no nearby loungers, if you want matching lungers and tables, you need to hit the SRO section in the middle ring with bushes blocking the pool.
Now I really couldn't believe we got this table!
Back at home base I related my findings and was able to relax for a while.
Until the yellow jacket moved in!
Only one of them this time, but what this hive lacked in
numbers, it made up for it in energy!
She started blasting music.
There was a time I never would have complained about loud music, ever, but I am not up on today's music in the slightest, I still hate rap, and think the rest of it is just crap,
with the queen of crap on top, Lady Gagme.
Diane was able to get her to turn it down a bit, that lasted for about 15 minutes.
This Yellow Jacket was into Disney trivia though, she had all who wanted to, come up for paper and pens to write down the answers to ten questions, and these were not easy Disney questions. Oh no, the questions she bellowed out over the microphone were not easy at all.
Not, who did the voice of the school of fish that asked Dory, "Is this guy bothering you?"
(Cliffy, John Ratzenberger)
but, more like, "What were all the fishes nmes in the school that were voiced by John Ratzenberger?
I got maybe half of them, but this teenage girl nearby I think got all of them.
( half of the questions, not half the school's of fish names, geesh)
"I see Gill, I see Chad, I see Dolf, I see Largemouth Bess, I see Wall-eye.....
One thing I noticed that AKL had more of than BLT was Love Bugs, boy, they were everywhere and really annoying, kind of like Geico commercials, "yeah, I'll make your little Piggy go wee, wee, wee, all the way home, just send him over here, we can use the bacon!"
By the way, off topic for a second but how many mascots or icons does Geico need? They have the Rod Serling impersonator, the gecko lizard, and the stupid Caveman, I don't get it.
We did try the slide here, and it's nothing special, the best Disney slides are still at Storm- a- long BaY, the Dig Site at CS, Grand Floridian and the Luna Pool,,, The Hard Rock Hotel trumps them all though, but maybe as time goes by, that's getting better in my mind without really getting better. I do know the actual pool at HRH is WAY too shallow.
What I don't understand is why I get a snootfull every time I hit the water coming down a slide now unless I hold my nose, this didn't use to happen.
But now, as soon as I hit the water my nose acts like the hood scoop on a '57 Chevy.
Face it, holding your nose coming down a weenie slide? You may as well have the "water wings " on as well.
After the slide, I was thirsty and grabbed my mug to walk over to Mara and get some Coke. Mara is the AKL version of a food court. It's small by values and moderates food court norms, but it has the basics plus a few upscale meals,,,, and you can refill your mugs at a station in there.
Fool that I am, I'm at a self serve station, what I really needed here is the old fashioned "full serve" type that most of you don't even remember.
There was a time you would actually pull up to a pump, a man in a uniform would run over to you and you would take your time rolling down your window and then tell him "Yeah, um, let's see now, um,,, oh,, ok, I guess give me 5 bucks of regular, no, make it six. Oh, and check the oil too, ok? And I think that left rear tire might be low, can you check that out for me? And don't forget the two packs of Viceroy.
Every word of the above paragraph was the old norm, that was the way it really was.
Whoops, my mind threw up again, where was I?
Oh yes, gonna fill up my mind,, I mean mug, at Mara with Coke.
(no, don't go there)
I got up, no problem, I walked over there to Mara, no problem,
I opened the door, no problem, and I walked inside, no
problem.
And I could not see, PROBLEM!
Nothing, zero, nada, but as I stood there, I went from "no problem", to, "creating a problem." I was in everybody's way.
Quickly looking around, I could see that I couldn't look around, all that was coming through was some disembodied colonies of different colored light groups barely registering with my eyes, and a few ghostly apparitions occasionally blocking them out as they floated past my field of vision.
Let's stick that DVD back in:
I turned around, no problem, I walked to the door, no problem, I ,,,,,,,
Back at the table I said, "Would you please, please, go and get me some pop? I know it's in there, but the dingos wouldn't let me near the watering hole,,,,"
"What are you talking about?" she asked.
"I couldn't see a thing in there, it is so dark.
I think they are using fireflies for lighting to save on electricity, and these are not Chicago style lightning bugs,
these are the "green", cheap ones from Dollar General, the useless ones!"
Bless her heart, she liked my joke, she went and brought me back a Coke.
We sweltered out here till about 3 o'clock, then decided to go up and have something to drink and do some 'splorin, (apostrophe trademarked).
My problem was, i could barely get out of the lounge chair, the sun had sucked every ounce of strength from my body. Once again, it was like somebody put some Kryptonite under my chair whilst I lied there!
"Hey, what happened to solar energy? Why doesn't it work on me?"
Seemed like a reasonable question, but she had no answer.
I looked like a turtle on it's back.
Only after handing Diane the Uncle John's Reader, ( it was too heavy, weighing me down) was I able to get up.
In our room, there was no way we could even go out on the balcony due to all the dead love bugs out there, just covering the floor so we sent for a broom. It was like they all said, "Hey, Baby, wanna go to the balcony of 5436 and fool around for a while? And when we're done, we can take turns croaking, I heard it's a lot better than the afterwards cigarette."
Moses had that same attitude when he climbed Mt. Nebo.
After moving the table and chairs out of the way, it was now a, Ok, now what?
There was a ridge that kept you from sweeping them over the side, and we weren't given a dustpan, not that I'd want to toss some half dead bugs into the room garbage cans.
However, separating our balcony from the one next to us is a partition that starts at knee height, nobody was out there so you can guess what went under the wall.
Changed our clothes and had a few snacks, then made a couple of drinks in our mugs to bring with, even brought a couple of little bottles with us since we didn't know how long we'd be gone.
Walking back to the lobby while still on the 5th floor, I started taking more pictures. One thing I wanted to do was take a walk all the way down the hall to where our original room with the savannah view was supposed to be, but somehow, I didn't think of it agian until we were almost to the lobby. Oh well, have plenty of time to check it out later.
Oh I just can't wait to be KIng,,
whoops, sorry, got it a bit too loud right now as I'm doing this, hang on, I'll turn it down. Yeah, it really does help me a lot to get in the mood to write these chapters.
more like......
Ok, back in th lobby.
If you haven't seen it in person, it will blow you away! And that is not a superfluous exclamation mark. You also need to see it in both daylight and at night, totally different experiences, with the daylight and the ambient lighting and gigantic savannah windows to the world, to the warm, inviting coziness during the evening that makes you want to stop for a drink at Victoria's Falls that is a tiny ounge on the staircase next to a waterfall, or to just go and pick a random couch in the lobby and just sit there because,,,,,,, you can.
And this last one in this sequence was not an easy shot, especially due to the subject's extreme fear of heights and whom wanted NO part of the catwalk type bridge that crosses the lobby up here.
Soon, we worked our way out the front of the lobby downstairs.
We had originally thought that Kidani was connected to Jambo House, and this early evening we wanted to make the walk down to see what we could of Province Kidani, and all things it included, but no, the Ostrich Trail or even the Snail Trail does not go there at all.
Our choices for getting all the way down there are... take the internal shuttle, that runs sometimes,,you never know when, maybe it does, maybe it doesn't,, but there's no schedule, it usually depends if Wally has sobered up or not,or was staying late at Pat O'Brian's late last night, ,or two,,, take the regular bus, but it has to be only the DD bus, all the theme park busses stop first at Kidani, only Downtown Disney stops Jambo first, then mosies over to Kidani.
Or three,,,, walk it, outside.
Hey, except for the Krypto drain, I'm doing ok right now with a full mug of whiskey and sprite.....
if you can call walking along the outside of the Kidani Village Green Mile, and yes, it, is, one, long, row, of, rooms, leading all the way to the Kidani hub, if you can call that a walk on the wild side,,,,,,,,, well that's exactly what we done went and did, we walked.
As we left the Jambo Lobby in the front to start our trek, I punched in zeros on my stopwatch, just for the heck of it.
Coming up, how to ruin a good evening with Smidgy, or, "Really, I'm sorry, it seemed like a good idea at the time!"
night brethren, remember, even if you have nothing to say, I'd still like to hear it. Hey, that's how I got my start, and as you can see, doesn't slow Ponzi down at all.
No, seriously, Ponzi and I play well together, but it's not just the Nebo an Ponzi show, it has and always will take all of us contributing that has made this so much fun.
By the way, I guess I 've got an upcoming trip announcement to make and talk about.
Kinda pooped now, but we most coitanly willst be going back! and i feel sooooooooooo, much better with a light at the end of the tunnel!
My TV reaction is exactly opposite of yours. Whenever I'd stumble over it I'd quickly change the channel, lest my two young DDs get scared and have nightmares. Now they're 14 and 10 and I'm still doing it! Except now after the knee jerk reaction passes I think, "Well, I want them to see it from the beginning."
Yeah, that was a good tv laugh.
Thank goodness, now I'll be able to sleep nights...
