After lunch, the family heads to the northeast section of AK. We see that the wait time for Kali River Rapids is only 15 minutes, so we park our stroller and head on in.
We come back for ponchos, to protect our video camera and new digital camera that are strapped on to the adults
. I offer the kids ponchos too but they say "No! We want to get wet!"
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them wear their ponchos!
You see? "
You will get wet!" I tell the kids. They still reject the ponchos...oh well...
We proceed to the rafts...(No pics of this because I decide its too expensive a risk to pull out my camera from inside my poncho
) In place of pics, here's a really cool description of the ride
:
The story behind the ride is that you are a part of an eco-tourist expedition, but a logging company has been illegally clearing part of the jungle, and has created dangerous rapids as a result.
During the course of the ride guests are loaded into a 12 seater raft, in which everyone sits in a circle facing inwards, and each other. After loading the raft is hoisted up the 33-foot lift hill, disappearing into a bamboo tunnel filled with jasmine and ginger scented mists.
The raft then passes through a rain forest (and you just know what rain means to a water ride), followed by a bamboo thicket rife with the smells of burning wood. Immediately after this section the raft plunges along a 230-foot section of white water, at the end of which it passes under a rock bridge with 40 ceiling drippers built in. On top of the bridge, park guests have the chance to activate 'Elephant Guns' that shoot jets of water at the Kali riders.
A view from the top of the bridge...
And, no, we didn't try to shoot the riders passing by with the Elephant water guns
Jake got a little wet, Sam wasn't wet at all except for some spashes on his face which somewhat smudged his face painting.
DH and I, with the ponchos, got the most water hits, but we were fine (and so were the camera equipment
)
One lady approached us as we were exiting the ride and asks where we bought our ponchos. I tell her sorry, it came from
Walmart in Houston
. I guess she didn't want to buy an 8 dollar Disney poncho just for that ride (ours was 80 cents). She looked so forlorn that I felt bad for her, but I couldn't give her the boys' ponchos, right?
So, with the ponchos now hanging off the stroller arms, we proceed to the Finding Nemo Theater. We are so excited because the show is to start in 5 minutes, and there's hardly anyone in line!
As we enter the theater, we find out why...everyone has taken their seats inside, and the only seats remaining are in the nosebleed section in the waaay back.
We sit in the cheap seats
, and the show begins.... After 5 minutes into the show, I tell DH, we need to go. This is awful. We are too far behind, and two tall persons are blocking the boys' view. We can come back later. DH agrees.
We come upon this huge Dinosaur footprint which catches the boys' fancy...
They ask me if it's a real Dino footprint, and I have to tell them "Yes of course it is!"
(In the same spirit as the Toothfairy and Santa, you know what I mean
)
So, at this point, our touring plan says go ride Dinosaur. Of course it also said that by this time we should have had fastpasses for it!
We skipped getting fastpasses because we were too far from Dinoland and stubbornly/lazily refused to make the long trek back and forth.
We sure paid for that error, because the standby wait time said 50 minutes and there were no fastpasses left!
We did get some pictures while in line...
This guy was too big to fit in a whole camera frame!
Reminded me of Crush and Squirt...
Stay tuned for my review of Dinosaur the ride!
Gotta get the kids to school now. (And me, to work!
)
So, we line up and say hello. Stitch plays with Sam's hood, and pulls it over his head 
I didn't see that ride on my touring plan map....) 
