PrincessAurora
<font color=blue>Hmpphh! Who needs that boy in gre
- Joined
- Oct 26, 1999
- Messages
- 1,368
CAST:
PrincessAurora - Computer geek, web designer, and Disney Princess Fiend. Always planning her next trip to The World.
Tigger: Martha Stewart wanna be, Mickeys evil twin, thinks Norm Abrams should use a hand tool occasionally.
(Please note all detailed food reviews are featured as separate reports after Day 8)
10-27-03 (Part 4) Calvin the Deviant Dolphin <Dolphins in Depth Tour>
Dawn is breaking and I am looking out at the pond when I hear What? Are you on dawn beaver patrol? Yup Tigger is awake, sorta.
They are not beavers, theyre otters.
Whatever
Today was our day to hang out with the dolphins over at Living Seas. I was REALLY excited because I had never touched a dolphin before and REALLY wanted to. We decided to take the bus to the Grand Floridian, get off, go upstairs, get on the monorail, take it to the Ticket & Transportation Center and then transfer to the Epcot monorail. Confusing enough for you?
On the monorail to Epcot we are sitting across from a nice British family. Their little girl, opens her sweet heart-shaped little mouth and says A zebra peed on our car.
Ummm, what are you suppose to do you do with that? Say how nice, did you win a prize? I reverted to smiling and nodding. It seemed the safest thing to do after the Flying Fox incident.
The men started talking about the Richard Petty experience and how cool it would be. I wish I knew that was at WDW. I thought it was outside the World, like by Universal or something. Now I am kicking myself for not taking Tigger race car driving. OK, note for next time .
We met our group over by the Guest services window. They sent out our nice dolphin ladies that were going to be with us for the next few hours. I had left all my jewelry at the hotel and was wearing my swimsuit under my clothes just like they told us. I had Tigger carry my bra and a pair of panties in his backpack so Id have dry knickers. Thats important.
We signed our waivers and went backstage to see the wonderful DISNEY TRASH DUMPSTERS!! Wow. It was great. Too bad we werent allowed cameras. HEY MOM! Here is me by the trash!
They gave us keys to lockers and we went and changed into our wetsuits and little scuba booties. As long as I walked slow, I could limp pretty good. There were 8 people in our group. 3 couples and 2 single ladies (non-related). We were taken up to the tank by our cute, athletic pixyish dolphin trainer.
Here is where we got to meet Calvin. There are two dolphins currently at Epcot, Calvin and Rainier. Rainier is the older, wise dolphin. He is the alpha male. Calvin is the young 7 year old. He is feisty and full of himself. Yeah, was he ever. There is a third dolphin but he is off on loan having lots of dates with new girlfriends.
It seems it is dolphin mating season. Calvin is lonely. He doesnt have a girlfriend. He does have a boat float. Lets meet Calvin.. WHOA!!! Calvin REALLY is a BOY dolphin!!! In a major way! He wants to say Hi! He is very proud of being a boy! Our trainer tries to ignore it. You cant! Its like a train wreck or fireworks or someone wearing white after Labor Day. You just cant avert your eyes.
She leads us over to some chairs to talk about dolphin behavior. We are sitting with our backs to the tank. With no one to show off to, Calvin (after a few rounds with the boat float) swims off. We learn about dolphin behaviors, parts of the dolphin and how to train the dolphins. Our perky trainer uses people in place of dolphins and rewards them with monopoly money when they do something right. We were a smart group. We did have a choice of money or the smelly fish. No one took the fish. I would have double dog dared someone to eat a smelly fish raw.
So now we walk over the big Living Seas tanks. We can see that there are some separate pens. The trainers explain that someone had asked why the dolphins arent given free rein of the entire tank. Well, they are but when they go out in the general population they need to be supervised by a diver. It seems that dolphins, while very smart, have the maturity level of an 8 year old wired on too much sugar and cartoons.
Everything is a fun game for them. Their favorite is spinning the tortoise. Yup, they swim straight for the large tortoises and start spinning them around like tops. They were also know to flip the manta rays up into the steel rafters with their powerful tails and to play football with the fish, flipping them back and forth to each other. They are too well fed to eat them, they just mess with them. Its not good for the other sea critters mental health. I know a fish has a brain the size of a grape but its no fun being hit back and forth like a shuttlecock for dolphin amusement.
Now we are getting ready to get into the water. The water is about 70 degrees and you never get up farther than your waist so you dont have to know how to swim. I must put in my own water issues here. I like swimming but like warmer water than this. Remember my cool water under my bum issues on Kali River Rapids? I also nearly drowned three times as a child. It was starting to be a party game at family reunions. So I dont like people dunking me or making sudden moves regarding my person when Im in the water.
That being said, the trainers told us to make sure we werent wearing anything that could scratch the dolphins, not to make any loud noises that would discourage the dolphins and not to pet them by their face or private parts. Calvin was now being a good boy and it was probably a good idea not to get him all riled up again.
We walked in twos down to the water while the trainers demonstrated some moves. This is when I screamed. It wasnt my fault! Tiggers hand went down to the bottom leg of my short wet suit. I thought he was trying to grab a private feel. He hooked the leg of my suit and let this cold water in. It rushed up my tushie and therefore the involuntary scream.
Now I felt terrible. I didnt want to blow my chance of petting a dolphin if I scared off Calvin, deviant that he was. I glared at Tigger who was looking like What?!. It seems that he thought he was doing me a favor by letting more water into my suit to make me warmer. I didnt appreciate it.
Now to be fair, I hadnt bored him with my water issues. I didnt think it would come up but now there was more water around my bum then there was before or at least it felt that way. Gee, does this wetsuit make my butt look big?
So now the main event we got to pet Calvin and have him do behaviors. It was so cool. They too our picture with Calvin as well. He was a good boy and minded his manners. Then we switched a little later and got to give Rainier a rub down as well. It was sooo cool. All and all, I think we spent about 30 minutes in the water. It was great fun.
Now we had to go back to the lockers and change. They had showers as well if you wanted to hose off or wash your hair. As I was changing I realized, I didnt have my underwear! Tigger still had it. I debated walking into the boys bathroom but thought some of them might freak out. Decided that I could go commando until we got back to the hotel. Figured I would announce to everyone that I had to go commando because my DB had my panties in his bag.
My plan was foiled as one of the girls handed me my underwear. Smart guy that he is, he figured it out and handed my unmentionables off to the first gal that came out of the bathroom. Thank God I had my Disney panties! Well after free cokes and t-shirts (they are made from recycled plastic and yes they look like real cotton shirt only they dont fade) we headed to the bus.
We had some water mouse time planned before dinner that night. Little did we know ..
PrincessAurora - Computer geek, web designer, and Disney Princess Fiend. Always planning her next trip to The World.
Tigger: Martha Stewart wanna be, Mickeys evil twin, thinks Norm Abrams should use a hand tool occasionally.
(Please note all detailed food reviews are featured as separate reports after Day 8)
10-27-03 (Part 4) Calvin the Deviant Dolphin <Dolphins in Depth Tour>
Dawn is breaking and I am looking out at the pond when I hear What? Are you on dawn beaver patrol? Yup Tigger is awake, sorta.
They are not beavers, theyre otters.
Whatever
Today was our day to hang out with the dolphins over at Living Seas. I was REALLY excited because I had never touched a dolphin before and REALLY wanted to. We decided to take the bus to the Grand Floridian, get off, go upstairs, get on the monorail, take it to the Ticket & Transportation Center and then transfer to the Epcot monorail. Confusing enough for you?
On the monorail to Epcot we are sitting across from a nice British family. Their little girl, opens her sweet heart-shaped little mouth and says A zebra peed on our car.
Ummm, what are you suppose to do you do with that? Say how nice, did you win a prize? I reverted to smiling and nodding. It seemed the safest thing to do after the Flying Fox incident.
The men started talking about the Richard Petty experience and how cool it would be. I wish I knew that was at WDW. I thought it was outside the World, like by Universal or something. Now I am kicking myself for not taking Tigger race car driving. OK, note for next time .
We met our group over by the Guest services window. They sent out our nice dolphin ladies that were going to be with us for the next few hours. I had left all my jewelry at the hotel and was wearing my swimsuit under my clothes just like they told us. I had Tigger carry my bra and a pair of panties in his backpack so Id have dry knickers. Thats important.
We signed our waivers and went backstage to see the wonderful DISNEY TRASH DUMPSTERS!! Wow. It was great. Too bad we werent allowed cameras. HEY MOM! Here is me by the trash!
They gave us keys to lockers and we went and changed into our wetsuits and little scuba booties. As long as I walked slow, I could limp pretty good. There were 8 people in our group. 3 couples and 2 single ladies (non-related). We were taken up to the tank by our cute, athletic pixyish dolphin trainer.
Here is where we got to meet Calvin. There are two dolphins currently at Epcot, Calvin and Rainier. Rainier is the older, wise dolphin. He is the alpha male. Calvin is the young 7 year old. He is feisty and full of himself. Yeah, was he ever. There is a third dolphin but he is off on loan having lots of dates with new girlfriends.
It seems it is dolphin mating season. Calvin is lonely. He doesnt have a girlfriend. He does have a boat float. Lets meet Calvin.. WHOA!!! Calvin REALLY is a BOY dolphin!!! In a major way! He wants to say Hi! He is very proud of being a boy! Our trainer tries to ignore it. You cant! Its like a train wreck or fireworks or someone wearing white after Labor Day. You just cant avert your eyes.
She leads us over to some chairs to talk about dolphin behavior. We are sitting with our backs to the tank. With no one to show off to, Calvin (after a few rounds with the boat float) swims off. We learn about dolphin behaviors, parts of the dolphin and how to train the dolphins. Our perky trainer uses people in place of dolphins and rewards them with monopoly money when they do something right. We were a smart group. We did have a choice of money or the smelly fish. No one took the fish. I would have double dog dared someone to eat a smelly fish raw.
So now we walk over the big Living Seas tanks. We can see that there are some separate pens. The trainers explain that someone had asked why the dolphins arent given free rein of the entire tank. Well, they are but when they go out in the general population they need to be supervised by a diver. It seems that dolphins, while very smart, have the maturity level of an 8 year old wired on too much sugar and cartoons.
Everything is a fun game for them. Their favorite is spinning the tortoise. Yup, they swim straight for the large tortoises and start spinning them around like tops. They were also know to flip the manta rays up into the steel rafters with their powerful tails and to play football with the fish, flipping them back and forth to each other. They are too well fed to eat them, they just mess with them. Its not good for the other sea critters mental health. I know a fish has a brain the size of a grape but its no fun being hit back and forth like a shuttlecock for dolphin amusement.
Now we are getting ready to get into the water. The water is about 70 degrees and you never get up farther than your waist so you dont have to know how to swim. I must put in my own water issues here. I like swimming but like warmer water than this. Remember my cool water under my bum issues on Kali River Rapids? I also nearly drowned three times as a child. It was starting to be a party game at family reunions. So I dont like people dunking me or making sudden moves regarding my person when Im in the water.
That being said, the trainers told us to make sure we werent wearing anything that could scratch the dolphins, not to make any loud noises that would discourage the dolphins and not to pet them by their face or private parts. Calvin was now being a good boy and it was probably a good idea not to get him all riled up again.
We walked in twos down to the water while the trainers demonstrated some moves. This is when I screamed. It wasnt my fault! Tiggers hand went down to the bottom leg of my short wet suit. I thought he was trying to grab a private feel. He hooked the leg of my suit and let this cold water in. It rushed up my tushie and therefore the involuntary scream.
Now I felt terrible. I didnt want to blow my chance of petting a dolphin if I scared off Calvin, deviant that he was. I glared at Tigger who was looking like What?!. It seems that he thought he was doing me a favor by letting more water into my suit to make me warmer. I didnt appreciate it.
Now to be fair, I hadnt bored him with my water issues. I didnt think it would come up but now there was more water around my bum then there was before or at least it felt that way. Gee, does this wetsuit make my butt look big?
So now the main event we got to pet Calvin and have him do behaviors. It was so cool. They too our picture with Calvin as well. He was a good boy and minded his manners. Then we switched a little later and got to give Rainier a rub down as well. It was sooo cool. All and all, I think we spent about 30 minutes in the water. It was great fun.
Now we had to go back to the lockers and change. They had showers as well if you wanted to hose off or wash your hair. As I was changing I realized, I didnt have my underwear! Tigger still had it. I debated walking into the boys bathroom but thought some of them might freak out. Decided that I could go commando until we got back to the hotel. Figured I would announce to everyone that I had to go commando because my DB had my panties in his bag.
My plan was foiled as one of the girls handed me my underwear. Smart guy that he is, he figured it out and handed my unmentionables off to the first gal that came out of the bathroom. Thank God I had my Disney panties! Well after free cokes and t-shirts (they are made from recycled plastic and yes they look like real cotton shirt only they dont fade) we headed to the bus.
We had some water mouse time planned before dinner that night. Little did we know ..
Have you been getting tips from Delswife???
