Today we did the only park we hadn't been to yet, Disney's Animal
Kingdom. Just a quick note here: There's not a whole lot of material to
make jokes about at Animal Kingdom; it's more of a take a trillion
pictures kind of park, so this
report might be a
little dry. (When I put it up on the blog it'll be spiced up with a
trillion blurry pictures with captions like "I think this is a monkey"
and "Is this a lemur?")
When we arrived we went straight to the Rainforest Cafe.
Katie got the chicken stir fry again. I got the South China Salad, which
was quite good. If you're curious, "South China Island Dressing" is
sesame ranch. "Are you going to put this in your trip report?"
Katie asked, pointing her fork at me accusingly. "Put what in?" I asked
innocently. "That you're getting something exciting and I'm getting the
same thing I already had." "No," I lied cunningly.
Then we had desert which was the same mango sorbet from Day 1; It
was good. Then we hit the Rainforest Cafe gift shop, and we got new
mugs. You may have seen me carrying around my 32oz Rainforest Cafe mug;
it served faithfully for four years, but the outer shell broke and the
top fell into the sink while it was full of gross scummy water and the
mug was finally retired with honor (tossed into the garbage), so I'm
very excited about getting a replacement. Hey, you just read a paragraph
about me buying a plastic mug; this is going great!
2015 update: Both Rainforest Cafe mugs died within weeks of our return, with the second one taking a very dramatic plunge down the stairs =[
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| Also, there's this huge fish tank you walk under. |
Then we went on
DINOSAUR
Yes, the official
name of this ride is DINOSAUR. This is very based on an obscure movie
from the year 2000. I'd been on this ride before,
but it wasn't until this time that I figured out that you're actually
saving the hero of the movie DINOSAUR by bringing him into the future so
that he doesn't die with the rest of the DINOSAURs. Huh.
Anyway, the ride itself
is that you're in a time machine in the dark that skids all over the
place. They do that thing where they take a picture of you at the
scariest moment of the ride, and Katie decided that the expression on my
face was "concern". Unfortunately, we were then eaten by dinosaurs.
We had some time to kill after DINOSAUR (getting
digested takes a long time), so we wandered on over to Finding Nemo -
the Musical! This is a 40 minute stage show that recreates the entire
plot of Finding Nemo, except everyone is an actor holding up an
expressive puppet. It's cute. Also, being able to sit down in the dark
for 40 minutes was nice. And at the end when Nemo was found (spoiler
alert!) like a billion bubbles came down from the ceiling.
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Prisoner 24601 - your sentence is over and being a flamingo has begun!
I don't know what I'm saying. |
Kiliminjaro Safari
This is
the signature attraction of the Animal Kingdom: A 20-something minute
tour of the nature preserve. Last time we went, there was some guff about poachers where the tour guide pretends to help out a African guy named Wilson who's trying to save a baby elephant, but this has been cut in favor of just showing more animals. I think this is a wise move; seeing all the animals is awesome, and you don't really need that extra goofery.
And did we see all kinds of stuff and take about a billion pictures? We saw all kinds of stuff and took about a
billion pictures. At
one point we had to stop because a rhino was wandering across the road.
Also, while we were waiting in line there were two cute little girls
kicking each other. The end. Or is it? Cue pix (click to enlarge):
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| Either an alligator or a crocodile |
The
Safari lets out next to a trail you can walk if you want to see even
more animals. We saw a meercat and a bunch of gorillas who were not
terribly pleased to have a ton of pictures taken of them and also one of them smelled bad as a defense mechanism. We also saw a
hippo who was sleeping underwater with just a little bit of its hump
sticking out of the water that three birds were relaxing on. Also Katie's
Charmander evolved into a Charmeleon and wasn't cute anymore so she gave it to me but I didn't use it because I already had a
Fennekin.
Next we wanted to go on the Maharajah Jungle Trek,
which is just like the walk we had taken, but it's in Asia and has
tigers and birds. We ran smack into a parade, though, and ended up as
the tail end, walking about fifteen feet behind the float Mickey Mouse
was blowing kisses from. This part was a little weird.
The Maharajah Jungle Trek itself didn't have as many interesting
animals (although we did see a very bored tiger), but the atmosphere was
nicer; whereas the Pangai Forest is just wood huts, the Maharajah is
done up like a abandoned Southern Asian temple. Also, it had some cute
bats. LOOK AT THAT DUMB LITTLE BAT FACE. WHO'S A DUMB SLEEPY BAT? WHO IS??
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| Look at these cute chumps! |
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| This tiger is in jail for contempt of court. Thanks, Obama. |
Yak & Yeti
The last
thing we did was eat dinner as the park closed 15 minutes after we
finished. We went to a new place called Yak & Yeti where I got the
sweet and sour chicken, which was great (not very sour, but I'm not
complaining). Katie got vegetable lo mein with her buddy tofu. "Are you
going to put this in your trip report?"
she asked, pointing her chopsticks at me accusingly. "Put what in?" I
innocently asked. "That you're getting something exciting and I'm
getting something I eat every week." "No," I cunningly lied.
Then we had desert which was a trio of sorbets for me (orange with
red sauce, one that tasted like frozen lemonade, and raspberry, and
apparently I like raspberry sorbet) while Katie got some crazy skewer of
pineapple and fried wontons with cream cheese inside.
And that's it for Animal Kingdom. Tomorrow is Mickey's Christmas Party at the Magic Kingdom. Oooooooooooooooooo!!!!
