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Day Two - Animal Kingdom

Animal Kingdom was better than Seaworld, but by the end of the day I was knackered and ready to go.

Today was warmer than yesterday… actually, it was just about perfect weather for this sort of thing. We grabbed breakfast, packed lunch, and set the GPS for Disney. Sylvia loves the GPS, by the way. It’s like having another wife in the car, only one that doesn’t get talking and forget to tell you when to turn. I think when we get back to the First World I might get one. I suppose I could claim to have a harem then.

In any case, we arrived without incident, and were promptly and efficiently herded into our parking spot and onto the shuttle tram to the park. The day started out on a high note, which was the Bug’s Life 3D show. This was spectacular, complete with the blue and red glasses and water spraying over the theatre. That was a pretty hard act to follow, and so the rest of the day lived in the shadow of that first show.

In the Asia pavilion we did a river ride which was fun, if a little brief. I’m glad we got the express pass for the ride, since I’d have been pretty annoyed to have waited in line for 45 minutes to do 3 minutes of ride. In fact, as feared, there is a lot of waiting to do at Disney, but at least the lines actually move so you feel like you’re doing something. After we explored various parts of the Asia and Africa Pavilions, we lined up for over an hour to do the Kilimanjaro Safari. We had our packed lunch in the lineup, which helped to kill some time. The ’safari’ was well done, if rather obvioulsy contrived. It was ‘cut short’ from the promised two weeks due to the poachers we had to chase into a trap set by the park ranger. The kids didn’t get it, but they liked it well enough, since the animals along the way were impressive.

A train ride took us to Rafiki’s Planet Watch which was rather lame, except that Isabel enjoyed the petting zoo. This was the cleanest petting zoo I’ve ever seen. I kid you not when I say that as soon as a goat started to poop, someone ran up with a scooper and had it cleaned up before said beastie was even finished. Helga the petting zoo Nazi patrolled, and we had to be Spoken To three times. The first incident involved Sylvia taking out a map made of paper, which is not allowed due to the fact the goats might eat it. I’m assuming that Helga was not entirely familiar with exactly what goats will eat, since she didn’t also instruct us to put away our shirts, socks, and underwear. Perhaps that was just as well.

Our second Incident came when Alex was caught climbing on a metal railing. I really don’t know what he was thinking… he could have fallen 24-30 inches and died horribly.

Finally, we must not have been displaying enough glee, because the kids were instructed to go and pet some animals. Fair enough, it was actually a petting zoo, but we thought we’d leave before they took out the tazers.

As an aside, I noticed that while there were fewer Brits at Animal Kingdom than Seaworld, they were still around in plentiful numbers. A fish and chips stand could make a killing here. It was tempting to line Sylvia and the kids up, to see how many of them would instinctively queue up behind us.

Our final section was the Dino area, which was mostly a rides section. We did the round and round and up and down ride, themed as a herd of stegosauruses, and then Sylvia thought it would be fun to do the feature time machine ride. This involved getting onto a car that lurched sickeningly around against a backdrop of mechanical dinosaurs and special effects. It was actually quite well done, but my stomach didn’t appreciate it at all, and threatened to disassociate itself from lunch. Isabel was terrified, and Alex kept his eyes closed for much of it. Sylvia, who doesn’t like rides, rather enjoyed it. Go figure.

Not a lot of decent photos, but I did add a couple to the Florida album.