Finishing up Saturday at the AK
So the Hermit and I went and got Fastpasses for the Kilimanjaro Safari, then did the Pangani trail. We like the Maharajah Jungle Trek animals a lot more, but the scenery on Pangani is pretty nice. Doesn't this look green and restful?
The stand-by line for the Safari was out there, but no one was in the Fastpass line -- seemed like a huge long walk down to the end, and some of the people waiting were Not Happy to see us buzz by. Next time I want to wear a t-shirt that says, "FastPass is free -- think ahead!" (I think some people believed we'd paid extra for it.) But I guess I should wait and see what they're going to be doing with that whole system first, since all manner of changes are in the works. I really don't think they're going to start charging for them, but they certainly might.
After the Safari, the heat and crowds were getting to the Hermit, so I got her a drink and we retreated to a people-free path for a while.
After she watched the stream and waterfalls for a bit, we headed over to Discovery Island and took pictures of the Tree of Life:
I wasn't in the mood for BBQ, so we headed to Dinoland and got a Veggie Sub at Restaurantasaurus, mostly just because it was something different, but we both liked it more than we expected. We ran across Mr. Cool, and the three of us headed up to catch the Finding Nemo show.
The only pics I took from this point on were bathroom tiles :upsidedow, so here's a pic from when Ballet Girl went:
After Nemo we hit the Joffrey tea cart again, where the Hermit discovered ambrosia. I mean, iced chai. She actually got Green Honey Ginsing, which she thought tasted like soap; this is the kid who likes lavender lemonade, so that response surprised me until I tried it myself. Yetch. I got the iced chai, which I hadn't really expected to like -- I love hot chai, but for some reason the idea of it cold didn't sound that great, and IMHO, it wasn't. But I gave her mine since hers was undrinkable, and she loved it.
After years of refusing to try my myriad of chais, the iced chai at the AK converted her; now the Hermit likes every chai I do. Go figure. And she still periodically talks about how wonderful the iced chai at Animal Kingdom is. So I sat and drank my water and she savored her iced chai while Mr. Cool wandered off because we were boring. He returned almost immediately with the troops and we had a very short confab because the parade was due to start and, after agreeing to meet at Rafiki's, they all ran off to do that.
The Hermit and I got to Rafiki's first but were quickly joined by Mr. Cool, who started lobbying to go home. While he hadn't shown a lot of enthusiasm for the other parks, he hadn't tried to convince me to leave early, either. I still wanted to see the Festival of the Lion King, but when everyone else got there they all said they'd seen what they wanted, so I finally told Mr. Cool we'd head home after we were done here.
Which meant, of course, that he started trying to hurry everyone off. The younger three wanted to check everything out, in detail, so they did, along with their dad.
Mr. Cool finally gave up and sat with the Hermit, while I wandered around taking pictures of the bathroom tiles and the carpeting and such like.
Finally got tired of Mr. Cool's agitating, so the Hermit and I went down with him to wait for the train, and the rest of them were going to "catch up." Which they did, actually, but only because the train was taking forever -- last train of the day, so they wanted to collect everyone and we had to wait until they declared the building all clear and etc. So we drifted through Africa as the band was playing; nobody was dancing, and there was a big clear space in front of the band, so Ballet Girl took advantage of that and did a big solo dance in it:
Her father thought this was terrific, and I didn't really mind, but Mr. Cool was horrified. At first I thought he just thought she was rude for holding us up, but, nope, he thought it was rude of her to be taking up so much space dancing. I told him I was absolutely not going to go grab her by the ear and drag her off when her dad was happily filming away, especially since no one else seemed inclined to dance (or seemed to mind her dancing), and she didn't even dance for one full song, but apparently he was never more humiliated in his life. *sigh*
Ballet Girl finished with a flourishing bow to the band and left the dance floor, but I made them stay until the song was done (the band is pretty good!), then of course we had to check out the otter on the way out (otters are Ballet Girl's favorite critters, and she hadn't seen then yet), but eventually we got into the car and headed home.
So we'd been to three of the four parks, and all of the kids except Mr. Cool had decided Disney was definitely worth doing. Mr. Cool, however, had seemingly not liked anything he'd seen thus far, was vowing he'd never do Animal Kingdom again, and the only park left was Epcot. Problem is, stage shows tend to be Mr. Cool's favorite thing, and Epcot has no stage shows.
So the Hermit and I went and got Fastpasses for the Kilimanjaro Safari, then did the Pangani trail. We like the Maharajah Jungle Trek animals a lot more, but the scenery on Pangani is pretty nice. Doesn't this look green and restful?
The stand-by line for the Safari was out there, but no one was in the Fastpass line -- seemed like a huge long walk down to the end, and some of the people waiting were Not Happy to see us buzz by. Next time I want to wear a t-shirt that says, "FastPass is free -- think ahead!" (I think some people believed we'd paid extra for it.) But I guess I should wait and see what they're going to be doing with that whole system first, since all manner of changes are in the works. I really don't think they're going to start charging for them, but they certainly might.
After the Safari, the heat and crowds were getting to the Hermit, so I got her a drink and we retreated to a people-free path for a while.
After she watched the stream and waterfalls for a bit, we headed over to Discovery Island and took pictures of the Tree of Life:
I wasn't in the mood for BBQ, so we headed to Dinoland and got a Veggie Sub at Restaurantasaurus, mostly just because it was something different, but we both liked it more than we expected. We ran across Mr. Cool, and the three of us headed up to catch the Finding Nemo show.
The only pics I took from this point on were bathroom tiles :upsidedow, so here's a pic from when Ballet Girl went:
After Nemo we hit the Joffrey tea cart again, where the Hermit discovered ambrosia. I mean, iced chai. She actually got Green Honey Ginsing, which she thought tasted like soap; this is the kid who likes lavender lemonade, so that response surprised me until I tried it myself. Yetch. I got the iced chai, which I hadn't really expected to like -- I love hot chai, but for some reason the idea of it cold didn't sound that great, and IMHO, it wasn't. But I gave her mine since hers was undrinkable, and she loved it.
After years of refusing to try my myriad of chais, the iced chai at the AK converted her; now the Hermit likes every chai I do. Go figure. And she still periodically talks about how wonderful the iced chai at Animal Kingdom is. So I sat and drank my water and she savored her iced chai while Mr. Cool wandered off because we were boring. He returned almost immediately with the troops and we had a very short confab because the parade was due to start and, after agreeing to meet at Rafiki's, they all ran off to do that.
The Hermit and I got to Rafiki's first but were quickly joined by Mr. Cool, who started lobbying to go home. While he hadn't shown a lot of enthusiasm for the other parks, he hadn't tried to convince me to leave early, either. I still wanted to see the Festival of the Lion King, but when everyone else got there they all said they'd seen what they wanted, so I finally told Mr. Cool we'd head home after we were done here.
Which meant, of course, that he started trying to hurry everyone off. The younger three wanted to check everything out, in detail, so they did, along with their dad.
Mr. Cool finally gave up and sat with the Hermit, while I wandered around taking pictures of the bathroom tiles and the carpeting and such like.
Finally got tired of Mr. Cool's agitating, so the Hermit and I went down with him to wait for the train, and the rest of them were going to "catch up." Which they did, actually, but only because the train was taking forever -- last train of the day, so they wanted to collect everyone and we had to wait until they declared the building all clear and etc. So we drifted through Africa as the band was playing; nobody was dancing, and there was a big clear space in front of the band, so Ballet Girl took advantage of that and did a big solo dance in it:
Her father thought this was terrific, and I didn't really mind, but Mr. Cool was horrified. At first I thought he just thought she was rude for holding us up, but, nope, he thought it was rude of her to be taking up so much space dancing. I told him I was absolutely not going to go grab her by the ear and drag her off when her dad was happily filming away, especially since no one else seemed inclined to dance (or seemed to mind her dancing), and she didn't even dance for one full song, but apparently he was never more humiliated in his life. *sigh*
Ballet Girl finished with a flourishing bow to the band and left the dance floor, but I made them stay until the song was done (the band is pretty good!), then of course we had to check out the otter on the way out (otters are Ballet Girl's favorite critters, and she hadn't seen then yet), but eventually we got into the car and headed home.
So we'd been to three of the four parks, and all of the kids except Mr. Cool had decided Disney was definitely worth doing. Mr. Cool, however, had seemingly not liked anything he'd seen thus far, was vowing he'd never do Animal Kingdom again, and the only park left was Epcot. Problem is, stage shows tend to be Mr. Cool's favorite thing, and Epcot has no stage shows.
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