Tarkblog

5/19/05

We had a big day planned, and big days always start early.  Annie told me
she wanted to do some running this day - the day after the mini - as a
cooldown.  Before the vacation, I told her that this would be the only day
she would be allowed to run, and she reluctantly agreed.  Well, she didn’t
get up to run - probably due to how much exertion she went through the day
before.

We had breakfast reservations for 8am at the buffet in our hotel, so we
decided to get up around 7 to get ready, and so we wouldn’t have to go back
to the room after eating the buffet.  The food was delicious - a pretty good
mix of traditional American breakfast foods, plus some African specialties,
like some apple stuffed sausages (which were absolutely delicious) and the
house drink “jungle juice”.  The fresh fruit wasn’t all that great looking,
but the fresh made pastries looked pretty delicious.  I had a sampling of
everything.  But, to the surprise of most readers, I only visited the buffet
once.  Yes, I didn’t eat much at all.  This is completely abnormal behavior
for me, particularly at a buffet - I guess I was just getting excited about
the day.

We got on the bus for the Animal Kingdom and got there just as it was
opening for the day.  It only took a few minutes to get into the park - a
good sign of the potential for light crowds.  We looked at the animals as we
progressed into the park, and then we saw the tree of life.  I think Annie’s
jaw hit the ground as she saw for the first time just how massive this tree
really is.

We went to “It’s Tough to Be A Bug”, a cute 3D show inside of the tree.  We
walked right into the show - no wait.  After this, we went over to dinoland
and rode on “Dinosaur”, which was also a walkon.  We started quickly liking
how fast we were getting on rides.  After Dinosaur, we went over the the
“Primevil Whirl” a little coaster that also spins.  It was a neat ride, but
not one I’d probably ride on again during this trip.  We waited about 5
minutes to get on this one - the longest wait so far.

We ventured to Africa and after grabbing the largest $3 pretzel I’d ever
seen we rode the Safari to see the animals. The wait took about 10 minutes,
but that is okay considering that the ride itself takes about 20.  Having
waited over an hour previously for this attraction, I was quite pleased.  We
did a couple of walking tours of animal exhibits, then went over to Camp
Minnie and Mickey and saw the Festival of the Lion King.  This show was
really awesome.

We headed back to dinoland to see Lucky, one of the new exhibits, but we
were told by one of the cast members that they were having technical
problems with Lucky and he wasn’t coming out for that particular show. The
next one was in about 45 minutes, and we were basically finished with
everything we wanted to do, so we headed over to the Magic Kingdom.

After a quick bus ride to MK, we entered the park and both got chocolate
chip cookies from the Nestle Toll House cookie store.  It’s actually not
called that anymore, but they still cell these cookies, so that’s what I’ll
continue to reference it as.

It was now a little after 4.  We searched for some food, and finally settle
on Pecos Bills.  We had some humungous BBQ pork sandwiches.  We went over to
the Haunted Mansion, and had about a 5 minute wait.  We hopped over to
Pirates of the Caribbean and the Jungle Cruise, both again about 5 minute
waits.  This was truly awesome.  We went over to Tomorrow land and did Space
Mountain, Tomorrowland Transit Authority, Stitch’s great escape, the
Carousel of Progress, and Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin.  After all of
those (again, no more than 5 minute waits anywhere) we went over and saw
Mickey’s Philharmagic - again about a 5 minute wait.  We also rode the
Winnie the Pooh ride while in Fantasyland.  After that, we took some
pictures by the castle and left the park.

We stopped in at Mara again for an evening meal. I had the “African Stew”
which looked very interesting the picture, but ended up being nothing more
than pot pie filling inside of a big piece of bread.  Not bad, but not worth
the 8 bucks they charge for it by any means.

After our long day we were both exhausted, and we went the room to go to
bed.  We had an early day (Epcot opened an hour early - 8am - for resort
guests and we were going to hit it).

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 25th, 2005 at 7:39 am and is filed under Random Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.