Day 2-Animal Kingdom

Alternate Title: Who Stopped the Kali River Rapids??

We headed to Animal Kingdom on our second day because Undercover Tourist told us it would be a good choice.  They were right again, AK never got too crowded, and even though we worked the Fastpass system, we probably didn’t need to.

We got to the park as it opened and headed straight to Expedition Everest.

We all looooove Expedition Everest, except Jack, who really doesn’t like most roller coasters or scary rides, and Expedition Everest counts as both.  Dave rode with the big kids once, then took Jack to ride Kilimanjaro Safaris, while I rode it two more times with Maddie and Ben.

Here are Dave, Maddie, and Ben, in the second and third seats of the coaster:

Dave let Jack take pictures of the animals he saw on the safari ride.  Their ride was excellent!

They saw so many animals up close!  When I joined them with Maddie and Ben, our ride together was pretty boring.  There were very few animals out and any that were out were far away.  Everyone looked like this for most of the ride:

After the safari ride, people started getting a little grumpy.  We headed over to the Dinosaur area thinking maybe they would like to run around on the Boneyard play area they have there.  Only Jack really wanted to run around though, Maddie and Ben walked around half-heartedly, which made me a little sad to think that they’ve outgrown playgrounds. We soon headed over to the Primeval Whirl.   Primeval Whirl is very much like the Mouse ride at Hersheypark, it’s very tame, but Jack still needed to be talked into this one.

But he loved it!

                                                                         Ta da!  Jack rode a roller coaster! 

But then disaster struck!  As he was running (because Jack doesn’t walk anywhere) down the off ramp, he tripped and fell and skinned both knees, which required two band-aids.  He was brave though.

We thought this might be a good time for a lunch break.  We headed to the Flame Tree Barbecue, which is located at the entrance to the Dinosaur section and I have to tell you, this may have been the best meal we ate while we were in Disney! The menu was varied and somewhat healthy, Dave and Ben shared a barbecued chicken and ribs platter, Maddie had a delicious smoked turkey with cranberry mayo sandwich, Jack had chicken legs, and I had the pork barbecue sandwich.  The seating was behind the Flame Tree stand, and was lovely.  We sat in a gazebo right on the lake:  breezy and shady and perfect.

There were a lot of friendly ducks walking around.

Notice Jack posing for the photo…for some reason he turned into a child model (not model child) for the remainder of our stay…you’ll see…

After lunch we headed to Dinosaur.  I made Jack ride this one and I regretted it.  He was terrified!  Everyone else loved it, but I had my arm around Jack and my hand over his eyes for the entire ride.  Here’s a photo I snapped of the photo Disney snapped of us while a giant T-Rex (off camera) is attacking our car:

                                                                                                                      Oh my.  Scarred for life.

We decided to perk him up with the Kali River Rapids ride.  It was a hot day, and there are no plunges, just lots of water falling and splashing onto you here and there.  I didn’t want to get wet though, so I had planned ahead, and packed 5 plastic ponchos I got at Walmart for 88 cents each (that’s an 800% savings from the ones they sell at the park!)  Dave and Jack each thought they might like a poncho too, but Maddie and Ben decided to brave it.  I got the ponchos out of my backpack, but did not remove them from their individual pouches.  This proved to be a devastating error, people.

The line to the Rapids was shorter than we thought.  All of a sudden, we realized we were next to board a raft.  I began quickly removing the ponchos from each pouch.  I threw one at Dave, and tried to quickly get Jack’s poncho on over his head, but it was hard to find the head opening, and I was afraid he’d suffocate, so as we walked onto the raft, I was still adjusting his poncho.  By now we were on the raft, and my poncho was still in its pouch. Also, I was holding a camera, a backpack, my purse, and Jack’s hat, and my sunglasses kept slipping down as I tried to violently shake my poncho free and jam it over my head.  I couldn’t find the head opening.  By now our raft was moving and I was still standing, trying desperately to find the arm holes and the head hole. 

The Disney Cast Member in charge of getting us seated was furious.  She was yelling “Sit down and fasten your seat belt!” at me.  My family was amused.  The people in line were entertained and watched gleefully.  The other family in the boat with us was horrified that they’d be spending their cruise down the Kali River with an idiot.

I sat and tried to buckle, but my buckle wouldn’t click!  I swear, I jammed it in as hard as I could, but I couldn’t get it to click!  I quickly stood up and sat in the empty seat next to me and tried that buckle, but I got two male clasps and it wouldn’t go.  The screaming lady had disappeared, and I soon realized why when the entire ride stopped.

By now I had found myself a male and a female buckle strap and put them together, although my poncho was on all wrong, my face looking out through plastic, not an opening.  I was hot and flustered and then I looked up and saw the Screaming Cast Member who barked to us that our boat was going to be rerouted off the ride since I couldn’t buckle in time, which meant the innocent family in the boat with us was also going to have to get off and wait in line again.  I was horrified.  I felt so bad.  But I pointed at my buckle and yelled through my plastic poncho that I had indeed buckled myself, we were good to go, please couldn’t we just ride the ride?  But she shook her head no and left.

I apologized profusely to the family, who were so nice and understanding.  My own dear children wavered between extreme embarrassment and cruel snickers.  Dave wrote up divorce papers in his head and tried hard to hide his own smirk.

An eternity passed, at least two minutes.  I sat and sweated and tried to maneuver my poncho around and apologized over and over again to the other family. Finally, the ride began to move.  And miracle of miracles, they did not reroute us off the ride, but allowed us to go up the hill and join the other stalled rafts full of smart, coordinated, organized people who had all managed to get seated and buckled in an orderly fashion with no screaming motivation needed from mean cast members.

I really don’t remember much of the ride.  When we got back to the start, I slunk off of the raft hoping no one in line had recorded my blustering and was downloading their video to YouTube.  I really could have sat down and cried at this point, but you can’t do that when you have three children watching your every move, so I laughed it off and left the ride behind, but really, I was the one scarred for life.

To end our day, we headed over to the Maharajah Jungle Trek.  Honestly, nobody wanted to go except Dave.  The kids were hot, I was still humiliated, but he really wanted to do it.  Here’s a picture of him pouting to get his way:

So we went.

We did see lots of animals up close, like giant bats and tigers, but all of us were just kind of pushing ahead to the end.  Also, Maddie was completely soaked and grumpy as a result. 

Jack, however, posed everywhere he could and asked us to “Take a picture of me!” repeatedly.  He is available for modeling, if you’d like to hire him:

And thus ended our day at Animal Kingdom.  We went back to the hotel, had pizza by the pool, and I had a nice ginormous glass of sangria, which helped erase the shame of the day a tiny little bit.