In spite of another early wake up time, we all breathed one
more well-established McGinley Disney Sigh of happiness at our first full day
on the home turf. We got ready to the sounds of what we thought was the new
non-Stacey full Disney World Tour channel, but it turned out to be a short loop
only about Downtown Disney. Its lack of
Stacyness doomed it to never be watched again.
Dumping some cereal into ourselves, we loaded up and went
out to meet our first Extra Magic Hours bus.
The Animal Kingdom early crowd was far different from the Magic Kingdom
travelers at the same time. There were only a couple of kids on the bus, and
none of them in costumes. I guess it’s a
more mature bunch that wakes up early to visit zoological exhibits in Disney
World…and us.
We missed the park pre-opening, but were still well within
Extra Magicness on arrival. Disney once
again acknowledged our presence musically by playing the “Bear
Necessities.” Rosa grabbed some
multilingual maps, I danced like Baloo, and Anabelle pretended not to know the
crazy guy in the Scar shirt.
During planning Expedition Everest was a “maybe” meaning we
didn’t use a FastPass Plus for it.
Therefore we walked straight over to it when Anabelle decided she wanted
to try. Rosa set up camp outside, ready
to take photos of every train that shot down the mountain until we came out in
the hopes of finding us. This way she could share in the stress of a thrill
ride, with none of the motion sickness.
There was no line through the densely packed with coolness
Himalayan artifact and Yeti stuff museum area.
The whole way in was a repeat of the Tower of Terror. Anabelle kept
saying, “I’m scared again,” over and over.
Once more it was story elements, this time the Yeti, which
scared her far worse than the prospect of the fast moving ride.
Even for a massive thrill ride like this, with Disney the
story took precedence, starting with the aforementioned line. The cars had what appeared to be large steam
engines at the rear, enhancing the illusion of the loading area being a
mountain train station.
The chain lift pulled us through a Yeti shrine cave and
overlooked a “local” village as we climbed ever higher into the sky. Anabelle was still mumbling about being
terrified of the Yeti. Meanwhile, I was silently being terrified that we were
high enough to see the Rock of Gibraltar to the east.
After cresting the magnificent mountain, the train went down
and around some sissy little hills and curves, which were barely “Weeee”
worthy. Then we rounded another curve,
and the train stopped because the tracks had been torn up.
The train hung there for a while, letting us stew over the
broken tracks and the roars behind us.
With a soft click almost covered by the Yeti calls, we zoomed backwards
into utter darkness over a couple of bumps, until we could feel ourselves being
ratcheted upward in the impenetrable blackness.
Suddenly a bright craggy shaped spot on the wall treated us
to a shadow puppet show of the Yeti tearing up more tracks, before swinging off
with a growl.
It was only then that the train dropped out of the cave
mouth at fifty miles an hour, tearing around a curve like a bat out of
hell. A few more fierce twists and drops
led us back into the mountain to pass under the strobe lit, giant, red-eyed
Yeti himself, before the ride finally came to rest.
Overall, it was like Big Thunder Mountain on steroids. Anabelle’s fear evaporated once the movement
kicked in, shifting her into her normal coaster mantra,
“awesome, Awesome, AWESOME, AAAAAAAAAAA!”
She did, however, close her eyes for the Yeti appearance. I
told her he looked just like a dirty Wampa, the Hoth creature from Empire Strikes Back. That may have pushed her over the threshold
as she constantly sings the Wampa song from Robot
Chicken’s “Empire on Ice” when we play cards with the Star Wars deck I
unsurprisingly own. The Extra Magic
lines were mostly nonexistent, but we did walk through the line/museum a little
slower the second time to appreciate it better.
She kept her eyes open for the monster and happily screamed
just as much. Rosa spent enough time in
the gift shop getting the ride pictures on our PhotoPass card to form an
attachment to a cute stuffed Yeti. (After trying to figure out which screaming
train was us, of course.) Naturally it accompanied us the rest of the journey.
Rosa wanted to perfect the timing for photographs, since it was
quite difficult to determine which fifty mile an hour trainload of screaming
individuals were related to her from the safe coaster viewing distance. As we walked toward our normal park opening
time FastPass Plus for Kilimanjaro Safaris, she began asking where the big drop
following the flash of light in the cave was.
There were problems with this seemingly straight forward
question:
(1) Not being on the ride, she had absolutely no idea how
much of it was hidden from view and that several moments matched that
description.
(2) Being on the ride, which goes up to the previously
mentioned fifty miles an hour, both forwards and backwards and through a
variety of twists, we had no idea where we were at any given moment.
The sign for the “bumpy bus” said it was ten minutes, but
fortunately we were unfamiliar enough with the FastPass Plus system to try and
change one yet. They must have not
updated the notice quickly enough after park opening, and we queued past a
giant conglomeration of guests deeper inside the waiting area, easily and
painlessly boarded our transport.
As could be expected from animal filled lands large enough
to fit the Magic Kingdom in, it was extremely impressive. The new zebra area fit in seamlessly, and had
a much better connection to the rest of the story now that “Little Red” was
gone.
Rosa switched between her “near”
and “far” lenses (which she actually knows the proper names for) on the Super
Deluxe Magic Camera in order to get good close ups. The SmartPhone back up camera was sufficient
for me to take my usual animal moon shots.
Cast Members performing an animal survey were seated behind
us, and ended up providing a more informative tour than usual. They confirmed
that the rickety bridge did do a false collapse drop for a short while when the
attraction originally opened. It was
nice to get official confirmation that I wasn’t crazy…
Or at least that I didn’t hallucinate the drop the first
time.
We then continued our counterclockwise circumnavigation of
Animal Kingdom to reach the soon to be evicted Camp Minnie Mickey. There was
time before our Festival of the Lion King FastPass which we frittered away on
line for Pocahontas. She went for a
coffee break, and it would be a couple of days before we figured out “be right
back” for face characters had a drastically different meaning than for the rest
of the gang. Anabelle did have one of
the Awesome Happy Disney line technicians sing her, “This is your birthday
song, it isn’t very long!” Though the
fountain was the first time she heard it, and he was far from the last, this
older gentleman’s version had the most involved and entertaining build up and
introduction. He also recruited some
help to sing the real birthday song “backwards” to Anabelle and another girl.
Anyone needing details of what they did clearly needs to
spend more time with Awesome Happy Disney People.
We bailed on the Powhatan Princess to catch our prescheduled
viewing of Rosa’s favorite: the Lion King Show.
Using the FastPass Plus didn’t seem to bestow any
“preferredness” to our seating. We
entered a separate door from the main one, and then filled available
space. Maybe it works better when the
park is packed to capacity.
We did get extra time to pick our section because of the
entrance location. After careful
discussions, planning and recommendations we chose our spot. We ended up in the warthog section, which is
where we’ve ended up pretty much every time we’ve seen the show. I’m sure
there’s a “with you, everything’s gas,” joke with my name on it somewhere in
there.
Rosa filmed the show, leading to a very shaky video as she
was recreating the one handed version of all the cast’s dances. Since she was occupied, she bestowed the
great honor upon me of using the Super Deluxe Magic Camera.
Unfortunately, the Super Deluxe Magic Camera hates me. It refused to focus on anything, zooming
randomly in and out whenever I pressed the button. Considering we have infinity
plus twelve pictures of this show from previous viewings, the loss wasn’t too
epic.
This trip I focused a great deal on details. Instead of
merely enjoying returning to favorites, I actively searched for subtle things I
hadn’t noticed before. The faces the
tumble monkeys made were anything but subtle, however I never registered how
constant and varied they were throughout the show.
The expressions were only a small part of the nifty
background stuff. Most dancers waved and
greeted the animals on the floats they loitered on between numbers. As opposed to Timon who UNENDINGLY looked to
be keeping up a running commentary with Pumba throughout the entire proceedings. At least I think so. He had one wonky eyeball staring at the inside of his own head that made it hard to tell what he was looking at.
We hopped back on Pocahontas’s large line listening to
Guitar Dan. Rosa sent me over to ask
about the color coded benches on the floor level of the Festival of the Lion
King. We knew one set were for special needs guests, and I learned the others
were for V.I.P.s. Despite the
obviousness of our non-V.I.P. status, Rosa sent me back to find out what one
had to do to reach that level.
The less than helpful answer I returned with was that
Anabelle would have to grow up and get a job as a performer in The Festival of
the Lion King. Then, as relatives of the cast, we would be V.I.P.s. To toss in a smidge of foreshadowing, that
was close to the truth of Saturday morning.
When I started asking why so many people wanted to see
Pocahontas, before I could qualify that question, Anabelle jumped in with,
“Because she isn’t wearing much clothes.”
I think they both made fun of my being a fan of Leela again
before I could continue my thoughts.
I clarified that when Pocahontas was wandering around as a
free range character; she was mostly ignored by passersby, and now that she had
an official spot with a sign; Animal Kingdom’s only Princess drew a mob.
We reached the front of the line, and there were birthday
greetings, hugs and smiles at our first bit of wonderfulness that is a Princess
encounter.
This was followed by considerably less wonderfulness as we
ran like crazy back into Africa to make our Donald’s Safari Lunch Reservation
at the Tusker House.
We tend to view Animal Kingdom as a one day park, due to the
limited number of attractions on our must see list. Any extra days or parts
thereof are a bonus. However, the place
is freakishly large, leading us to exhausting sprints to traverse the vast
distances within it.
We caught our breath as we checked in, took our photo with
Donald, and sat for only a couple of minutes before the pager signaled we were
going in.
The host and one of the busboys were from Brooklyn, and our
waiter was from the Bronx. If that
wasn’t a good omen, I don’t know what is.
As soon as we entered, the parade and dance with Mickey
while playing various African instruments started. Anabelle joined in, and
became very puzzled when they took the instruments back shortly after the
procession began. In hindsight, it appears that one kid in the front of the
line changed his mind and didn’t want to play.
The kids next in line followed suit, popping all the instruments back in
the box well before the parade was done.
“Hey, do you think Goofy is taller than Doctor Doom?”
The Tusker House had several large rooms off of the buffet
area, and I got lost for a bit trying to get back after one trip once Anabelle
was loaded up and returned. Rosa was
afraid to go eat due to Mickey’s delayed visit.
She did eventually find time to sample the amazing mix of traditional
and African recipes a couple of times.
The delay netted us a second visit from Goofy. My attempt to take a picture with the lens
cap on earned me a face palm from him.
Yes, Goofy was commenting on my stupidity. How’s that for
impressive?
There was another Mickey celebration parade, this time with
full instrument involvement, before we had our personal Mouse time at the
table. Yet another birthday cupcake
rounded out the vast and varied mix of desserts provided.
Tusker House lunch is going to cause a big internal debate
for Future Grid creations. The lunch is
a new offering. We had used it for breakfast several times in the past to allow
pre-opening entry to Animal Kingdom.
Using it this day would have wasted extra magic hours, which is what led
us to lunch in the first place.
There are a below average number of characters at the meal,
only three inside as opposed to the usual four. Also, for a one day visit, the
character lunch gobbles up far more time than counter service would, and eliminates
eating at the most excellent Flame Tree Barbecue.
On the other hand, the food was freakin’ fantastic. That’s not just me being the insane Disney
fan and complimenting their everything again.
This place had delicious and diverse food even compared to the rest of
Disney World’s awesome eateries.
Clearly, the non-existent Grids of the Disney’s yet to come will be
altered by this meal.
Deciding not to run East Jeezus across Animal Kingdom for a change,
we remained in Africa. Our walk through the Pangani Forest Trail was undeterred
by the disturbingly large flock of vultures circling over the exhibit.
Anabelle decided she wanted to check out one of the many
Wilderness Explorers’ booths that were splattered all over the park, but more
concentrated in the walk through safaris.
She received her faux scouting guide.
It was similar to the worksheets I tend to complain about at museums and
zoos. However unlike them, this being
Disney, it was straightforward and entertaining, while still being educational. Most of the badges (distributed as stickers)
involved interacting with the Awesome Happy Disney Wilderness Guides at the
stations for some interpersonal learning.
I didn’t have to worry about missing the “back side of
water” on the Jungle Cruise. This is
because the Pangani Trail gave me more than enough exposures to the backsides
of monkeys, the backsides of hippos, and the backsides of so many other
animals, I was quite done with backsides by the end of the day.
We took some brief interludes in the little shops to
unsuccessfully find Rosa a visor, and to listen and watch the street drummers
in Africa and Indian dancers in Asia.
Anabelle’s audience participation-o-meter was at a low, preventing her
from joining in as we continued around toward Discovery Island for our third
and final FastPass Plus in that park.
They really should have more places to meet the First Mice
together, they always play off each other staggeringly well, and it’s an entertaining
treat for the whole family. They both
were very excited about Anabelle’s shirt featuring them, and Minnie comforted
Mickey when he was afraid of my Scar shirt. I tried to demonstrate through clearly
inadequate mime that I chose the shirt more for Ed the Hyena than for Scar.
Sadly, my actions ended up causing Mickey to need more comforting.
Minnie demonstrated her muscles by handling Anabelle’s giant
pen, greatly impressing her husband. (Walt stated that even though they date on
screen, those are only roles, and they are married in real life. He would have known.)
The Up meet and greet had ended already, leading us to zig
zag a bit for no reason, one of our favorite Disney pastimes, before entering
the bug movie. There’s almost never a
line for the giant theater, but I’m making the same suggestion to everyone else
that I made to my family.
Take your time walking under and through the Tree of Life,
the sculptures are outstandingly beautiful.
Many blend in perfectly with the natural looking surroundings, and can
be easily missed when running by at Mach Five.
Even if the delay causes you to just miss one seating for the show, the
time can easily be filled by checking out the witty Broadway parody posters in
the waiting area, or just leaning on the giant dung ball.
The movie was fun too.
Anabelle handled it much better than the fiasco at age five. She was still highly disturbed and grossed
out for quite a while afterwards by the maggots, roaches etc. that she felt
passing across her butt at the end of the show.
Mission accomplished Imaginers.
Our next stop was the character trails we missed over at the
doomed Camp Minnie Mickey. This
completed our clockwise circumnavigation of Animal Kingdom. I point out the excessive walking for those
planning to give me a hard time about the ice cream I’m about to mention in ten
sections.
With Jungle Book my
favorite, and formerly (her first trip at age two, very formerly) Anabelle’s
favorite, the main priority was Baloo and King Louis. The Cast Members once more complimented our
shirts, Rosa’s wood carved Bambi included.
I felt bad having to answer the repeated question of, “Did you get that
here?” with, “Sort of, there wasn’t a ‘here’ when I bought this in Adventureland.”
Not only did my t-shirt predate many employees, but Animal Kingdom itself. Anabelle’s selection of the pirate belt buckle
also proved popular with nearly every PhotoPass person.
Baloo mimed singing and dancing to Happy Birthday for
Anabelle. Many characters did this, and
it managed to confuse Anabelle every time.
This is why we really pushed for this trip, while she was still the age
to be star struck by the experience.
Baloo signed her pink fluffy princess book while King Louis tried to
keep dancing with her, because he’s a very musical ape. As fun and cool as he is in the film, in
person he’s kinda short, and has weird extended hands, making her reluctant to
grab on and join in.
We finished our last possible trip to Camp Minnie Mickey
with Chip and Dale, because they are awesome.
They did random goofy and confusing things to Anabelle and her pink fluffy
princess book because that’s who they are.
We have very strong Disney traditions, which should be
insanely obvious by now. Some center on
Mickey’s Jammin’ Jungle Parade.
One) We always find a great, close up spot to watch the
festivities.
Two) The spot we find is always directly in the fierce and
blazing afternoon Florida sun, leading to possible heatstroke.
Three) In order to fight off some of the heatstroke, we look
for Disney Dining Plan approved Mickey Ice Creams, and fail to find them.
On every other trip, we would approach our sun bleached
parade spot from Africa or Dinoland, where the only ice cream vendors were
serving hand scooped Hagen Daas. While
that particular treat is both on plan and probably higher quality than what we
were looking for, it was not “what we were looking for.” Also, several of those stands were on the
parade route itself, and shut down while we found our self-baking spot.
The parade was just as much fun as every other time we
sweated through it. The heat seemed to
addle the brain of a family near us, causing them to decide to leave right
before the fun started. That netted us
an even better spot in front of the store than we started with, allowing
characters and giant animal puppets to harass us throughout the show.
Rosa’s video once again wobbled to the beat
as she continued her own tradition of single hand dances.
A quick check of the ever helpful MyDisneyExperience app indicated our plan’s for doing the whole park in one day was shot by a broken Dinosaur ride. Plan B of revisiting Everest was similarly busted, as was the coaster. This switched Saturday’s Grid entry from “Probably Animal Kingdom” to “Definitely Animal Kingdom.” I guess I’m experienced enough with Gridmaking by now that most of the “probably”s turn out to be correct.
The only other attraction we cared about was back in
Asia. We still refused to go to the
environmentalism heavy Rafiki’s Planet Watch, partially because none of the
descriptions excited us, but mostly as a tribute to Dad.
There was a brief stop for both Rosa and Anabelle to battle
the effects of the parade heatstroke in the old favorite Asia fountain. As much as I normally dislike walking around
all wet, even I saturated my hat to chill my brain after the heat jammin’. It was there that the little Peruvian kid
patch got loose on Anabelle’s cap leading Rosa to remove it to keep it from getting
lost. This left her headgear without any
image whatsoever on it. Clearly we had to remedy that situation. The McGinley
family Disney trip display standards are high.
Anabelle still was in non-participating mode, and went to
get the currency badge while nearby a Bhangra dance demonstration that pulled
in an extremely fun looking older anniversary couple. We saw them at several dance demonstrations
throughout our trip, proving very clearly that kids aren’t needed to have a
wonderful time in Disney World.
We stopped for some final pictures, shirt compliments and Explorer
Badges on the way off of Discovery Island.
The PhotoPass guy gave us a new card, which puzzled us, since we had
PhotoPass Plus and not an old card. He explained the PhotoPass web site was
changing that day, but not to worry as there wouldn’t be any issues.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
On the way out of the oasis to the park exit, we saw the anteater!
YAY!
Nearly impossible to photograph due to movement and shadows,
but we got to see him walk around a while.
YAY!
I like anteaters, leave me alone.
YAY!
Some entertaining fellow switched the arrow on the bus stop
direction sign, sending us in the wrong direction. We recovered just in time to
see a half empty bus leave our stop, and then have to pack in the next one
sardine like.
We sat near the same family we were near on the way in. It was obvious because they were very
distinctive.
They had three girls.
Based on their looks Rosa thought they were twins and a sister close in
age, and I thought they were triplets. Based on their accents Rosa thought they were
from Chile, Uruguay, or Argentina and I thought…
They spoke Spanish.
Animal Kingdom closed early, at 5PM. Instead of rushing to a
distant dinner reservation, we left this night aside to explore and pool hop at
our new neighbors, the Art of Animation resort.
Of course, the daily thunderstorm of inconvenience hit as
soon as we de-bussed.
Knowing the minimal duration of Florida storms, we changed
into our TARDISy pool wear, grabbed umbrellas, and crossed the bridge to our
sister resort.
Art of Animation was pretty much a mirror to the Pop
Century, though the theming was film specific rather than decade, which added
more cohesiveness and immersiveness to each area.
The center of the resort was Finding Nemo based, and oriented around giant sculptures like the
Pop. The difference was instead of a main and kiddie pool, there was one large
fenced in area containing the pool, a coral themed playground and a laminar
flow fountain. The fence was keyed only to Art of Animation guests’ key cards
and Magic Bands. This saddened Anabelle more than the rain.
As we passed though all the sections, we discussed the post
lottery win stay in Disney World for a year plan, and how we would be changing
hotels and areas during that time.
To quote the ads, “Hey, you never know.”
Once again, we had walked off the “too full to look at food”
feeling from lunch and were starving.
The main building was filled with concept art from each of the four
films. While the cafeteria followed the
same general plan as Everything Pop, it was slightly more upscale. There were multiple “make your own” stations
for Pasta, salad, and others. The ingredients also seemed a bit fancier, such
as salmon instead of tilapia fillets.
The plates and flatware were real as well, forcing me to concentrate a
great deal to prevent throwing them out, especially after the opening day mug
lid fiasco.
When we heard the finale of Illuminations from EPCOT, we
realized our “go to bed early in Disney World” plan had, yet again, vanished in
a puff of, “We’re having too much fun.”
As soon as we exited the pool the temperature dropped and it
started raining again. More rushing was
in order, to get back across the bridge and behind the Play Doh can to the warm
room.
On the way, a large group of teenage girls cheered our
shirts yelling about the TARDIS and Doctor Who. I smiled and waved, while the
geeky kid hidden in the back of my mind yelled, “Where the hell were you thirty
years ago!?”
We dried off extensively and changed. I went on the more
required than usual hot chocolate run. On the way back, I priced a shot of
Bailey’s at the bar pool for my coffee to aid in warming up. I decided not to buy one because I was
concerned it would make me fall asleep even before I stopped moving.
We placed both Anabelle’s pairs of soaked sneakers near the
vent with packing paper acquired from the Awesome Happy Disney gift shop lady to
try to get some moisture out before the next day.
We finished up any and all other preparations to be ready
for much more important extra magic hours the next morning.
Disney 2013 Trip Index
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