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As we were finishing up breakfast, I looked at my watch and saw it's 9:20!!! Oh no! Now we're going to have to wait for the ride!
We head through Chester and Hester's Dinorama and we try to make our way to Everest. I got us all turned around before I realized we needed to go under the big dinosaur instead of around the dinosaur. We finally make it to the bridge to Terebithia, um, Asia, and we are blessed with this sight:
Ok, so this picture was taken later from the other side, but it is still pretty impressive.
I grabbed everyone's tickets and got us our fast passes for Expedition Everest. We had some time to kill and the wait was about 40 for standby so what were we to do?
I suggest that we head over to the Safari since that was one of the things I was looking forward to the most.
So we all start the trek over to Africa. Oh man is this park hot!!! This was one of the days that you have probably heard everyone complaining about in TRs.
Well, we get to the safari and WHAT!?!?! HOW LONG IS THE WAIT? Eighty, 80, 8-0 minutes. Um yeah... I could have sworn that all of these touring plans tell you to get your fast passes for EE and they head over to KS. I guess not starting out at exactly 9 am was talking its toll on us.
Well, we decide to head over to Dinoland to hop on Dinosaur, but on our way we see this guy:
He start passing out instruments to everyone and DB, DM and I were handed some:
I had fun and it probably would have sounded really good if the loudest instrument was not given to the person with the least rhythm. A lady was given the cow bell and her rhythm this:
Thunk! Thunk! Thunk! (sorry, I am trying to imitate the sound of the cowbell which is neither a ding, bing, or bong)
Thunk!
Thunk!
Thunk!
Thunk!
Thunk!
Thunk!
Thunk!
It was a rather annoying, somewhat steady beat, but not fun steady clubbing beat (although clubbing her may have made the rhythm better )
We did have fun though and he had everyone pose for pictures:
The lady in the Turquoise behind me in the Thunker.
Rather than heading straight to Dinosaur we walk passed some of the animals that were on the way.
After looking around I check the time and realize that we are approaching our fast pass time so we detour to EE.
For the people who think that they don't enforce fast passes, here's a little story for you:
We get to EE and it is about 10:45 and our FPs are for 10:50, but we try to get through anyways.
No rejected.
We walk to the end of the line because it is now 10:46 and surely we will get through on the next go round.
Nope, rejected again.
We head to the end one more time (as does at least one other family, but it could have been up to 3 families doing the same thing). This time we get to the front at 10:48 and the CM kindly (and I mean it, she didn't have an attitude or anything) asks everyone who's entry time is not 10:45 or earlier to please step to the side.
So the lot of us step to the side but remain in the line that we had created and wait...
10:49...
The CM, this time not as nicely puts out a call for people with 10:45 or earlier...
10:49...
Will this this ever change???
10:49...
And we wait..
After the longest minute of my life, the clock switches!
10:50!!! All of us shout and we bum-rush the CM!
Okay, so we didn't take her down, but we all practically ran passed her flashing our now-valid FPs at her as we go.
I'm sorry, but I have no pictures of the queue or ride itself. I was a little nervous about riding the backwards portion of the ride becuase I have gotten a little bit more likely to become motion sick as I have gotten older. The first ride that I removed from my repetoire was the pirate ship (you know, the one that every amusement park has). This summer it took me some time to recover from the Sidewinder at Hershey park. That is one of those forward then backward coasters.
EVEREST WAS AWESOME!
I didn't get sick at all from the backwards portion of the ride either. It was nice and smooth and simply a lot of fun.
Since DM didn't go on this ride we had an extra FP and since I was in a generous mood, I gave it to DB so he could go on again. I then told DM, DSF1 and DSF2 to go over to Dinoland after he got off of the rider and DBF and I took everyone's tickets so that we could get FP for the Safari.
Along the way I saw this beauty:
I got the FPs and headed back to find everyone, but first I took a few minutes to listen to these guys:
We then went to find everyone else. Were they where I told them to meet us?
After we made our way back towards Everest, I was shocked to find everyone waiting where we had left them. I had purposely told everyone to go over to Dino-land so that DB wouldn't get bored. He didn't seem to care too much though that he had to wait for us.
So we gathered everyone up and attempted to head over to Dinosaur! I was really looking forward to this ride because I had loved to Indiana Jones ride in Disneyland and I was told that is was the same ride.
Unfortunately....
When we got there, the ride was down Oh no! We had planned on doing that and then heading over to Africa, but now we had to figure out an alternative plan. We were near Nemo: The Musical, but the show wasn't running that day. A quick glace at the times table and we saw that we could make it to the Flights of Wonder (?) show if we booked it.
Thankfully we made it and we were able to see some really cool birds along with some crazy tour guide who wandered up onto the stage.
This lovely blue bird is not able to fly according to the CM/handler. Apparently, its wings were clipped when it was very young. Because of that, it was never able to learn how to fly. The poor thing! Oh yeah, I'm sure that we could have had seats closer to the stage here, but it was so friggin' hot that we did not want to be so close to everyone. We went to the back and sat in front of the fans and took our shoes off.
It was now time to go on our Safari. This was the ride I was looking forward to the most in AK. THe FP line was a little long, but the wait was bearable. Once we boarded our vehicle, we were off on our two-week adventure that was so much fun it felt like it was only 20 minutes!
We so some of the most amazing sites:
We thankfully caught the poachers and found Little Red. After our safari, we wandered through the trail looking at the animals before I told everyone that we needed to get moving in order to see the Festival of the Lion King.
Along the way, we saw a steel drum band. DM and DSF1 got married in Grenada and DM has always loved the Caribbean. When the band finished to song that we were listening to, DM shouted out "Yellow Bird". The band, spreading some Disney magic took her request and played the song for her. Of course, she danced and tried to get me to dance, but I was tired and WAY too hot for that. I was a little bit nervous about making it to the Lion King though, so I needed to drag DM away and continue on our way.
We made it to the show and thankfully, there was seating still. Plenty of it. We again headed right up to the top of the bleachers, sat down and took our shoes off. We were in the worthogs section.
"When I was a young worthog...
"When he was a young wort HOG"
This is my favorite live action show in all of the world! I had lots of fun and the music was great.
I am definitely going back to this show again!
Next upom: The Perfect Storm
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