The day looked cooler than the one before, so I was not happy when Katherine announced that she Had to Wear Her Tank Top. After a great deal of angsty demonstration, I gave in — since she was putting on a sweatshirt over it, anyway. She spent the rest of the day happily showing everyone that she had a tank top on.
Today was the day for Animal Kingdom and Epcot. Margie was going to have a business dinner, so the plan was that Kitten and I would spend the morning and afternoon at AK, then bus over to Epcot for dinner and fireworks.
That’s not quite how it turned out.
WDW Tip: Taking a young child to a Disney park takes about twice the time and three times the energy of going with just adults. Single-parenting a young child takes six times the energy.
We arrived by bus at Animal Kingdom. No problem going through the main ticket area, except …
… well, interestingly, they asked for a fingerprint on admission (index and middle, by placing the fingers inside of a scanner). Mention was made of how this would identify you with your ticket/pass, which wasn’t a big deal to me.
(I noticed, later on, that Epcot, at least, had the same equipment in place, but wasn’t using it.)
We snagged a stroller, both for Kitten transport and for baggage. For the most part, we usually had at least a day pack with umbrellas, gorp, autograph book, etc. That could usually sit on the top of the stroller while in use, and be left in the seat while parked. Sometimes we added a separate satchel as well, to carry sweat shirts (if those weren’t in the backpack) or the video camera (which did not get left behind while on rides). That usually would sling over the handles of the stroller while in motion.
We headed off left for the Africa part of the park, taking the Safari Jeep once there. It was early enough that there weren’t many animals out, and Katherine was a bit bored. After that, we took the train over to Rafiki’s Planet Watch, which is part education center, part petting zoo. Katherine was not thrilled with the former, and was gigglingly entertained for only a short time by the latter. The talking trash can there got more of her attention.
Then … India. Ah, India …
We went through the Maharajah Jungle Trek, which is a wonderfully atmospheric zoo (centerpieced by Bengal tigers). Katherine opined distinctly that it was not suiting her, which led to some irked interchanges between us.
Fine. Water it is.
We’d not been on the Kali River Raft Ride on our previous visits, but I decided to go with Katherine, coolish temps notwithstanding. As a nod to said temps, though, we bought ponchos. And, yes, I’m glad we did.
Given the nature of the December mid-week crowds and the weather, this was another walk-on (which whooshed us past some very nice decor). We hopped on a partially full raft (one of the ones with the special Kitten-capable seats), and floated on.
Lame.
I’ve been on river raft rides at different parks before — Magic Mountain, Eilitch Gardens (in both cases before their Six Flags era). Those are exciting, fast-moving, with big splashes and waterfalls to play Russian Roulette with.
Kali River? If you’re one of the unlucky 1/3 of the raft that’s on the bottom end when you go down the Big Hill, you’ll get drenched. Otherwise, you’ll suffer a few minor spashes. The End.
It’s a lovely ride, with all sorts of colorful decor, but as a raft ride, it gets one water drop out of four. The little video on Disney’s page is more exciting than the actual ride, except for that one big drop.
The crowds were light enough that they were offering to let people go again (staying on the boat). We went on it three times, which amounted in my mind to one decent ride’s worth of thrills.
Quick succession, then. Bird Show (Katherine enjoyed, and it was a decent example of same, if undistinguished as such), then the It’s Tough to Be a Bug show at the base of the Tree of Life (entertaining, fun 3-D and special effects, and one that Katherine enjoys).
From there, we headed for Dino Land USA, the Most Schizophrenic Land at WDW. Is it educational? Is it carnival? Is it sophisticated? Is it tawdry? Is it fun! Is it stodgy? The answer is — “Yes!”
First, Katherine’s favorite feature at AK, the Boneyard, essentially a huge jungle gym and sand box masquerading as a dinosaur dig. Ladders, nets, slides, tunnels, and things to dig. Katherine was in seventh heaven.
The amusing part was when we were in the sandbox area, which is all heaped around a large mammoth “fossil” (which Katherine kept trying to organize the other kids to help dig out). On one of her excavation breaks, I pointed out to her the large “map” of the “dig” off to one side. “Hey!” she noted, “that’s what’s in there!”
She was so tickled by this revelation, she dashed back into the sandbox and dragged out one of the boys she was playing with to show him.
From there we went over to see Dinosaur, based on the hit flop movie that Disney would just as soon you forget about (so that it can tout the upcoming Chicken Little as its first non-Pixar foray into CG animation). The ride itself is part Tunnel of Love horror show, part Indiana Jones Adventure (using the same sort of jeeps as at the Anaheim Indy ride), part time travel story (Note: Time Travel Adventure of the Day Number 1).
It’s, um, not a very good ride. Not boring, but not very good.
From there, off to the TriceraTop Spin (Dumbo in a dinosaur suit), walking the bridge over to Asia (to check out construction on the new Mount Everest roller coaster, which may give Animal Kingdom a needed shot in the arm), and then …
… the inevitable Gift Shop Crawl at the end of the day at Animal Kingdom, and out.
Though no trip could possibly complete without the highlight of the day, the Seventy-Five Yard Dash With Kid Up On Shoulders For The Departing Bus For Epcot. Try it. It’s exhilarating.
On arrival at Epcot, and pickup of another stroller, we found where Margie and I have our picture at the Leave a Legacy pavilion at the front (for the record, it’s West-4-C-1-1-4 … though, really, the last should be a 2, since it’s the second picture from the left, first (bottom) row, first (bottom) plaque, column C, fourth row, on the west, from the fountain. Now you can all go see it, too.
(Katherine was with us, a baby still, when we first visited Epcot. It was afternoon when we went to do the plaque thing that day, and she was zonked out in the stroller. Alas.)
Since it was about 4:30 p.m. at this point, which gave us five hours to the fireworks, I decided we could backfill in a number of Future World rides. First off, then, was Spaceship Earth, the “golf ball” ride. This “Communication Is Our Friend Throughout History” (Note: Time Travel Adventure of the Day Number 2) slow ride typifies the “old” Epcot, complete with large ride queue area outside (never the least bit full in my experience).
The ride is sponsored by AT&T, which used to have an interesting “high tech” phone technology section in the lobby at the very end. That’s all now walled up and gone.
Kitten loved it. I think she loved it for the cars going up and down and backwards (though the audio-animatronics are decent, and, for what it is, it’s one of the best of the Epcot slow rides).
From there, we went over to Energy. This is another Old School educational slow ride at Epcot. It’s been inexplicably spruced up by using Ellen Degeneres, Bill Nye, and “Jeopardy!” as a surreal framing sequence and explanation of why it’s important to learn about energy (Note: Time Travel Adventure of the Day Number 3), but, frankly, it’s a lot more interesting and amusing watching how the large sections of the audience “cars” break off and do an intricate ballet through the ride than listening to the sound track.
Just like Spaceship Earth, the ride has room for a million zillion people to queue through it, versus the few dozen that were there (and, I suspect, are close to the peak attendance, even in the summer). Though, to be fair, Katherine enjoyed that one, too.
From there, it was back to Test Track — and, amazingly, it was nearly empty, just a walk-on.
We went on it three times. Much fun. Though I could see signs of why it’s been so problem-prone — each of the three rides had something wrong with the onboard presentation (sound system, video system). It was still fun, but a bit annoying.
Three times, though, and I realized I was about at the end of my rope. Especially after, the third time through, Katherine spotted “Dreamchasers” — a GM-sponsored GM ad for cool car technology coming to you soon on a GM car. What she liked was that you see it all as a 3-D presentation riding on little chairs that turn around and envelop your head with the viewscreen and earphones. She thought that rocked. I thought it was passable once, the previous Test Track visit, and had managed to steer her past it twice. Third time was the charm, though … it’s hard to put something over on that girl for too long.
At this point, I realized that neither of us were going to make it to fireworks at 9:30 p.m. (let alone figure out what we were going to do for dinner). So … we headed back home … er, to the hotel.
Katherine and I had a nice, quiet (inexpensive) dinner at the dining hall at Riverside — during which time, Margie caught up with us. We did a little shopping in the store there, caught the end of the piano player entertainment in the bar, and called it an evening.