Although ironically, unicorns were involved yesterday as we parked in the “unicorn” parking lot of Animal Kingdom. And we had half the required ingredients for rainbows. Rain. Lots of it.
It was raining. We knew it would rain. We didn’t care. We struck out for Animal Kingdom. Never having been there I was excited to go. We purposely stayed clear of it in 2002 when we went as it had just opened (well, 4 years prior) and still hadn’t fully completed construction. It was going to be a long day for me. My foot was hurting for some mysterious reason and walking was…difficult. But I could limp it out. Would just need to sit down for more frequent breaks. We get to the park and head in. Crossing over the bridge to “Discovery Island” a photographer takes our pic with the centerpiece Tree of Life in the background (AK’s equivalent of Cinderella’s Castle or Spaceship Earth). We go into Discovery Island and see a few animals including black swans and ring tailed lemurs. Neither of the kids were really about animals today though. They wanted rides. So off we limped to Dinosaurland, U.S.A. – an obviously dinosaur-themed area that had a few rides. Unfortunately Ryan was only big enough for two of them and the roller coaster that he desperately wanted to go on was not one of them. We did go on one ride “DINOSAUR!” that was a car-based ride that took us back in time searching for a dinosaur. Nikki & I enjoyed it but it was a little scary for the boys.
After that we headed towards Asia for two more rides: Expedition Everest – the other coaster in the park that Ryan MAY have been tall enough for. We got there. It was broken and the best they had was that it will likely be running later in the day. Wouldn’t have mattered much anyway as Ryan was an inch too short to go on it. So we headed to the Kali River Rapids – a river rapid ride like all the other parks have were you sit in a big circular raft/floaty thing and get wet. Very wet. EXTREMELY wet. The kids loved it! Loved it so much they wanted to go on it again immediately after getting off of it. So we did. And we got wet. Very wet. EXTREMELY wet. At the end of the ride as we get off what do the kids want? Yep, you guessed it. Again. I sat this one out to rest my foot but Nikki took them on the third time. After that time both kids were almost to the point of shivering and Alex said “I think that’s enough for me.”
We really didn’t care about the rain as we were all soaked from the water ride but it was raining. My foot was still hurting. We decided to call it a day. We didn’t even make it into the “Africa” section of the park. There was one more ride there but the kids weren’t really interested in it. There was also a couple great walking tours that would have provided some great pictures of animals. But walking. And the kids weren’t about the animals.
On the way out we stopped at Rainforest Cafe for lunch. This is apparently the largest Rainforest Cafe in the world. Never having dined in one it was quite the experience. Quite the loud experience. And I’m 99% sure the staff must hate it whenever someone orders this dessert they have called The Volcano as it’s delivered to the table by a half dozen servers clapping and chanting like it’s someone’s birthday.
Animal Kingdom didn’t rank high in our books as places to return to anytime soon.
We got back to the villa and I rested for the afternoon. Woke up with my foot feeling much better (as in I could actually apply pressure to it). Went to Denny’s for supper, came home and chilled. Only other crappy part of the day was Ryan’s tablet decided to die. Won’t charge anymore. And while trying to see if I could fix it I cracked the glass covering the screen. So both tablets now have cracked glass and Ryan’s won’t work at all. Good thing they were stupid cheap.
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