Yesterday, the walkways had imprints of horse's hooves. Today, in Asia at Animal Kingdom, the walkways had bicycle track imprints. And in Discovery Island, the walkways were imprinted with leaves and twigs.
We got the park early - about 15 minutes before it opened and that was brilliant. The park was actually already open when we got there which was a bit confusing. But it's all part of the crowd control thing. These Americans have got large crowd control management down to a fine art. We could only walk up to a certain point and then there were 2 guys blocking the way with a long rope. When 8am came along, they walked us to the 'Everest Expedition' ride in a controlled manner - herded behind the rope. The problem is that they used to have mad rushes when the park opened and it was chaos, so this is how they have handled it and it worked really well.
The Everest Expedition roller coaster was really fun and, all in all, we went on it 4 times today and didn't have to queue longer than 5 minutes - thanks to the very cool Fast Pass system. The kids absolutely loved it and Ali is now an adrenalin junkie just like her brother!
The attention to detail is wonderful. When you get closer to the Everest Expedition, there are Tibetan prayer flags all over the place and the queuing area is decorated with all the things you'd find in an old-fashioned Nepal expedition - crampons, sleeping bags, ropes. Even the rooms feel like a Tibetan tea house.
The Africa section was a low point for me so we left quickly. Us South Africans are so lucky to have the real thing on our doorstep.
The dinasaur area was fun. I especially liked the area where all the visitors were being "herded" onto their cars - it was like a laboratory.
At lunch time, we ordered Asian takeaways and they came on those square cardboard boxes that you always see in the movies. Yesterday, I told the kids that from now on, we're going to share 2 meals instead of 3. But we didn't do that and, once again ended up with way too much food. How can anybody eat that much! So later in the day, we just bought 1 icecream and shared it as a snack. This is a much better plan. For dinner, I ordered 1 chicken caesar salad and 2 portion of chips ("we don't sell chips - we have fries"). That was a fine dinner for the 3 of us and there wasn't any waste. I can't say that we are overly impressed with the food.
Part of the 'rules' of this holiday is that the kids have to drink 500ml of water for every non-water drink. Little did I know that a non-water drink (ie: a "soda") will be served in a cup that is enough to feed a family of 4 and, wait for it... the cup is bottomless! So, when they've drunk the 750 mls in the cup, the waitress just comes along and brings ANOTHER one! The upside of this is that it's rather appalled the kids - how can a nation consume so much sugar! I think I may be winning them over on the water persuasion. This really is the land of abundance.
Then we went to the Finding Nemo show and so far, this has been my favourite thing. It didn't impress Luke much - no thrills or audience participation or water. But what creativity! It was a puppet show with dancers and singers holding or wearing their fish / shark / starfish / seaweed / turtle costumes and singing out the Nemo story. I absolutely loved it - it brought tears to my eyes. The costumes were just so wonderful and I just love the fact that there are people in our world whose passion it is to create such happiness. It was bliss. When our 30 min show was finished, the next bunch of people crowded into the theatre and the cast had to redo the whole thing - they must do it more than 12 times a day!
After Finding Nemo, we went to another 2 shows. "It's tough to be a bug" where we were squirted with acid, stung in the back, swatted, farted on by a stink bug and then cockroaches left the show under our seats. Really excellent 3D stage show. We saw it twice. Then we went to see the Lion King dance - somehow managing to arrive exactly as the doors closed - right on time.
Alice went to go and get her picture taken with Mickey Mouse and she was wearing an old Mickey t-shirt. Mickey was so funny when he saw himself on her t-shirt - he pointed to it and jumped up and down. All the characters that are wandering around the place are so good. To think that these people do this all day every day and still have so much energy - you'd think they were doing it for their first time.
Oh - earlier in the day, Ali had also had a picture taken with her and a Disney dog - one of the Disney characters I'm not familiar with. I didn't see it, but after Ali, there was a little kid on a leash and the dog was holding onto the kids leash. How funny.
We came back to the hotel in the afternoon - I was hoping to get to one of the waterparks for a couple of hours. But that was a bit of bad planning because they close at 5. So we had a swim and a bit of a break and then headed back to Magic Kingdom at 6 of so for the evening.
Luke just wanted to do Space Mountain again and so he went to get us fast passes. When he came back, the time for the fast pass was after 10pm. I didn't say anything, but I was not that impressed - it tied up our fast pass option for the whole night for something that we'd already done. I wanted to go to Fantasyland which I was a bit concerned about with Luke because it's too young for him and I was concerned that he'd get bored. But I was determined to see the things so we started the 50 min queue to see the Little Mermaid show.
Along came L (name disguised so that she doesn't get into trouble). She had a permanent family fast pass and needed a family. Now how's that! She whizzed us off to the Little Mermaid, Winnie the Pooh and Peter Pans flight and after about an hour we'd done all 3 and had a good conversation about cuss words in America.
It was awesome and I think that Luke would have been miserable if we'd spent entire evening in queues for these little kiddie rides. As it turned out, he loved them because we could do them quickly and L was a hoot.
Then we rode the carousel (just like in the movies), went to Mickey's PhilharMagic (more 3D theatre with a splash) and went to It' A Small World - all 3 of them had no queues.
Finished all of that just in time to see the electric parade, and the nighttime spectacular - a fireworks display that went on for about 15 mins above Cinderella's castle.
Finally, our Fast Pass for Space Mountain was valid and we did that ride again.
Last year, when we went to the Kruger, I really felt that we had some kind of well wishing fairy looking over us and keeping us safe and making everything work out really well for us. That fairy is back and I hope it stays with us for the full two weeks (touch wood). We've been so lucky with our timings of things and strangers have been so kind. The weather is wonderful - I can't bear the heat and it's just perfect. I just feel so lucky to be able to be here with 2 such special kids that are having a ball.
Now that we've shared our final ice cream for the day, it's time for teeth and then bed. I am absolutely pooped. Night Night.
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