On Sunday, Karen, Val, Geri and the girls went off to Universal Studios to see the Harry Potter exhibit. My parents were going to spend the whole day with us.
First up was breakfast at The Tusker House at Animal Kingdom. We had 9:15 reservations. I wanted to leave at 8:00 a.m. I was very clear about wanting to leave at 8:00 because of the awful transportation we had had thus far in the trip. Better to be early than late. Better to take a slow, leisurely walk to the restaurant than to have to leg it.
Apparently 8:00 didn’t fit into Margie’s plan. She dicked around for ages and we didn’t leave until 8:30. That just drives me batty. It really does. Let’s just get going already folks. Get the lead out! We leave the room and make it downstairs, only for my parents to tool off in their matching red scooters in the opposite direction. My blood pressure must have been skyrocketing. They do this when they drive, too. They don’t keep up, get lost and then make up their own directions. You have to spend time waiting for them and finding them. Fortunately, we met up with Kristy and Geri and Kristy ran off after them.
So of course, we arrived at the bus stop just the wrong time. There was a crowd at the bus stop, standing on the spot where people are supposed to wait if they need assistance. The bus stop cleared out--except for us and a few other soles--because busses arrived for every single one of the parks and other places to go--except Animal Kingdom.
When the bus finally arrived, it turned out that people in scooters got on the bus first. It’s a long drawn out process involving the bus driver getting out of his seat and then having to help you drive your scooter up onto a ramp, then buckle you into a space. One scooter takes about 7 or 8 minutes, depending on how much you can assist the driver by driving your scooter up the ramp and then parallel park into a tight spot. We’re already running late, then we had to wait for a bus, and then we had to wait to get everyone on the bus all the while frustrated because they had waited, too. Then the stupid bus went to Blizzard Beach first!!!
Once we were on the bus, John and I started talking with a family who happened to be from a couple of towns over. That was one thing about this trip. Everyone at Walt Disney World was either from Massachusetts, Connecticut or New York. One of the men asked me about my dad’s hat. My dad was wearing his First Armored Division hat. The man said that he thought that was cool that my dad had served and had actually driven a tank.
We got to Animal Kingdom just at 9:30. Fifteen minutes late for our reservation. I thought I would just run for the restaurant and check us in and then wait for everyone else to join me. Anna had to come with me because she was attached to me at the freakin’ hip for the whole trip. I didn’t even stop for the stroller, I pulled her through the bag check and then through the turnstile. Then we really ran. She whined, of course, but I just pulled her along.
We got to the restaurant and checked in. The sweat was pouring off of me in buckets; it was gross. A table was ready for us pretty soon after, but they wouldn’t seat us until our entire party was there. More blood pressure issues I'm sure. I have a really hard time with waiting and with being late. It bothers me so much that it makes my stomach hurt. But there was nothing else to do, so Anna and I waited and waited and waited. It took them about 20 or so minutes to get from the front of the park to the restaurant. The look on John’s face was pure agony. He said that it was the most painful part of his trip. They parked the scooters, and then we were ready to go.
We got our pictures taken with Donald, which was the highlight of the day as far as Anna was concerned. Then we were seated at our table.
The food was good. The food was really good (particularly the juice they served), but the room was loud and chaotic. My parents were overwhelmed. My children were overwhelmed and all I wanted out of life was more caffeine. Had I more caffeine, things would have been so much better, I think. I was wound like a top. Anna wouldn’t let me leave—not to go to the bathroom, not to go get food, not to do anything. I had to be right where she could see me and reach out to touch me if she needed to.
Tusker house is a buffet. The food is in one room and there are at least three other rooms filled with tables. The room we were in was large and the acoustics were uncomfortable. And honestly, while I have some great pictures, I don’t think the character interactions were as good as at the other restaurants we ate at. I don’t think that I would choose to eat here again.
We left the Tusker House and decided to do the Mount Kilimanjaro Safaris. I figured we could all do that one and we would all enjoy it. We did, but…
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| Before the accident... |
The line for Kilimanjaro Safaris moved quickly, but the stroller and scooter parking was well down the line. You could stroll and/or scoot pretty far through the queue, and you could bring the scooters all the way to the ride itself. The queue twisted and turned between railings. It was not really easy to navigate with the scooters. Then there were small covered, walled sections made to look like little buildings along the way. These posed a problem to my mother because as soon as she went under the covering, she couldn’t see. She would stop dead. This held up the people behind us and just made me tense.
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| Happy as a clam, both of them. |
Close to where the ride started, a cast member called John over to park the stroller. My mom was not paying attention and she followed John still in the stroller. My dad and I called out to her, and the cast member told her to stop, but she just kept following John.
Two things happened at once. The first was that Anna jumped out of the stroller and ran toward me, realizing that if she went with her dad, I would be out of sight. The second was that my mother realized her mistake and was flustered. In the process of being flustered, she turned the scooter and floored it, pinning Anna to a post in the railing.
Anna wasn’t hurt, crying or even upset by it, so we kind of brushed it off. My mother was upset. The cast member was concerned. But really, there was nothing wrong with Anna. We examined her, dusted her off and gave her a few kisses for good measure, but there was nothing the matter with her. If I had yelled at my mother, like I really wanted to do, nothing would have been accomplished. It would have not only made a scene, but would have just thrown the day in the scrapper. I was pretty sure we were headed that way anyway, but I wanted to prolong the even
We ventured forth onto our safari without any other incidents. Both my kids and my parents really enjoyed the safari. I got to sit next to Jack, which was nice. He and I got to talk and point animals out the whole ride. I forget all the animals we saw and in the order, but we saw giraffes, elephants, a white rhino, some kind of big cat (not the lion), flamingoes, some kind of monkeys, alligators, hippos, and an ostrich who came pretty much eye-to-eye with Jack.
After our safari, we split up. Anna, my parents and I went to Rafiki’s Planet Watch. Jack and John went off to Expedition Everest. Both activities, it turns out, were huge mistakes.
I got confused and thought I had to park my stroller to get on the train to Rafiki. In reality I could have brought it because it folded up. We got the scooters on the train and everything was good, but Anna was too hot and tired to want to walk around and there was no way I was going to let Anna ride with Margie on the scooter again, and she didn’t want to ride in the scooter with my dad. I had to drag her down a particularly long path toward the train. Once we got to the station, I didn’t see a lot of things there aside from a little petting zoo, but I didn't really look around. Not big into the petting zoo because if we really wanted to pet animals, we’d drive out to see Auntie Karen and not go all the way to Disney World. Anna soon tired of everything anyway.
I put my parents and my kids back on the train and back toward the main part of Animal Kingdom. The best part of the whole thing was the train ride because we drove by where the animals at Animal Kingdom are kept at night time and when they’re just hanging around. We saw a ton of white rhinos. It was also a little break from the heat.
My parents, Anna and I found a place in the shade at our meeting place and just waited. I bought Anna misting fan, which amused her greatly and bided the time while we waited for Jack and John. Mom bought us sodas (which turned into an ordeal to watch as she shuffled across the pathway toward the little drinks stand a couple of times carting back sodas, but it kept her amused while we waited for Jack and John). Dad and I just hung. We were both a little tired and worn out from all this scooter drama.
While we were waiting, a guy came up to him. The guy was wearing a Vietnam Veteran hat. He came over, shook my dad’s hand and thanked him for his service. Then he walked off. Nothing else. I thought I would cry. He didn't even wait for us to return the favor.
John and Jack came back, and it turns out that Expedition Everest really shouldn’t be the first real roller coaster experience for particularly nervous and wary children. They’d recovered by the time they got back to us, but Jack was kind of turned off roller coasters for the rest of the trip. Apparently it goes backward in the pitch black at amazing speeds. Oh, and there’s a Yeti.
I bought Jack a misting fan because Anna had one. I gave him my soda because Anna had one, but his dad had bought him an ice pop. Some children are just a little spoiled (deservedly so, though, in this case). I had wanted to get our pictures taken in front of the Tree of Life, but I didn’t do it. I didn’t even have the energy to more than half suggest it to John. We both thought better of the idea.
We went back to the hotel and we all climbed into bed. The family we had talked to on the way to the park were actually on the bus on the way home, but we were all too tired and crabby to chat again.
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