[Again, this is a re-blog of a trip that I took last year, that I’m just putting on this site, this trip took place from December 29th, 2017 to January 5th, 2018]
I meant to live blog while we were at least driving to Florida…. but well you can all see how wonderfully that worked out… Or to be honest, the second day was mainly filled with lots of driving…. and lots of traffic… And then when we finally got to the hotel, hours after we were meant to be there, I really just wanted to play Fire Emblem Awakening on my 3ds and didn’t feel like setting up my laptop…
Warning…. I like to think I’m a good photographer, whether or not that is true, you can decide… I’m far from some of the amazing photographers on this board… But there will be lots of pictures…I really don’t do well during night or rides that move fast, but I tried. Anyhow, Hopefully they don’t burn your eyes. I suppose you could always view them with eclipse glasses, surely those are easy to get since the eclipse is way over…
Anyhow on New Year’s Eve, I woke up at 5:00 am… see it’s just like school. I showered and then woke Justin up from his slumber, we hopped into his car and drove about 30 minutes to Pop Century… Though we seriously took a wrong turn on the journey to Pop Century and wound up at an extremely vacant MGM er Hollywood Studio’s parking lot, had to make a serious U-turn, and then finally arrived at Pop Century… Seeing how it was about 7:00 am or so when we finally got there, and there was no way our hotel room was ready, we just parked the car, and jumped on a very crowded bus to Animal Kingdom..
As the bus driver said “If you can see the floor, there’s room for more!” [and as a preschool teacher, man do I love saying like that… though the one I seem to use the most is “you get what you get, and you don’t get upset…”]
We were squished against a large group of people [thank goodness I showered and put deodorant on that morning!] and listened to 70s and 80s rock the entire journey to the park.. AND IF I DON’T HEAR “I GOT YOU BAD” by Sonny and Cher EVER AGAIN, IT WOULDN’T BE SOON ENOUGH FOR ME!!! My parents used to TORTURE me with that song.. they’d take us to this diner with a jukebox [HE WAS A JUKEBOX HERO… sorry 80s tends to get stuck in my head a lot]and play that song and sing it horribly…. very loudly… and there was no paper bag large enough to cover my head with during those very loud public concerts… though I suppose I inherited my love for very BAD karaoke from the, so perhaps I should be indebted to them? Though I personally think I do an AMAZING rendition of “Piano Man” by Billy Joel.. But anyways… I HEARD THAT SONG ON THE BUS SO MANY FREAKING TIMES DURING OUR JOURNEYS TO THE PARK [and I heard a lot of journey too!]
Speaking of buses, we had AMAZING luck during our trip, there was ALWAYS a bus ready for us, whether we were leaving for a park, or returning to the hotel, and if the bus was full, one would pull up behind it immediately. I don’t know if there was an increased amount of buses because it was a crowded time, or I’m just lucky, but MAD PROPS to Pop Century’s Bus Service.
Anyhow, I digress… where was I?
Oh yes, ANIMAL KINGDOM.
But before that, there was a Christmas tree:
I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I was that Disney still had all their Christmas decorations still up. Have I also mentioned I’m Jewish and have major Christmas tree envy? And I’m an awful jew because I seriously get more excited about setting up my Christmas tree every year than I am about setting up my menorah.
So of course that called for a CHRISTMAS TREE SELFIE!!!
Now, I didn’t even realize that Animal Kingdom had EMH that day when I initially planned what days we were going to what parks. I just wanted to be FAR FAR FAR FAR away from the Not-So-Magical when it’s too crowded and you can’t move and Space Mountain has a 300 minute wait Kingdom, and the rave known as the World Showcase at Epcot. I also didn’t really want to go to MGM… er Hollywood Studios either because there are so few things open there, and my introvert tendencies prefer to be left alone and not in massive crowds of people [says that girl who loves mosh pits at rock concerts…..]. So AK it was.
Anyhow, so we got to get into AK early, which was an unexpected surprise. The first thing we did was see the Tree of Life.
Chapter Two: If you can see the floor, there’s room for more!
I meant to live blog while we were at least driving to Florida…. but well you can all see how wonderfully that worked out… Or to be honest, the second day was mainly filled with lots of driving…. and lots of traffic… And then when we finally got to the hotel, hours after we were meant to be there, I really just wanted to play Fire Emblem Awakening on my 3ds and didn’t feel like setting up my laptop…
Warning…. I like to think I’m a good photographer, whether or not that is true, you can decide… I’m far from some of the amazing photographers on this board… But there will be lots of pictures…I really don’t do well during night or rides that move fast, but I tried. Anyhow, Hopefully they don’t burn your eyes. I suppose you could always view them with eclipse glasses, surely those are easy to get since the eclipse is way over…
Anyhow on New Year’s Eve, I woke up at 5:00 am… see it’s just like school. I showered and then woke Justin up from his slumber, we hopped into his car and drove about 30 minutes to Pop Century… Though we seriously took a wrong turn on the journey to Pop Century and wound up at an extremely vacant MGM er Hollywood Studio’s parking lot, had to make a serious U-turn, and then finally arrived at Pop Century… Seeing how it was about 7:00 am or so when we finally got there, and there was no way our hotel room was ready, we just parked the car, and jumped on a very crowded bus to Animal Kingdom..
As the bus driver said “If you can see the floor, there’s room for more!” [and as a preschool teacher, man do I love saying like that… though the one I seem to use the most is “you get what you get, and you don’t get upset…”]
We were squished against a large group of people [thank goodness I showered and put deodorant on that morning!] and listened to 70s and 80s rock the entire journey to the park.. AND IF I DON’T HEAR “I GOT YOU BAD” by Sonny and Cher EVER AGAIN, IT WOULDN’T BE SOON ENOUGH FOR ME!!! My parents used to TORTURE me with that song.. they’d take us to this diner with a jukebox [HE WAS A JUKEBOX HERO… sorry 80s tends to get stuck in my head a lot]and play that song and sing it horribly…. very loudly… and there was no paper bag large enough to cover my head with during those very loud public concerts… though I suppose I inherited my love for very BAD karaoke from the, so perhaps I should be indebted to them? Though I personally think I do an AMAZING rendition of “Piano Man” by Billy Joel.. But anyways… I HEARD THAT SONG ON THE BUS SO MANY FREAKING TIMES DURING OUR JOURNEYS TO THE PARK [and I heard a lot of journey too!]
Speaking of buses, we had AMAZING luck during our trip, there was ALWAYS a bus ready for us, whether we were leaving for a park, or returning to the hotel, and if the bus was full, one would pull up behind it immediately. I don’t know if there was an increased amount of buses because it was a crowded time, or I’m just lucky, but MAD PROPS to Pop Century’s Bus Service.
Anyhow, I digress… where was I?
Oh yes, ANIMAL KINGDOM.
But before that, there was a Christmas tree:
I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I was that Disney still had all their Christmas decorations still up. Have I also mentioned I’m Jewish and have major Christmas tree envy? And I’m an awful jew because I seriously get more excited about setting up my Christmas tree every year than I am about setting up my menorah.
So of course that called for a CHRISTMAS TREE SELFIE!!!
Now, I didn’t even realize that Animal Kingdom had EMH that day when I initially planned what days we were going to what parks. I just wanted to be FAR FAR FAR FAR away from the Not-So-Magical when it’s too crowded and you can’t move and Space Mountain has a 300 minute wait Kingdom, and the rave known as the World Showcase at Epcot. I also didn’t really want to go to MGM… er Hollywood Studios either because there are so few things open there, and my introvert tendencies prefer to be left alone and not in massive crowds of people [says that girl who loves mosh pits at rock concerts…..]. So AK it was.
Anyhow, so we got to get into AK early, which was an unexpected surprise. The first thing we did was see the Tree of Life.
Followed by selfie at the Tree of Life:
We decided to ride Dinosaur because I figured Justin would like that… It was sort of like Indiana Jones from Disneyland, but Dinosaur themed. We literally walked right on the ride, no wait or anything.
Justin liked it a lot. That was a good start to our Disney trip… But the park was so empty, that they didn’t even bother to take pictures on the ride… I mean I tried to take pictures on the ride, but they just were colorful swirls, sort of like the pictures my students paint in class.
My only complaint was that it seemed short? I mean not as short as Navi River Journey [which I have a whole rant planned about], but just short.
After Dinosaur it was our turn to ride Primeval Whirl:
This ride was also a walk-on, though the girl, who was working there told us that the park had been SO crowded the day before that even PW had a huge wait that extended far past the building and she was surprised since PW isn’t really one of the more popular rides,.
I’m happy to let you all know that WE SURVIVED EXTINCTION AND MANAGED TO ESCAPE THE METEOR:
LOOK THE DINOSAURS INVENTED TEXT TALK B4 TEXT TALK WAS EVEN A THING… talk about a civilized species.
Primeval Whirl was OK? I think I read somewhere that you ride it once and that’s plenty… That’s sort of how I felt? I mean really it was just a Space Mountain like roller coaster that was outside as opposed to inside and dinosaur themed… I actually think the roller coaster would be better if it was an inside ride and in complete darkness, with maybe some cool lighting effects, but I wouldn’t say it was a bad ride. Justin seemed to really like it…. But he likes rides that spin… His love for the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party in Disneyland almost broke up our marriage.
By the time we finished narrowly escaping the meteor apocalypse, Dino-land was getting pretty crowded, and there were a few more rides we didn’t have fast-pass for that we needed to rope-drop, so I took a few quick pictures of the holiday decor and off we went.
Coming up next time… do JZSquared manage the trek up Everest, and did they spot the Yeti?
To be continued….