Don & Laurie's Grandchild Trip

Day 4 - Tue 4/25 - Animal Kingdom

Don and Laurie, with almost-6-year-old granddaughter Serina

When we get up this morning Serina is all happy and bouncy, wonderful to confirm that last night's trauma was just a case of being overly tired. She even reads a whole Sesame Street book by herself while we have our showers. I find myself thinking of the Old Troll again at breakfast this morning, as we sit next to a table full of bored teenagers playing table hockey with a box of Frosted Flakes.

Laurie describes us as "regular tourists" again today, we're just finishing breakfast and are heading off to Animal Kingdom at almost 10:00. Looks to me like this will be the "day off" we intended to take yesterday. After last night's episode, a 6:00 park closing is probably just about what we need.

We just miss getting Rafiki's autograph on the way in the park, but he had to go somewhere. We stop to look at a few animals on the way in, spending the most time with the flamingos, which she's been talking about since before we came. Just past the Oasis, the girls get in line for pictures with Lilo & Stitch. Serina's all for it until she sees Stitch picking on everyone (sometimes literally), and then she wants to bail. We finally get the picture when Laurie agrees that she'll stand on Stitch's side and Serina can stand by Lilo.

It's different for us touring with a girl that's in school already, kind of neat when she can point to the sign on the bridge and tell us "that says Africa." Our plan is to get FastPasses for the safari and walk through the Mahatmagandi Jungle Trek, or whatever it's called now. The park seems crowded today, but then Animal Kingdom always seems more crowded than it really is because all the walks are narrow and there isn't a lot of open space on your sides. It can't be too crowded, because at 10:55 the standby line for the safari is 20 minutes. Heck, the line for the Mickey bars is 25.

We decide to get the FPs anyway and get in the ice cream line. By the time we're finished, the girl is so desperate for a "ride" that we decide to postpone the Trek and take the train to conservation station. There isn't too much on the path up there that interests her, but we have to sit outside for a bit when we get there because there's a garbage can walking around talking to people, saying things like "Thanks, I haven't had anything to eat all day!"

She's objecting to all the walking we have to do inside, because her toe hurts. But we let her pick the path, which takes us fairly quickly to the animal hospital. Some kind of sheep had a bloody nose this morning, and he made it here because it wouldn't stop bleeding. A guide is telling us everything about the doctors and the process, and it seems that Serina is as interested as we are. But after a few minutes she looks up at us and says "would we be able to walk more now and see something else?" Sure, you're driving. All kinds of interesting lizards, and snakes, and eggs. As a bonus, we get autographs from Stanley and Rafiki.

We get outside to the Affection Section and there's just no way she's going in there to pet those stinky animals, so we'll head back to the safari. Amazing how a few minutes ago her toe hurt too much to walk, but she can now run to beat us to the train.

On the way to the Safari, it's twenty questions again -- "Is it a ride? Are we going to get wet? Does it go fast? Is it bumpy? Is it dark?" She ends up enjoying it, but it's just a big zoo to her. In fact the elephants here aren't any big deal at all, "at the zoo they throw sand at each other." Well this is Florida, honey, these are (re)tired elephants.

The thing that impresses her most about the safari becomes clear after our driver tells us what some animal or other does in the wild. "The bus driver knows about animals?!!?" That's another big difference between Serina and the preschoolers; she has a bus driver every day. (Later in the trip she would explain to us the differences between the park bus and a "real" bus -- a real bus is like an airplane, it has three seats on each side, and it has seat belts that are gray, red, and black. And it should be clear by now that real bus drivers don't know anything about animals either.)

On our way down from the safari to the PizzaFari, the question is "Am I getting more stuff than the other girls?", which draws us into a discussion of how everybody gets more of something but it all adds up to about the same. Laurie notes how nice and cool it is when we get inside the restaurant, and Serina thinks that what we need is one of those fan spray bottles. It's a very hot day, why not. Neither of the other two girls had ever asked for one, but we don't think it's a good idea to tell her that, there's all kinds of expensive stuff here that the others didn't get ;-)

Serina and I pick a table while Laurie goes to get our lunch. While we're waiting, I mention that I was impressed that she could spell Africa. She gives me kind of a puzzled look and says "I can't spell it, I can only read it." Okay, I hadn't thought about it, but those ARE two different things. She's looking a bit bored and says "too bad we don't have a pencil and paper." So after I supply her with her autograph pen and a napkin, I discover her plan is some high-spiritied tic-tac-toe action. Another first for me at Disney.

As we're finishing our lunch, she looks wistfully out into the courtyard and says "Grandma, don't you wish the Pooh ride was right outside this window?" We've wished that many times about something or other, especially at Animal Kingdom. As we leave the building, we're drawn across the street to look at some very big blue fish and take some pictures. Around the corner, Laurie doesn't recognize the animals on the island, but Serina does -- "they're otters, just like Hip and Hop!"

At Camp Minnie-Mickey, the only character we need to see is Goofy, since we "have" all the others. Surprisingly, Serina walks right up to him with pen and book in hand without any assistance, and Goofy scares ME ;-) It's a hot line for the Lion King show, but fortunately not too long. (Plus we've got the spray bottle fan going for us.) We get good seats right by the exit, in case we have to leave early. And we do, right after the tumble monkeys. It's WAY too loud. And we can't deny it, Disney doesn't do low volume, and this show may be the loudest we've seen.

We have kind of a neat thing happen at Flights of Wonder, we end up sitting right next to where the girl stands who has the big bird fly up to her. Serina's eyes are very wide when the bird comes at us, but it rates a "cool" afterward. She wants a ride now though, and she's trying to think of the rides we were telling her about this morning. She finally decides on the rabbit ride. Laurie and I look at each other and have absolutely no clue what the rabbit ride might be. "You know, the one that gets you all wet, the rabbit ride." Ohhhh, Cally River Rabbits!!

We really don't want to wait 45 minutes now for the rabbit ride, even with a spray bottle, so we're heading over to Dino Land. Serina says she wants to ride Primeval Whirl, but she's about 4" short. She's really bummed that Lexi got to ride it and she can't, but brightens noticeably when we tell her that Lexi was too short also. She does like the Triceratops Spin though. She and Laurie sit in the back so she can control elevation (if 4 feet qualifies as "elevation"). Toward the end of the ride, I push the "tip" button up front a couple times just to see what it will do. It doesn't seem to me that it does much at all, but she lets me know with certainty afterwards that I was NOT supposed to be playing with that.

She loves the Boneyard, but is a bit nervous about the tunnel slides because you can't see the bottom from the top. That shoots our hope of sitting at the bottom and resting our feet, and I end up doing some climbing in the Boneyard as well. "Papa, let's check out this path!!" Sure, why not. Fortunately, before I have to travel too many miles, it starts to rain and we take shelter under the platform. The rain doesn't last long, but it looks very dark in the distance and is probably a good time to leave.

Outside the park gate we run into Wendell, and I grab Serina's book and pen for her. As she and I are posing for our picture, Laurie's just standing there looking at me, saying "the camera's in the bag on your back." There's a line now, so we "pretend" we're posing for a picture and then get out of the way. But I'm forgetting that we can't leave it at that, because we're going to put each character's picture in her book on the page facing their autograph. So after we walk away, I pose Serina in the stroller about 20 feet from the bear and sit down on the ground and get their picture "together", sort of like Wendell was the castle or the golf ball ;-)

We get back to the hotel and send Serina immediately to the showers, she's wearing her ice cream again as she has every day. Laurie decides that since she has a headache anyway, she'll do a load of laundry while Serina and I go to the pool. Serina swims, I don't, because the storm has dropped the temperature about 20 degrees and it's very windy and I'm freezing. She's in the water saying "come on in, it's warm,", but there's a considerable difference between kid-warm and adult-warm. She goes through several cycles of swimming for 5 or 10 minutes, climbing out and running over to my chair for a swallow of her hot chocolate, then jumping back into the pool. She's definitely a princess now, when I tell her we're ready to go after about 45 minutes she says "Bring me a towel." And I do.

She's very bubbly and chatty during supper; life is good when you're not tired ;-) At one point, as Laurie is cutting her spaghetti, Serina begins gently rubbing Laurie's back as she's talking to me. Laurie melts. A little bonding is a wonderful thing.

She asks us if we liked that ride where the seat moves around and there's a wheel in the center. The Tea Cups? She says not, but we can't think of any other ride where the seat moves around. She says that in the center of the wheel it says "of". I don't remember looking closely at the TeaCups wheel, but there could be something on there. We ask her if she can remember the ride's name, but she can only tell us that the last word starts with a P. We ask her what park we were in. She doesn't know, but thinks it was on Day 2. That was Magic Kingdom day, and I'm still racking my brain to come up with something fitting that description when Laurie says "Carousel of Progress?" Yeah, that's it. Not how I would have described it, but then I didn't see it when I was 5. The seat DOES move around, and (in the first and last scenes) there's a wheel in the center of the stage, that has "of" in the middle. Yes, honey, we did like that ride very much, and you have a pretty good picture of it in your head.

It starts raining really hard during dinner, and we ask a security guard on our way out if it has let up any. He tells us they said it would be raining hard for 8 or 9 hours. Can't think of a better time at Disney for an all day rain than at night;-)

After the exciting 40-yard rain dash from the end of the food court to our room, Serina calls her daddy on the cell phone and he can't believe that she didn't have a nap today. She's all energy walking from one end of the room to the other as she talks. We get her dressed for bed and have our nightly snack. She's about halfway through her grapes when she rolls over, cuddles up with Pooh and Atta, and she's out like a light. Much better end than last night.

We should be well-rested in the morning for an early trip to MGM.

Day: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7