Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Animal Kingdom

Monday morning, the 14th was Animal Kingdom Morning.

I had a stupid tourist moment as I entered the park. The ticket I had looked so much like a Metro Pass that I missed the place where a reader photos your fingerprint. So I stood there stupidly wondering where my ticket was going to be spat out before a nice guide instructed me to put my fingerprint on the gate. 

Wow. All Disney has to do is hook up with the FBI and I'll bet they could collect a lot of data. Come to think of it, if there are any finger prints on the on-site scene of a crime, they've already got ticket info.

I was going to go all crazy taking photographs of everything when I realized I probably already have photographs of everything. So I had a pleasant experience remembering things like lampposts and lamp shades that I hadn't seen in over seven years.  I like the way many of the artifacts in the Animal Kingdom have intertwined animals on them.

We went on the Safari, which no longer has the poachers or a shaky bridge. I'll have to see if we got close enough to take photographs of the animals. I'm going to bet Mark got some pretty good shots. My camera is better for close up objects and architectural details.

When I told her I was going to DisneyWorld, Nina wished me fun and lots of opportunities to get story ideas. So this morning's idea is the Komodo Dragon keeper.

I wish I could have placed her accent. It wasn't' Georgian; it sounded almost rural Oregonian because of the way the keeper said, "don't got no," and "ain't got none."

The Komodo Dragon is canabalistic. Mating is hard on the females. And bigger males will kill and eat smaller males. They look after the eggs, but once the kids hatch it's dinner time. The baby Komodo Dragons instinctively know to climb trees so that Mom and Dad don't eat them. Probably about half the kids make it. The Komodo Dragon Disney has is a male, because a solitary female is hermaphroditic, and can self-fertilize. In fact, there were no baby Komodo Dragons at Disney, because, "Then they could climb trees and get at us."

The Komodo dragon--which had been eating something near the back of its enclosure--turned around, came a little forward, and looked at his keeper.  He appeared to have gold eyeliner.

"Yah," she said, "You looking at me? I'm talking about you, Mr. Evil." The Komodo Dragon's tongue licked out as it stared at us. "What were you eating? Why didn't you show me?" The hypothesis was that a baby rabbit had wandered in too the Komodo Dragon's area. (Where would a wild baby rabbit live in Disney Worlds Animal Kingdom? I hope there were no pocket watches involved.)

Mark has taken something for his motion sickness, so he can go on some of the rides (hes still refuses to get on the Mission Mars ride) We went on the Kahli River ride, some of us got completely soaked (Hot Tip: If you don't want to get soaked, sit between two small children; on the big slide at the ride's end, the heavier side of the raft tends to turn to the lead and then splash up against the current at the slide's bottom, swamping the riders at that end). We went on it twice.

Then we went onto the Mt Everest Yeti ride.  I liked the Yeti temple we climbed through on the way up.  They make clever use of track switches and backwards falls. Now that I think about it, just looking at the ride, you'd never know that large portions of it go backwards. And corkscrew. Mark only went on that one once.



Back at the condo, we took a nap. A really long nap.  This set the pattern for our Disney crepuscular existence of early morning entrances and late evening lingerings.

Then we went to Disney's Hollywood park. I like the fake sets.  At the Imperial Palace Theatre, I took a picture of the dress Dame Judy Dench wore as Queen Elizabeth I

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