Keane's August 2011 Trip, Part 4
"It Was Hot, Then It Rained, Repeat Tomorrow"
Please see Part 1 for cast and plot summary...
Day 3, August 18th. Animal Kingdom,
Almost Epcot and Rain! Imagine that...
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We go through bagcheck, and lose yet another 5 minutes of my life that I will never get back.
We walk back to Asia, and get in the standby line for Expedition Everest, and at the end of the queue, Jenny and Cathy announce there are only two in their party and are allowed on, and I am stopped like some club goer who can't get in because I'm not on the list while fastpass holders are funneled into the boarding queue. sniff. So I'm a couple of trains behind them, and get to ride with a single rider, a young lass from southeast Asia, who is riding for the second time today.
The cheesy bird at the end of the first forward track is gone and replaced, while Betty is still in B mode, and the strobes they put in do little to make it look like she's moving. I guess all the attempted fixes didn't work.
We exit, and wander over to Kali, and it's a 40 minute wait, so we wander back to Dinosaur which is almost a walk on. We once again save Aldar from the comet, exit the dinostore, and walk back to Asia, where Kali is a 25 minute wait. So we go on.
Kali is another ride I've never been on, since I've always had a lot of electronics with me. But everything I have will fit in one of my emergency t-shirt bags, so we board. Of course, we are backwards at the bottom of the big hill, and get soaked.
If I had to compare Kali and Bluto's Bilgerat Barges in Islands of Adventure (both spinning raft rides), I'd say Bluto's in IoA is the superior of the two. It's faster, will get you just as wet, and is less politically correct. Just sayin'.
We're wet, but it's not cooling us off. We're just hot wet. So we're out of the park and back to cool off at the resort.
Animal Kingdom, Oasis/Bus Stops
We bused back to CSR, changed into dry clothes, and ate lunch in Pepper Market. I had the Steak Fajitas. The brain cells that held what Jenny and Cathy had has died. Be disappointed. After lunch, Jenny has to head over to guest services to get a jogging trail map. While we're there, I see Guide For Guests With Disabilities for all four parks, which are park maps, but with accessibility information. More data mining for my next trip... :-)
I'm down for a nap during the hot of the day (and a good one at that), then get a call, we're going into Epcot for dinner and perhaps some adult beverages. Now, we're talkin'!
We meet in El Centro, and board an Epcot bus. No sooner do we board, then I see cloud-to-ground lightning. Oh good. We stop at Blizzard Beach, and it begins to rain. By the time we get to Epcot, we are in a serious heavy downpour, with lightning and thunder. Instead of being dropped off at the CSR bus stop, we are once again dropped off at one of the furthest bus stops from the entrance. Really not appreciated this time.
Most of us stay huddled under the canopy, where we find every other ceiling tile leaks. We figure it has to let up, right? Right? Wrong. Jenny finally decides she needs the bathroom, and we can mostly make it to the bathrooms under cover. Never the less, we are wet by the time we get there. We wait about an hour total and give up. It is raining just as hard as when we got off the bus. None of us are prepared for rain this hard, and we aren't even close to anyplace that we can buy a poncho. We are 50 yards from the CSR bus stop, so we make a run for it and get soaked.
It's still raining at bus at Bus Stop 2 (which is across from Casitas 4), and the walk across the parking lot soaks me down even further, and puddles are DEEP AND YES I'M WHINING! (I will later learn from this, get off at Bus Stop 1 at El Centro, and take the covered walkways back to the room. A farther, but dryer walk.)
We still haven't eaten, nor had anything close to resembling anti-freeze, so we change into dry clothes and meet at Rix Lounge, the new (for me) bar area in El Centro. It was still raining, and was able to walk most of the way to El Centro until we got to the low lying areas, where there were several inches of water. This required a couple of detours, once of which was in the rain, where rivers of water were draining from the complex into Lago Dorado.
We decide to eat bar food. Ordered the Scarpatti Flatbread, Cheese Empanadas and the Angus Beef Sliders. All were very tasty and perfect for bar food. Cathy and Jenny had a classic margarita, and I had the tequila flight. (The flight is three 1/2 shots of an agave Partida Blanco, Don Julio Reposado and Tres Generation Anejo tequilas, with a side of Sangrita, a tomato, citrus, and cilantro mixture that would make a great bloody mary mixer. Just sayin'. The Anejo tequila is a dangerous beast... I will have to crawl out of the tequila bar in Mexico one day...)
I must say, a good time was had by all. I really didn't have to help Jenny get Cathy back to their room, but I did have to sorta have to lead the way... ;-)
End August 2011 Trip Report - Part 4.
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