Tigger, is that you?

[vovat]

bethje 's comments are still in green.

Wednesday's park was Disney's Animal Kingdom. It's apparently very important to include that "Disney's" in there, even though it's pretty obvious that a park inside Walt Disney World would be owned by Disney. The bus that runs there has a marquee that can fit the words "Animal Kingdom," but for some reason they decided to have it change so that they can put "Disney's" on the marquee as well. Anyway, this is probably the park that I would be the least excited about revisiting if I were to ever return to Disney World, but it was fun to see once, and provided some excellent photo opportunities. The first thing we did was see "It's Tough to Be a Bug," which had some of the best 3D I've ever seen, as well as a familiar voice... The film prompted me to ponder how amusement parks are pretty much the only place where 3-D movies survive. We went on both a safari tram ride and a trail walk (one of the things we saw, I think on the trail, were spiny mice. This is interesting to me, because I used to have a spiny mouse, when I was in 5th grade. it was a crappy pet, really. The curious may ask me for details!) through the Africa area, which had several different African animals. One gorilla was in the process of eating its own feces when we passed him. The guy had known that they do this, but he said it was his first time seeing it, too. They do it to get more nutrients out of the food they eat. They eat their own puke, too. There was also a train ride to a petting zoo, although a lot of the animals were behind fences and didn't always want to walk up and be petted. Unfortunately they don't sell pellets to feed the animals, because if animals think you have food, that's when they get up in your face. The sheep and goats were out in the open, though. We didn't get a chance to walk on the Asia trail, but we did ride Expedition Everest, one of the newer roller coasters. I ended up buying a little cart containing Mickey Mouse and a Yeti in the gift shop for that ride. There was also a ride (Dinosaur: The Ride) featuring animatronic dinosaurs, and another one (Primeval Whirl) with a spinning car on a roller coaster track. Pretty much the same ride is at a lot of places, including Atlantic City where it's called the Crazy Mouse. The annoying thing was that the park's Extra Magic Hours meant it was open until 9, yet there was hardly anything to do after 6 or so.
Since we'd already used up three of our table service meals, we just got two counter service ones that day. For lunch, I had pizza, which seemed more like homemade than anything you could get at a pizzeria. I quite liked the crust, but the sauce was a little weird. My dinner was a hot dog and McDonald's French fries. bethje  had a hamburger and Chicken McNuggets for her two meals. In retrospect, and even right after ordering it, I felt bad about getting McDonalds food in Disney World. I was just really gung ho about not letting a counter service meal go to waste, and it was good, too. 

One thing I liked to do at each park everyday was look at the shops and see what kinds of things that offered at some but not at others. For instance, Animal Kingdom was the only place where I saw a plush Winnie the Pooh in a safari outfit. I like looking at things, you know?

Comments

[bec-87rb.livejournal.com]

Disney is a 360 degree sensory experience, isn't it?

I'll bite - what is a spiny mouse?

[bethje.livejournal.com]

A spiny mouse is just a kind of mouse that lives in Africa. Wikipedia says it has they have stiff guard hairs like the spines on a hedgehog. I got one when I was in fifth grade or thereabouts from a shady exotic petstore. I'd come to get your average pet mouse (snakefood), but I saw the spiny mice and got one of those, thinking they were weirder and therefore cooler. It was a really crappy pet. I couldn't even touch it, it was so fast, so I never even got to feel the spininess. I hadn't thought about it in ages, until we saw some in Animal Kingdom.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiny_mouse

[colleenanne.livejournal.com]

I must disagree with Nathan about the 3-D only surviving in amusement parks. Beowulf was in 3-D, the Coraline movie will be in 3-D, and there's that U2 concert film. It's back, if anything.

Jay and I went to (Disney's) Animal Kingdom when we were in FL a few years ago. I, too, was underwhelmed, although it is where I got my Kermit shirt, and I love me some Kermie. Jay got a t-shirt of Pooh in a safari outfit with a magnifying glass looking at a real-style tiger, saying, "Tigger, is that you?" It was cute.

[colleenanne.livejournal.com]

Duh. I just saw the title of this post. I'm a doofus.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Did Beowulf and the U2 film provide the 3-D glasses at the theaters and everything? I hadn't heard about that. A 3-D video of a rock concert sounds like kind of a waste, though.

We saw the "Tigger, is that you?" shirt, and I thought it was pretty cool, but I didn't buy it. I did get a shirt with a special 2008 design, though.

[colleenanne.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they provide you with the glasses. I kinda wanted to see the U2 movie, just to see the neat camera tricks. The 3D was really the only redeeming feature of Beowulf, anyhow, in my opinion (not so great for Jay, who can't see 3D. Oops.)

[vovat.livejournal.com]

The 3D was really the only redeeming feature of Beowulf, anyhow

I didn't see it, but most of what I've heard about it was negative. It seems like Hollywood taking on an ancient epic is pretty much always a recipe for disaster.

[colleenanne.livejournal.com]

But Neil Gaiman wrote the screenplay, and I heart Neil Gaiman!

[vovat.livejournal.com]

So maybe it would be more accurate to say that Gaiman is single-handedly trying to revive 3-D movies? (I doubt he had anything to do with the U2 one, though.)