soaked safari

Leanne is letting me do my laundry at her place! She is so awesome, and her fiancee Ben is nice as well. I hope to hang out with them again some day in the near future and not far future.

And they have a guest bedroom! And I was able to sleep there and they made breakfast and it's so excellent. And I'm doing my lau-oh I already mentioned that. So yeah, it's great. I'll head off to Georgia in a bit. Find a campsite and camp.

But first: Animal Kingdom! Leanne works for Disney, so she is able to get guests into parks, but she needs to accompany them so it isn't like "oh hey here is a ticket". Still, it's nice to have the option to just swing by a park late in the day and check out a few things and pop back out. No hassle for ticket costs and whatnot. But before we went to the park, I had to get to Orlando. I arrived at 1:30ish and we hung out. A thunderstorm came rolling in, so we delayed going out to lunch till it passed. Leanne and I share the same great grandpa, but it we branch separately out from there. I should make a family tree.

We got lunch at a nearby ale house. I got seafood mac n cheese and the days pint special. She got zingers. Hurray for zinger left overs! Then it was park time. Free parking! And with the pass we did the special finger print light activated thingy where it lights up when you hold your pass to it. Very... Big Brother. But by Disney!

Crowds were starting to leave, and the weather wasn't looking good. We got in the short line for the Safari ride and it started to properly rain. The ride was covered, but not on all sides. I sat on the window side, so I got wet. Oh well, it's just water! My shoes got totally soaked through. Those poor shoes. Getting so thrashed.

The Safari ride was fun. Got to see giraffes and zebras and gnu and elephants. Seemed like they had pretty good space to hang out in, and not of them were sitting in a corner looking depressed. Apparently there used to be a "poacher" story arc, but it was taken out. Now the Animal Kingdom park has a Wilderness Explorer activity like from the movie Up. There is a lot of mythology with the parks as it turns out. I knew a bit about it from this podcast I listened to about Disney's Haunted Mansion.

The rain continued, but we were undaunted! We went to the dinosaur ride, which was indoors. A nice little on a track ride with flashing lights and time travel. Fun and fast. So Animal Kingdom celebrates animals of the past, current, and imagination. Which is why there is a Unicorn parking lot (we were parked in Giraffe). It was a damp squelch back the the parking lot trolley pick up. I got a crushed penny tho, so yay! Adding to my collection.

At home pajamas were put on and telly was watched and I met Ben. And I proceeded to have a very nice sleep.

So yeah, Georgia! Going to start knocking the states off.