I'm a late riser on any day that doesn't require me to go to work, and this being Disney World, I knew that was going to be a problem. Yeah, it's your vacation and you can do what you want, but it's pretty dumb to roll out of bed with half of the park day gone already. To circumvent, I tried to book us a series of ridiculously early appointments, including one for 7:40 AM at the Polynesian's 'Ohana restaurant for their special character breakfast.
The "character breakfast" is a Disney-must for anyone traveling with kids, but it's pretty cool for the rest of us, too. Select restaurants in the parks and hotels send costumed characters around to meet 'n greet the customers, and it's a beautiful thing to see. The kids are so, so excited at the chance to break bread with Mickey and pals, and for their part, the cast members wearing the big goofy masks are really animated and "on."
The Polynesian's character breakfast included Mickey, Pluto, Lilo and Stitch. Nobody was interested in poor Lilo, except for the couple of babies who were remarkably scared of her compatriots. We had no children at our table, obviously, but that didn't keep the characters from dropping by and making a slap five sign-language version of small talk. Stitch, always the prankster, saw fit to quite literally spend 45 seconds rubbing his ass against my shoulder, revealing the framework of someone who must've weighed 45 pounds inside. I rolled with it, but God damn.
'Ohana fiddles around with the same themes as the Polynesian at large, and thus, they serve everything "family style," because that's apparently how Polynesian people eat. "Family style" means they bring out big pans full of fatty food and challenge you to eat it all. If you do, they'll bring you more, and a person could conceivably rinse and repeat that process until they gained 20 pounds. Moderation was the key, but it's pretty tough to moderate when they're throwing waffles shaped like Mickey Mouse at you.
To cap off the character-driven island breakfast adventure, 'Ohana hosts a parade for all of the characters and children. The "parade" just means that they march around the restaurant in a vague circle for a few minutes, but there's music and maracas to make it feel more like something worth videotaping. The Disney experience really does involve taking part in things that you wouldn't normally have any interest in, so even if the thought of pancakes with Pluto doesn't make you hard, I say go for it.
HOT DISNEY THING #12: The Tower of Terror
My short list of must-ride attractions included this one, duh. It's the only ride in Disney World with a truly scary skew, and it's one of the few that keep competing theme parks from totally blowing it out of the water in the thrill ride department. The tallest structure in Disney-MGM (and, in fact, in all of Disney) is the Twilight Zone "Tower of Terror," and if you ever go to Disney, you must ride this. It starts with an introduction in a lobby area by a remarkable Rod Serling lookalike; I can't say much for it because the people were we bunched with were completely talking over it, probably because they'd ridden Tower of Terror a hundred times before. WELL I DIDN'T, sirs and madams.
I gathered enough to know the general story: We were in the old Hollywood Tower Hotel (the structure is made to look like a real hotel, and it does), where on some long ago night a few happy folks were transformed into spooky ghouls by an errant lightning crash to the hotel's squeaky elevator. Sure enough, you're then ushered onto that very elevator, where you'll spend a minute or so being thrown up and down several floors, screaming. There's a few more theatrical elements to the ride that I'm skipping over, but the core action is impressively intense. The "elevator" goes down so fast that you actually fly up in your chair, and since the ride has a bunch of randomized sequences for each group, there's no way to ever get used to it. If you ride it twice, you're not very likely to get the same pattern of jumps and drops.
We went on it during the day, but I'd really recommend trying it out at night. As you're being thrown up and down several floors, you'll get random window views to remind you of how far you could potentially plunge should the ride dislocate under your ass. I think that'd have to be a lot cooler when it's dark out.
I'm surprised to report that Disney's latest park, Animal Kingdom, failed to impress the fuck out of me. I liked it, but it just wasn't the spectacle I was expecting, nor did it seem to have the sheer enormity I'd read about, at least in as far as places people can actually walk to and do stuff. This is only a gripe because, out of all the parks, Animal Kingdom takes the biggest toll on your soul. It's absurdly humid because of what you're surrounded by, and its terrain is ridiculously "up and down," also because of what you're surrounded by. It can really knock the hell out of you, especially when you consider the crowd density. This place is nutsy crowded. It's ludicrously crowded. And, strangely enough, it also seemed to be the dirtiest of all the parks. Like, with real, actual litter. I live in a place where people frequently go to drive-thru fast food joints, eat in the car and dispose of the waste by chucking it out the window, but this is Disney World, and every straw wrapper gone astray steals part of the magic. Okay, now I'm just being bitchy because it's late.
Shown above is the "Tree of Life," which is Animal Kingdom's answer to Cinderella Castle and the Epcot ball. It's a huge, artificial tree with animals "carved" with unbelievable finesse into its trunk. Neat. Not neat enough to classify as a Hot Disney Thing, but neat.
According to press materials, Animal Kingdom is a little bit of Africa, a little bit of Asia and a little bit of our planet's prehistoric past. They deliver on all counts. There's wildlife everywhere, and many portions of the park serve as really posh zoos, where you walk over neat swinging bridges and through tunnels to catch glimpses of everything from giant birds to okapis. Yeah, okapis. They're not fucking around at Animal Kingdom. They got okapis. There are also shops, restaurants and other junk fashioned to look like legit villages and communities in Africa and Asia, and while expectedly gimmicky, they help the cause: Forgiving the trash, the white meat crowds and the fact that certain stands sell McDonald's fries, it's not entirely difficult to momentarily forget that you're not actually in some foreign land. Especially if you're still way hungover from a night drinking in Epcot.
Can't remember what it was called, but somewhere in the middle of a long trail in Animal Kingdom was a wooden shack overflowing with nature's tiniest, creepiest creatures. Though lacking the same level of a cheering section things like elephants and giraffes got, I have to admit, this might've been my favorite spot in the entire park. Snakes, rats, scorpions, giant spiders -- all in tanks and cages that let you more or less kiss everything. The "room" was full of furniture with functional drawers for visitors to sift through, revealing everything from preserved dead beetles to random animal bones. Click here for a video I took. All told, I'm not sure what this place was, but it reaffirmed the idea that I'm really only living at half-speed until I buy a foot-long centipede or some pet giant roaches.
HOT DISNEY THING #13: Kilimanjaro Safaris
Kilimanjaro Safaris is one of the most popular attractions in Animal Kingdom, and if we're only counting attractions that bring us closer to the animals and aren't at all about 3-D movie adventures or roller coasters, it's the most popular attraction, "the" with a long-sounding "e." During the ride, you're herded onto real, working safari cars before heading out into the real, working African savannah, where you'll see...the big stuff. Animal Kingdom does a good job of hiding all of its top stars in Kilimanjaro Safaris, so if you wanted to see rhinos taking a shit on leopards, this is where to be. But hey, if you're happy with just birds and cockroaches, go for yours, bro. The driver also narrates the trip, telling you how each animal would normally act if it was in its real natural habitat and not being gawked at by a jeep full of idiots wearing Goofy-eared baseball caps.
There's some light theming to make the ride more like a ride, too. An electronic bridge that shakes as you drive over it and some trick driving by your narrator make it a bit more exciting, but the big story comes near the end of the trip, where you and your van help save an animatronic baby elephant from a bunch of no-good dirty poachers. It's worth riding if only because "Kilimanjaro" is one of those words that sticks to you; you'll just keep saying it over and over again for weeks because you're so proud of your ability to actually pronounce it. Kilimanjaro, Kilimanjaro. I feel great!
HOT DISNEY THING #14: Dino-Rama!
Chester & Hester's Dino-Rama! is kind of small but totally worth visiting. Though technically just "a part" of Animal Kingdom, Dino-Rama! feels more like its own mini-park, based on the sights and sounds of a lightweight carnival. There's a couple of basic roller coasters and "spin-out" rides, carnival games (I won a doll by beating a six-year-old in a watergun race) and like, funnel cake and shit.
Dino-Rama! also serves as a central base for all of Animal Kingdom's more prehistorically-skewed attractions, many of which rule. There's Dinosaur, a souped-up dark side where Phylicia Rashad (what the fuck) sends you and your team through the sands of time and into Earth's prehistoric age, where you're almost eaten by giant dinosaurs and almost flattered by an unseen asteroid. That's a great ride. It's considered dated, but I dunno, it really worked for me, largely due to the fact that animatronic, roaring dinosaurs the size of houses were screaming at me from 18 inches away. Step off, big lizard. I'm fluent in fucking your shit up.
HOT DISNEY THING #15: Build Your Own Potato Head
In our final Hot Disney Thing for Part 1, I got to buy and build my own Mr. Potato Head. There's setups like this in several locations throughout Disney World, where visitors can pay 18 dollars to fill a box with various Potato Head body parts and accessories, many of which themed specifically for the Walt Disney World Resort. They charge a flat rate, so you can literally take as much as you can fit into their provided boxes -- and we spent a good ten minutes making sure we got our money's worth. The exclusive additions range from Mickey ear hats to Minnie feet, Donald beaks and even Disney-branded luggage. It's only overpriced if you forget that every souvenir in Disney World is overpriced. All in all, the Build Your Own Mr. Potato Head areas boast one of the best mementos Disney World offers, and we're talking about a place that sells flashing neon light necklaces and Pirates of the Caribbean-branded eye-patches.
Hot Disney Thing Tip: You don't have to include a Potato Head body base in your set. If you're just looking for the Disney-exclusive accessories, fill the funny box up with just those. See? Now you read all of this for a reason.
That's it, that's all for Part 1. Next time, you'll find out why Epcot may very well be my favorite park on the property, and you'll see everything from Star Tours to fireworks in the sea. Stay tuned...
