Again we split up, this time into three groups. Kenneth wanted to take on Kraken, a floorless roller coaster. The picture on the map scared the willies out of me. Steinar walked Kenneth over to the coaster, while I took Robert to Penguin Encounter. The puffins are in the same building as P.E. There's a souvenir cart out front and a larger shop just across the way. Mission accomplished, right? Nope. Neither place had a puffin shirt. We figured we'd keep looking.
Kenneth and Steinar met up with us - Kenneth said Kraken was "a bit too much" for his taste, but he was glad he could say he'd ridden it. We looked at some of the other animal exhibits and another gift shop, then had a snack before meeting up with my parents for the Shamu Adventure (and confirming that we were still puffinless).
We chose a seat in the upper part of the stadium. The lower part is prominently labelled "Shamu's Splash Zone". They weren't kidding. The day was warm enough that a little water would have felt good, but we weren't as eager to find out what would happen to our fairly new digital cameras if they got drenched with sea water. As the show continued I could see we'd made the right decision!
Apropos cameras: in theory I got a lot of great shots. Unfortunately, I took them with the zoom turned up to pretty close to full, and found out that when you do that, you can't trust what you see in the viewfinder. So what looked to me like excellent action shots turned out to be pictures of the audience or of empty sections of pool. Oops. I needed to look at the screen, which wasn't easy to see in sunlight, especially since I wanted to keep my sunglasses on (I get a headache in bright sunshine if I don't protect my eyes). Fortunately I got a few decent pictures to help us remember the show by.
Afterwards, we had lunch, then Steinar and the boys rode the Journey to Atlantis flume ride while I went to see the manatee exhibit. We wandered through other animal exhibits - and the odd souvenir shop - together until mid-afternoon, when we met up with my parents and headed back to the hotel. Without a puffin T-shirt. If they're still selling them, they sure hide 'em well.
We had supper at the hotel food court. Then we all got on a bus to Downtown Disney, which is a shopping/dining/entertainment/money spending complex on Disney property. This is when I started appreciating how big "Disney property" is. I've lived in cities smaller than Disney property. Anyway, Kenneth and Steinar were heading for Disney Quest, which is "an indoor interactive theme park" - basically, a video arcade on steroids, every ten-year-old boy's dream. The rest of us were going shopping. As it turned out, Steinar spent a lot of his time in the Virgin Megastore next to Disney Quest. And we discovered that THE LEGO STORE WAS CLOSED! Waaaaah! We'd heard about all the cool Lego statues outside and were really looking forward to seeing them, but the only one we could see was the (admittedly very impressive) sea monster in the lake in front of the store.
We did, however, find a Kanga-and-Roo doll. And Winnie-the-Pooh lollipops. This helped cheer up our little Lego fan, who also happens to be a Pooh fan. Phew.
And so, our intrepid explorers collapsed in bed for another night, noticing their feet were not in their happiest state, and bracing ourselves for a day at the Magic Kingdom...
flodnak.com
Created 28 March 2005 * Last Updated 14 July 2005