Ponchos and Pipe Dreams

 

A couple weeks ago Eric and I embarked on a journey to Florida's heaven-on-earth with his brother, Peter, and Peter's fiancee, Sally. 

Our first day at Disneyworld was riddled with moments of the "OMG" variety (as my 17-yr-old sister Kayla would literately choose to describe them, if she were there): Things like rides that take your breath away, then give it back to you, only to take it right back away again and laugh at your joyfully petty fright. Things like torrential downpours of the deluge capacity that go on for 4 hours straight (never seen so many Mickey Mouse ponchos make so many individuals so ambiguous SO quickly in my life). I learned a lot about water-proofing that day. 

Moment one of ride number one on day one of Disney: we boarded a roller coaster in Animal Kingdom. Halfway through the roller coaster? The ..... abominable ..... snowman (I kid you not, family), and his silhouette-of-alpine-destruction eats us, and all the other coaster cars he can manage.

Moment two, finding ourselves on the same roller coaster as moment one, we actually manage to not grip the car for dear life in anticipation of having a potentially successful quest through the mountainous terrain. We get eaten again. 

I despise you, abominable snowman.

Moment three of day one is a safari, complete with a Rhino bypass and the answer to 40-DOWN on the airplane crossword: "A relative of the giraffe." The Okapi!

After moments four and five and six being spent huddled closely together with 50 strangers under an awning awaiting the rain, moment seven held a spectacular stage-version of Finding Nemo. Dory wears knee socks, fish fly like kites, and there is a song about Sydney. I am going there! 

Moment eight found us on our way to Disney's Hollywood Studios, where moment nine was comprised of strawberry funnel cakes for dinner. Yes, we are grown-ups. : )

Moment ten, tied with moment one for fright-factorage, was the ride in which you question sanity, engineering, structural stability, and ask the "Who on earth came up with this as a form of entertainment" question as you fall 30 stories in an elevator shaft. Quickly the Disney mantra of "Where your dreams come true" is brought to life as you recall all those dreams where you fall off of a waterfall, or a skyscraper, or out of an airplane, or down a cliff, or into the ocean ......... 

Hooray for day one! More on days two, three, and four later!  

Above: A Google-images Okapi, in case you are in doubt of exactly what one looks like. : ) Disney! Many things are stuffed! So I found this image to be fitting.