Mousefest 2006 - Animal Kingdom

The 3 F's Friends, Fun, ...and Freezing

This night was to be a day for me to tour the parks and for Carlene to rest up and perhaps go do some shopping, so she took me to the park and when we got to the toll plaza we asked for guest drop off, they said to follow a certain color line, at some point that line disappeared so we had to chose at the split, we ended going into the regular parking, though we figured out almost immediately that we should have followed the signs for "taxi" and that "taxi stand" and guest drop off are synonyms at WDW. Still we just pulled into a normal spot and Carlene dropped me off, as I got out of the car I realized that I recognized the people at the next car over! Amy Stoll of All Ears Net and Mike Scopa of Mouseplanet.com and WDW Today, so I got to walk on in towards the park with friends, this is the kind of thing that is so cool about Mousefest. As we approached the gift shop I had a moments indecision, I usually hit this "outside the gates" gift shop, so, I thought "do I continue on with them or hit the shop", well I decided to hit the shop, after all I had just sort of tagged along, and besides that I was pretty sure I'd see them again in a few minutes since we were all going to the AllEars.Net Kilimanjaro Safaris meet. I did find a few cards here so that was nice, I then headed on to the bag check station, one nice thing about bag check at Disneys' Animal Kingdom is that there are smaller bag check tables you can set you bag on just beyond the bag check awning, as I took my bag over there and started closing it up a woman started to do the same across from me it was Linda Eckwerth of AllEars.net(if you use that link you may have to scroll down slightly they didn't have an "a name" anchor for Linda). So I got to tag along with some more friends not only were Deb and Linda headed in but Fred Block of MagicMeets.com was with them, and when I checked the link to that page I see Fred's got a link to my podcast (where there is audio of Magic Meets predecessor, Dismeets) How VERY cool! thanks Fred! Once in the park (via the Rainforest Cafe gate I had been meaning to try for some time) we grabbed a stroller for Fred and Debs backpacks (I'm guessing that they both had oodles of stuff to give away), and Linda went to grab fast passes for all of us for the later Everest meet. Then we set a course for Kilimanjaro Safaris.

Below: view of Everest from bridge between Discovery Island and Africa

Above and Below: I think we got enough people to fill three vehicles, (All ears net says "more than 150 people") so yes all the people in these photos are gathered here to ride the Safari with other Disney Fans.
Hanging out with a bunch of folks who all "get" Disney like this is a lot of fun, even while we were queued up we were having a blast. I don't remember exactly what it was but for some reason I remember Fred Block and I singing really loudly (very briefly) while in line.

Above: Okapi
Below: Ghost of the forest?

I believe the shot above is my ATTEMPT at a photo of the crocodile pool (that's Mike Demopolis of the Mouse Station podcast in the foreground) there's a story here I heard Fred block tell on someone's podcast (It may have been WDW Today). As we crossed in front of the Crocodile exhibit there was a large wading type of bird sitting on the island in the middle of their habitat, one of the largest crocodile started coming out towards it but it just hopped back a little and the Crocodile kept coming out, our jeep erupted in noise as everyone saw this and it just continued in slow motion as the driver gunned the engine and we sped off, the thing is the crocodile is a cold-blooded animal and it was a very cold morning for Florida, cold-blooded crocodiles move very slowly when it is cold, so I doubt that the croc ever got a hold of that bird.