We spent our last vacation day at Animal Kingdom! Ten and a half hours of fun!! We got everything in and then some. The girls traded pins ALL day and Steve carried the backpack of doom for the five of us. I laughed thinking that the women carry the babies and deliver and in turn, the men will carry the "packs" until the kids are grown! There was so much stuffed in his back pack it became our vacation joke!!
The girls have experienced many firsts this trip. Seeing a newborn manatee and seal, seeing Shamu, meeting people from all over the world and........are you ready for this???
On one of our last rides, the girls did a 10 minute walk up to Africa's Rapid Ride. It posted a 10 minute wait and it was the only ride this entire week that Steve and I said, " go on girls, we will wait for you at the exit". The girls wanted to ride this so bad because the heat was so intense today, they were dying to get wet. As hot as Steve and I were, we were more excited to sit on a bench!
The girls entered the ride and I gave Maria the "boss" position. She grabbed Cam's hand and they were off. Steve and I finished off a frozen lemonade and were directed to a bridge that we could see the girls coming in from the ride. The ride consisted of like 10 people on a huge round canyon raft. The whole premise is big hills and getting soaked. Steve and I stood on the bridge with the video camera ready. Because of the short wait time, they were due at any second.
Then......no more rafts. hmmmmm....still no more rafts...Steve said, 'Jac, look behind us"...
Behind us under the bridge and beyond were raft after raft. hmmm
Maybe a lag or something? No, next announcement was there was a problem with ride and to please stay seated. We waited. I asked Steve if he was nervous and he said that if he needs to get to them, he will go UP the river.
At this point, I walk away from him. I just needed to know where on the ride the three of them were at when it broke down. So, leaving Steve on the bridge, I went to the exit and went in that way.....all the way to the loading area.
I tell the attendant that I have 3 girls possibly on the ride and they asked me to leave. I turn around and see the beginning of the ride and there are rafts stuck everywhere!! Stuck on the hill and in progress. The worker said the ride was shut down because someone stood up and that it will only be a couple of minutes. I still do not see the girls ( Hi, chad and jill:)) and so I head upstream of the line...I go in and out ( backwards) in line...no girls. I head back to the bridge to tell Steve, "yep, they are on......"
It seems like a reasonable problem until Steve says, "Jac, why is security running?" Now, for all following my breathing this trip, I did feel a quick little concern. I head back into the exit, back into the lines and try to see if I can see the girls raft. I walk back to see Steve down on the platform with 2 security guards and the employees. (humpf..they did not ask HIM to leave.....)
I walk up to the men and Steve says that there is a problem because they are "rescuing" (my word, not his) each raft individually and that they cannot get the ride going. At this point they are DRAINING the ride in order to get the "guests" off safely. RU kidding me!? The problem, according to Steve is that as they are getting people off, they are using different emergency exit points on the ride, therefore dropping our three girls somewhere else. This all depended on where their raft was at the breaking point. The standing up person did not happen..it broke. I told them I could wait it out, as long as I knew no one was hurt ( or that Abby was not the one who stood up!haha:)
At this point, the security guard says that he is splitting Steve and I up and one is to go back to the bridge and the other to another emergency entrance for the ride. So, off I went to a "secret" door with security and we waited. And waited. The girls descriptions and names were radioed off. Finally, through the secret door, head of security was escorting 4 rafts. No girls. I found myself simply describing them as 3 girls, 2 blondes and an asian! and oh yeah, they are alone!!! After radioing their description again, I hear, "Mooooommmm"!
I turn around and Abby is running toward me and they are MAD! OMG! They were stuck on the hill the entire time. They were still hot and now the park was closing in 15 minutes. Cam then, really mad, says...." they gave us a fast pass for this ride for TOMORROW!" They were all mad....and I just laughed at them! Abby said she could see us each time we went to talk to the people...
They were delivered to Steve, who then asked security to see if they could get us on Everest instead as we will not be back for the rafting ride...of course, being Disney, they took us right there!
How exciting that they were on a ride, ride drained and they had to use a staircase off the hill to get down and they did it all by themselves!!! I asked Maria what she would have done if dumped somewhere and could not find us and she quickly said, " I would have found a cast member and asked for help!" Good answer..I guess we did not need to worry!
All in all, another first! Too much...we have really laughed alot!!! We ended up riding Everest three times to close it down. Now, off to Downtown Disney where we started vacation. The pin trading has become an obsession with the three of them!
We will be home tomorrow .........
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