A Frizzy Disney Diary About This Page:

[debic]

Just getting caught up. Glad to hear you had a great experience at Tony's and can't wait to hear more about your day at AK. Love to hear from others who love the park, as so many classify it as a half day park, and that would never work for us!

[MissFrizz]

Yeah, I have to say that I will never understand people who think AK is a half day park. If I have the time, I spend two days there. I am so excited to be able to do the Sunrise Safari in October. I wasn't sure I'd be able to book it so last minute but they had slots! I think we're going to love it.

[JennyM]

I am just catching up. Congratulations on your Disney Store role! And I am happy to read of your love for Animal Kingdom! My daughter was so excited the first time she saw the opening soon sign for the Yeti Palace Hotel! She thought it was truly going to happen and wanted to stay there, until she realized it is actually restrooms! It became a running joke in our family...especially after she started working front desk at AllStars for her CP! We kept asking her if she was going to ask for a transfer or at least get deployed there. She is a CM at AK now...just started a few weeks ago...and really loves it there so far!


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[MissFrizz]

What a wonderful story! I'm glad I'm not the only one who wanted to stay at the Yeti Palace Hotel. I'm hoping to do the CP in a few years and I would LOVE to work at AK.

[MissFrizz]

I learned a lot from this trip, and based on how exhausted we were from our non-stop day yesterday and our early morning today, I knew that the pace would need to slow down on future trips. Luckily, after our ride on KS, our Rainforest Café ADR was approaching. Another thing I would learn to do was to limit lunch ADRs—they can really cut into your day! We were happy to be heading to be headed to sit down in air conditioning, though.

On the way, we stopped by the gift shop in Africa, which is quite possibly my favorite little shop on property. Being the massive Pooh fan that I am, I fell in love with the “Tigger, is that you?” t-shirts. They didn’t have one in my size, so I instead got the largest size they had to use as a sleep shirt. We started doing this when my brother and I were small. When we’d go on vacation, we’d get adult sized large t-shirts as souvenirs to sleep in. My mom loved my shirt, so she got a mug with the same design.

I knew very little about the Rainforest Café when we had made our reservations. We just knew they had tables open and figured that would be good enough. I had the vague notion that it was themed inside, but I had no idea that meant we’d be sitting next to an extremely loud, animatronic elephant. Actually, the whole restaurant, despite not being very crowded, was ridiculously noisy. I can see how the “in your face” theming might appeal to children, but it definitely wasn’t a good fit for us.

In fact, Rainforest Café turned out to be everything my parents had feared Disney as a whole would be. It was loud, over-priced, included extremely pushy sales to buy into their dining program, and of mediocre quality. This is the restaurant that made us vow to never eat at a non-Disney restaurant at Disney ever again (although we broke this rule when we tried Yak and Yeti and we actually love it there, so who knows!?).

The worst thing was probably the completely inept handling of Mom’s allergies. Now, we had been spoiled by how good the Disney restaurants were with her food allergies, but this experience was even worse than those we’d had back in the “real world.” Often times, people don’t know what “gluten-free” or “Celiac” mean (although, that’s becoming less and less true these days) but they can tell you what’s in different dishes so Mom can figure it out. We encountered a completely different problem at Rainforest Café. There was practically nothing gluten-free there, and there were some options that should be totally safe for Mom that they were saying had wheat in them. Our waitress had no idea what was in any of the dishes, she just knew what she was supposed to say Mom couldn’t have. After becoming increasingly frustrated with trying to squeeze information out of our waitress she told us that the ketchup and mustard weren’t gluten-free. There was a bottle of Heinz on the table. My held it up to the waitress and said, “This ketchup? This isn’t gluten-free?” To which our waitress replied, “No, it has vinegar in it. You can’t eat that.”

Now, my mom has had ketchup and has never had a problem, but there was a rumor going around a while back that vinegar had wheat gluten in it. It was, however, quickly debunked. The truth is that the way vinegar is made makes it impossible for any gluten to survive the process. However, if the Rainforest Café people had decided to cover their @sses by buying into the rumor, well, no wonder practically nothing was listed as gluten-free. Lots of things have vinegar in them.

My mom, at this point, was tired and hungry and had been wrestling with this waitress who, apart from being incompetent, seemed really annoyed that she was supposed to provide my mother with food that wouldn’t poison her. So…Mom snapped a little bit. I mean, there was no throwing of the aforementioned ketchup bottle, or even yelling. Mom just tersely told her that she knows for a fact that she can eat ketchup and to please just bring her a regular menu and she’d figure something out. Mom may have sounded a little short, but I didn’t think it was that extreme. Apparently the waitress thought differently as she didn’t come back to our table ever again, and we were sent a different waiter to handle the rest of our meal.

Everything was fine once we got a little food in our systems. It’s a meal we laugh about now, (we refer to it as “the meal where Theresa made the waitress cry” although to be fair, I never saw any actual tears) and it definitely served as a learning experience. Still, it wasn’t an exactly “rejuvenating” lunch experience. We were wiped out and decided that we were too exhausted to continue exploring AK. This was the point where my parents actually said out loud that they were sure we would be back one day, so I didn’t feel too bad about leaving, even though we had only done a little bit. You really can’t do everything in one trip, and that is exponentially true when you only have two days. Instead, we decided to head to Downtown Disney, as I had expressed some interest in checking out the shopping there.

Stop number one at DTD was the Art of Disney store. We probably spent the longest time there! I still love just browsing in there. We picked up a sketch of Eeyore for my godmother (he’s her favorite ) and a lovely little Lady and the Tramp print for me. I also got the Walt Disney Imagineering book so I’d have something Disney to read over the coming week if I got sad. I enjoyed looking at all the paintings and figures, but I was truly enchanted by the Olzewelzki (sp?) shadow boxes. I still covet those things. Maybe one day! (Now that I have a job )

After Art of Disney, we browsed the Christmas shop, the toy store, and Pooh Corner without purchasing anything. My mom and I also stopped for a photo op with the Pooh characters, which was my sig pic for the longest time. When we saw Pin Traders, I had to stop in. I had been resisting the pins all weekend but after receiving one the night before from our wonderful Tony’s waiter, I gave in. My parents told me to pick out three. (By the way, I had no money at this point in my life, so my parents were not only paying for the tickets, my food, and all the lovely surprises—they were buying me souvenirs too. I was—and still am—a very lucky girl.) After much debate I settled on a Lady and the Tramp pin (of course), a small Dumbo pin, and partners statue/castle pin.

From there, we moved onto the biggie: World of Disney. I have such a love/hate relationship with this store. It’s massive and full of Mickey merch which means it’s a giant building filled with stuff I want. WoD has been responsible for me parting with quite a few dollars over the years. It is also a complete nightmare when it’s packed with people. I’ve seen WoD more crowded than it was on this day, but it was a little overwhelming for us exhausted first timers. We pushed our way through maybe half of it before admitting defeat and exiting.

We unanimously agreed that it was time to head back to AKL one last time. We needed to pick up our suitcases and our car, but I also took a little time to say goodbye to the place I’d fallen in love with. We walked out onto Arusha rock and bid the animals farewell. I was pretty sad by this time and my mom gave me a hug and said, “You will be back. I promise.” We stopped by Johari Treasures and I asked if I could make a charm bracelet. My parents said yes (I don’t think they had said no to me all weekend ) and so I picked out three charms: a castle, Mickey ears, and Lady and the Tramp in a heart.

I’ve changed my charms around a little bit since then, and now have one charm for every trip over one day I’ve taken to Walt Disney World. After living in Florida with an AP for a year, there have been waaaay too many day trips to keep a charm for each one. Right now I have six charms: Lady and the Tramp for my first trip; Cinderella’s coach for my second (we ate in Cinderella Castle and at Akershus and met a loooot of princesses); Mickey ears for my third (my brother’s first trip that turned him from a sullen 21 year old to a full-on, ear wearing mousekateer!); Cinderella Castle for my fourth (a day trip to MK that I count since we spent two nights on property—Mom’s car had broken down in Daytona Beach. When they fixed it up and she needed to fetch it, I went along and we threw in a little Disney!); Tigger for my fifth (my now ex-boyfriend, although still dear friend, went with me on his first trip. His favorite character is Tigger and his hyperness matches Tigger perfectly!); and Winnie the Pooh for my sixth (a trip where I ate for the first time at Crystal Palace on my 20th birthday.)

I don’t wear my bracelet every day, but I put it on when I need a little magic or when I’m feeling particularly excited for an upcoming trip. The day I got it, it felt like a promise to return. It made walking out of AKL a little less difficult.

It’s been a little over four years since that first trip. In that time I’ve visited WDW overnight six times and spent two semesters at the University of Central Florida—where I spent nearly every Friday in a park. Even though I’m living in North Carolina again, I am now officially a Cast Member at the local Disney Store and I am so excited to get started. I also have two, week-long trips planned for within the next year. I don’t think we realized what we were starting when we set off for Florida, but we all had an idea by the time we were leaving. I was addicted and, most surprisingly, my parents were hooked too, albeit less strongly than I am.

What’s most interesting, to me, is looking at myself before and after my Disney experience. Granted, you can’t give Disney all the credit, but my entire outlook was tangibly changed by the introduction of Walt Disney World. The second I got home, I began figuring out how I could get back. I started doing odd jobs around the house and babysitting so I could get money together for a trip. I got up more easily and I cried less. Battling with anxiety and depression was (and is) still the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do, but Disney always gave me something to hope for. I don’t think there has been a time since that first trip when I have not been thinking about my next one. I jokingly refer to it as “The Cult of Mickey” but Disney really does anchor me in a similar way to how religion anchors other people. I think people find all sorts of lights at the end of the tunnel, mine just happens to have round ears.

[I hope you guys have enjoyed reading the story of my first trip. I might come back to this at some point to ramble on some more about Disney but right now, I have a PTR to write! Please let me know what you think or, better yet, share the story of your first trip. I love hearing about people’s experiences and I think first trips are a very special kind of experience. When did you know you were hooked? Was it a lightbulb moment, or did it happen gradually? Did you expect to love it? Were other people with you that loved it too? Or hated it? I know I’m not the only person who wants to know. ]

-MissFrizz