Special Safari

All my research suggested to get to the parks early. So every day we got up between 7.00am and 7.15am, so we could make it to the parking lot 30 minutes before opening time. When we were getting up that early, and getting ready, it really seemed crazy. Am I crazy? That was until we started driving to the park, and when we got closer to the World, other people were doing the same thing. At least I'm not the only crazy one.

This reminded me of Black Friday. Black Friday is the Friday after Thanksgiving, and the best shopping day of the year. The stores bank on crazy people like me that get up at 4 in the morning, to be at the store at 5am (or earlier if it opens earlier). Whenever I have gone shopping on Black Friday, I felt half insane getting up in the middle of the night, that is UNTIL I see that hundreds of other people do the same thing.

Thursday we went to the Animal Kingdom, and this is where my craziness paid off the most. 15 minutes before opening time they let people into the parks, but not all the way in. You can go to the end of Main Street, or in this case to the base of the tree of life. Even though we weren't the first ones at the park, Joe was able to jump to the beginning of a line, when they opened another turnstile. I am an adrenaline junky, and being at the front of the pack of people, really gets it pumping. I pushed the double (monster) stroller with all my might, and got to the rope first.

As we were waiting for the rest of the park the open, a park ranger asked us what we were going to see first. The Safari was the first thing on our list because the animals are most active first thing in the morning. So we told him we were off to the Safari, and he asked if we had been on one before. Joe and I have, when we worked at Disney, but the kids never had. Then he asked if we would like to be the first family on the safari. We were excited, and Yes, of course we wanted to be on the first safari.

He opened up the rope for us, and closed it back behind us. He led us across the park and to the safari entrance. I thought we would just be part of the first bus load, but it turned out we WERE the first bus load. We were on this huge 60 person bus/truck, all alone with the driver and the tour guide. The first safari is awesome! There were lots of animals in the middle of the road. A herd of rhinos were sitting on the road, and mozied on off after a while. At one point we came to a narrow part of the road, and some wildebeest were in the way. They squeezed passed the truck, and we could have touched them if we had stuck our hands out. There were ducks in the fake mud-ruts, and a gorilla 10 feet away from us.

After getting off the truck, we were presented with a special "Honorary Family" certificate. Also, we were given a special Fastpass that allowed us to come back to the safari any time, all day long, and use the Fastpass to skip the line. Unfortunately we had so many other things planned for the day, that we never did make it back there.

The moral of the story: I might be crazy, but it was totally worth it!