Monkey Tse Monkey Do: A Three Hour Tour

Since a person has to start somewhere and this person just labeled and organized the pictures related to this part of our trip....

The day after the wedding and near the end of our trip to Hong Kong, we finally made it to Disneyland as promised. Rain had kept us from going before the family commitments as we'd planned and we were a little nervous about going on a Sunday, but we went and it was "the best day ever" to quote one family member. (See video).

After two trips to Disneyland Paris, you'd think we would have this Disney thing figured out, but we're still pretty much rookies--we still make mistakes. Near the end of our day we headed toward Adventureland intending to see The Lion King show. We thought the Jungle River Cruise looked fun and harmless enough. As we walked in there was a sign directing us to the English tour line and an overhead voice in English that said: "Though it may appear that certain queues have a longer wait that others, they are actually all the same length". (There was no overhead voice in Chinese...hmmmm). We walked right to the front while those who did not choose the English line appeared to be waiting in a much longer line. We were informed that our tour would begin in 10 minutes.

So we waited. (Patiently and with such good attitudes).

Then we go into our boat.

Our tour guide was called Marlena (or something that sounds like Marlena) and she was very entertaining (at least for those of us who didn't have a screaming child in our laps).

(Clearly, she was not all that excited even before

it began...)

The tour began with some cute little elephants splashing in the water. We assured our two big kids that they were not real and there was laughter and enjoyment. By the time we saw the hippos and the crocodiles, our youngest child was not able to hear, nor did she seem to care what was real and what was not. She was in full freak out mode. The other two made it with very little drama until large flames of fire broke out in front of our boat in the water and in the rocks as we passed. That was it. This boat tour was no longer fun for the majority of our family. (No pictures of the fire...had to comfort the terrified children. Priorities, ya know).

Thankfully that was the end. As the boat docked, our tour guide tried to make it better with a few jokes. "If you enjoyed the tour, my name is Marlena. If you did not, my name is Mary. You can find me here touring the river every 10 minutes for the rest of my life". The majority of our family was not amused. We would not be returning and are not planning any jungle safari trips any time soon.

I later learned more about how Hannah really felt about the ride. Just before the ride, we purchased some Minnie Mouse ear headbands for each of the girls. Hannah chose some with a veil and a sparkly "diamond", of course. Sarah chose pink ears with a big pink bow. Hannah wore her ears for most of the rest of the trip and in the taxi on the way home she was telling us that she couldn't wait to show her friends her ears. She said that if her friends wanted some she would have to tell them that they would not be able to get them because they would have to go on an airplane, fly to Hong Kong, ride the subway to Disneyland, and THEN ride on a boat past the "pretend" crocodiles and the "very scary" fire. She went on to say that she was so happy to have her ears, but we should NOT have gone on that boat ride.

Lesson learned.

On a side note, that Buzz Lightyear the lovely Hannah is posing next to? Painted with water and a broom by this guy. He was so awesome! I'm sure those who have been to Disney US would not be surprised to see random entertainers in the streets of Disney, but as I mentioned we visited Disneyland Paris twice. We did not see many characters at all much less random entertainment like this. We were just thankful that the princesses were smiling and not rude. Parisian culture and Disney culture? They don't blend easily.