And Then Disney Asked Me to Put the Camera Away...

One afternoon on our trip to Disney World we moseyed on over to Animal Kingdom. 

Wow...Spell check agrees that 'moseyed' is a word. How odd.

At Animal Kingdom there is a ride called the Kali River Rapids. 

It's actually one of my favorite rides. 

It's like the old Grizzly River Rampage at Opry Land.

Except Kali River Rapids is much more political. 

Down with evil loggers and the like.

If you haven't seen it, its a ride with a big round boat that seats eleven people. It meanders through a series of drops, whirlpools and waterfalls with the intention of cooling you off on a hot day.

Or freezing you out on a cold day. 

So...

We get on the ride and seat belt up and see that we are sharing the ride with a happy lot of Canadians with beards and burly mustaches.

So, score and all that.

The ride starts and we are just coming off of the first hill when we hit a snag.

A bump really.

See there were five boats ahead of us that were stopped and sitting idly in the river.

When we bumped the boat in front of us they shrugged their shoulders as if to say: 'we're stuck'

Now the ride normally doesn't have any parts of it that allow boats to just sit so we knew something was wrong.

As we looked around we noticed something...the water was getting lower. 

And lower...

And lower...

Which was also odd.

No one was worried though. 

After all...

We were in the boat with Canadians with beards.

See...I have a theory.*

Beard=gun and survival supplies packed and loaded in the car.

So, come the Apocalypse I'm looking for the bearded Grandpa to rescue me first. 

At this point several Disney Cast Members** climbed up to us and said...

...and I'm not exaggerating here...

"Do not panic. We will have you off of the ride as soon as the water drains completely. We will be rescuing you with ladders. We will ask the children to come first then the women and then the men."

Women and children first?

Hmm...Who knew Disney was so chivalrous?

The Canadians thought this was hilarious.

My children thought this was hilarious.

Jokes like this one began to be bantered around between boats:

"Hey! If we see a group of violinists setting up I'm jumping out!"***

And so we prepared to disembark.

I was taking pictures at this point left and right. 

Before we could attempt the treacherous descent that would take us down to the rest of the park we had to wait for all the boats to be unloaded.

We asked a cast member what happened and here is what she told us.

At a certain point on the ride the boat hits a black plastic guard that guides the boat in the right direction. For some reason when the first boat hit the guard it cracked it and caused the first boat to tip back and begin to fill with water.

Er...fill with water?

As in sink???

Yikes.

Let me continue:

So when the boat began to fill it tripped a sensor on the boat that told the workers that a boat was getting too much water in it. At this point the ride shut down and the problem was discovered. 

I'm still a little surprised she told us all this. 

As that first boat unloaded we saw that they were all soaking wet from the waist down.

 Dang. 

That probably wasn't a comfortable ride home.

When we were all accounted for we began the long walk down and up and back down to the park. 

We had a pretty cool view of Expedition Everest. 

That is the big white 'mountain' in the back ground.

Being behind the scenes was pretty cool.

We could see the gas lines that produced the fire on the ride and all the different special effects lighting.

We came to one particular area that was very photogenic and I got the camera out again and began to snap some of the boys.

Not looking at the camera...

Still not looking at the camera...

Hmm? Is that the same picture?

Oh well.

There we go. 

At this point a cast member comes over and informs me to cease and desist with the camera.

Apparently, when the ride first stopped they asked us to put the cameras away but I didn't hear them. 

Hey! 

I was busy. 

Canadians were making jokes and they were funny.

I wasn't upset though.

I ceased and desisted.

Another rider remarked "I guess they don't want people to know the rides ever break."

Yeah...I guess it wasn't great PR for them.

Unfortunately I had already tweeted and Facebooked about it.

So...

Whoops.

And Disney is so good and thorough at everything they do that I have no doubt I'm going to be getting a 'cease and desist this blog' e-mail from them at some point very soon.

So...

Get rescued with the aid of ladders from a Disney ride...

I guess I can check that off my list.

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* It's not just my theory. I think I saw something about it on Pinterest.

** Yes, they call them 'cast members' not workers. I love it and I love Disney.

***Let's not talk about the movie Titanic.