Friday, December 8, 2006

Everest had not been open on my last trip; it opened about two weeks later. And for nearly a year I had been hearing all of my online friends rave over how good this ride was, so by this morning I was champing at the bit to experience it myself, and made sure to get up at 7:30am so as to be to the park for the meet, which was scheduled right after rope drop.

Last night's weather forcast had been for chilly temperatures today, so I dressed warmly and double-checked the forcast one last time before heading out. No change in the forcast, darn it.

I arrived at the Animal Kingdom gates at about 8:20, a full 40 minutes before the scheduled 9am opening time. I wound up waiting in line with throngs of other people. I was near a large number of my friends from Tagrel.com, and various other MouseFest attendees including the cast from the WDW Today podcast. The gates opened at about 8:45, allowing the crowd to surge forward to Discovery Island, where we again waited for the actual rope to drop and the park to officially open. I had never whitnessed the rope drop ceremony at Animal Kingdom before, and today was no exception - I was far enough back in the crowd, standing with some of my Tagrel.com friends, that I could barely see or hear anything of the ceremony.

But soon the rop was dropped, and the crowd spilled into the rest of the park like the start of the New York Marathon. Most of the MouseFest group, of course, went immediately to Asia for the Everest meet, only to find that the ride was experiencing technical difficulties and was not yet operating. The rides FastPass machines were operating, however, so we all got in line to get one of these magical slips that prevent you from waiting in line. Our return time was listed as 10:40.