update two of two

Sorry, I didn't have my camera for this one. We got to feed the Nile Crocodiles on Friday. Not just prepare their raw chicken and fish, but actually throw it at them from a safe distance. So now I can say I actually did get to feed the animals at Disney World.

First, a little background info. There are 27 Nile Crocodiles at the Animal Kingdom. They're all males and they're all in the same exhibit on the Kilamanjaro Safari ride. The exhibit also contains some small fish that breed and that the crocs munch on every once in a while, along with the occasional vulture or local egret. There's a trick bridge that goes past the crocs' open exhibit that kinda rotates and makes you think you're going to fall into the croc pond when you're riding in the Safari truck. It's maybe six to eight feet above the surface of the water and there's a fence under the bridge so the crocs can only hang out on one side. It was from this bridge that we fed the crocs.

We started off around 7 AM with several large containers of about 320 pounds total of raw chicken halves and tilapia. When someone threw the first chicken, all the sleepy-looking crocs slinked into the water to grab what they could. I was hoping they would catch the fish in their mouths like a dog would catch a hot dog, but they usually just grabbed it after it landed. There was a lot less aggression in the exhibit than you'd expect with 27 male crocs, but the croc keeper said that's because there are no females for them to impress. You'd see two crocs going for the same chicken and whoever got there first was the winner; there just weren't any fights. (Once again, I'm sorry I don't have any pictures!)

The crocs liked the chicken better than the fish, of course. They have good taste. They even left some of the fish at the bottom of the shallow pool to look for more chicken, and you could see some of the small (living) fish feeding on it. After the feeding "frenzy" (it wasn't really a frenzy) was over, some of the more dominant crocs started looking around for the scraps that everyone left behind. The little fish swam away when the crocs came to grab the leftover tilapia from the shallows.

Crocs have great eyesight, and although they're not terribly agile, they are quite fast. Crocs have the same magnetic-sensory thing that sharks have in their heads that allows them to find their prey, but the awesome difference between crocs and sharks in this respect is that the croc has this sense all over his body--it's not restricted to his head. Crocs are also omnivores. Surprising, right? They've been known to eat fruit from low-hanging branches in the wild, and the crocs that we met love tomatoes. So this sort of made my morning. :)


I finally downloaded my pictures from the Lodge, so I'll post some of them soon, too!

update one of two

far back row: Stephanie, me, Ben, Bethany, Annie, Doug
middle row: Debbie, Katie, Liz, Stephanie, Nancy, Emily, Karen
front row: Shannon, Lisa, Gary

That's a picture of most of the people I work with. In guest clothing (as opposed to costumes). A few weeks ago, Gary (one of the two Nutrition Center managers) took us on a backstage tour of two scary rollercoasters at Hollywood Studios: the Hollywood Tower of Terror and the Rockin' Rollercoaster.

Our tour guide, T.J., has worked at the Tower of Terror since it opened. Apparently the ride tends to malfunction when he's not there. The Tower likes him. Anyway, he showed us the security area where they monitor the ride and make sure that no middle-aged women try to jump out of the elevator car before the scary drop part. He also explained the random drop sequence selection to us and how the Disney World Tower of Terror is different from the one at Disney Land California (the elevator car at Disney Land doesn't leave the shaft like ours does). He told us that Tower was the most expensive ride in Disney World... until Test Track's track had to be rebuilt three times. Tower also had the most computers of any ride in Disney World... until Test Track decided the solution to their problems was more computers! TJ also told us about some of the antiques in the lobby of the Tower (ToT).


The chairs set at this table date back to the 1500s(?). They're Portugese. The ToT Imagineers found them at an estate sale in California and bought them for super cheap because the descendants of the recently deceased owner didn't know what they had. Another cool thing about this photo is the attention to detail. The story behind the Hollywood Tower Hotel is that it was struck by lightning in the 1930s and was then transported into the Twilight Zone. Although the bellhops are destined to stay there forever, many of the hotel guests were able to make it out in time. You can see that a lady left her handkerchief and gloves on the table and that there's an imprint of her lipstick on the wine glass. The plates are antiques, too, but some of the smudges on them are from the pastries the couple was enjoying when the disaster occurred. The cobwebs were made from hot glue. The lampshade was made from an old 1920s flapper's dress. There's a company that specializes is making dead silk flowers.



MahJong (I think that's how it's spelled)--the Chinese? tile game--was gaining popularity in America at this time. The two men who were playing the game ran out of the hotel without cleaning up their game.



This couch is not a genuine antique, but it has its own cool story. When the Imagineers were looking for furniture for the Tower, they happened upon a furniture advertisement from the 1920s. They called the number on the flyer, and the company was miraculously still in business. Still more surprising was that the company still had the means to make the sofa that the Imagineers saw in the ad. So they bought two identical new-antique sofas... and that's one of them!

I didn't really hear the significance of the rest of these photos, but they're still cool to look at. :)