We made plans to visit a Safari (zoo) today and to stay for the circus at 7 so we had a slow morning around the hotel doing more homework, playing uno and relaxing since it is going to be a long night. At 11:30 we met John in the lobby and made our way to the Subway. It was busy today! We got on the first car and surprised John by serenading him with Happy Birthday. Of course that only added to the stares but John enjoyed it 🙂
We had to get off at the next station and transfer to a different line. It was crowded and when the doors opened it was great shove to get in as others were coming out. The doors began to close and five of us were left standing on the platform as the train pulled away.
I was planning on hopping on the next one and just keeping an eye out at each stop to see if they were on the platform, but John was mouthing to stay there and they would come back 🙂 About 15 minutes later we saw them exit across they way and before long they had made their way back to out platform. We made a plan this time making sure everyone knew the exit stop but when the doors opened it was not crowded and we were able to easily get on together. Eight stops later were were at our destination. The area has an amusement park, water park, safari, alligator park and circus with busses transporting you between the parks. It was like a mini Disney World. When we got our tickets we learned that the circus was at 5 instead of 7:30 so we didn’t have as much time as we had thought.
We had high hopes of getting to visit the newly born triplet pandas but they were no where to be seen, other than on bulletin boards and replaying tv segments. We enjoyed seeing the pandas who were mostly sleeping and sprawled out on a block of ice, and cute koala bears. There were many different tigers and they were active and fun to watch. The elephant and giraffe exhibits were much closer and interactive than ours at home so that was fun to see as well. After speed waking though the large zoo we finished up on a train safari ride. You can also drive your own vehicles through so it was an interesting mix of the wild animal safari in Georgia and a zoo train ride. By the time it was over our crew was hitting a wall. It was 4 and they had not had food side we led the hotel and it was HOT HOT HOT! WE didn’t have time to walk back to the AC restaurant we had seen at the back entrance so our only option was a fast food counter with limited options. Of course Samuel and Jim had no problem ordering, SK and Elizabeth had large ice cream cones and the rest of us stuck with crackers, peanuts, etc that I had in the back pack and we just got drinks.
We made our way toward the circus on crowded busses which felt a lot like Disney transportation. The circus had open seating with the exception of some VIP tickets so we found some open seats and sad down to enjoy the show. It was a wonderful and entertaining show filled with animals, motorcycles, amazing stunts and death defying acts and finished with an American being shot from a canon. It was a highlight of our trip thus far and we were thankful it ended up being an earlier show because we were tired out. We eventually made our way back to the bus and onto the subway. The majority of us were ready for a quick bite of dinner and bed. John ordered Papa John’s to be delivered to our room and he took SK, Samuel and Jim out to a local noodle restaurant. Once again our pizza order was not as expected but at that point we were so hungry and tired it didn’t matter. We ate and called it a day.
