DINOSAUR: Sprinkles vs. the Carnotaurus

As a little girl, there was a simple tradition in my family. It went something like this:
"Sprinkles, what do you want for your birthday/Christmas/etc?"
"I want to go to Disney World!"
Okay, so it was more like a tradition for me and an annoyance for my poor parents. Seriously, I had been to Walt Disney World three times by the time I was nine years old.
"How many more times," they thought, "Could she want to go?"
If they only knew.

One year, the same thing happened:
"Sprinkles, you're entering your second year of college. What do you want to do?"
"I want to go to Walt Disney World!"
"... Okay."

We were checking into our resort (the Polynesian, my favorite one of all) when I started a discussion with one of the cast members there. I admitted to him that, since I hate drops, I am unable to ride Splash Mountain and Tower of Terror.

He scoffed, "Those aren't the most frightening rides here."
"Oh? Then what is?"
"DINOSAUR."

I scoffed. What sort of ride could be frightening if it didn't have drops? I mean, who's afraid of dinosaurs, right?

The cast member warned me.
I should have listened.

In case you have never been there, Disney's Animal Kingdom is beautiful. It is beautiful, and also the hottest place in the world. I don't know how it is the hottest place in the world, but it really is. I wanted to make a bee-line for DINOSAUR, but common sense told us to head to Kilimanjaro Safaris first. It seemed like it took forever to wander from Africa to Dinoland, U.S.A.. My mind was filled with The Universe of Energy, and I wanted to see more Disney dinos.

My mother was smart. She had guessed what kind of ride this was... and she didn't want to get jostled around, either. So she decided to sit this one out while I went in with our group.
As we passed dinosaur bones and listened to Bill Nye the Science Guy give us tidbits of information, I started to get a knot in my stomach. Those bones were, you know, kind of big. Just how close was the nasty dino going to get to us?

I was a little ball of nerves as we watched the pre-show movie and I completely missed the references to the actual movie "DINOSAUR". I almost decided to leave, but I had shown so much gusto before.

"Does it have a big drop?"
"It doesn't need one."
"Ha! Then it can't be scary."
"A giant audio-animatronic dinosaur chasing your car isn't scary?"
"Of course not. It's just an animatronic."

Just an animatronic... just an animatronic...

I have watched videos of DINOSAUR online, trying to re-capture exactly what it was that I experienced. To me, it's just a ball of terror and sensory-batterment. Reigning above it all is the Carnotaurus, the un-disputed star of the ride. After he showed up, I tucked my head down and put my hands around my head and neck-- convinced that he was going to dive down on my fleshy body with rows upon rows of jagged teeth. This was not an audio-animatronic. For those few minutes, that dinosaur was real.

I do not have the photographic evidence of my trauma. For some reason I didn't find a photo of a quivering ball of me all that amusing at the time. In fact for the next half-hour I aimlessly wandered the park- seperated from my group, drunk with adrenaline, and revelling in the fact that I could see the sun again. Somewhere along the way I picked up a doll of the Carnotaurus, as if that could erase the memory.

Oh, and now I occassionally have nightmares about being eaten by gargantuan dinosaurs.
The next post will be a useful one, I promise! It will probably be about Traditions.