Animal Kingdom's Yak & Yeti Local Foods Cafes

Continuing my day at Disney's Animal Kingdom, I had lunch at the Yak & Yeti Local Foods Cafes. This is a fast food attachment to the full service Yak & Yeti restaurant with outdoor seating.

I was considering eating at the actual full service Yak & Yeti, but after looking at their menu, I changed my mind. It seemed they had pretty standard dishes that you could get at any Chinese Restaurant, but charged about $30 per dish. The Local Foods Cafes also featured some pretty standard Chinese dishes, along with some burgers, all for much less money. If I wanted to spend top dollar on Chinese food, I don't think a Landry restaurant in a theme park is the best choice.

I ordered the Shrimp Lo Mein. It had plenty of shrimp served over noodles with a somewhat limited selection of vegetables. It definitely could have used more variety when it came to the vegetables in the dish, but it was still pretty tasty. It was a whole lot of food too. Much more than what it looked like.

I also split an order of Pork Egg Rolls. This had to be one of the greasiest egg rolls I've ever eaten. The hot oil was dripping off of the roll when I picked it up! I don't know what happened here, but it wasn't a good thing!

Moving away from the food/restaurant pictures for the rest of this post, I'll say a few things about the new stuff in Animal Kingdom to please the obsessive Disney fans who cause a big spike in this blog's traffic whenever something Disney related is posted.

First new thing was the whole carnival themed area that was added to Dinoland. I didn't quite understand the purpose of the whole area, except as a cheap theme to tie in some carnival rides. What do dinosaurs have to do with carnivals or roadside attractions? I went on the Primeval Whirl roller coaster while in this section of the park. Kind of a stupid ride, but it is what it is. I love roller coasters, but wild mouse coasters really do nothing for me.


Moving on to Dinosaur. Last time I rode this, I'm pretty sure it was called Countdown to Extinction. Very cool ride, but stupid storyline. As someone who has spent way too much time in Natural History museums, the Carnotaurus on this ride really bothers me. This ride portrays the carnotaurus as a large animal, equivalent to a tyrannosaur, when in reality they were much smaller dinosaurs. Even smaller than the iguadon that you are trying to rescue in the ride. I would have expected better scientific accuracy from a ride partly narrated by Bill Nye the Science Guy...


Last, I have to mention Expedition Everest. This ride was one of the highlights of the day. As far a themed roller coasters go, this is definitely one of the best, right up there with Thunder Mountain. Roller coasters always seem so much better when they build a fake mountain around the track. It had it's nice surprises and was really smooth. Only disappointment was that the robotic yeti wasn't working. Still, Expedition Everest is a really fun ride!

Happy 4th of July!

What better way to celebrate July 4th than to visit Coney Island for Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest?

I visited Coney Island back in 2007, back before this blog existed, and enjoyed some of the very varied food that is for sale on the boardwalk. I started out at Nathan's in honor of today's hot dog eating contest. I'm not a big fan of hot dogs, but this place is classic. I wish I knew they had frogs legs, lobster rolls, and clam chowder before I ordered from the outdoor window that only served hot dogs.





Besides from Nathan's, Coney Island had all sorts of other interesting food.









Ralph's Italian Ices had a stand set up on the boardwalk.

Over the past few years, Coney Island has been going through some controversial redevelopment. A company named Thor Development has been buying up property and evicting the occupants in order to build mostly condos and a few new rides. In 2008, Coney Island's Astroland park had it's last season. This food stand from the park has since been removed. The famous rocket on the roof was once an early simulator ride and has apparently been bought by a Coney Island history museum.



And what visit to Coney Island is complete without a ride on the historic Cyclone Roller Coaster after eating the boardwalk's food?

Sea World's Manta...

I made a Twitter account for Watch Me Eat (@WatchMeEat) a few months ago. I didn't really understand what all of the buzz with Twitter was about. The whole Twitter thing seemed so pointless to me. I would post something about the blog, but I really don't think any of it was read. Today, that all changed and I found out the purpose of Twitter: To get on new roller coasters for free!

Somehow I found out about Sea World's Twitter account (@RealShamu) and through that, I wound up getting admission into a private after hours event at Sea World called Manta Madness to ride Manta a day before it opens to the public.

We got to Sea World at the instructed time and were lead into the park to the entrance of Manta.



Once at the ride, everyone was free to eat the food and drinks that were supplied. I thought I remembered hearing that when Anheuser Busch was sold, they removed all of the free alcohol from their parks. Apparently that doesn't apply to special events since they had this bar set up serving drinks. I went with an exotic Sierra Mist...



And then there was the table of food. It was filled with vegetable platters, assorted cheeses, tortilla and potato chips, crackers, and a really good artichoke cheese dip. The table of food was constantly getting refilled. It was really nice of Sea World to feed everyone...




While everyone was eating, the park president did a speech, and Manta was opened.


After I finished eating, I entered the line leading to Manta. It traveled under waterfalls:


And eventually the line led into an aquarium. I was kind of disappointed that Sea World didn't have any actual manta rays on display. I saw a few varieties of rays, but no mantas. I've only seen manta rays on display once before (at Atlantis in the Bahamas), and I was hoping for a ride named Manta, there would actually be manta rays on display. I hope this isn't a continuation of the dumbing down of the Orlando theme parks that I've been noticing over the past few years and hopefully Sea World will be getting some mantas to put on display once the ride officially opens. They had a connected aquarium that was closed, so maybe they have some manta rays in there.



And finally, for the ride itself. I've only been on one other flying coaster (Superman at Six Flags Great Adventure), and Manta is definitely a step above that. It starts out with it's unique loading where you get strapped into the very comfortable seats which then get pulled up backwards leaving you dangling. You proceed up the lift hill over a backstage area of the park. It would have been nice if this area was themed a little more, but what could you do. Soon, the train dropped down the first hill into a pretzel loop which started with some great airtime and then went directly into having everyone lying on their backs for a second or two of really intense g-forces. After leaving the pretzel, the ride got much more relaxing with the occasional twist as it zoomed around it's track. After the halfway block brakes, Manta got fun with lots of near misses. If you were on the the right side of the train, you got close enough to reach out and touch water in the ride's splash area. I actually liked the left side of the train as it seemed to come a bit too close to waterfalls, rockwork, and the ground in certain spots.











Manta is definitely a winner. I haven't decided where I would rank it yet in terms of Orlando's other roller coasters, but it does kind of have a monopoly now as the only flying coaster in the area.

I checked out some of the other Manta Madness postings that have popped up on the internet from this event, and I'm disappointed that I left before the T-Shirts were given out. I did get a Manta pin, but I would have loved a shirt.

Thank you Sea World for letting everyone in to ride Manta!