For Zilla, the Rainforest Cafe Update

Just for fun, we drove from Tampa to Orlando yesterday to watch a friend of mine perform in the Orlando Fringe Festival. Gabi is awesome and totally brave to mount a one-woman show. And we were brave to bring a seven-year-old to a performance that did not involve singing animals or snakes. As a bribe, we told Girlie that if she was super quiet and didn't say anything during the show, even in her very best quiet library voice, we would take her to the Rainforest Cafe for dinner. There are two Rainforest Cafes in Orlando - both are on Disney property. We went to the one at the Disney Marketplace, right next door to drunken Disney (oops, I mean Pleasure Island). We arrived at 5:20 p.m., waited in line to sign up and were told that it would be an hour and fifteen minutes or maybe an hour and a half. We totally expected to wait that long. It was a holiday weekend and all that. But a bribe's a bribe and they don't ever work again if you don't pay up. Our return time to get seated was 7:10 p.m. Have you ever been to a Disney park? If you've ever waited in line for a ride, you know that they trick you by having you get to what looks like the front of the line only to find out you are just last in line in a different waiting area. And so on, and so on. It's much the same at the Rainforest Cafe. At 7:00 we'd been wandering all around the BIG merchandise area for a long time and were getting mighty hungry. "We're here," we told the guy back at the purple elephant where they let you into the restaurant. "Super," he said. "But you're not even close," he said. Sniff, sniff. Girlie started chanting, "LET US EAT, LET US EAT." They must get that a lot because he was totally unphased. Finally, at about 7:30, we checked in again and they told us to proceed to the Gorilla Room. Right. They really meant the Gorilla Room LINE. Where we waited for another 20 minutes. Then, en masse, they had a bunch of us proceed to the Gorilla Room entrance where we waited in line AGAIN. I was ready to chew the leather off my purse. Finally we were seated, we ordered, and we waited. And waited. I tried to get my Hubby to distract a waiter carrying food so that I could trip him and scrounge off the floor but Hubby didn't bite. When we left the restaurant (we had skipped appetizers and dessert), our bribe payoff had taken FOUR HOURS. FOUR HOURS for a salad that would feed Darfur and its neighboring countries, three little hot dogs for Girlie and a stir fry for Hubby. Was the food tasty? Yes. Was it neato when they had a fake thunderstorm? Yes. Will I ever go back, even if somebody offers ME a bribe? No.