The Jungle Queen

I started Tuesday by calling a few parasailing outfits to see if we could do one day while we at Fort Lauderdale. I couldn’t get through to anyone. No one would return my calls or emails for some reason. We finally decided to take the Jungle Queen tour. It goes on a tour through the Intercoastal Waterway and ends up at an island with animals and a alligator show. We headed over there Tuesday afternoon.

The parking was a bit confusing (you actually park at the resort next door) but we finally managed it. I had bought our tickets online so we had no problems when we got there. The Jungle Queen is a large two decked craft. We grabbed seats where we could see. Our guide told us about all the large yachts and homes as we passed them. All of the yachts were multi-millon dollar, some of them as much as 50 million EACH. The homes were beautiful and equally expensive. Many of them are owned by big name business types (such as the owners of Sunglass Hut and Alka Seltzer). We passed under several drawbridges and even OVER a highway. We saw where the yachts are moored and where they are repaired. We finally arrived at their island. Their were several cages of birds and other animals to see. The highlight though was the alligator show. A young man actually dragged a 300 lb alligator around and sat on it! He also opened its mouth and put his face in it! This was especially risky given it was drizzling at the time. When the show was over, he brought out a much smaller alligator (with it’s mouth taped shut) that we could pose for pictures with. I could of course not resist doing that. We took the Jungle Queen back and passed a huge cruise ship. It looked like someone had grabbed up a big hotel and put it out on the water. I didn’t realize how huge they were. When we got off, I noticed a sign advertising parasailing so I noted the phone number to call later.

We decided to then go to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner since it was relatively close to where we were. It was hard to find and didn’t even have it’s own parking lot. We ended up paying to park and walking. I was immediately disappointed to find out they were out of my favoriate appetized – mini corn dogs. The service was barely passible – for example they took Donna’s tea glass midway through the meal to refille it and never brought it back. Finally when we left, we decided to order cheesecake to go. The young lady at the counter was not very nice at all – she acted as if we were bothering her. It was easily the worst Cheesecake Factory experience we’d ever had.

We got back to the restort in time to watch Kentucky play. Tyler Ullis was still suffering from the hyperextended elbow he’d suffered again South Florida while we were there Friday so he didn’t play. It really showed. UK started off very sluggishly against Illinois State. The game was tied at 31 at the end of the first half. UK played better in the 2nd half and eventually won by 12 but it was obviously Tyler Ullis was severely missed.

That’s enough for this post. For my next post, I’ll let you know if we ever got to parasail plus how we tried out one of the new entertainment trends sweeping the nation.