Animal Kingdom

Friday morning we were excited to check out Animal Kingdom.  Mickey left Monsters University decorated sugar cookies and a little Monsters University toy for each of them.  Anna got a sugar cookie decorated like Belle and a princess play dough set (actually now that I think about it, I think she got the Snow White figures on Friday and the princess play dough on Wednesday .  . . whatever).

I told Erik I was taking a picture of him and Wyatt on our very last morning bus ride all together (since Grammy and Poppy wouldn't be with us on Saturday).  This is the face they give me!

Animal Kingdom started off not quite as smooth as it was raining.  It caused us to want to seek shelter by the bathrooms and not where people were lining in up in anticipation of the gates being opened for the day.  I'm pretty sure the rain was keeping some people away however, so I'm sure it didn't make a big difference to be towards the front.

Once we were inside we went over to the Safari ride.  It was a lot of fun!  It was amazing to see so many animals, and I was impressed with the way the landscape looked just like the African plains (which I only know from TV or books haha)

I loved seeing the hippos!

I got tired of taking pictures (shocker!) but there really were a lot of impressive animals and it was neat to be so close to them.

haha these boys . . .

One thing Jackson was most excited about for Animal Kingdom was the Junior Ranger program they do there.  He learned about it on the Magical Express TV on the way from the airport.  Basically it was a book that you could get stamped once you learn about different things at Junior Ranger stations scattered around the park.  We only got to do a few of them, but they really did enjoy them.  I was really impressed with the cast members" that taught the kids at each station.

I am so fascinated by gorillas.  Right now the boys and I are reading Ivan together which is a children's novel about a sad gorilla stuck in a dingy circus.  I couldn't help but hear Ivan's thoughts as I looked at these gorillas.  Hopefully they are happier than Ivan was! ;)

I really enjoyed the 3D, "It's Tough to be a Bug."  It was quite creepy, but really funny too.

I think this was when we took Jackson on the primeval whirl roller coaster.

Lunch was at Tusker House. This buffet was even more delicious than the others.  There were a lot of African dishes that were really good.  It also had some of the longest character interactions.  Donald Duck came to our table like three times.

Did you notice that the only character Wyatt wouldn't pose with was Daisy Duck?? It cracks me up that he is like that!

Dancing around during the first "parade" around the room.

Ready for our second go around the room.  I really loved that kind of stuff.

It was a great lunch.  And while we were eating the skies cleared about and it stopped raining!  Yay!

As we were walking to our next attraction, there was some Indian dancing going on.  Of course I couldn't resist.  As I was copying their moves, one of the Indian dancers came up to me and grabbed my hand to dance next to her.  I had a lot of fun dancing alongside her and a bunch of high school cheerleaders (Oh I should mention that we were there the same week as a really big cheer leading competition at Disney World.  Every day we started to see more and more cheerleaders.  I'm not going to lie, it brought back a flood of memories of my own competitions in Disneyland when I was a cheerleader).  Anyway, the Indian dancing was so much fun and as a bonus, it totally warmed me up!

Poppy trying to coax Wyatt to the front.  That wasn't happening.  I think he and Anna did come up to the front once I was up there  :)

So Everest is the biggest roller coaster at Animal Kingdom, and it was my favorite roller coaster of the whole trip.  It's a really fun ride with great theming-- which I love.

We had fun looking for Janet and Robert when they were riding it.

Jackson's face totally cracks me up here.  He was happy to go on it with me and Erik, but he decided twice was enough for this ride.  Maybe he was a little roller coastered out?

The second time we went on, I kept asking the boy next to me what he was going to do with the stuffed toy he had with him.  He told me it was his 24th time riding the ride, so he knew exactly where the picture gets taken and posed right then. :)  When we went to the picture kiosk after the ride, to put our picture on our account, the worker there said, "Oh I recognize that boy and stuffed toy!  Each time he does something different."  haha I thought he was a funny kid.

We noticed that Baloo and King Louie were just starting a character meet and greet, so we decided to see them.  

Janet and I were saying that we should interact with them a bit more/differently.  She was funny with them.  And I busted out my phone and started playing King Louie's song from Jungle Book, "I Wanna Be Like You."  He and Baloo started dancing with me and it was a lot of fun.  I kept thinking that the photographer or one of the characters would stop dancing and try to do our photo op, because by that point quite a line had formed to see them.  But they didn't stop, so I didn't either.  We kept dancing and dancing, and finally Erik said, "Jenny, there are people waiting for you to finish!"  I guess people in the line were bugged that I kept dancing and dancing with them haha

Photo op by Everest.

Tinker Bell came to join us! :)

So I can't remember all of things we did.  I know in general we had a much slower pace than other days.  It was nice though, because I kind of got to enjoy the ambiance of the place.  To let the kids just run and around and play, we went to the Dinoland play ground which they LOVED.  Sometimes I feel like it's a waste of money to spend so much on tickets to Disney and then go to a play ground there, but the kids really do need just let loose time where they can dictate how and where they play and this spot was perfect.  We found a very nice "cast member" to talk to that gave us the inside scoop on how they hire their college interns and how they pick the girls to be the princesses.

Pluto was the one character that Jackson really wanted to meet that he never did.  He was excited to see him pass by while we were waiting to go into another ride. :)

The ride was Dinosaur.  Wyatt but not Anna was tall enough to ride.  I had read it was scary ride, but not fast.  There was hardly a line, so we walked right up to the front but then right before it was our turn to get on, the ride stopped.  I think maybe someone had lost something important because I noticed the workers were checking all of the cars and the floor.  After about 20 minutes, it was finally running again and we were able to ride it.

So I thought it was a fun ride.  The concept was you were going back in time and trying to find a specific Dinosaur, but on the way you were running into lots of scary dinosaurs.  However, as you can see from the ride photo, Robert was not impressed at all!  He thought it was really dumb, and Erik wasn't too thrilled with it either!  The boys thought it was pretty scary!

Erik and I took Anna and Wyatt on a kiddie dinosaur ride while Robert and Janet took Jackson on primeval whirl again.

And then right before we decided it was time to go back to the hotel, Erik convinced some of us to go on the water ride, Kali River Rapids.  I was already cold, so it really wasn't the best idea.  Then to make the idea even dumber we took Anna on the ride!  She was barely tall enough.  We covered ourselves with our ponchos and hoped for the best.  As it turned out Anna and I got the most soaked.  While Erik who decided to forgo his poncho was barely sprinkled on.  I was so wet it felt like a bucket a cold water was dumped into my pants and down my shirt.  Poor Anna started crying after she got so wet, but luckily I had a change of clothes for her once we were off the ride.  She still talks about this traumatizing experience!

Earlier in the day, I had inquired about a Zebra dome at a bakery in the Africa section of the park.  I had read the Zebra domes were the best treats at Animal Kingdom to get with your snack credit.  Well they told me they only started selling them after 11:00am and it was like 10:30 am when I asked.  Janet and I planned to go later in the day, so right before we were going to get on the bus, Janet and I power walked back to that bakery.  As we walked up to it, we saw that they were already closed and finishing up their cleaning.  I told one of the girls my plight and she said she would go back in the bakery and just give us one for free!  I was so grateful, but then when she handed it to me I realized it was not the same treat I had read about it. In fact, it didn't even look that great.  I decided that beggars could not be choosers in this situation and we were just grateful for our free cupcake :)

After putting on dry clothes, we had dinner at the Art of Animation cafeteria which we again very much enjoyed.  I also took the kids to the arcade for one last session.