A Slightly Wild Time

Up next, the Animal Kingdom.  There are so many things to love about this park.  Good rides, good food, lots of shade.  Plus, a fantastic playground area for kids to really let loose.  

But first, Anne said, "Ima stand on that rock, pose,  and you can take my picture."  Ok, little lady.  

I predict this will be a fairly short post.  Most of the photos I took are of animals, and I don't think you need to see another picture of an elephant.  This happens every time we go to this park.  I end up with 100 pictures of birds.  I know they mean something to me at the time, but you get home and think, wow, I have 100 pictures of birds whose names I can't remember,  

We arrived at the park around 9am when it opened. Oh, and before you ask, we didn't ride Pandora.  Here are my reasons why.  1.  Neither Rob nor myself have seen the movie, or have any desire to see the movie.  2. It was crowded and we didn't feel like being in a crowd to see stuff we didn't care about.  3. Riding motion simulators make Rob sick.  He does ok on Soarin' because the motion is so gentle.  But having his legs locked into something and his face covered? Not a good idea.  

Our first stop was Dinoland.  Its good to get that area of the park out of the way early in the day because there is no shade over there.  Once the sun is fully up, it is HOT.  Luckily we were headed right to the Boneyard playground.  If you have small kids, this is a great place.  One side has lots of slides and places to explore.  Then you cross a little bridge and there is a shaded area where a fake dinosaur skeleton is covered in billions of small, smooth rocks.  There are plenty of buckets and shovels, so your kid can dig to their heart's content.  After an hour of sliding and digging, we pulled the kids out.  Seriously, they would still be there now, 5 months later, if we let them.

Our first ride of the day was the Triceratops Spin.  This is just like Dumbo, but you sit in a triceratops instead of an elephant.  

l-i-v-i-n

After the ride we let the kids get their faces painted.  It was awesome.  Up first, Ryan.

​Then, Anne.  The artist began by asking me if Anne was allowed to have glitter.  I said, "yes! of course!"  Anne started beaming.  Afterwards, Anne said that when the lady asked about the glitter, she was sure I was going to say "no." When I said yes, it made Anne very, very happy.  

This face paint really stays on.  In fact, at 7pm when we went to the pool, they were still a snow queen and dinosaur!


After this we walked along one of the jungle trails.  These are so well done, you really should take the time to explore them when you go.  But I will spare you the aforementioned bird pictures and skip ahead to lunch.  Yup.  We were at the park for 3 hours and had only ridden 1 ride.  I love Animal Kingdom!

We tried the Yak & Yeti quick service location for lunch, which was our something new that day.  The food was outstanding but there was a serious lack of seating that kinda put a damper on the meal.

This is a picture of Rob's beer, so he could check it in to his app. But it's hilarious that there is a dinosaur eating an uncrustable in the background.

Orange Chicken. I don't think I ate a cheeseburger this whole trip.

Next we went on the Kilimanjaro Safaris.  This is, of course, the highlight of this park.  It is so good, that I have to show you some pictures of animals.  

Lots of pictures of kids pointing.

After we returned from our two week safari (haha), we were off on the Wildlife Express to Rafiki's Planet Watch.  In layman's terms, we took a train to a special section of the park.  Here they sometimes do surgeries and check-ups on the animals.  The day we were there, nothing special happened.  So we met Rafiki, Doc McStuffins, and the kids enjoyed a talk about alligators.

They each got to pet the alligator and we learned that alligators have a second set of eyelids that function like goggles when they are in the water.  How awesome is that?

Outside of the Planet Watch, there is an area called The Affection Section.  Don't be fooled, that's fancy talk for Petting Zoo.  But the nice thing is they give the kids these brushes so at least they aren't petting the goats with their bare hands.  And there is a hand wash station.  

Hands thoroughly scrubbed, we took the train back to civilization and searched out some ice cream.  

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All hopped up on sugar, it was time for the bird show!  Seriously though, we love Flights of Wonder.  Because, you know, bird pictures.

1 bird picture isn't going to kill you!

The last attraction of the day was just Rob and the kids.  He really wanted to take them to see It's Tough to be a Bug.  I swore off that ride in 2012.  I really hate it.  The kids thought it was funny and scary, which is pretty accurate.  Luckily I was able to poke around the shops while they were seeing it.  I buy very few souvenirs but I love looking through the shops.  I have to do it without the kids though, which I seem to remember being the same with my mom when I was a kid.

That's the end of our day at the Animal Kingdom.  It doesn't seem like we did a lot, but I promise we had fun!  Plus, the day before was a full day at the Magic Kingdom and the next day we were headed back there.  I have read some negative reviews of Animal Kingdom for being a "half day park."  I don't really see a problem with that!

My shirt reads: Hakuna Moscato, it means drink wine.