Day 2: Animal Kingdom

For our second day, we headed to Animal Kingdom.  It was a fun park too!  They have a huge tree in the center.  Ashleigh asked if Tinkerbell lived in the tree. It is called the Tree of Life and has over 300 animals sculpted into it. The Bug's Life show is under it, in the roots!

 We saw a Lion King Show.  It was amazing.  Disney goes all out for costumes, props and animals!  It was fun.

 These acrobat monkeys were amazing.  Flipping, hanging, swinging.

Pocahontas

When we left the show, we ran into Pocahontas and her raccoon friend, Meeko.

We also found many more characters to meet.

 Baloo and King Louie

 Flik

He kept smelling the flower in Erin's hair.

 Winnie the Pooh

And his friends from the 100 Acre Woods

 Eeyore

 Tigger

 Pluto and Goofy

In the different sections, they designed it to look like different places, Africa, Asia, Dino-times.  It was pretty neat!

Asia

 This was one of the favorite rides in this park.  Expedition Everest.  It was a roller coaster that went forward, then backward, then forward again.  It was quite the ride.  I went twice (and that about did me in) but Brent, Erin, Ashleigh and Janiel went three times!!!

This is part of the African village.  So authentic looking!

One of my favorite rides was the Kilimanjaro Safari.  You rode in a truck-jeep type vehicle through an African Savanna.  We saw all sorts of animals.  Some of them could even cross the trail like they were in the wild.  Others couldn't (like the lions and cheetahs), but their enclosures were designed so that you couldn't see any fencing at all.  It was really neat!

When we got off, we saw this big guy having lunch!

Erin compared her six year hands to those of a gorilla.

Next we tried the Kali River Rapids.  It was a lot of fun, but we got wet.  Good thing we are in Florida with some warm weather!  The kids loved it so much that we went twice.

They had some tigers in the Asia section. I think they are so beautiful.

Here is one of their many fruit bats.  They were really big!

 Some monkeys had quite the old ruins to play on!

We also saw the Finding Nemo Musical.  It was so good. The actors sang and talked, but used puppet type fish to act it out.  We tried the dinosaur ride, which was kind of like Jurassic Park.  The twins loved it and had to go twice.  Brent didn't love it, so I got to take them!  We also enjoyed flying Triceratops.  We had a fun day, but ran out of time.  They closed at 5, a little earlier than the rest of the parks.  Probably for the animals' sake.  What another amazing day.  The kids voted that the Expedition Everest was the favorite ride at this park.  (On one of my rides, I sat next to a man that had gone on it 7 times.  His son loved it, but his wife couldn't handle it.  I was lucky to do twice and the other kids three times!)
The crowds were perfect.  We didn't have to wait long for any rides or characters.  The kids could ride as much as they wanted without waiting.  We had our dinner then headed out to find some souvenirs at some local shops.  Walmart was the best find for souvenirs!