Disney Trip Day 3 - Animal Kingdom

We woke up a little later on Tuesday morning since we'd been out so late the night before.  We had on the schedule a morning off and then afternoon at Animal Kingdom but everyone was up and we didn't feel like letting them swim and then pulling them out of the pool.  We decided to take it easy getting ready but we still got to Animal Kingdom around 10:00. 

I got the FP for Kilamanjaro Safari while everyone else made their way slowly to the Lion King show.  That show was amazing.  We got some good seats.  The boys loved the monkey acrobats.  I loved the show but I was also amazed at the precision with which they did every movement.  Everyone had a job and they knew precisely when to do it (even when they weren't the main performer at the moment).  It was a study in efficiency and precision.  It was here that I got the first comment on my laminated map.  The lady next to me wanted to know where I got it.  I told her I made them at home.  They were really useful too.  The map I would I got from the park would get ruined either from rain, sweat or the bathroom sinks within a few hours.  My maps are still good today and they made good fans as well.  :)

After lion king we went back to Kilimanjaro looking at the animals and sites along the way.  Most of the animals were out even though it was 11:30 by now.  The lions were sleepy but since they sleep like 23 out of 24 hours, that's not news.  Here are some pics of the animals. 

 Hippos

We walked through Pagani Forest for a bit. Saw some neat birds and the hippos underwater.  One came by the viewing glass right next to Nathan's head and it made him jump really high.  But he loved it.

Then I went to Kali River Rapids for FP while everyone else made their way to the front of the park for lunch at Rainforest Cafe.  We had a nice lunch.  The humidity was really high so it felt really nice to be in the air conditioning.  You could tell the kids were tired because they just sat quietly while waiting for the food.  We had a good meal, re-sprayed the sunscreen and then headed to Dino-land and the Finding Nemo show.  I hightailed it out of there and got FP for Expedition Everest and met everyone at Finding Nemo.  We got in near the end of the seating but really almost every seat in there is good.  The show was amazing.  I think Nathan said this was his favorite sit down show.  It was just really cool.  After that we went on Dinosaur (the wait was like 10 minutes even without FP).  I liked it but it was a bit too scary for Nicholas and a bit too rough for my parents.  At this point it started to pour down raining.  Sheets of rain.  We tried to wait it out and went to Bug's Life (another way to scary one for Nicholas, by this point he was a preschooler on the edge of disaster).  When we got out of Bug's Life it was still pouring so my parents and the kids decided to call it quits.  They really just wanted to go in the pool after all.  So we decided not to use the Kali FP.  I asked my parents to take the kids (sans Nathan who wanted to go on the fast roller coaster with us) back to the hotel.  We left them near the tree I pointed to a sign post that had an exit sign at the bottom and told them to follow that on the way out.  We went back to Dinoland because Nicholas wanted a T-rex T shirt and then we were heading to Expedition Everest.  We bought the shirt and looked around for a few minutes because it was still pouring.  We walked out of the store and started heading towards Expedition Everest.  And there standing in Dino-Land with all the three kids were my PARENTS!  Dinoland was the opposite direction from the exit from where we had been at the Tree.  They just started laughing because they were lost.  We pointed them in the correct direction AGAIN and we were off to Expedition Everest.  It was still pouring raining so we were a little worried that the ride wouldn't be running.  Somehow we had gotten separated from Stacy and Tim so we took shelter under a vendor's umbrella while we waited for them.  The vendor offered to call over to EE to check if it was still running.  He got the info that unless it was lightening they were still running the ride so once we all got back together we headed over. 

Side note:  When I was planning the trip I showed Nathan and Nicholas a youtube video of the ride to see if they thought it was too scary.  They both said it was.  But when we talked about it in the park we just called it the fast roller coaster and Nathan was gung ho about it.  I guess he never made the connection between that scary video and the fast roller coaster.  Until we were on the ride.  There's a point in the ride where the coaster stops because it looks like the Yeti has torn up the track.  then you go backwards for a while.  We got to that part of the ride and Nathan says to me "HEY this is that scary roller coaster!"  I said " Yup, too late NOWWWWW!!!!"  (as we were hurtling backwards).  He loved it though.  Since we had enough fast passes for 8 people and only 5 went on, Nathan, Tim and Matt went on it again.  It was great.

After that we headed back to the hotel.  Got some food and pool time (the weather let up) and to bed at a decent (9:30) time.  We were all pretty exhausted.  This was the first time we spent almost an entire day (9:30 to 6:30) in a park without a break.  We decided at this point that we could not do that again especially with the humidity.  I had planned on doing a full day at hollywood studios on Thursday but decided that we would not be able to do it.  Wednesday morning we were supposed to go to a free breakfast sponsored by Boscov's at Animal Kingdom but we would have to be at the bus stop at 6:45AM.  We decided the free food was not worth it.  When we went to bed we were still on the fence about what to do the next morning, hang around the pool till lunch time, then go to Epcot in the afternoon, or go to Hollywood studios in the morning and get some of that done so we didn't have to spend the whole day on Thursday.  Decisions decisions.