Surprise Orlando Trip Day 2

WARNING: TOO MANY PICTURES

The next day we all went to Animal Kingdom for the first time.  We loved it!  We wanted to be in the first wave of people in the park so we were up and at 'em early in the morning, on the shuttle headed toward Animal Kingdom by 7:30.  Just like everyone else, we rushed straight for the Avatar Flight of Passage ride in the Pandora area.  The line was really long even though we were early and hurried to go there first, but it moved really quickly and we were on the ride in less than 30 minutes.  This was similar to "Soarin'" at EPCOT but with the CG environment and animals of Pandora.  We loved how the whole Pandora area really looked like the fictional world from Avatar (even though none of our kids had seen Avatar).

Then we walked to a different area of the park, past the awesome Tree of Life, to ride on the Kali River Rapids.  We expected to get wet on this ride but we were merely sprinkled.  We wouldn't have minded a little more moisture with the Central Florida August weather being what it is.

Then we enjoyed seeing some animals in Animal Kingdom.  It was as if they planned it that way.

If you can find the animal in this picture (not Jack) then you earn a Gold Star.

Next was Expedition Everest.  This is a cool roller coaster that takes you up into a mountain only to discover that a Yeti has destroyed the track, so you have to go back to base camp backward.  Of everything we did in Orlando during this trip, this is what Luke still talks about the most (as of writing this 3 months later).  He was really into the Yeti thing.  This was a pretty intense roller coaster and riding it once was plenty for me.  Mema and Papa even decided they didn't mind sitting it out from the get-go.  So after Ben and the kids and I rode it once, Cat and Eliza were really excited to get to ride it again using Mema and Papa's fast passes.  Worked out great.

A quick rain shower and another walk past the Tree of Life later, we were in the Africa area ready for our Safari Ride.  This was really cool.  We saw a lot more animals than I thought we would and had great views of most of them.  The only animals I feel like we missed out on were the lions, and that was mostly because we did the Safari in the middle of the day.  Next time we'll be sure to plan this for the evening.

While still in Africa, we caught the Lion King show, my personal favorite attraction of the day, but then again I'm a sucker for a good live show.  This one had great music (of course) talented singers, acrobats, cool costumes, and air conditioning.  I loved it.  We stayed in the area and had an (authentic?) African lunch, then walked over to see the Nemo show.  This was really cool because of the larger-than-life puppets and different levels of the stage that were used to tell the story.  It also had original music, air conditioning, AND comfy seats.  I might have had a short nap while Marlin searched for Nemo.  Though I did like what I heard of the music.

By now it was about 5:00 and Luke was really grumpy.  Mema and Papa were ready to take a break so Luke and I took the shuttle with them back to the hotel.  Luke didn't mind leaving too much, until he realized that the older kids were all staying at the park and having fun without him.  He threw a major fit and cried for the next 20 minutes while the other people on the bus wondered what in the world was going on with him/me/us.  He finally fell asleep as soon as we dropped Mema and Papa got off at their stop, right before our stop.  And he stayed asleep while I carried him to our room and put him in his bed.  I'm glad he got a nap, and I didn't mind putting my feet up for a little while either.

Meanwhile, Ben took the big kids back to the Pandora area to ride on the Na'Vi River Journey.  I was actually bummed to miss this ride because I wanted to see all the bioluminescent plants but Ben said it wasn't all that great.  He might have just been saying that to make me feel better, but it worked.  We had dinner at the hotel then let the kids play in the lap pool for a little while before finally going to bed.