Best Day Ever! (otherwise known as Animal Kingdom)

This is why I really wanted to go to Disney World! Since the odds of my ever going on an actual African Safari (a lifelong, completely unexplainable obsession) are slim to none, this will have to do. The Kilimanjaro Safari at Animal Kingdom was super, duper awesome, exceeded my expectations for sure. We got there early and headed straight for the safari (a long line forms pretty quickly and they can only do so many tours a day). Early in the morning is the best time to go anyway, because that's when the animals are most active. Honestly, I could have stayed there all day.

Those would be hippos

a real termite mound

baby giraffe walked right in front of us, mama giraffe thought we were a little too close

those are actual ostrich eggs!

Not just the safari, but all of the animal trails were great too. The whole park was great, nice a shady (unlike Animal Kingdom that's almost entirely asphalt and you feel like you're being cooked to death). We all loved this park.

two Hokie boys; there was way more commentary on Bubba's Hokie hat than my BYU hat

just some dragon feet

cruisin Silly

on the Maharajah Jungle Trek

 By now we knew the secrets to getting Bubba on those rides with the 44" height requirement, so we all went on Exploration Everest; really great ride, definitely worth riding once, but Bubba and I opted out of going back with Scott, Cakes and Silly. There's a part where it goes backwards, in the dark, and that doesn't mix well with my motion sickness and claustrophobia issues. Bubba very firmly said he did not want to ride it again.

Kali River Rapids was awesome. We went straight through with our FastPass and enjoyed it, everyone got at least a little bit wet. That was not enough for Audrey though. It was still early in the morning and there wasn't much of a line yet, so we went again. She was determined to get as wet as possible this time around. And boy did she get her wish. She got completely drenched. It's possible that she was entirely underwater at some point. We were in that park for most of the day, and I never saw anyone else even close to as soaked as she was. And she loved it.

soaked Cakes

 We explored the rest of the park; saw It's Tough to be a Bug, were pretty disappointed by Dino-Rama!, well not really disappointed, it's a carnival, and it was just like every other sketchy, crappy carnival you've ever been too. DINOSAUR was scary - we did not like it, particularly Bubba, and he didn't want to go on anything dark after that. The Boneyard was a fun place to play and take a break.

Then we had lunch at Flame Tree Barbecue which was pretty good. There was a band playing nearby and Bubba started dancing like crazy when they sang Happy - here's a little snippet of the tail end of his performance

best shirt ever - Cakes wears it all the time now and always gets comments on it

 We weren't planning to go to Rafiki's Planet Watch, but we wanted to ride the Wildlife Express, so we went, and the train ride was fun, but the destination was not so very exciting. We just wanted to get back over to Africa because we hadn't walked the Pangani Forest Exploration Trail yet.

our favorite sign - you can hold hands but you can't dance

Do you know what that is? That's an OKAPI, people! Who the heck has an okapi? They're practically extinct!

K, so I loved the safari, and I was amazed to see an actual okapi, but then, then, the most unexpected thing - NAKED MOLE RATS!!! My family loves naked mole rats! And I have instilled this love in my children, but they had never seen real, live naked mole rats before! Bubba slept with a stuffed naked mole rat for years. I was so stinkin excited! I think the man there at their exhibit was pretty happy to have a whole group of people standing there oohing and aahing over these ugliest of all creatures. This day was a real win for me - African safari? check! Showing my children a real life naked mole rat colony? check!

We spent a long time watching these gorillas too. They were pretty entertaining. The baby even looked at us and banged on the glass.

And I couldn't resist taking this picture. Like father, like son. :-)

We took a little break at our hotel, then set off to check out Downtown Disney. First for the unpleasant part, because I want to end on a happy note - do not go to DisneyQuest in Downtown Disney. We wouldn't have gone ourselves, but it was included in our park tickets, so we basically went for free. If we had paid to go in there it would have been over $200 and we would have been really mad at the money we wasted. It's like a horrible Chuck E Cheese pretending to be something awesome. Don't do it.

 Anyway, we had some good food at The Earl of Sandwich, bought some Ghirardelli chocolate, checked out the Lego store (The highlight of Scott's day) and I found what I was looking for - the seven dwarfs!

My family went to Disney World when I was about 8 and I got a set of dwarfs almost exactly like this and a Snow White dress (A real dress, not this dress-up crap they have now). I had already decided before this trip started that if I saw a set of dwarfs, I was gonna hafta buy 'em - I saw some, and I did. I even bought another one and sent it to my friend. :-) Now they hang out in my closet with all my other childhood stuff and it makes me happy!