Click on the photo to be taken to the first in the set of today's photos.
We finally made it to Animal Kingdom. This was our first visit to this park for our trip. Actually, the first visit for any of us except the locals in the family. I'm really impressed with and love the atmosphere there. It's very lush and feels nicely overgrown. But in a crowded park it just seems to add to the confusion. Especially since the trees block any kind of view beyond the immediate area making it impossible to orient yourself with landmarks. Many of the trails look very similar and I got turned in the wrong direction more than once.
We wanted to make sure to go on the safari so one member of our group grabbed everyone's park passes and made a dash for the Fast Pass distribution while we went over to ride Dinosaur. That was a really fun ride. Unfortunately, all the kids were scared of it. They take your picture just as a huge t-rex attacks your vehicle. In the photo all of the kids have their heads down in fear (in fact they pretty much hid like that after the first dinosaur encounter)...except Adam. He had a look of fear on his face that can only be described as "I want to hide and cry but there's no way I'm turning my back on that thing." It was kind of sad and funny at the same time.
Then we grabbed passes for Everest, the one ride I wanted to be sure to ride on as many times as possible. We ate lunch, then went on the safari. I'm impressed at how well they were able to transform Florida into Africa (I wonder how much the animals enjoy the humidity during the summer though). It was a fun ride, but the vehicle is so bouncy and they don't slow down long enough at the animals to really take it in and/or take pictures. So half my photos are really blurry.
We watched It's Tough To Be a Bug. I gave Adam a warning before hand about some of the effects so that he could avoid them. Unfortunately I forgot about a few of them. The funny thing was, he was more upset about having one of the bugs spit "acid" on us than any of the other scary stuff in it. There seemed to be many first-timers in that showing too, which made it all really fun.
We also rode the river raft ride where Adam and I got soaked. Adam was freezing afterward so we had to take him into the bathroom and let him undress and wait in a stall while we dried his clothes at the hand drier. I just stayed wet the rest of the day. And things got much colder tonight than any of the other nights.
We tried to make it to see the Finding Nemo Musical, but didn't get there on time so I took a group of kids to wait in the stand by line for Everest (our Fast Passes were still not mature yet). It was a 1 hour wait, but we really didn't have much else we wanted to do and I wanted to ride more than once...which means one of those rides will require a stand by wait. It was awesome! That is a fun ride. I've seen video of it on the web so I knew what to expect, but those videos can't recreate the entire experience. And the queue is one of the best I've seen yet. Very immersive and highly detailed.
I'm constantly impressed with how fearless Rachel is with these coasters. During the second ride on Everest I actually saw her raise her hands during some parts of it. Of course, not the really fast or dark parts, but still...it's a start. (She absolutely hated Dinosaur by the way.)
While we rode Everest, the remainder of our party had held places in line for Nemo, so we were able to immediately jump over there. It was a fun show, but that downtime in the dark revealed just how tired I was. I kept nodding off. We can't have that, so back to Everest we go for another shot of adrenaline. This time we had Fast Pass. Then we were able to ride a 3rd time right after that with some extra Fast Passes someone was able to pickup.
By the end of the final ride the park was about to close and we still needed to eat dinner. We went to the Yak & Yetty Cafe. Delicious!
I think tomorrow we're going to be going back to the Magic Kingdom. It will be Thanksgiving, so it should be interesting to see how the crowds are.
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