Day 3 – Animal Kingdom 

We took the golf cart to the bus stop, thank you very much, and made RD. I have to apologize here for some of my photos. Cold bus + Florida heat + humidity = foggy pic. I didn't notice til it was too late. Everyone was done posing, so no good pics for Lori. I also have a ring around the top from my lens!! I really need to send the camera off to have the sensor realigned, but I didn't have time before our trip. 

 

They have added so much to this park since our trip in 98!! There was the Rainforest then & the safari, of course, the Tree of Life & ITTBAB, which we did not do again. They had Dinoland, but it was just the play area & some water play stuff.I think Camp Minnie Mickey was there. I remember them telling us that Asia was planned & some more animal areas, but wow!! 

The kids watched the opening show while I got the stroller. I sent the big boys off to ride EE while Danny went to FP the Safari. I took the kids to Dinoland. Almost completely deserted!! Wow! Thanks for everyone’s advice on that. Emily refused to ride Triceratops, even though it’s exactly like Dumbo, the one ride she wanted to go on. Jackson, Joshua & I rode it as a walk-on. By that time, Danny had gotten back, so he took Jack on PW. They walked on twice, then another time when Bryce & Alec got there!! Let that be a lesson for your families/friends who like to mess around. Why wait 30 minutes later when you can walk on 3 times first thing!?! 

 

We head over to Dinosaur about 9:45. It was a walk-on, too. All the boys rode together in the front row. Jackson was the only one who wanted to do it again. Everyone else said it was too scary! I was going to have them FP it for later, but nevermind then.  

 

Emily, Joshy & I shopped in the store at the exit & got Joshua some dinosaurs, his favorite, & dino flip flops. He did have to pick the rubbery dinosaurs that fall apart if you get them near water.  This is the child who thinks his stuffed dinos need to "drink" from the dogs' water bowl!! I think Emily got a pen & Jackson some sunglasses, since his had gone missing. I'm pretty sure Alec picked something out, too, but it wasn't nearly as obnoxious as his Epcot souvenir. I don't think I wrote about it before. As we are meeting up to leave Epcot, Alec comes walking up with a 4 foot long wooden sword from China "to remember Epcot by." This is what I get with a 13 year old shopping unsupervised with his own money. How are we going to get THAT on the plane?? 

Ok, back to the current story. We decided to go from Dinosaur do the Safari before going to Asia, since lunch was over there later. I was trying to avoid a whole lot of backtracking. We sent Bryce to get FPs for EE, then meet us at KS. Here he is showing off our FPs collected so far, minus the ones for KS that we had handed over already. I think we got 2 or 3 complete sets of EE FPs. The boys used them all up, too! 

 

The safari was a lot of fun. We saw most of the animals, only the top of the lion's mane, though. I thought Alec was going to try to touch that giraffe!! All the kids really enjoyed it, except for Bryce, who is way too cool to think such things are fun. Emily was pleasantly surprised that it was a truck & not a real ride. She lived in fear of getting on real rides the whole trip. 

  

Walked by the photopass guy behind the tree of life on our way to Asia to do EE before lunch. We would keep this in mind for later. The boys all rode. Danny said Jackson was freaking out on the ride & wanted off after the yeti “destroyed” the track. Then he gets off & wants to go again!! Emily found the little Yetis at a cart & needed one. We ended up with one for Jackson, too. Not the big puffy ones, though. I was afraid we wouldn't have room for those with everything else we would inevitably end up with. 

Lunch at Yak & Yeti @ 11:30. The food was really good & so was the atmosphere. LOTS of food. This was an easy place for people without ADRs to get into right at lunchtime, fyi. Again, the only picture I have is a crummy one from my phone before the food gets here. And this food was so pretty, too!! And notice Bryce, on the phone, with the gf. He went to bed late every night, so he could talk to her when she got off work. Usually 10 TEXAS TIME!! 

 

After lunch, the big boys got another FP set for EE, since the Kali FP wasn’t running today. The rest of us did the Majarajah Jungle Trek. It was fun, & I saw the biggest bats in the world! As we are walking back to EE, Joshy falls asleep in the stroller. We have the big boys stay with the kids in the gift shop, so Danny & I can do EE together. Why we didn’t think about doing a rider swap, I have no idea, but we did have plenty of FPs for it. It was a lot of fun! Jackson HAS to get a "conquered Everest" hat. 
We decided to head over to FOTLK. (2:30 show, I think, but it may have been 1:30) I really wanted to see this show & am so glad we did. It was excellent! Next time, we’ll get there earlier for better seats. I should have made the big boys go, since they would’ve enjoyed it, but they rode Kali twice on stand-by instead. The posted wait was an hour, but they said it was more like 20 min & 10. 

 

I forgot that on our way over to FOTLK, we saw this guy just starting to draw Mickey with water. We watched because I thought it was cool. Around here, the air is so dry, you can barely draw a circle before it starts to dry up!! He was talking about a guy in MK who can draw the castle, but we never saw him. 

 

We had planned to meet at that Photopass spot afterwards, but it starts pouring as soon as we leave the show. Do we have our ponchos in the backpack?? NOOOO!!! We are soon soaked. The packs are pretty water-resistant, so nothing gets really damaged. We ducked into Pizzafari. The boys end up running over to us from Asia. Nothing is letting up & since that picture was the only thing left for us to do that day, we decided to bolt for the exit. It’s a long walk from Pizzafari to the bus stops!! Thank goodness for a kind driver who turned off the A/C. 

We spent more time in AK than I wanted, but since Joshua got a nap in the stroller & we saw a show right before leaving, it wasn’t bad. Back at cabin before 4? Maybe even closer to 3:30. We went to DTD for dinner again. Ft Wilderness has only one CS place & it closes at 5. What’s up with that?? We ate at Wolfgang Puck Express. It was really good, & I’m glad we had the dining plan. Dinner would have been $150!! Danny took Bryce to a cigar shop, since he had just turned 18. Not that we approve of smoking, but he was going to go to it anyway, so I guess Danny tagged along looking for Copenhagen. Ugh. I took the kids into World of Disney…alone!! This was a mistake. I should have known that. Silly me, I think I had Disney-brain! We ended up spending over $150 in that store!! The 3 little ones each got a stuffed animal & 2 tiny ones. Alec got his goofy hat. We got my nieces each a toy, too. Seems like there was something else, but I can’t remember now. Mousekeeping had fun putting them in different positions each day, though! You see we got stuff when they shove you through a gift shop going out of the seas, coming off of Buzz, etc. 

   

I don't think we swam at all today, since we got out of the park so late. I also made everyone get in bed early, maybe 8:30, because I was determined to make it to MK well before RD!!