Day 2 - Animal Kingdom

On Tuesday, we went to Animal Kingdom, which we hadn’t done last year.  I’ve read quite a bit about how some people believe this is a “half-day park,” but I guess it really depends on what you want to do, because I think Em could have spent all week here.  She is such an animal lover, and she wanted to stop and look at and read about every animal we passed.

We had a FastPass for the Kilamanjaro Safari that morning that we could use until 10:30, so we didn’t get there super early.  Early enough for a Mickey-shaped cinnamon roll that we all ended up sharing, though!

The safari was awesome—believe it or not, it was actually cool enough that we had to pick up a jacket for Em at one of the stores!  I’m sure we’ll never be on a real safari, so this is as close as we’ll get, but the animals really were just freely roaming around where the vehicles drove through.  A couple of times, traffic was held up by a passing rhino or zebra! 

We rode the train over to Rafiki’s Planet Watch and ran into Chip and Dale playing some games with the kids there—Em joined in for a while and then we spent a little time at the petting zoo. 

We saw The Lion King show, which was really pretty incredible.

After that, we had lunch reservations at Tusker House, which is a character dining restaurant with a delicious buffet!  It was nice to have a good meal and just relax for a bit while the characters came around to our table.

Literally every meal we had, someone brought Em a birthday cupcake or dessert with a lit candle, and here she also got a birthday card signed by all the characters!

This is the kind of stuff that makes me think we could have spent a lot longer at Animal Kingdom--lots of fun things to pass the time.

We saw the Finding Nemo live show, and it was really good too.

By the time Nemo was over, it was around 3pm and Em was wearing down pretty quickly.  I knew we had to find Pocahontas, because you can only meet her at Animal Kingdom and Em wanted to see her.  We found her line and had some afternoon snacks while we waited.  Em also decided that she wanted to entertain everyone in line and make friends with the cast members.  They're all so incredibly nice and terrific with the kids.

Em had a quick conversation with Pocahontas and was ready to roll.

On our way out, we passed the meet and greet spot for Adventurer Mickey and Minnie and the line was super short, so we took advantage of it.

As we headed toward the gate, Em wanted to ride instead of walk (yes, we brought a stroller for her--we bought a lightweight, easy-to-fold one specifically for this trip that has a higher weight limit).  I'm going to hate when she outgrows a stroller completely because we won't have a place to put our stuff!

As soon as she sat down, I told her she should close her eyes and rest, and it was over.  She slept for over an hour, so Mick and I checked out some stores and just took a break for a while.

Best thing about all the Disney photographers is that we get lots of family pictures!

This was the day, more than any other, that I felt like we didn’t really take our time anywhere—I had FastPasses for the shows we wanted to see, and on top of lunch reservations, it just felt like we were rushing to get to the next place on time.  Em would have loved to spend more time seeing the zoo portion, which we really didn’t even go near.  Next time!

Once we were back at the hotel, Em was rested and ready to play, so we spent some more time down at the pool.  The Wilderness Lodge is actually inspired by national park lodges in the northwest, and there's even a man made geyser that you can see several times a day.  We caught it a couple of times! 

We had dinner in the hotel at Whispering Canyon Cafe--it was a little bit like a family version of Dick's Last Resort or something similar.  There was a card on the table that you turned to green if you wanted to participate in the fun and games, and red if you didn't.  You can probably tell by Em riding a stick pony around the restaurant that our card was on green!

When our food came and Em asked for ketchup, the server yelled out "we need some ketchup!" and some little girls at another table brought over about 20 bottles.  A few minutes later when another table needed ketchup and yelled for it, it was our turn to take all 20 bottles over to them.  Em loved that part.

And of course, what's dinner without another birthday cupcake!?  Em didn't actually get to eat this one because she didn't do so well with her dinner, but it didn't make it less fun for her to blow out the candle!

We went down on the beach area of the hotel after dinner for the nightly electrical water pageant. It didn't last too long, but there were a bunch of floats with animals and characters made of lights, and it was all set to music.  Pretty cool way to end the night.