Thursday, November 19, 2009

First Part of Day 4 - Animal Kingdom

Thursday Morning, we went to Animal Kingdom. Our original plans for this week was Mon - Epcot, Tues - Hollywood Studios, Wed - Animal Kingdom, Thurs & Friday - Magic Kingdom. However, with us missing a whole day (plus half of Monday), our plans were changed a bit.
We still wanted to have a full day at Hollywood Studios since there was just SO much for Austin there. Plus, we wanted to see the Osborne Family Lights. So, we figured we'd have to sacrifice a little time from other places. Animal Kingdom closes early anyway, so leaving a little earlier than planned wouldn't be that big of a deal. Plus, we had tickets to go to Mickey Very Merry Christmas Party on Thursday night and knew we'd get a lot of rides done at Magic Kingdom then.
So, off to Animal Kingdom we went.

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Our first stop was Kilimanjaro Safaris. This ride usually has a really long wait if you don't do it first thing in the morning. We knew Austin would love the animals and Bill and Mary hadn't ever been to this park, so they were open to anything.
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I think Colten almost fell asleep during this ride. It was bumpy and just kind of lulled him a bit.
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After the safari, we went over to Finding Nemo - the Musical and grabbed seats for that while Bill and Mary tried to track down some lattes. This show was REALLY good held Austin's attention through the whole thing. Colten slept through half of it, then woke up and loved watching it as well.
Some friends of ours that we knew at Fort Lee and Hawaii, The Olivers, were also at Disney the same week. We didn't know that until a day or two before we left, so it was a nice surprise. We had originally planned on meeting up with them on Wednesday at Animal Kingdom, but when our plans changed, we figured we'd end up missing them. Well, we coincidentally changed our plans the same as them. They were tired on Wednesday and decided to do AK on Thursday as well. :-) So, we met up with them in Dino Land for a bit to catch up and see them. It was a short, but really nice visit...maybe someday we'll be at the same place again. They were also at Campbell the same time as us, but we didn't know that until we met them at Lee. Small world, huh!
Austin loves Dino Land because they have carnival-type games (EXPENSIVE!) and the TriceraTop Spin ride that he likes. It's like Dumbo, but with dinosaurs instead of elephants. :-)

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There are also a couple of the fun mirrors and Austin had a blast looking at himself in them. He thought it was just hilarious that he was SO short!
We had lunch at Flame Tree Barbeque. YUMMY! I had requested this since we had it back in 2007. They have the best smoked chicken and their portions are HUGE! The kids meal was only $5 and came with 2 chicken drumsticks, grapes, carrot sticks, apple juice (or milk or water) and a cookie. I got the kids meal and it filled me right up!
After lunch, we headed over to the Festival of the Lion King. We had seen this show back in 2007 and LOVED it. We wanted to see it again, plus Bill and Mary wanted to see it, so we walked over there and got some GREAT seats! We were right by the doors where all of the people come out onto the stage. Austin got to wave to everyone and even got asked to participate. If it had been 6 months later, I bet he would have, but he was a little too shy and declined. It was funny because at the beginning, he was asking me if he could go down to the stage and help them. Anyway, this show is just great and totally shows how awesome Disney is!
We left around 2pm and headed back to our resort for rest time and dinner. We had the Christmas party that night at 7pm and wanted the kids rested for the fun we were going to have that night.

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