Animal Kingdom

A whole day off from DisneyWorld, and now we were ready for the Animal Kingdom. We geared up in our OU attire, and headed out to join the animals! In the background is the Tree of Life.I believe we got here right when the park opened, and headed straight back to do the Kilimanjaro Safaris. This will probably be the closest thing I will ever get to as far as African Safaris go, so I was super excited to do this.
We saw so many animals... and none were behind cages. Very cool! We saw elephants, hippos, gazelles, ostrich, lions and as you can see giraffes! And the landscape really made you feel like you were in another country! It was super cool and another must-do!The next area we went to was DinoLand USA. As soon as we got here we saw a short line for Goofy (Addie's favorite), so we grabbed a picture. I'll just take some time here to say that we had gone to WalMart and bought autograph books and pens and other things, but the crowds were so crazy that we never got to use them! The characters stood in one place and the lines were outrageous... like hours! This day we decided it wasn't even worth bringing the autograph books because we weren't going to wait in lines and so the kids were sad they didn't get Goofy's autograph... but at least we have the picture!This was a fun little ride called the TriceraTop Spin. A lot like Dumbo but you could go up and down and also rock the dinosaur back and forth.Here is Addie and I on the ride. She's showing off her Jolly Rancher in her mouch!Next Randy and the older kids went on the Primeval Whirl, another height restriction that Addie couldn't quite make. So we went on the TriceraTop Spin again while waiting.There was also a little carnival area in DinoLand USA. Randy let the kids all play games...until everyone had won a prize! Addie is a little mesmerized. Maybe because she was the one who won the big green dragon! We actually asked to exchange for two smaller dragons because we were afraid we wouldn't make it home with it!
Next was a show. Like I said, we really wanted to get the shows in. We felt like this would be more worth our time and money. These shows for us to watch outside of Disney would cost our family a small fortune so we made sure and saw as many as we could. We knew they would be great... and they always were! This was Finding Nemo- The Musical! So great with fun music! We loved it! After this we headed over to an awesome ride... Expedition Everest- Legend of the Forbidden Mountain! Now that was a great roller coaster ride!After Randy and I both had the chance to do that, we were off to find the Lion King show. On our way Avery bought one of these ribbons that you can put pins on. She was so excited, she had been looking for this particular ribbon since she saw it on day one at EPCOT.And this picture of Austin was also on our way to the Lion King show... which was located in Camp Minnie-Mickey.Randy and I waiting in line for Festival of the Lion King. Ashton fell asleep in line, so I had to hold her through the show.This was another great show. Lots of music and dancing and acrobats. Very entertaining. Most of the shows you can't take pictures in but they didn't say anything this time. Ashton woke up in time to see Pumba. She put her hand out and he gave her five. We were right on the edge and towards the front of our section so we had great seats. Since we made these shows a priority, we seemed to always get great seats!After the Lion King we waited on the sidewalk for the parade. Again, we got there in time to sit front row and many of the characters came over to the kids. We saw a lot of the Jungle Book characters, Lion King characters, Chip and Dale and others. Mickey was the last character to come by. I loved this parade, very African inspired. Very cool.