Fort Wilderness Resort and Campground , Disney World, Orlando, Florida
My lips will shout for joy when I sing praise to You – I, whom You have delivered. ~ Psalm 71:23
This is Animal Kingdom day. This Theme Park wasn’t here when the boys were with us since it didn’t open until 1998, but we remember parts of it from when it was just the two of us. However, the Pandora area was new to us, and we don’t remember walking the two wildlife trails, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t here. 😊 For the most part, we remember Mt. Everest and the Safari ride.
The day began with persistent beeping rousing me from dreamless sleep at 3:28am. A backup alarm from something that seemed to go on forever. Definitely not conducive to creating the proper environment for the Happiest Place on Earth! I tried to return to my blissful state . . . . . for two hours. Ah well, at least I was resting, right?
Once again, we were out the door by 7am. And didn’t arrive back home until 9:20pm. Whew! That’s a long day! And it was shocking how good I felt, but I suppose magic will do that.
And it truly was a magical day!
Lots and lots and lots and lots of people took advantage of the extra hours here at Animal Kingdom today.
There are five different areas in this Park – – Africa, Asia, Dinoland, Discovery Island and Pandora. We expected to head to Pandora first thing upon arrival this morning to try to catch an extra ride on the Flight of Avatar, but it seemed almost everyone else had the same idea, so since we had a FastPass for it later, we headed to Asia – the opposite direction.
Doing that allowed us to ride the Mt Everest coaster three times – one right after the other with no waiting – and again with our FastPass later in the day.
One monkey makes all those sounds you hear by themselves!
Aren’t they amazing? And so loud!
It’s so incredible what they’ve done in this Park! There are animals everywhere and plants and trees and lots of ‘set props’. There’s so much so see and do! And yet, we overheard a lady walking by us say, “ . . . since there’s not that much to do here . . .” Unbelievable! Can’t imagine what more she’s looking for. For us, there weren’t enough hours in the day to see everything!
Isn’t that great?!?
Just a taste . . .
These are the Tumbling Monkeys
A fire twirler . . .
We watched two different bird shows and were awed by the various things we saw, and I think even more awed that they fly away and come back – – when they’re supposed to! Guess they know what side their bread’s buttered on!
They even trained chickens to come out and push buttons on a CD player!
He was demonstrating how he could make it walk and move around.
Pretty cool, huh?
Pandora. This is from the movie “Avatar” that was released at the end of 2009. It’s a fantasy movie that we watched once but don’t remember much from it. Anyway, this ‘world’ Disney has created is astounding! We walked in and stood or wandered slowly with our mouths agape and heads swiveling every which way. Wow!
It was in Pandora that Blaine became That Guy.
They had a street show with three drummers and chose to incorporate Blaine into the show, calling him “That Guy”. 😊 It was a lot of fun – for me anyway. As goofy as Blaine likes to be, he doesn’t really like being the center of attention. His mother may disagree as they used to get notes from his teachers about his antics in class. 😊
We love percussion!
He keeps good time, doesn’t he! That’s why he’s . . . . That Guy!
Dinner tonight was in Africa! Friends had recommended the restaurant at the Animal Kingdom Lodge called Boma. It’s a 75-item buffet that features food from Africa. My, oh my! It was soooo scrumptious! And no, we didn’t sample all 75 items, but most of them! And there was more there than just African food – things like carved turkey and steak (not prime rib), mac and cheese, spaghetti and meatballs and chicken nuggets (for the kiddos), a variety of salads, soups, and of course desserts. As I said, we sampled many things. There was only one thing we didn’t care for. The watermelon salad, and I think that’s just because we got a bad slice. The first one was good. The second was hard and we had to spit it out. Eww! Gross!
After dinner, since we had to hop a bus to Magic Kingdom in order to catch a connecting boat to get near home, we decided to check out the fireworks show. Disney calls it “Happily Ever After”. Standing room only more than an hour before the show started, but we chose a good standing spot where we could see everything just fine.
There are no words for this. Honestly, the fireworks were just background noise compared to what they did with Cinderella’s castle. Through the magic of digital projection, they could transform the castle into different styles and also show characters from their various movies. And at the end? They sent a real live Tinkerbell all covered in lights down a really long guywire! To where, we have no idea, but she left from near the top of the castle, flew 750’ in 34 seconds and averaged 15mph (or so I read). I just really don’t even know how to describe this show, other than to say,
I can’t even describe how magical it was!
What an unimaginable mob of people!
A very brief example of how the scenes changed constantly. There was also narration, and music of course. : )
There were approximately 30-40,000 people crammed into the space in front of the castle and down Main Street and yet, we managed to get out fairly quickly, and get into the que for the boat to take us home. This was the only problem. They didn’t run enough boats for the throng that was trying to leave the Park (in our humble opinion). We waited a long time. And we were tired. And kids were getting cranky. 😊
Once we docked, Blaine and I decided to walk the ½ mile home rather than wait for an undisclosed amount of time for a bus to show up. Especially since it wasn’t certain we’d even be able to get on it.
We made it home way before the bus stopped at our back door at about 9:30pm.
Showers and straight to bed! We’re exhausted!