Day 3: Animal Kingdom

Getting to Animal Kingdom...once again staring right into the sun.  Notice the new stroller...so nice!

First thing we discovered was an area called Camp Minnie and Mickey where we found 4 characters out taking pictures.  So we went to see each one of those.  First Donald.  Bella was NOT in the mood to see characters; she still wasn't feeling very good.  I tried to pick her up and carry her in one of the pictures and she about freaked out.  So, we left her in the stroller to watch. 

Mickey Mouse

Noah's personal favorite; he even gave him a "high five"

Goofy

and Minnie

Somehow we got Bella out of the stroller for her. 

While we were walking to something new, we came upon Chip and Dale.

Chip came up to Noah and tried to give him a hug, but then tried to take his little Mickey Mouse from him.  Noah did NOT like this at all!

Enjoying the new stroller

 After meeting the characters, we went to see the "Festival of the Lion King."  It was okay, not my favorite.  It was 30 minutes long and featured songs from the Lion King and lots of dancing.  They had a fire juggler and acrobatic "monkeys" which were cool, but I thought it would incorporate more of the characters from the movie.  Simba and Pumbaa didn't get up and move, they only stayed on their rocks, but Timone could actually walk around. 

Pumbaa

Simba

After Lion King, we went and had lunch at the Flame Tree Barbeque. They had yummy pork barbeque sandwiches and fresh fruit! Then we made our way over to Dinoland, USA.

They had a cute flying dinosaur ride called Tricera Top Spin for the little kids that I took Bella, Noah and Paige on. 

Garrett took Maggie and Lydia on a roller coaster ride called Primeval Whirl and then I went on it with them. It was such a different roller coaster. Lots of zigzagging and turning and down hills. Kind of fun, but I was getting a pretty bad headache at this point, so this ride didn't help.

After this, we had fastpasses for Expedition Everest, which is a big rollercoaster that Maggie really wanted to go on.  Garrett and I wanted to go on it, too, but I had this really bad headache and didn't think it would be a good idea to go on it until my medicine started to kick in, so I watched the younger kids while Garrett and Maggie went.  They came back after like 15 minutes or so and said how awesome it was and that I really needed to go on it.  So, we actually left Lydia with the kids right where we get off and Garrett and Maggie and I went on it.  I was pretty nervous for this ride since I haven't gone on a big roller coaster in awhile.  It was pretty cool, I loved the downhill part, but after you go up the hill, there's a part that's in the dark and you go backwards and I felt so disoriented by it all, that I felt a little queasy when it was over.  I'm blaming it on the headache.  If we had gone back to Animal Kingdom again on a different day, I would have ridden it again, just to see what I really thought of it.  Garrett and Maggie loved it!

Right after Everest, we ran to the "Finding Nemo Musical", because the park was closing really early that day, like at 5 I think. So this was our last thing. This show was pretty cool. All the fish were puppets, but you could totally see the people that were holding the puppets. Sometimes I had a hard time concentrating on the puppets because I was watching the people. But it was very well done. 

Us at the end of the day in front of The Tree of Life

We did a little bit of shopping for Lydia and then headed back to the resort for dinner and then got the kids in bed at a decent time, ready for the next days adventures at Epcot.