Florida - Day 2

Yesterday's blog... written by B, posted today with photos...

From Animal Kingdom

Off to Animal Kingdom we went, bright and early this morning. We arrived at AK at 8:15 am and weren’t surprised to see the parking lot starting to fill up and buses by the dozens dropping off the days’ guests. Getting through the gates was a quick and painless effort even with the large crowds because we subscribe to what we call “Disney Syndrome”. That’s when people follow the person in front of them because they’re too afraid or lazy to walk a little further to the next line. Thus creating a logjam of people. Try it out the next time you find yourself faced with a decision of which line to go in either at the movies or to cash out at a store. It works.

From Animal Kingdom

The first area in the park you walk through is called the Oasis. It’s a group of trails that leads you into the main park and offers views of a bunch of smaller animals along the way. Once we finished up there, we walked rather briskly to AK’s newest attraction, Expedition Everest, to grab a Fast Pass. We couldn’t wait to get back there later in the morning so we could have our chance to see the Yeti. With Fast Pass in hand we made our way to the Kilimanjaro Safari in Africa. Aside from a group of annoying high school kids behind us in line it was great fun. I took a ton of pictures even though the ride was incredibly bumpy. We saw a good mix of animals and even got up close and personal with M’s favorite animals, giraffes.

The safari came to an end so we continued to follow the plan that was laid out so expertly by Passporter and later adapted by me. After the safari we still had some time before we needed to get back to Everest so we hit up the Pangani Forest Exploration Trail followed by the Maharajah Jungle Trek. Both were very cool and offered lots of hidden treasures in the form of giant fruit bats, tigers, komodo dragons and a few humongous silver back gorillas. All I can say is wow! Disney puts you right in the middle of it all, to the point were you start to wonder if one of the bigger animals could just snatch you up if it really wanted to.

From Animal Kingdom

It was finally time to head back to Expedition Everest. We were so pumped for this ride. We’d watched a bunch of videos on YouTube and shows on the Travel Channel about what to expect. All I can tell you is that no matter how much you prepare and research you’re still going to be surprised and amazed at how incredible this ride is! I’ll leave it at that. Go to AK and check this out for yourself. It’s worth the price of admission.

From Animal Kingdom

The rest of the day found us battling crowds and standing in long lines. Not fun but the pay off was great. Dinosaur was super exciting and scary so much so that M almost tore my arm out of the socket at one point. The Festival of the Lion King and It’s Tough to Be a Bug shows are always crowd pleasers and they didn’t disappoint us either. Both shows came at a time of day when we needed a rest.

From Animal Kingdom

The only thing we didn’t get to see today was the brand new show Finding Nemo – The Musical but we’ve decided to hit it up on Monday morning before we leave. If you know me, you know I can’t miss out on anything. I’d say the day was a huge success overall and it served as a nice start to what promises to be a great vacation.

I’ve got to run, I have a 7 am tee time with M’s dad and we’re meeting him at his restaurant at 6 am. Good night.

From Animal Kingdom