Travel

Disney's Animal Kingdom

Even though we'd had a late night the night before, we took full advantage of the Early Admission to Disney's Animal Kingdom and we were at the park as soon as it opened (7am). Remember what I said earlier about when the crowd goes one way, you should go the other? Today is a prime example of why. We knew everyone would be rushing to Pandora, but we have Fast Passes for later in the day. They all went left so we went right. What did that gain us? Everything!!!

No lines or waiting at all in any of Dinoland blew through that in no time flat. Onto Everest. We had Fast Passes for this one, but they weren't really necessary because there was no line yet. That meant a couple of trips on Everest. We actually had to wait for the Kali River Rapids to open we were getting through everything so fast.

Let me just stop here and address something. The Tree of Life. Holy Moley! That thing is astounding. It is, no doubt, a piece of art as magnificent as any I've ever seen. The details, the beauty, the magnitude of pictures don't do it justice. It's mind-blowing.

Our next Fast Pass is for the Kilimanjaro Safaris. We had plenty of time to wait for those too so we were able to explore and do the Jungle Trek while we waited. Even with the Fast Pass, we had a bit of a wait to get on the Safari, but it was worth the wait. There were lots of incredible animals, but we got to learn about some of them as well as their role in the Disney family. It was a lot of fun!

Next stop? Pandora. AFTER a stop for a Frozen Banana and Ice Cream (seriously breakfast is the most important meal of the day, right?) Somehow we timed it just right with this Fast Pass. The Fast Pass was for The Flight of Passage, but due to some physical constraints Dad & I knew we couldn't ride that one. Bummer, right? It's okay we set out a plan with the kids for a meet spot after the ride. They rode that and we went and rode the Na'vi River Journey. The wait time wasn't bad and we finished close to the same time so it worked out really well.

We took our time walking back through Discovery Island and the Oasis. We didn't get to see any of the stage shows the only ones operating at that time, you just about had to have a Fast Pass to get into or wait an hour or more.

It's weird because Animal Kingdom was a great park, we did a lot of stuff in a very short time but we got done by mid-afternoon. We would have liked to have seen it after dark, but the truth is we had done pretty much everything we wanted to do and by this point we were all getting tired. So, on day 5, middle of the afternoon, we wrapped up our Disney trip.

We went back to the resort and the kids spent a lot of time in the pool (one got a massive sunburn). I got brave and left the safety of Disney World and ventured into Orlando to go souvenir shopping and to bring pizza back for dinner. Yes, I got lost. Yes, I ended up at the entrance for Epcot. The sweet gal at the parking booth gave me easy to follow directions for how to find what I was looking for. Yes, it finally rained on us the monsoon hit the very last night we were there.

We packed a lot of fun into a few short days. A lot of wonderful, wonderful memories. We learned a lot of things and have a greater understanding of what we'll do the same as well as what we'll do differently next time. I'm grateful I was able to share this with my family I wish we'd done it when they were younger, but it just wasn't meant to be that way.

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