Tuesday - What a Day!

Where should I start?   The short version … day started at 7:00am and ended about 1:30am.  If a picture is worth a thousand words – these should say about say it all.

Starting the Safari day at Animal Kingdom

Ending the day at Animal Kingdon

To explain a little more, we spent the day at Animal Kingdom.  We started with a Character Breakfast which was very well received by all the kids.  After not having any fun (well, not to the extent they thought they would at Disney) at Downtown Disney – they were really surprised with the different characters we saw here.  On the way in, they saw Donald Duck, and even got a picture with him.  Inside while we were eating the Mickey shaped waffles etc. they were able to say hi to Mickey, Goofy and Daisy Duck.  The kids were all a little upset that Pluto wasn’t there though.  We just helped them by saying maybe later they’d get to see him.  Sam’s favorite part of the day was when Daisy was dancing around the restaurant and Daisy took Sam by the hand and they led the whole dancing train through the restaurant.  They did the dance line for what seemed to be five minutes – pretty fun for our little princess.

After breakfast we took a safari which they all really loved.  If you aren’t familiar with this ride, it is set up just like a safari would be in Africa.  Dawson is our little animal lover and he was more than thrilled with this ride.  You ride a large truck and they drive you through an animal preserve without fences etc.  Again, just like in Africa .  Dawson’s highlight of the day was a certain part of this ride where we “saved a baby elephant from poachers in the area.”

One part of the animal kingdom adventure that was fun for the kids was learning how to track down animals based on their tracks and droppings.  Come to find out, this was actually Noah’s favorite part of the day – he really loved this learning exercise.

We found the poop - it's Rhino poop!

After Animal Kingdom closed for the day, we went back to the cabin and took a slight nap.  I say “slight” because it wasn’t more than maybe 45 minutes to an hour.  The kids wanted to play – or fuss for 30 minutes because they didn’t want the nap.  In any case, when all was said and done, we headed back to Magic Kingdom for “Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween.”  This was pretty fun. Everyone was dressed up in costumes and surprisingly, there were more adults dressed than kids.  Everyone was going around getting candy and riding the rides.  I have to say, the lines – or lack of – was awesome!!  Many very popular rides – Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean and Splash Mountain among several others had no lines.  You just walked right on.  If you wanted to ride the ride a second time – you just stayed in your seat.  It was really great for Disney.  They also played great spooky music throughout the park all night long.  It was really cool.  All the kids had their pictures taken with many characters throughout the day and of course I had to give in and have my picture taken also.  Just like I had to buy a hat the first day, I felt obligated to have my picture taken also – so I got pushed into having my picture taken with Jasmine from Aladdin.   Oh well, what we must do to keep the family happy. 

Noah loved the roller coaster Splash Mountain, although when asked if he wanted to ride it a second time, he chose to get out.  Being the kind hearted person that he was, he covered  with the excuse that he wanted to make sure that mommy was able to get to do a ride and didn’t want to use up our time on this ride again.

Sam and Dawson loved the ride Peter Pan.  This one we all did ride twice as it was the last ride of the night at midnight.  Again, it was a lot of fun all dressed up.

I almost forgot – we all loved the Lion King show.  Noah was chosen to be the leader of our part of the audience. That kid has no fear and loves to be the center of attention!!  The show really was good, however, the baby girl missed it.  She slept through the entire thing. (of course – why would we think anything else? At the real bedtime – she opted to stay up even longer than anyone else!)

Great day – but super long!