Thursday, February 12, 2015

Animal Kingdom On Our Own

After working Saturday-Monday, I needed some time to rest up before venturing to the parks.  We were feeling pretty good Thursday morning, so we went over to Animal Kingdom.  This was my first full park visit without another adult helping me (as you may recall, I did spend a few hours in Epcot alone with the kids when Doug interviewed).  I'm lucky the kids are so well-behaved; it's really no big deal taking four kids to a theme park by myself.  The only problem comes when not everyone wants (or is able) to ride the same thing.

We missed rope drop by a few minutes, but still managed to get over to Kilimanjaro Safari shortly after 9am.  The posted wait was 10 minutes, we walked directly on (it does feel like it takes 10 minutes to just walk through the queue, so maybe that's where they get the 10 minutes from).


Niall brought his Tanooki Mario along, and Fiona brought a little monkey.  I think the stuffed animals had a pretty good time.  It was pretty cool out, and I don't know if that's why, but the hippos were all out of the water and snoozing on the banks.  One was up and actually moving around a bit, too.  We'd never seen that before.


In the main savannah section where the giraffes usually are, they looked like they were doing some work.  There were no giraffes over there, so the drive through was pretty boring.  There were only three giraffes out around the corner.  After the safari, we walked through the Pangani Forest Trail.  It was a little busy, but we had a great time.  Fiona was disappointed that we hadn't thought to bring a notebook for her to draw the animals, so I think we'll make a trip soon specifically to draw different animals.  I love that we can take the time to do that and not worry about missing out on rides.

After finishing the trail, we used our Kilimanjaro Safari Fast Pass for another ride.  It was definitely busier this time, even though the posted standby wait still said 10 minutes.  We were on the truck in about 5 minutes, which included a nice little chat with the CM in the loading area who recognized us.


After the safari, we headed over to Expedition Everest so the boys could ride.  Colwyn balked at the last minute, so Lachlann rode all by himself.  He was really proud of himself.  As you can see from the picture above, Colwyn regretted his choice pretty quickly.  Thankfully, though, I was able to give the boys Fiona's and my Magic Bands so they could ride using our Fast Passes.


Dinoland USA was next on our agenda.  We stopped at the Boneyard for a bit to play - we had skipped it on our September trip because it was so hot, but the kids had fun this time around.  When they were ready to move on, the boys went on to Primeval Whirl while I took the littles on Triceratop Spin.  Then it was off to DINOSAUR for the bigs, while the littles and I sat and ate the Nutella sandwiches we had brought.


We had this creepy dinosaur for company.  Weird choice for a water feature, don't you think?  There was a little boy sitting across from us - he, Fiona, and Niall had fun looking at lizards in the landscaping.


And that was pretty much it for our morning at Animal Kingdom.  Niall was super excited about riding the tram, though, so leaving the park went smoothly.


We had to go up to PetCo afterwards to get crickets for Lachlann's leopard gecko, then we had to hit Publix.  I have to tell you - it's very strange going from Animal Kingdom to PetCo in 30 minutes.

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