Orlando Vacation - Day 4

We started off Tuesday, September 4th, at Disney World's Animal Kingdom park.  We arrived there when it opened, and stayed until the early afternoon. 

This nice lady was right inside the main gate ready to welcome the kids with big, fuzzy spiders. Oooh....

We started off in the "Asia" section of the park, where we rode the Expedition Everest roller coaster.  This is one of the most popular rides in the Animal Kingdom park.  The lines were really short again this day (yay!), so Grant and Cory rode it a few times.  Johanna and I only rode it once.  Unfortunately, little Julia was the only one who was not tall enough for this ride. The idea of it was to be careening through the Himalayan mountains on a speeding train while avoiding the clutches of the Abominable Snowman. It was a really fun ride, and all the kids ended up with little stuffed Yeti's from the gift shop.

 

 
Next, we headed to the DinoLand USA section of the Park.  Here we rode DINOSAUR. In it we boarded a time rover which took us back to the time of the dinosaurs to try and save a dinosaur from extinction.  We had to get out fast to avoid a meteor shower, of course, and also came face-to-face with a T-Rex.  There were a few scary dinosaurs, but overall it was fun for everyone.
 

 
There was also a section of little amusement park rides the kids could enjoy.

 We also watched Finding Nemo The Musical.  It was a 30-minute Broadway-style musical stage show.  The actors held large puppets to make all the characters from the movie come alive.  We enjoyed the show, and also enjoyed the air-conditioning!

We made our way into the "Africa" section of the park, and went on a Kilimanjaro Safari.  For this we rode in open-air vehicles, and got to see exotic animals.

The Tree of Life is the centerpiece of the Animal Kingdom Park.  Below you can see the kids in front of it holding their little Yeti's, or Yeti Kids, as they liked to call them.

 
We finished up in Animal Kingdom, and headed over to one of Disney World's water parks called Blizzard Beach.  We had a great time here.  There was a huge wave pool, as well as water slides, a chairlift, a family rafting slide, a lazy river which went all the way around the park, and a children's play area.

  

We stayed at Blizzard Beach until it closed, and then we headed to an area called Downtown Disney which had shopping and dining.  We ate dinner here at a restaurant called T-REX.  The kids loved eating here! The decor was all dinos - similar to the Rainforest Cafe, but with dinosaurs.  Below is a picture of an "ice cave" in the middle of the restaurant which would change colors.  It was red at the time because we found ourselves in yet another meteor shower.

These tentacles were over the bar area, which was close to where we sat in the "ocean" section of the restaurant.  

 
After dinner we went to Disney's Magic Kingdom park to watch the fireworks over Cinderella's castle.  That is not as easy as it sounds since Magic Kingdom does not have it's own parking lot. To get there you have to take a ferry, a shuttle, or the monorail.  We parked at the transportation center, and took the monorail.  We made sure to claim our spots about an hour beforehand. The fireworks, which were set to Disney songs and narrated by Jiminy Cricket, were awesome! 

 

Here Dad and the girls were trying to get comfortable to watch the fireworks.  Johanna was standing on a little iron fence that was behind Cory.  I think she was still trying to get her footing.  Notice the little yeti's still in hand. :)

  

We managed to get out of the park and back on the monorail pretty quickly.  We drove back to our resort, and got all the kids tucked into bed around 10:30pm.  It was a long, but memorable day!