Wednesday: Animal Kingdom aka our first full day

Sterling's camera was working better today, so there are more pictures. Plus, we did about ten times as many things today as on Tuesday. This is a huge park!

You'd think after my fantasizing about this trip for 5 years I would have double/triple checked the opening times and made sure we weren't going to be late (see Friday), kicked out early (see Friday), or waiting to get in while watching all the resort guests come in for an extra magic hour before us (see today). Extra magic hours are a perk for resort guests, so they can go in for an hour early OR three hours after the park closes, depending on what is scheduled. Well, our schedule was for the great unwashed who stay off property and it didn't indicate that there was an early extra hour for resort guests. We got to Animal Kingdom 30 minutes early and thought we'd be there for park opening. It had already been open for 30 minutes. So we stood in line with kids who really could have used a little extra sleep-in time while we watched a small army of people go into the turnstiles to our right. But, to Sterling's credit, he never reproached me once this entire week.

Once we were in, the park felt pretty empty. We went straight to Everest and I dropped Dad and Elle off at that enormous mountain of snow. They got fastpasses, and I continued on a five minute walk to the dinosaur area of the park. There's an enormous playplace built around dinosaur bones that is supposed to be like an excavation area. We thought you could somehow dig for dinosaur bones, and when we found it was all slides and stairs Sterling III was a little disappointed. But, it was a great place for the kids to play while adults and older ones went on Everest (or Dinosaur, if we had gone on it).

Once Dad and Elle got back from Everest, I traded babysitting duties and took Eleanor back to Everest. She love love loved this one. It is really exciting, scary, and fast. Also,one of the best queuing places too.

It was less than a ten minute wait. Not enough time to see the cool Asian "offerings" to their Yeti protector, or I would have liked to examine all the trashed camping gear that the Yeti had destroyed, or compare Yeti footprints to snow leopard footprints in the yeti museum. The actual ride is so much better if you know nothing about it. Some seriously great storytelling at 40 miles per hour!

Next we cooled off in a big beautiful theater where we saw Nemo: the Musical. One of the greatest thing about Disney parks is the world class entertainment. The Nemo musical was like nothing I had ever seen before. Performers have giant puppets that they personify with music and acting and even swimming. My favorite puppets were the 20 foot tall jellyfish. Some great music and moments too. All of the children were enthralled. This was great prep for seeing the Seas section of Epcot tomorrow.

We had planned to stay the whole day so we got some lunch at the Restaurantosaurus. It has some cute ambiance, like dino skeletons hanging from the ceilings, and some seats in trailers like those at an excavation site. This is a burger and fries joint, and they serve the kids' meals in sand pails with shovels. My favorite thing about this restaurant is the fixins bar. They have sauteed mushrooms, onions, and some other stuff. And the paper ketchup cups are like bowls. I filled one up with mushrooms as a side dish.

By now it was 12:30 and there was a bird show at 1:00. We split up and Dad headed with the stroller to get seats and the big girls went to ride Dinosaur. Sadly it was closed down, and we thought we'd try again later in the day. I met up with Sterling waiting to get in to the Flights of Wonder show. He was chatting up some Brazilians. This is the first but not the last time Sterling just strikes up a convo with Brazilians. They are always surprised to find he is American. We gave them some of our Everest fastpasses because we thought we wouldn't have time to fit in the rides before the "window" was up. The bird show was cool, with different birds than we saw the last time. Charlotte got too antsy in the last 10 minutes so I took her out to stand in a misting machine which is a fan with a water spray thing. The bird show finished, and Eleanor and I hustled back to Everest. The fastpass said we should return between 1:45 and 2:45. We got there right at 2:45 and I asked if we could still get on even though our time was out. And the Cast Member attending the line pulled this face and said "Oh, you're late!" and I must have had this really disappointed look on my face and then she smiled and said "Fastpasses are good for the rest of the day!" Whew, good to know. Ah, such a great ride. Of course, we got more fast passes. We met dad walking down the forest paths and saw all kinds of beautiful animals. including tigers, bats, huge cows, monkeys. And I love the way it's set up. Not like a regular zoo where it's just a bunch of animals in cages. The animal spaces either give the illusion that there's acres of land for them to roam just over a rise behind them, or they have terrific playplaces and viewing areas. The tigers play among temple ruins and you stand in old ruins with a plexiglass window to see them. They are RIGHT THERE. It's so beautiful. At least three different areas to stand to see the tigers so it's not too crowded with humans.

Charlotte loved the bird section. She calls birds "beeps". And she spotted all sorts of cute and exotic beeps and their nests.

At this point Elle and I went BACK to Everest (I know, again!). It's kind of sad because this is actually one of Dad's favorites but he had gotten a little ill on it in the morning (poor guy was fighting some kind of sinus infection all week, so his motion senses were extra wacky). I was the privileged parent to go on this with Eleanor tons of times. Makes up for all the times I missed out on Splash I guess. While we were doing Everest two more times, Dad and the little ones took a train trip to Rafiki's Village, which has all sorts of smaller animals to see. They gave it two thumbs up! As you walk into the building there are all kinds of animal sounds, and the elephant sound kept freaking Charlotte out! We met up with them and got to see Jiminy Cricket of all people (of all bugs? of all characters?).

Sterling loved showing us around to his favorite frogs and spiders.

I'm glad they had fun. Next was the African Safari. This is the way safaris should be. 15 minutes of riding and you see everything you would fly to Africa to see. I realize how Orlando-centric my thinking sounds. There is no irony. I can't believe we had the energy to walk down more paths, but this is where we saw the hippos, and I think the crocodiles?

It was almost time to go, so we walked down to the last showing of the Lion King festival. Charlotte literally dragged her feet.

The Lion King festival did not disappoint. The costumes and dancing were really cool, and the giant animatronic animals were interesting. The acrobatic monkeys were pretty good. I think if the story had made more sense I would have liked it better. The kids have never seen the Lion King movie, and the whole festival was a collection of the hit songs squished together. Not terrible, but not as good as Nemo.

Well, we had squeezed every possible minute out of our day at the Animal Kingdom. We went home and swam in the pool for an hour and ordered pizza and wings. I really liked it. Better than Hollywood Studios, but not as much as Magic Kingdom. It's like the best zoo in the world with world class entertainment and a couple of top notch rides.