Animal Kingdom

Our short vacation at Disneyworld was coming to an end, and we spent our last day at Disney’s Animal Kingdom.  It is one of the largest animal theme parks in the world, home to 1700 animals and 250 different species.  We were very impressed by this park, opened since 1998, as it really focuses on conservation and education.  It had less of that traditional “amusement park” feel to it.

The iconic symbol of this park is the Tree of Life, which is a sculpture 145 feet tall and 50 feet wide.  It has 325 animals carved into the tree.

Tree of Life

Can you spot the animals is this photo?  You may need to double click on the photo to blow it up, but there are dozens of animals in just this section alone.  You can spend a lot of time walking around the base, and seeing something different each time you look.

animal carvings

Our group started out the day with the excellent 30 minute Broadway style show, Festival of the Lion King.  The music, performers and costumes were fabulous.  Part of the “homework” that Karen and Al made us do was watch the Lion King movie before we went, so we would have a better understanding of the show.  We would recommend using one of your three allotted FastPass selections for this show.

the gang

There are many animal exhibits scattered throughout the park, and we stopped to view of few of the many species of ducks on display, such as these Indian Spot-Billed Ducks

Followed by the Black-Necked Swan

And this very popular “duck”, which had a long line of people waiting to see her!

Daisy Duck

We headed over to the Tree of Life to see the “It’s Tough to be a Bug” 3-D film, which is in a studio underneath the tree.  The interactive movie was a lot of fun, even if you find bugs to be a little creepy.

There are many other outdoor exhibits featuring many species of birds from around the world.  This Victoria Crowned Pigeon was a favorite of mine.  I love the big “crown” of hair.

The area also contained a popular exhibit on bats.  We saw two species on display, the Giant Flying Fox, which is one of the largest bats in existence. They can have a wingspan over 5 feet.  This guy was a bit of an exhibitionist!

covering the “privates”

To get an idea of the size of this bat, they had a common fruit bat in the same exhibit.

fruit bat on right

After lunch, and with a great deal of hesitation on my part, I did agree to go on Expedition Everest – Legend of the Forbidden Mountain.  The ride goes straight up into a mountain, and then you go around inside the dark, and backwards, before coming out and dropping down the mountain.  You are supposed to see the Yeti monster, but I had my eyes closed most of the ride, so I just have to take everyone’s word about the monster!  Many of the reviews of this ride describe it as the best roller coaster in Disney.  I just know there was a lot of screaming going on this ride, and it wasn’t all by me!

Expedition Everest

The highlight of the day was going on the Kilimanjaro Safari.  You board an open top vehicle to explore African animals in a natural setting on 110 acres.  The narrated ride is very bumpy, to simulate the roads that you would travel on a real safari trek.  There is no guarantee of what animals that you will see, as they may or not be active during your trip.  These are just a few photos of the animals that we saw.

Safari vehicle

African Elephant

Hippopotamus

Giraffe

African scenery

Mandrill

Greater Flamingo

African Lions

Zebra’s

Addax

And unlike the other parks where you can stand in long lines to meet the characters, the animals “go wild” in this park, with an afternoon dance party with the characters.  I think the ‘moms’ had the most fun during this impromptu dance session by the characters.

line dancing, to the left, to the left…

animals gone wild

Because of the animals, this park has the shortest operating hours, so we still had a few attractions that we did not have time for.  We headed back to the campground to feed the dog and get ready for our morning departure.  We did make it over to one of the hotels for a quick meal, followed by this excellent Mickey cupcake.

yummy!

It was a great way to end the short but busy week at Disneyland.  We can’t thank Karen and Al enough for being our tour guides, and to their friends and family for letting us be a part of their week.

Thanks for putting up with a few too many Disney photos!

Quote for the Day: “Animals don’t lie.  Animals don’t criticize.  If animals have moody days, they handle them better than humans do.” – Betty White

Our busy week at Disneyworld continued, as we headed to the Magic Kingdom via the ferry shuttle from Fort Wilderness.  Our Fastpass rides were not until the afternoon, so we did our best to see as much as we could before meeting up with the rest of our party.  This was our first daytime visit to the park, and it certainly had a different vibe than our nighttime visit.

Main Street

There is a lot of construction going on around the park.  You can see some green walls to the left, and there is a green box in the lower middle of the picture.  Apparently that box is covering up a statute of Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse. Some of the construction was recently finished, so we are looking forward to seeing the changes when we go back to the Magic Kingdom for a visit in March (trying to take advantage of our annual pass before we leave Florida!).  You can also see a crane behind the castle, as they were taking down their Christmas decorations and doing a few minor repairs.

Cinderella’s Castle

up close

And it would not be Disney, without a huge parking area for strollers!

lots of strollers

Or lots of balloons for sale!

Since we had seen the 3D film Captain EO at Epcot, Al and Karen recommended we see Mickey’s PhilharMagic, which is another 3D movie to get an idea of how far 3D technology has improved since the 1980’s.  We loved the movie, and recommend this for all ages.  The 3D technology is impressive, and the wait time for this attraction was only 10 minutes.

We wandered over to the Liberty Square section of the park, to view the replica of the Liberty Bell, and check out the Hall of Presidents, which contains artifacts from a number of former Presidents, as well the story of the United States, complete with Audio-Animatronic figures of every single President. It was a very informative and impressive display of the technology that Disney perfected back in the early 1970s.

Liberty Square

replica of Liberty Bell

After lunch, we met up with the rest of our group, and headed over to the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, for our first FastPass ride for the day.  As far as roller-coasters go, this one is pretty mild, which made it a very enjoyable ride for me.

an ‘easy’ roller-coaster

Next up was Splash Mountain, which you may want to use as one of your three FastPass options, as this can have a long stand-by waiting line.  This is a log flume ride, so you will get a little wet, or in Al’s case, a lot wet!  (he was in the front row of the ride!)  These are some photos of our group, although not everyone went on the ride.  And the young man in the front row with Al was not with us.  And yes, I did put on my raincoat for the ride!

ready for splash down!

If you double-click, you can see the photos better.  Dan and I are in the 2nd row, I have my hood up!

Fred hanging on to his hat!

Al was pretty soaked, and Fred never lost his hat!

all smiles!!

We had some time to kill before our next FastPass ride, so everyone headed out into different directions. Al, Karen, Dan and I went over to see how long the wait would be to get on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.  It was close to the 3:00pm daily parade, so there was not too many people in line, so we were able to see that attraction.  Although we didn’t notice anything wrong on our boat ride (you won’t get wet on this one), Karen and Al commented that ‘things were not working right’ and after we exited the ride, we heard the announcement that the ride would be temporarily shut-down.  So we will have to go back on this in March, to see what was not working.

We quickly headed over to Tomorrowlands, on the other side of the park, to go on Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin.  This is another shooting arcade game, similar to Toy Story ride at Hollywood Studios, but it is not in 3D.  We thought the Toy Story ride was better.  There were several other attractions in the Tomorrowlands that we plan on seeing in our future visit.  This is also the area that has Space Mountain, which is an indoor roller-coaster ride that has been around since 1975.  We did not go on this, and maybe will consider it for a future visit….maybe if Dan can talk me into it!

We headed back over to the Liberty Square area for our last FastPass ride for the day, the Haunted Mansion.  You sit in what they call a ‘doom buggy’, and go through various rooms in the mansion.  Personally, I found this boring.  There was a long wait to get on this, so I am glad we didn’t have to wait in line for this.  But I have no interest in going back to this ride.

Haunted Mansion

180 days before our visit today, Al’s sister Ginny set her alarm for 5:00am to make reservations at Be Our Guest Restaurant at the Magic Kingdom.   Apparently this is the most popular restaurant on Disney’s property, and very difficult to get into for dinner.  Disney allows advance dining reservations up to 180 days ahead of your visit.  So thanks Ginny for doing this!  In preparation for this dinner, Karen loaned us a copy of her Beauty and the Beast DVD, so we would understand the story, and the various rooms in the Beast’s Castle.  If you are going to dinner here, I would recommend seeing the movie as well.  It does add to the experience.

The Beast’s Castle

The dinner was excellent, and we appreciated the fact that Disney knows you have been in the park all day, so there is no dress code for such a formal meal.  Even though the Beast was all dressed up!

meeting the Beast

And here is our entire group: Fred, Al, Jim, Kathy, (Judy behind my head), myself, Sue, Denise, Bill, Karen, Patty, Dan and Ginny.  We were happy to be ‘adopted’ into their family!

our group

After an excellent meal, with our belly’s full, we headed back to the campground to make sure Makena’s belly was also full!

As with the other parks, there is really not enough time to see everything, unless you just run yourself ragged from the time the park opens until it closes. And since we already knew we would be back, we decided not to wear ourselves out (we did that enough at Amazon!)

Quote for the Day: “Life itself is the proper binge.” – Julia Child

welcome!

Although it has been a few weeks since last posting, I will be making up for that absence with a bunch of posts on our stay at Fort Wilderness Campground, on the grounds of The Magic Kingdom.  After our first day, I had good intentions of putting a post out right away, but with so many photos and videos to sort through, plus being tired from playing tourist for 12 hours, I figured it would be best to wait until our “vacation” was over, and then work on the blog posts.

And yes, I am calling it a vacation.  Many of you may think we are on a permanent vacation, but the reality is we still need to work.  Our ‘house’ just has wheels and a changing view!  But for this week, we went into ‘vacation’ mode.  If you enjoy Disney, then hopefully you will also enjoy the next several blogs, as they will be all about Disney.  If you are one of the few that can’t stand the big mouse, well……!

But first a little background.  Last year we were invited to Disney by our friends Karen and Al, whom we had met at Amazon.  Neither Dan nor I have ever visited any of the four parks at Disneyworld.  And when it comes to Disney characters, I am pretty clueless.  Karen and Al have been visiting Disney for years, and are very knowledgeable about the entire complex.  We hooked up with them last year for one day at Epcot, just to get a feel of Disney.  You can read about last years blog on Epcot here, as well as my blog on Disney history and pricing here.  We had a great time last year, and decided to come back for a longer stay this year, so we could see all four parks.

Our opinion that Disney is still very expensive has not changed, and they just reported on the local news that Disney recorded record attendance and profits in their last quarter.  So Disney can continue raising prices, and it does not appear to have any affect, so far, on their attendance.  But since we changed our residency to Florida, we can now get a resident pass.  For $233.00 (which includes tax), we can visit any of the four main parks, Monday thru Friday, most of the year.  Holidays, summer months, and the weekends are blocked out.  And we can go to more than one park in a day.

This year, we did stay at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort, which is both the nicest, and the most expensive campground we have stayed at.  We paid $82.00 per night (plus tax) for a premier site.  They do not offer any discounts, weekly or monthly rates.  And their pricing varies depending on the season (we stayed during the cheaper “off-season”).  But they do allow up to 10 people per site, without an extra charge, and we did see a few sites that had both an RV and a tent (which is permitted), so if you come down with a few families, it is not a bad deal.  And it does include a parking pass (which would cost $17.00 per day if not staying on the grounds).  They also offer a boat shuttle to the Magic Kingdom, as well as a shuttle bus to all the other parks and Downtown Disney.  We were able to link our reservations with Karen and Al, so we were all in the same loop (they have family and friends that also visit every year, and we joined in with the group).

Welcome to Epcot

Our first day was spent back at Epcot, on a much more relaxed pace than last year, when we were trying to see and do as much as possible!  When you stay at any Disney hotel, you will receive complimentary FastPass bands, which allow you to make advance reservations for up to three rides/attractions at each park.  This will allow you to avoid long waiting lines on the more popular rides.  Last year we did the ‘green’ option on the popular Mission Space ride, which simulates a rocket launch and spacecraft flight.  This year, we opted to try the more intense ‘orange’ ride.  This one made my stomach a bit queasy, but it was not too bad, since we were familiar with the ride from last year.  When it was over, I did notice several people getting off and sitting down right away on benches, holding the complimentary “space bag” that is on the ride.  I would recommend not doing this ride right after eating!

After that, we toured the Journey Into Imagination, with Figment, before our next FastPass, Turtle Talk with Crush.  This was an interactive, animated story telling with Crush The Turtle that is geared towards children, but is fun for adults as well.  It appears that you are watching an animated movie, but the character does interact and talk with the audience.

You can tell when you are close to more kid friendly attractions, when you run into the designated stroller parking areas!

lots of strollers

Dan and I originally set up our FastPass to include Captain EO, but Al stated there is never a long wait for this, so we did not have to waste one of our three options on this.  Captain EO was originally made for Disney in 1986, and was discontinued several years ago.  But after the death of Michael Jackson, Disney brought back this 18 minute 3D film.  It was interesting to see how much 3D technology has changed since this was made.  What was state of the art back then, just seems a little ‘ho hum’ now.

With the FastPass option at Epcot, Disney only let’s you select one of the two biggest rides.  You can choose either Soaring, or Test Track, but not both.  Last year we went on Soaring, which was excellent.  This year we opted for Test Track, which was also a lot of fun.  You design a car, and then take it for a ride along a test track to see how it performs on turns, speed and under adverse conditions.

Test Track entrance

Both would be great choices, and both have long ‘stand by’ wait times.  Your best bet would be to get to the park right away and stand in one of the lines, and have a FastPass for the other later in the day.

where’s Nemo?

All these rides made us hungry, so we headed over to the World Showcase portion of Epcot for a late lunch.  Al had made reservations in Italy, at Via Napoli Ristorante e Pizzeria, where we sampled several different wood-fired pizzas.

We then headed over to France, for some excellent desert at Les Halles Boulangerie & Patisserie.  We stopped there last year, and it was so good, and reasonably priced, that I wanted to stop there again this year.  We burned a few calories walking around the rest of the world, and then headed back to the campground to let the dogs out.

Epcot World Showcase

Since I took so many pictures last year at Epcot, I do not have a lot of photos from Epcot this year, but I did manage on finding a few more characters.  This year I did a little better in guessing who they were!

Mary Poppins

Do you know how to tell these two apart?

Chip and Dale

Chip has a brown nose, and Dale has the red one.  Learned something new at Epcot!

After feeding Makena, Dan and I took the free shuttle boat ride from our campground to the Magic Kingdom, to watch the evening parade and fireworks.  Since this blog is already pretty long, and I took a lot of photos in the evening, that will be the topic of my next blog.

Quote for the day:  “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” – Walt Disney