Becoming one with the animals

The weather has finally warmed up, and most of tourists are gone (minus the Brazilians who I am positive are rubbing in the fact that they got the Olympics over Chicago, yup still bitter) so yesterday we decided to take the kiddos to Animal Kingdom. I have to say this is by far their favorite park, they love animals and everything there seems to keep in mind that most kids are in strollers. As soon as I put their shoes on, they headed to the door and were ready to go.

We happened to plan it just right that when we got there we were able to see the Festival of the Lion King show back in Camp Minnie Mickey. The last time Scott and I saw this show it was still in an open air auditorium, yeah, it's been a while.

It was no surprise that the kids loved the show, we have the soundtrack to the Broadway version which they love, and well, Jill is part South African in spirit. Aaron was fascinated with Timon and Pumba being right next to us and Jill waved hi to all the performers. You forget the level of talent that is at Disney sometimes, it's amazing.

After the show emptied out we hung out in the Camp Minnie Mickey area to see some of the characters, plus one of our friends is "friends" with Mickey and Minnie so we wanted to do photos with her. I have to say we are really lucky because the kids love the characters! I think their favorite yesterday was Donald, and he was great! He gave the kids a ton of kisses and before we left Jill gave him one too!

So after seeing all of those characters we waited around to see our friend, Scott thought she was going to be hanging out with Minnie around noon so we hopped in that line. When we got up there we were like huh, interesting, she's not really fussing over the kids. Come to find out she was hanging out with Mickey, not Minnie and Scott and I need to relearn how to read. Oh well, we still got a cute picture!

Since the park wasn't that crowded we were able to go to our new favorite sit down restaurant in the park, Yak and Yeti. It is so yummy! If you like Asian food, you need to go. I'm not a beef eater, but Scott had their Kobe beef burger and said it was to die for! The kids did really well too, which I'll be honest, was surprising because it was nap time.

After lunch we went back on the trek to see some animals and kill time before the bird show. Now, here is something I don't understand, where the tigers are located they are several and I mean SEVERAL windows that you can look through to see them, how is it that my children managed to see none? Oh simple, because everyone congregated in front of the main window to see the tigers and would not anyone get close. Ok people, it's a stroller, you can see over it! Scott was able to take great pictures even though he wasn't right at the window, so what's the problem? But they did get to see all the other animals and were really excited about that.

Since they had been so good at that point during the day we figured we would reward them with some cookies. Scott decided to get them chocolate chip instead of the usual sugar (maybe because he likes chocolate chip better?) and really, the kids weren't all about it. They like the sugar cookies better, but they did nibble a little bit of it before we went to see Flights of Wonder.

I really thought the kids would like the Flights of Wonder show since it is all about birds, but I forgot how "informative" it is rather than super entertaining. The kids created their own entertainment though and still managed to have a great time! They even got some "awes" out of everyone around us by giving each other hugs.

The kiddos were still going pretty strong at this point so we thought we would head over to the Pangani trail to see the gorillas and then call it a day. On the way in I actually took a moment to read the sign and you have to read the quote, it's so true.

Definitely something to keep in mind, right? It was a great day (minus the Olympic hosting Brazilians, I'm working on my bitterness), beautiful weather and awesome animals.

Hope your day was just as great!