Disney Day 3, Part 1 - Animal Kingdom

Friday was our first park day.  As usual it was shaping up to be a hot one, and we were starting at the hottest park there is, Animal Kingdom.  Seriously, it is always merciless there despite the abundant trees.  Every time I see my token picture of the Tree of Life as you step into the heart of the park, I immediately sense the oppressive heat on the walk to Africa.  But I guess it works with the theme, right?

We did breakfast in the room now that we finally had our groceries, and headed out--though as usual, later than I would have liked.  Luckily it was a super short ride to the park, since it is literally about five minutes away from the resort.  As it was already 10:30, lines had already had plenty of time to build up, and the one ride Jacob really wanted to do, the safari, was an hour wait.  We didn't do Lightning Lane that day so we had little choice but to wait.  We'd never done the standard queue before, and boy, did it ever twist and turn!  It was mostly shady, still hot, but somehow tolerable, and it was just under an hour in the end.  We ended up in the front row of the vehicle--well, it was a split front row for handicap accessibility, so two and two with no seats to our right.  Craig snapped this picture of Carter as we got settled.

As much as I love the safari and will likely always ride it, it was a little anti-climactic this time because we saw half of the animals around our resort repeatedly the previous couple days.  Like, yeah, that's cool, but I saw more of them closer up yesterday.  But we did get to see hippos, which of course are our current favorite family animal.
 

You can just see the head poking up in the middle near the rock

We also saw an elephant that was reaching its trunk up, and it looked like a fruitless effort because it was so far away from reaching the leaves.  Even the driver said, "Not sure you're tall enough, buddy!"  But just as we were moving out of view, sure enough, somehow the elephant got it!

We saw a couple more elephants that were play-fighting in the water.

It was a pretty standard safari--decent views but not much out-of-the-ordinary or spectacular.  We wrapped up there and Craig and Jacob decided they were moving on from this park, while Carter and I were staying to ride more rides.  Craig took a quick picture of the three of us, and off they went.

I wish we could have spent more of their one park day together, but with time being so limited, it really only made sense for us to split.  Carter and I made our way to Expedition Everest, spotting the hippo carved in the Tree of Life along the way.

Always need to get this perfect view!

Everest is one of our favorite rides on property, and we were excited to ride despite the 30+ minute wait.  

Killing time in line...love this pic!

Meanwhile, Craig and Jacob had arrived at Magic Kingdom to hit up Pinocchio's for lunch, and had a photo bomber!

Carter and I were lucky enough to end up in the front row on Everest, and it was outstanding--there are great views on the lift hill and where the broken track is, and it's just a fun, fast ride every time!  Supposedly they're going to be fixing the formerly animatronic Yeti, so I guess we'll see if that comes to pass.  I always like to get this shot on the way out, too.

We were starving by the time we got done and decided to try the Buffalo chicken mac & cheese nearby.  Carter ate most of it, but I had enough to get me through to our next stop and my main goal--Dole Whip!  We ate in this little garden area that was overrun with those birds that are everywhere at Disney and love to steal popcorn and other food.  Zoom in and look around the statue...they're everywhere!

We headed back to Africa to get our Dole Whip, in Fanta float form.  It was so good and so refreshing!

While we sat there, I checked wait times and Flight of Passage was suddenly super short (for that ride, anyway).  We drank down our Dole Whips and started off in that direction.  It's actually a very pretty walk to Pandora through the back route near the Lion King show (which we still haven't done despite Jacob loving the movies).

I saw this fun plant along the way and apparently it's called an American Beautyberry.  I love random exotic stuff in Florida.

One of the coolest things about this route was how the landscape very carefully changed from a rustic African/Middle Eastern feel to Pandora via some ambiguous rock structures and plants that could blend into both.

Arriving in Pandora

We'd never gone through the non-Lightning Lane line for Flight of Passage either, and I was actually a little bit excited about this one because I'd heard the line was actually pretty cool.  It certainly was!  

The foliage is so interesting, and someday I will go in the winter to see it in the dark!

Bioluminescence is so pretty!

As cheesy as these things can be, this section with a lab that included a Na'vi test subject was actually really cool.

While we were in line, I got confirmation when the boys would be back at the resort in the evening, so I was able to order Carter's new suitcase for delivery while we waited.  We got through the line pretty quickly.  I think it was posted as 45 minutes but I think it was shorter than that.  And as always, it's such a fun and exhilarating ride!  I'm always still highly amused by the memory of Craig's first ride, which left him panicking and us laughing because he was not expecting it to feel so real!  Such a fun moment, and I was thrilled we were able to fit it in again with a reasonable wait.  

At this point we were ready to move on to park #2.  I wish we would have had more time to do a few more things--we didn't really go on any of the animal trails, we didn't sneak a glimpse of the former Dinoland area that's being completely redone, and we didn't ride Kali River Rapids, which I know Carter likes.  It's not my favorite, but it's been fun to do as a family.  But between our time constraints and the complications of getting wet, it just wasn't in the cards this time.  I knew this would be a "side effect" of consolidating our park time, that we'd miss some stuff we like in favor of higher priorities, but we definitely got in our favorites and it was now time for other things...enough other things that I'm going to make that a separate post!