It’s Friday AM and we’re feeling confident we can attempt TWO Disney parks in one day…..anybody see where this is going?
Brian and the kids had already headed over to the Castle to see what Universal character came to the Village this AM!
In case anybody was wondering, Barney looks pretty big until.....Daddy shows up!
Although only Ella was super excited about meeting him, they all thought the purple dino was pretty cool after he rode the carousel!!! We missed riding with him, but of course Noah and Ella had to have a go round.....
We have breakfast in the Gingerbread house again, with MISTAKE #1 made early – we allowed John to have WAY too much SUGAR for breakfast. We’ll pay for that later!!
We head off about 10am to our first Disney park…..
We actually had been to AK 2 years ago, as a day trip while visiting friends in Tampa. While downloading my mom's pics, it was still on her camera! Here's the pic of last time....
And this time.....
We met up with Rafiki and Timon first off, grabbed stroller and headed straight ahead to the Tree of Life
First stop: “It’s a Bug’s Life”!
It’s a cool 4-D show that we had front row seats too – not so cool during the scary parts, but it was so fun to see Noah and Ella reaching out to touch the cupcake that was “right in front of them”!!!
We did the show with our friends from college who were at AK that day too! They had been the early birds this day, so they were pretty much done with the park when we were arriving, but it was fun to see them and spend a few minutes catching up!
Next up we made our way to the Safari in Africa. The animals were all out (minus the Lions) and it was a fun ride for all.
On the way to Kali River Rapids, Noah took a moment to play some drums…..
Then further up we bumped into our old friend Flik….
Then stopped for a quick picture...
It was also around now that Noah became infatuated with taking pictures. I will post all of his pics later (some are quite good!), but you might see one from time to time……
(ok, photopass is not cooperating...I'll add it later!)
Kali River Rapids is a fun river raft ride where you get SOAKED! We all got our own boat, secured cameras and all who wanted to got their ponchos on…..then the fun began. Brian videotaped the whole ride and it really was fun until all of a sudden we were about to do the big plunge when we stopped dead in our tracks! A fake tree branch was holding our boat back and the boats started piling up behind us --- 1, 2, 3, ….6 rafts were now behind us. An announcement came on that we should sit tight and the ride would begin at any moment. We laughed for a while, then wondered if we’d ever make it back…..then just as we were beginning to doubt we’d ever get going, FREEFALL!!!!!
Totally fun ride for all, unless you don’t like to get wet. We headed on, thinking that our “broken ride” experience was over!!! Ha!
Next up was Everest and the only kid who dared go….Abby!
She, Courtney, Brian and I did the first ride and she loved it so much that she wanted to go again!! She also bought a little "Yeti" to show her brothers how "not scary" it was!
Brian and Court met up with my mom in Dinoland. I had suggested to my mom to head over there, thinking the kids would like the tamer “dumbolike” or “teacuplike” rides, but they never made it out of the carnival games! John won a big stuffed shark though, so that made him happy, which was a good thing because he was finally coming down off his sugar high from breakfast! Since John also wanted to ride the Time machine Twirl (or something like that --- the spinning roller coaster ride) and only he and Abby were tall enough, it was Auntie Courtney and Mommy who were the lucky ones this time. Fortunately this was before LUNCH!
By this time we were all hot and hungry. We found a place to each at the entrance to dinoland, but other than my mandarin chicken salad, nothing was really worthy of note. HOWEVER we made a crucial mistake at lunch and that was not having Noah eat his hot dog meal here. Prior to us leaving, we had calculated out how much of a Disney hot dog Noah could eat, along with the chips, mayo/ranch, and a special ketchup. This was helpful since it’s not convenient to heat up meals at the Disney parks. So on these long park days I would pack one cold meal, and the fixings so he could order a hot dog and measure it on our portable scale. There were hotdogs available at this dino place, but we had him eat his cold meal and we figured it would be totally easy to get a hotdog at Epcot……HUGE, GIGANTIC, TYRANOSAURUS-sized mistake on our part.
But, no worries, we will survive!!!!
We bumped into some friends on our way towards the front of the park……
Then we figured it was time to get moving. We had aimed at hitting the Nemo show, but we also wanted to get over to Epcot before it got too late.
Next up: at EPCOT…. Mistakes and frustrations galore, but a bright ending!
Those outfits are adorable and The splash pad and pool at GKTW is AWESOME 
And that looks like a BLAST! I may have to go back to Sea World at some point to ride that!
good for him, me not so much. I'm totally envying your AK day...you'll see why...and now I want to go back. I can't wait to read more. You are so much more on top of it than I am.
