Day 5 Animal Kingdom
We took the monorail back to the GF and were in our room by 9:40 to change and grab park gear. It took us a while to get ready and so we didn't make it out ot the bus stop until 10:30. I was getting a little worried that we would be arriving at Animal Kingdom too late, and therefore having long line ups to deal with. Not that we were doing any of the big rides of course, except for the Kilimanjaro Safari.
We had about a 5 minute wait for the bus. There were quite a few people at the GF getting on too and the bus was half full already from the previous 2 pickups, but we all got seats anyways. The bus took us to Blizzard Beach first before arriving at Animal Kingdom at 11:00.
Here we are, note that the weather was beautiful and sunny at this time:
We walked straight to the back of the park to Africa. Our first ride planned for the day was Kilimanjaro Safaris. I thought for sure I was going to need to get fast passes, but the standby line said 20 min! So we decided to go in standby. We walked halfway through the line to the stroller parking area, gave the CMs our strollers and then continued walking to the front of the line. We practically WALKED ON this ride! There was NO WAIT!!! And this was at 11:15 on a Friday morning! We lucked out again and got the front row in the open air safari vehicle!!
By now, the sun had disappeared and the sky had become overcast. As we rode in the vehicle, we could hear thunder and see lightning!!
This of course set off little Tink, who is not only afraid of the dark, but also of being outside during lightning and thunder! It got worse when the rain started beating down on us in the OPEN AIR vehicle!! Although there was a cavas roof cover, there were no side covers so rain was coming in. I think this partly ruined the ride as the driver didn't seem as talkative during the ride. He had already warned us that he would not stop the vehicle for us to take photos, but would try to slow down at certain points...this did make for a lot of blurry pictures:
You can really see the rain coming down hard in this photo:
I was worried about what we were going to do once the ride was over as we had brought absolutely NO RAIN GEAR!!! I had kept the ponchos and rain covers for the strollers in the stroller at the beginning of the trip, but since the weather had been so great all week, we took them out and didn't think to carry them. When we finished the safari, we were told that we could not stand under the cover at the drop off point because other trucks would be unloading in the area so we had to move on. We walked slowly though to the stoller pick up area and found an inch of rain in the seat! We dried them off and by now the rain was starting to let up. We totally lucked out because it stopped raining by the time we were ready to head out.
We decided to hop onto the Wildlife Express Train to Rafiki's Planet Watch. As we walked along the Habitat Habit outdoor discovery trail, we ran into a Kids Discovery Club station. I had the girls go through this one, they had to find the objects (bugs, animals, vegetation) printed on their cards in the display area. Once they find all their objects, they are given a card/passport thing with a stamp of that station. We continued our walk along the trail and ended up at the Conservation Station. Here we explored the live animal encouters (the girls touched a lizard like creature, and I can't remember what it was called), saw some displays, and ran into these characters!
It was such a pleasant surprise to find Pocahontas here!!! She was just standing there and there was NO LINE UP to meet her!
So she was so nice and chatted with the girls while DH ran back outside to grab our autograph books out of the strollers.
Next to her was Rafiki himself! The girls have never seen Lion King, so they weren't familiar with him, but liked his furry chin. Again there was no line up to meet him.
We walked over to the other side of the building and found Jiminy Cricket! The girls have never seen Pinnochio either (I did get them the movie after our trip though and they think he's great!).
We also took some photos standing by some cut outs of animals
After exploring inside here, we went out and ended up in the Affection Section. This is a petting yard that had sheep and goats out today. There are brushes available for the kids to use to brush the animals.
Tink could have stayed here ALL DAY! She just loves petting yards and touching animals. But after a while, we really wanted to head out and see other things. There was a great hand washing station right outside the yard. We headed back down the Habitat Habit trail towards the Wildlife Express Tain and hopped back on to Africa. We were now headed for Camp Minnie-Mickey where the Lion King show was performing. We really wanted to catch a show and thought Tink would love this show because of her new found affection for her plush Simba. As we walked down, we ran into a photopass lady in front of the Tree of Life and she did the Simba photo with them:
The Tree of Life is pretty amazing:
We made it to the Festival of the Lion King show at 1:45 for a 2:00 show. It was AMAZING!!! And most importantly, the girls loved it. It had a musical/dance/Cirque du Soleil feel to it, and it was wonderful. I didn't take any photos of the show, because I was too busy watching it!
Anyways, after the show, I wanted to head to DinoLand USA and take in a ride. When we got there, the rides were shut down because it looked like it was going to rain. So we hid in a gift shop for a little bit until the rain looked like it was not going to come, and the rides reopened. As soon as I saw that TriceraTop Spin was about to open, we went in quickly to walk right onto the ride!
There was nothing else that excited the girls here, so we decided it was time to head back to the GF. It was now 3:30, and we had to get back in time to have dinner and get changed for our GF photopass shoot at 7:00. On our way back, Belle said her hand hurt and upon close inspection, we discovered TWO deep splinters!!!!! I have no idea where she got these from. We thought we could just wait to go back to our room to try and get them out, but she was telling us they really hurt. I thought of the First Aid center and we went to look for one. When we got there, we told the nurse about the splinters and she let us into one of the exam rooms and gave us tweezers, antibacterial wipes and a numbing wipe plus a little lancet to help get them out. I am finding that in my increasing years, my ability to see small things up close is declining. Needless to say, it took a while to get them out. Thank goodness Belle was such a trouper she let me go at them! We were also given 2 little bandaids to put on. It was great! I would never have been able to get them out on my own if we went back to the room without all the supplies given to us at the First Aid Center.
We made it to the bus stop by 4:00 for a 30 minute bus ride back to the GF. Tink had a nice nap on the bus and then some afterwards in the stroller!
Up next: To rain or not to rain.....
I'm beside myself with the idea of all the souvies I want to get the girls! WHAT other "load a box" things do they have that I need to prepare for??
I have been quietly following along. 
Once at the airport, we just walked in to hang out in the terminal for the next 2.5 hours. Luckily, this airport is full of shops and food services. 
