Day Two, Part Three
As I've been reading other trip reports, I've started to realize that the lions on safari have a tendency to be.. umm... lazy. LOL. So I thought I would share this picture from my 2009 trip. It's not super crisp because of the zoom on my little point-and-shoot, but apparently it's not as common as I assumed it was when I took it:
I just want to brush his hair!
Since we're talking about animals... if you feel like getting your heart tugged on, check out this link. You will cry. If you don't, I don't even wanna know. I had tears streaming down my face as I was reading it to my mom on the phone.
Clickety-click right here.
Recovered? Yeah, me either.
Ohhh... it has also come to my attention that the 50th anniversary of "It's a Small World" will be celebrated in all Disney parks.
ON.
MY.
BIRTHDAY.
I want to go!!!! IASM is the quintessential Disney ride for me. My grandma absolutely loved it and I think it's amazing. The song doesn't even begin to grate on my nerves like it does for some people. It simply makes me happy. *sigh* I am now trying to come up with a way to incorporate this into my birthday bash at work. I wonder if I can get everyone to agree to sing IASM instead of "happy birthday"???
Okay, enough jibber jabber. On with the show!!
After I left Rafiki's Planet Watch, I started wandering aimlessly again. There were a couple things that I absolutely HAD to do and I was trying to figure out the best way to arrange these things.
As I was wandering, I came across this little cart/shop. This is Justus:
I was trying REALLY hard to remember to write down people's names. I was having such a great time that even knowing I would never see these people again, I thought it was important for them to not just wind up being random strangers. This way, they were specific people who did specific things to make me smile.
Anyway, there were two little boys who were very intrigued with what Justus was making and he wanted to show us his creation. I included a very specific disclaimer on FB that this turned out looking kind of threatening and that is not at all how the encounter went!! I just happened to press the button at an odd time.
I could just tell how proud he was of his work and I wanted to capture that. It's easy to have a shop with hand-carved items. Actually seeing the people who are creating these objects makes it special. Disney ♥
There were some really cool items for sale, including wooden spoons with animals carved into the handle. I came very close to buying some but passed, mainly because I had a vision of using it and breaking it and crying. Not sure why I didn't at least take a picture.
I decided to take a stroll through the Maharajah Jungle Trek. Before I left, I asked my two youngest younglings who their favorite characters were. My niece's response will be revealed later, but my nephew very emphatically answered with.... BATMAN!
Oy. I understand, cuz I love him too. But it wasn't even the RIGHT comic book company. LOL. Of course, that was followed by me asking him what his favorite ride at Disney was. (I was expecting "Pirates of the Caribbean".)
The answer... "Ummm... my favorite ride at Disney is the Scooby Doo ride at Six Flags!"
Okay Benny, these bats are for you!
And, because that looks NOTHING like a bat OR Batman... I guess we'll go with the completely fake one:
When I was younger, my neighbors had an in-ground swimming pool that was backed up by a large wooded area. We would sometimes be swimming at night and bats would be flying over our heads, wings outstretched. That was significantly less creepy to me than that first picture is.
The next couple pictures are some of my favorite touches within DAK. I read about the significance of the prayers flags in my
Hidden Magic of Disney World book. There is something so simple and hopeful about this and I just love the idea, regardless of the fact that it's not my own belief system that it's based off of. People who don't "get" Disney consider this type of thing to be fake. I, on the other hand, consider it to be creative and imaginative and educational.
I win
I finished up my trek marveling at the tigers. There was a CM who explained that tigers are the only big cat who enjoy water, so as part of their enrichment there is a swimming area for them to play in.
Soft kitty, warm kitty, little ball of fur. Happy kitty, sleepy kitty, purr purr purr:
Bazinga!
Have a happy weekend!!
I have some birthday festivities going on today! Yay!!! It's a little early, but some of my friends will be out-of-town in a couple weeks so I roped them into plans for today. Going to the Melting Pot for the first time and I'm ridiculously excited!
And if you're following March Madness... good luck to your team and your bracket! Unless your teams winds up crossing paths with my
Syracuse Orange!!! 
I've been glued to the TV and even went down to catch open practice on Wednesday. We're hosting some of the second and third round games, so that was fun. I would have gone to the games, but well... I kinda took a little trip somewhere else and couldn't completely justify spending more money.
I should have outgrown this self-consciousness by now, but no such luck. Once I approached this PP photographer and saw how happy he was to take pictures of just me on his camera as well as my own, I got a LOT more comfortable with it. I have just as many pictures from previous trips; I'm just not IN any of them! Even when I went with my family, the majority of those pictures were ones I took with everyone else as the subjects. My sister commented that she was SO HAPPY to see me in the pics, and that made it so worthwhile to me 
Still cracks me up.
) The big draw for me this time was the veterinary thing and then I chickened out. I would say it's one of the few things in all of WDW that is truly geared more toward children. 
came on!!
I hope you enjoy your celebration and festivities! 
