On Monday, April 6, we officially started spring break, which meant no online school. We could head to the park first thing. This was our first time visiting Animal Kingdom.
After the other parks, this one was such a balm to the soul. It was so beautiful, calm, and filled with a whole different kind of magic. We loved having a slower pace and exploring the different walkways while discovering animals.
This has got to be the most peaceful of all of Disney's parks.
The central focal point/landmark is the Tree of Life, a large manmade sculptural tree. It is so incredible.
We headed over to the dinosaur area to get in line for the Dinosaur! ride. The ride was fairly long, like so many, especially thrill rides like this one.
My nephew was having surgery at Primary Children's that day...I think he'd already had it by that point, actually. They put a shunt in for him, and part of his recovery meant laying still for several days. Before we headed to the park, I asked my siblings if they wanted to go in on balloons/stuffed animal for him, and they all immediately sent me money via Venmo. I called the gift shop at Primary Children's to order him a few things to be delivered over the several days that he was in the hospital. It's a little tricky business. I'd tell the worker kind of what my nephew was interested in, and the worker would put the phone down and go see what kind of related things the shop had. It was quite the process, and without seeing anything, I ordered what I hoped were some coordinating gift deliveries. For three days, he'd get a stuffed animal or two (depending on the size) and a couple of balloons. I did a dinosaur type theme, an Avengers theme, and a woodland creature theme (again based on their limited selection of things). I finished my over the phone ordering just in time to ride the Dinosaur ride. I was feeling pretty productive and positive about that, even though I felt bad for ignoring my family and for missing some of the cool things in the queue line, like fossils and stuff.
It was a cool ride, but I wished that there had been a little more light inside to see the cool dinosaur animatronics.
One of the things that Animal Kingdom does is the Wilderness Explorers club. They give each kid a book at the front of the park, and then throughout the park, there are little stations where cast members dressed as troop leaders teach the kids about things in the wilderness. They learned about dinosaurs, bugs, the difference between apes and monkeys, and so many other things. It was really cool.
Michael, of course loved watching the apes swinging around this temple ruin climbing structure. We learned they were apes, not monkeys, thanks to the Wilderness Explorers. Apes don't have tails.
There aren't a ton of rides in Animal Kingdom, but the ones they do have are pretty awesome. We loved Expedition Everest. It was so unexpected, and the Yeti theme was really fun. (We learned about Yeti's in Wilderness Explorers as well. ) We kept riding it because the lines were pretty short. It was definitely a family favorite.
There are so many cool things to see. The details are so incredible. We all felt like we were able to travel to exotic lands, through ancient ruins and temples. There were so many amazing things for the eye to see.
After our experience getting soaked on the Bilge Rat Barges, we weren't sure how wet we'd get riding the Kali River Rapids. We were all a little nervous. The Grizzly River Run from California Adventure was also fairly fresh on our minds. Turns out, it's the tamest out of the three rides, and we only got a little wet.
There were so many different trails to explore and lots of animals to see.
Including these huge bats!
Which we learned more about with the Wilderness Explorers.
We loved seeing the Tigers. There's something magical about tigers, I decided.
Look at these exotic details!
Here's a close up of the Tree of Life.
It was amazing. The tree is made up of animal carvings.
We went on Kilimanjaro Safaris near the end of the day, and it was one of my favorite things. We got to feel like we were on a real safari as we viewed these animals.
I LOVED being this close to the giraffes!
and the elephants. Do you know how you can tell that these are African elephants? In Animal Kingdom, the guides tell you the real reason. Their ears are shaped like Africa. Now if we were on the Jungle Cruise...
Rachel and I loved the birds in the Aviary that we found in one of our walks.
And we loved seeing this tank because
The hippo swam by while we were watching the fish.
The highlight was seeing the gorillas. We'd learned about some of these gorillas by watching the Animal Kingdom documentaries on Disney +, and it was so fun seeing them in real life! We couldn't get enough!
Michael stayed and watched them long after everyone else lost interest.
After seeing the gorillas, we decided to do the Kilimanjaro Safari again.
And we walked a little closer to the Tree of Life.
We made a quick stop by the flamingos.
We rode the boat ride in the Avatar land, and it was really serene and cool. Rachel was the only one who would pose for a picture with us in Pandora.
We left the park at closing time, each of us incredibly impressed and in love with Animal Kingdom.
Tuesday, April 7 was our day at Epcot. Epcot didn't even open until 11 a.m. I think we got there close to when it opened, but I don't remember.
After seeing pictures of this giant golf ball my whole life from watching Disney specials on ABC, I was so excited to see it in person.
We rode Spaceship Earth very first. The best thing about that was that we got to actually be in the golf ball. And it was narrated by Judi Dench, so that was cool too. Not too far into Epcot, we rode Nemo's ride and entered Disney Seas.
We spent a good chunk of time exploring the aquariums in here. There was a scavenger hunt, and we had a lot of fun trying to find all the fish in the book.
I loved watching the dolphins and the manatees in Disney Seas. They are so cool!
Epcot was having some kind of garden festival, and they had these really cool character topiary statues throughout the park.
It was really cool exploring cities around the world. This was probably the most magical thing about Epcot. Our first stop was in London, where we tried out fish and chips. We planned to try something from every country and eat our way around the world, but most of the kids filled up on Fish and Chips before we made it other places.
We saw the princesses ride by.
And Mickey and Minnie.
We found Snow White's wishing well.
And a very green Snow White.
The line for the Frozen ride in Norway stretched all the way to China. This gave us an opportunity to appreciate more of the details in China.
And this scary looking Norwegian Gnome guy.
One of the things we really love about Disney parks is the attention to detail.
Florida does an amazing job with visual excitement in their queues.
Rachel and I rode the Frozen ride while the boys went to ride Spaceship Earth. Rachel and I LOVED the Frozen ride.
We headed home a little early, thanks to the heat of the day and all of our tiredness. Somehow, as we were heading back to the car, Michael got a bout of silly energy.
Our favorite parts of Epcot: Soarin' Around the World, Frozen, Fish N Chips, and Disney Seas. The weirdest thing was the Imagination ride with Figment. It was a bit trippy, but somehow, it grew on us.
As we headed back to our condo, our excitement was growing because our friends were on their flight to join us! We were so excited to see them!
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