05.29.09 Walt Disney World - Animal Kingdom

Another bright and early morning! We had planned to go to Hollywood Studios on this day, but we found out last night that the winner of American Idol was supposed to be there today, and it was going to be so extremely busy, so we switched our schedule up a bit since none of us really cared to fight the crowds. I think everyone was extremely tired today. Up until now, we'd done really well - we never really had much time just sitting around trying to decide what to do, etc, but today, no one really wanted to take the lead, the kids were all REALLY tired, and grumpy, too. Okay, admittedly some of the adults were, too! :-)

It started out great! We headed up to "Africa" for the Kilimanjaro Safari because we heard the animals are most active in the morning. It was incredible! Grant was afraid at first, but after he figured out that we were seeing animals, he came alive! It's so neat how you drive right up with the animals. I've heard sometimes they're so close you could touch them! It's one of my favorite rides at Disney, for sure. Grant just kept talking about the "Crapadiles" (crocadiles) that we got to see. The fun treasure for today was animal print sunglasses and visors to wear at the Animal Kingdom. We all looked pretty silly, but we had fun!

We ran back to see the Lion King, but it had started 5 minutes before we got there, so we couldn't get in. So we went to see "It's Tough Being a Bug" which is inside the famous Tree of Life at Animal Kingdom. I loved it. Grant hated it!

After that, we had signed up for a picnic lunch, so we went back up to Africa to pick it up and eat. It was a lovely lunch. We had planned to go back to see the Lion King, but Grant and Mason were both really grumpy, and Jason and Kendra were taking their kids back to the hotel, so we went with them. So we didn't really get to see much of the Animal Kingdom unfortunately. On our way out, we did get to see Brer Rabbit, one of my dad's favorite characters. So I was glad to get his autograph and picture.

We did go back and all four of us took a good 2 hour nap. When we woke up, we took the kids swimming, which was a big hit! I think if all we did was swim all week, Grant would have been happy, as long as a few characters were thrown in there, too! After our afternoon of rest, we got dressed and went to Ohana's for dinner. It's at the Polynesian resort, so we waited for our bus (which took absolutely forever) then boarded the tram to go to the Polynesian. This, too, took a while. It resulted in us being about 5 minutes late. No worries. They were running behind anyway. So we waited a long time. Mason was screaming because he wanted to eat/drink. Grant was antsy, and I was already going nuts. We hadn't even sat down yet. Finally dad went to check how long it would be and it seemed they skipped over us and had taken our name off the list. Ugh. We finally got to sit down and eat. But Mason was still screaming, so I finally had to take him out. Mom came out and suggested letting her try with Mason. Sometimes kids behave better when they're not with their parents, and it helped immensely. Unfortunately, Grant and Chris weren't having a very good time, either. Grant wouldn't eat anything except bread, and it wasn't going well. It was a stressful dinner for me, which disappointed me because the food was delicious, and I had a beautiful view overlooking Cinderella's castle. Eating at fancy restaurants with small children is so difficult! But the food was great! They served all sorts of different meats that they brought out on huge skewers and placed right on your plate. The veggies were incredible, and the pineapple-coconut bread was out of this world. And we had bread pudding with icecream and caramel sauce for dessert. Unfortunately, we had to rush it a little bit because we wanted to make it to the Magic Kingdom for the fireworks. We made it with merely minutes to spare. The park was open until 1:00, so we stayed until about 11:30, shopped for some souvenirs, enjoyed the cooler weather, and had fun "hooking" Grandpa! (Grant got a "hook" to wear on his hand).