Disney World 2010 - part 2 (Animal Kingdom)

On our second day we decided to go to Animal Kingdom and spend the entire day there. We got up, had breakfast at the resort then hopped on the bus. Of course, it was HOT (about 100 degrees) so we lathered up with sunscreen. I'm happy to report that despite the fact that the sun was trying its darnedest to burn our pasty white skin, no one got even the slightest sunburn the entire trip!

SPF 60 really does the trick.

:)

When we walked into the park Ron and I realized we were ill prepared. I brought hats for the girls but we didn't have any for us...so we stopped at the first outpost we saw and got some snazzy looking safari hats. We wore them all day every day and they help tremendously to keep us cool and not sunburned.

The first thing we did to cool down was go on Kali River Rapids. We all got soaked and it felt sooooo good to be wet (so good that we went on it twice that day). Then we watched the show "It's Tough to be a Bug" which was really cute and air conditioned!! We hit up some of the best rides like Expedition Everest (a roller coaster that goes backwards for part of the ride. Ron, Steph and I rode it and Steph HATED it), Dinosaur (Ron, Steph and I and Steph LOVED it so we rode it twice), and Kilimanjaro Safari where we saw giraffes, elephants, alligators, hippos, and more.

One of the best things was that we had special fastpasses for all the rides during our trip so we never had to wait in lines longer than a few minutes. We got the fastpasses by participating in the Give a Day, Get a Day program (we donated 4 handmade blankets to Project Linus). It was a great way to teach the girls about volunteering and the fastpasses were wonderful!!

At about 8 PM we left exhausted and headed back to the resort for dinner. When we got back to the room I had a surprise waiting for me from Grannie. It was a "celebration" in the room complete with balloons, a medal, a certificate, a huge Mickey, 5 wine glasses and sparkling cider.....all for my college graduation!

Here are the pics.....

The girls (and Grannie) in their Minnie Mouse ears:




The Tree of Life which is seriously one of the coolest things EVER:




To get an idea how big this thing is check out Ronnie (in his cool safari hat) at the bottom right of the pic below. He's a tall guy at 6'4" and he looks itty bitty next to the tree.



Jennifer meeting Stitch. A cool thing happened while she was getting his autograph - one of the flowers from his lei fell off onto the ground and he noticed that she was wearing some silly bands, so he offered to trade her his flower for a silly band. It was sooo cute!



Giving him the "thumbs up"!



Here they are trading!



Steph meeting Stitch (who became her favorite character - she even came home with a big Stitch stuffed animal!)



This is one of the things we did to *try* and keep cool. Grannie bought one of these battery powered water fans and we would mist ourselves constantly with it until we were soaked. We would fill it with ice and within minutes the ice would be melted and the water would be warm!!!



Expedition Everest:



Meeting Goofy and Pluto:



Some pics from the safari:






My graduation "celebration"! Thanks mom!!!!




Day 3 coming soon.....

:)