The Brooks Family: WDW Day 4: Animal Kingdom Morning

Saturday morning we were up early and ready for Animal Kingdom! I wanted to get some shots at our resort, so I took these on the way to the bus stop. This was right outside the door we always entered to get to our room...

Grey said, "I see Simba!" every time we passed it. (Fun fact: at Animal Kingdom I learned that Simba means lion in some African language).

And Mufasa was on the way to our building...

Excited!

We were there early, and had a great conversation with the family in front of us. The dad noticed James's state gear and started talking SEC with him (they were Tennessee fans). They had 2 daughters, one named Charlotte, and Hunter and Char had a great little talk with them. Pretty quickly after we got there, though, they let us in past the tapstiles into the Oasis at the front of the park, so we said goodbye to our new friends and headed to the rope in front of the path to Africa. The boys saved our spot while Char and I went to look at the tree of life...

Beautiful!

As Char and I were looking around, those birds came flying out of the tree of life and flew around the crowd. Everyone was all "ahhhh" in unison:) Then they all started flying toward Char and I - one even flew right over my head, touching my hair!! They landed by these cast members on this rim thing...

Right after that, they dropped the rope and everyone started walking toward the safari (where we were going as well). Grey and Hunter were sitting in the stroller playing around when all of a sudden, Grey started crying. I turned around and James was pulling over the stroller and getting him out. His poor lip was bleeding:( Somehow he hit it on the stroller when he turned away from Hunter giggling. Lots of people zoomed past us in their rush to the safari. He didn't take long to calm down and we re-joined the crowd. When we finally got there, we did have to wait for ~10 minutes before boarding. The big kids were annoyed, but thankfully Grey seemed better.

The safari was so cool! We saw hippos...

Crocodiles...

Lots of giraffes...

Elephants...

Lions!

Look how close this beauty is!

(I did zoom a little, but he was seriously close.)

After the safari, we grabbed the stroller and headed toward Dinoland USA. We wanted to meet Pocahontas on the way, but she wasn't meeting yet, so we went straight to the rides. First up was Primeval Whirl...

Hunter was real nervous in line (you can definitely tell here), but as always, ended up loving it. It was fun, but too jerky for this old lady.

Then we found James and Grey and rode Triceratop spin...

And then we headed to meet Pocahontas....

Hunter did not want to meet her and after it was over, wanted to head to the Boneyard (a playground), but it was too close to the time for the show we were planning to go to. He didn't want to go to the show either, so we got a little attitude. I promised him that we'd go to the Boneyard later, but he didn't really cheer up until it started. He did end up liking the show, though.

Here are some stock photos from the show...

After that, the boys went to the Boneyard while the girls found a bathroom...and a photopass photographer...

We went and got the boys and headed to our lunch reservation at Tusker House. I was nervous about the food because it said they served authentic African food, but the kids loved it. This was Hunter's favorite meal.

Donald wasn't happy about Grey's Mickey hat, but we assured him he was number 1 (at least for this meal...he's the host).

Mickey!!

Silly Goofy...

Grey was enamored with Daisy...

Love this!

And this!

After lunch we headed back to the resort for a nap, but stopped at the big Animal Kingdom Christmas tree since this would be our only visit to this park...