Disney World Day 5- Africa and Asia all in One Day

Wednesday was the day we visited Animal Kingdom. There were a few attractions I was really looking forward to at this park. Again we arrived a few minutes before the park opened and stood in line. Just before the rope dropped, Mickey and Minnie came out and talked to the crowd about the adventure we were going to have while we explored Animal Kingdom. Following their performance, they moved out of the way, so the crowd could pass and we followed the cast members straight to the Kilimanjaro Safari ride and were able to walk right on the ride with no wait. We were the first safari of the day.

On the safari ready for an adventure

The safari ride was a great attraction. Disney put a lot of effort in making it feel like we were really in the African safari and had so many different animals that we saw. The exciting thing for us was that a lot of the animals seemed to roam freely with no boundaries or fences like you would see at a zoo. Clearly, the more dangerous ones like the lions had barriers, but they seemed natural. Instead of a chain link fence around them there was a huge ledge that they cleverly disguised with plants. You can see in the picture that the giraffe walked right up to our safari. I had never seen a giraffe that close before. Also the Rhino crossed the road right behind our safari as we passed. It was a trip to the local zoo kicked up a notch.

Just a few of the animals we saw on the safari ride

After the safari ride, we left Africa and traveled to Asia to scale Mount Everest and survive an encounter with the Yeti. Expedition Everest was one of 2 major roller coasters at Walt Disney World and we thoroughly enjoyed the thrill. We climbed the mountain, traveled backward in the dark, through dips and spins, saw the Yeti, and dropped back down to the bottom of the mountain all in the matter of just a couple of minutes. After we rode it, we grabbed fastpasses so we could ride it again later that day.

Expedition Everest

Matt whipped out the camera as we neared the top of the coaster. Do I look excited??

After we had encountered exotic animals in Africa and climbed Mt. Everest, we decided we spend some time exploring the Great Barrier Reef, so we settled in to watch the Finding Nemo musical. Not counting the fireworks shows (Fantasmic and Wishes), Finding Nemo was the best show I saw at Disney World. It totally exceeded my expectations. The show used giant puppets to portray the characters, and they were incredible. The sting ray (Nemo's teacher), and Crush the sea turtle were my favorite puppets. Many of them were so big, they required two or three people. The music was great, and Finding Nemo is such a good movie anyway with a fun/heartwarming/cute storyline, they really couldn't go wrong with it. It was a 45 minute show, so they left some details of the plot out, but I thought they did a better job with including the majority of the plot of the movie than some of the other shows we saw.

Here's a clip from the musical if you're interested, but beware, the quality isn't that great

After the musical and riding Expedition Everest one more time, we set off to see some of the smaller attractions in the park. We walked through an exotic bird exhibit and saw a 3-D show based off of A Bug's Life in the Tree of Life. That was a creepy, crawly show, but they did a good job on the 3-D effects. We also rode the Dinosaur attraction which was a simulator ride where we travel back in time in an attempt to bring a dinosaur back to the present. The animatronic dinosaurs were well done, and the ride was fun but a little bumpy and jerky. Oh, and we were rushed because of a meteor shower, so we didn't make it back with the dinosaur :).

We took a break from touring to enjoy a Mickey Ice Cream bar. I had been telling Matt all week that at some point we had to get one. I didn't think it would be that good, but I wasn't leaving Disney World without eating one. Turns out, it was very yummy. We got another later in the week. I kindof wish I could eat one right now.

Another thing on the list of must do's for Animal Kingdom was getting a photo in front of the tree of life.

A view of the park with Expedition Everest

We strolled through one of the trails in the park and happened to see a mother gorilla and her baby. I stayed and watched for a long time. Matt finally pulled me away because he was so bored. I'm a sucker for baby animals

That afternoon, we saw the Festival of the Lion King show. This show was different than other ones we had seen, because it wasn't really based on the movie. They just had different performers, singers, dancers, and acrobats that performed to the music of the Lion King. It's hard to go wrong with songs from that movie. They had a sing along at the end of the show

During the Lion King Show

After the Lion King show, we walked through another one of the animal trails and enjoyed seeing Komodo dragons, fish, and tigers.

As we were walking through the park, Matt pointed out another baby monkey. He probably regretted that decision, because I stopped, and stood and stared again until he grabbed by hand and forced me away :)

By that point we had ridden all the major attractions except the rapids ride which I would have been just fine missing. I read in my guide book that people get totally soaked on that ride. The book even gave tips of things to do to stay dry including wearing plastic trash sacks. I like water rides, but only when I'm at a water park in a bathing suit. The idea of soggy jean shorts and walking in soaked socks for the rest of the day didn't really appeal to me, but apparently it did appeal to my husband, because he didn't want to leave without riding it. We had to wait about half an hour to ride it, and yes I did get totally soaked. As we were walking off the ride, a little girl standing in line saw us, and pointed and said to her mom, "They got wet." We were very wet. My shorts still weren't dry the next day. But with all that being said, I'm glad we rode it. It was a fun ride. At one point we were priding ourselves on being positioned just so that we missed getting water dumped on us, and just then a huge wave of water landed right on top of us. Thankfully, we left the park after we rode that ride and were able to head straight back to the hotel and put on some dry clothes.

After a nap at the hotel, we decided to go to Disney Quest that night. Since we had bought tickets with the water parks option, we had free admission to Disney Quest, which was a giant five story video arcade. They had all the classic video games. I lost count of how many games of ski ball I played, but they also had some elaborate virtual reality games. We rode a bumper car ride where Matt drove us around driving over balls that collected in the car. My job was to load the balls into a gun in our car and shoot them at the other cars. That was one of my favorite games of the night. We also were able to design our own roller coaster and then ride it in a simulator. That was really fun too. The simulator was pretty advanced and we actually were able to go upside down on the loops. We ended the night by pretending to be pirates and firing our guns at other ships to get their gold. I was captain, so I had the responsibility of navigating the ship and helping Matt fire at the other ships.
Matt definitely enjoyed Disney Quest more than I did, but I still had a good time.