Disney World Day 7

Friday morning was our last day at the parks, and we were back at Animal Kingdom for the day. We went early again to rope drop the Navi River Journey, and thankfully it was open this day. We were able to walk on the ride. It was a neat ride, but I'm glad we didn't have to wait in line for it. The animatronic shaman at the end of the ride was pretty impressive to see.

We got off the ride before the park even opened, so we headed over to Asia to ride Expedition Everest again. It's such a fun ride! I'm glad we got to ride it so many times.

 After that ride, we stopped to meet Mickey and Minnie. While we were waiting to meet them, the kids saw Kevin and ran to say hi. They laughed and were so happy to see her. I stayed in line, so I missed a lot of their reactions, but I could tell they were thrilled. 

Mickey and Minnie were fun to meet again. We ended up meeting them at every park except Magic Kingdom. Katherine was always so cute meeting them, that we wanted to see them anytime we could. Even on our last day though, she wouldn't get out of our arms during the visit.

When I found out that we could meet Russell and Dug (from Up) at Animal Kingdom, I knew we had to do everything we could to find and meet them on Friday. We stopped at their clubhouse and had so much fun meeting them. I loved the beaming smiles on Samuel's face. And they were just really fun characters. It was a highlight of the trip for sure.

We stopped at a gift shop after meeting Russell and Dug because we had some extra time before our Flight of Passage fastpass. Samuel found a Wilderness Explorer shirt that he wanted. Matt and I tried to convince him to get a different shirt (one with Dug- that said squirrel), but we couldn't change his mind. He was so excited about his new shirt. He had to wear it immediately.

Then it was time to head back to Pandora for more Avatar fun. Flight of Passage was just as amazing the second time. It was definitely worth getting the second fastpass.

We ate lunch at the restaurant at Pandora after our ride. It was actually really good. Disney is stepping up their quick service food with the new restaurants.

After lunch we walked across the park to watch the Finding Nemo Musical. Katherine fell asleep before the show even started, and even slept through the bubbles at the end.

Finding Nemo is a great musical. We've seen it every trip. The Festival of the Lion King and the Finding Nemo musical are always are must see shows at Animal Kingdom. Elisabeth and Samuel both slept through the show last time, so they liked seeing it for the first time.

After that show, we headed to another one. We had never watched the bird show at Animal Kingdom, but they've changed it and now the Up characters star in the show, so we had to do it for our Up boy. I always am excited when I can find special things for him. He's such an easy going, I'll ride with anyone, I'll go along with anything kid- that it's special when we can do things that I know are important to him. The show was fun too. Again, I was glad we had extra time at the end of our trip to do these little extras.

After the Up show, we walked through some of the animal trails. I had known that Animal Kingdom had a Wilderness Explorer program where kids could get badges to put in a special book for stopping at Wilderness Explorer stations all over the park. I had purposely tried to avoid the kids finding out about them, because I knew they'd become obsessed and need to find every single badge available. Unfortunately, we got stopped when we were at Pandora, and the kids had to fill up those books- just like I feared :). They stopped at several places along the trail. But we had extra time, and they were having fun

And we got to see a 10 day old baby gorilla along the trail, so that was fun. I enjoyed watching the mom too. I could relate- remembering back to the newborn days, ha!

After we walked through the animal trail, and the kids earned lots of wilderness explorer badges, we stopped and played at the Boneyard playground. It's such a fun playground. They even have a sand area where the kids can dig for dinosaur fossils. Again, I was grateful for some free time to let the kids play and not be rushed to get to the next ride or show.

We grabbed dinner at the restaurant across from the play ground and then headed back to Asia to ride Expedition Everest one last time.

Matt snapped a picture just at the right time and caught us on the roller coaster.

Then we had time to watch the Bug's Life show inside the Tree of Life. Nathan was terrified of that show during our last visit, and I hadn't really planned on watching it, but since we had extra time we decided to watch it. He did much better this time. And Elisabeth and Samuel were fine too. They all really liked the show. Matt was holding Katherine. He said she had a death grip on him. She didn't cry, but he called it a silent fear.

To end the night (and our time at the Disney parks), we walked over to Pandora to see it at night. We had heard it's neat to see at night. It wasn't quite dark though- just at dusk, so we didn't get the full effect, but it was still cool, and we got the idea of how it would look fully illuminated. Neither of us wanted to wait around until it was totally dark. We said goodbye to Animal Kingdom and our last day in the parks and headed back to our resort around 8:00. I got to hold my sleeping baby on the ride.