Disney World Day 4

I scheduled our Animal Kingdom day in the middle of our trip because I was planning for it to be a more relaxed, easy Disney day. It worked out great and we had a wonderful visit to Animal Kingdom. After higher than expected crowds at Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom felt more like the Disney we knew and loved. 

We didn't take it too easy and were at the park early for rope drop. We were packed in a huge group of people lined up for Flight of Passage. 

Katherine was all smiles for her day at Animal Kingdom!

There were so many people herded together for rope drop, that I was worried we'd have to wait a long time to ride Flight of Passage, but once we got to the official entrance of the ride, we breezed through the queue. We tried to catch glimpses of the amazing queue while we walked through, but (thankfully) we never stopped too long to enjoy it. 

I did have the boys stop and take a picture of the Avatar. We had used Fastpass on our last visit, so we never saw the standby queue for the ride. 

Flight of Passage is one of all of our favorite attractions. The boys watched the movie before our trip, and I think they enjoyed it even more this time having the context of what was happening. Samuel has told us multiple times that Avatar is his favorite movie, and he was eager to experience the ride after watching the movie. 

Katherine wasn't tall enough to ride, so Matt took the girls to ride Navi River Journey while we rode it. They also snuck in some adorable pictures.

We met up after the ride, and Elisabeth and Matt went to ride Flight of Passage while the rest of us went to Navi River Journey. 

We've always had such good luck with Animal Kingdom photographers, so we had to stop for pictures every time we saw a photographer. We also thought we probably wouldn't make it back to Pandora for the rest of the day, so we wanted some good pictures of the landscape before we left to explore the rest of Animal Kingdom. 

The kids grabbed their Wilderness Explorer books on the way out of Pandora. Katherine was a big fan of them. She couldn't wait to get her stickers at each stop. My kids have always enjoyed any sort of scavenger hunt/treasure hunt activities, so although the older kids are getting older, they didn't mind too much stopping with their sister to collect their badges. 

We walked across the park to Africa, grabbed some ice cream and hopped in line for the safari. We picked the worst part of the day to join the line, but since it was a must do, we wanted to make sure we made it happen, and it was really the only line we had to wait in during our day- a welcome change from the two previous days. 

I'm always surprised at how close we seem to be to the animals in our safari truck. 

After the safari, we grabbed some lunch and found some great seating near the lagoon where we saw some characters and a kite show. 

The view of Everest in the background broke my heart a little. It was closed during our trip, and we all missed getting to ride it. 

A picture at the Tree of Life is always a must do on our trip. Love that this one turned out so well even with the sun in our eyes. 

After lunch we walked over to explore the Dino Land area of the park and picked up some more badges along the way. 

We rode Dinosaur (I don't think Katherine was a fan), but Matt will always remember her death grip on his arm.

She much preferred Tricerotop Spin

Then we landed at the Boneyard and let the kids play for a while. 

This picture took me back to this one from 2016. 

The kids would have stayed at the Boneyard FOREVER if we would have let them. Samuel commented on it being his favorite part of our trip. All the parents were talking about how much they paid for park tickets to Disney, and all their kids wanted to do was play in the sand, ha!

I did appreciate that they got some free, relaxing time to play- that's not usually a regular occurrence on our Disney trips.

 

We lured them away from the playground with a rapids ride. I had zero interest in riding the rapids. I remember getting soaked, and the ride not even being that great. The weather was in the 70s, so we had recovered from our cold, cold weather earlier in the week, but still- I don't want to be soaking wet in 70 degree weather. 

I sent Matt and the kids, and I could hear their screams and laughter from a mile away. 

Then they ran back to me yelling, screaming and demanding that I had to ride it with them. They even were given a poncho by someone in line for me to wear. They weren't going to let me get away without riding it. 

Their screaming and running to persuade me to ride it with them might have been my favorite part of the day (don't tell them that).

I gave in, ha! And ended up having a good time, and the poncho did help me stay somewhat dry. 

Aww Memories! 

Speaking of memories, we passed these Up statues as we were leaving the rapids and had to recreate this picture from three years ago. 

Sweet boy was even wearing the same shirt. 

We stopped for more pictures at a little Lion King Scene. 

That brought back even more memories...

From 2019

And 2016!

We decided to ride Flight of Passage again since the wait time was low, and we'd already done our must dos at the park. While Matt and the boys rode, the girls and I found a pineapple whip stand for a little treat. I've always thought it was funny that those pineapple whips are such an iconic Disney treat, but they are so hard to find! I think they only sell them in two locations in the whole resort. I knew they had them at Animal Kingdom, and I wanted one! I'm glad we made it happen. They were delicious!

We rider swapped with Matt and the boys, so Elisabeth and I could ride Flight of Passage and then decided to call it an early evening. We left the park around 6:00 that night. The kids had begged to swim at our resort, and we decided to let them do that instead of closing down the park. We grabbed a pizza at our resort and then let the kids swim for about an hour.

I laughed that we were bundled up and freezing two nights before. Florida weather was crazy during our trip.

The kids were actually still awake when we put them to bed Tuesday night! Crazy!

Our Animal Kingdom day reminded me that the sweetest moments and memories don't always come from the vacation highs, huge rides, or elaborate fireworks shows. Sometimes you find them in free playing in the sand with new friends, being convinced by excited children to get ride a ride you swore you wouldn't ride, and swimming outside in February with your siblings. The simple, small things are treasured memories when they involve the people you love the most.