Animal Kingdom

Sunday morning we got up bright and early to hit Animal Kingdom. I didn't mention in my last post that we stayed at the Double Tree at Disney Springs for our Disney portion of the trip. They had a pretty good bus system to the parks, though it wasn't as good as Universal's.







Tree of Life.

Everest.

Everybody else who was there for magic hours headed to the Pandora world so we had the run of Asia-which is where Expedition Everest is. Mom and Dave rode it once and then said that was enough. Ike and I ended up riding it 4 times in a row without any wait!







Ready to ride.


















I loved Ike's pose on this one so much I asked him to recreate it with me!

Too funny!














We had a little bit of time before our first fast pass of the day so we went to Dinosaur Land and rode the Dinosaur! ride a couple of times. It was Dave's favorite (until Flight of Passage). It was a little jerky but fun.

The line for this one was cool!














Next up was the safari-we got to see all kinds of animals and it was a nice break to sit for a little bit!

After the safari we did a quick walk through what was basically a zoo and then we went to watch the UP bird show-super entertaining and the kids loved it!








Waiting in line for the Kali River Rapids. Mom got drenched! It was our longest wait all day at only 35 minutes.













Ike and I rode Expedition Everest again (we had a fast pass), we had a quick snack of chicken fried rice from Yak and Yeti (delicious),  then the boys and I went to watch the Lion King show. Meanwhile mom went off to collect a couple more stickers from our junior explorers book and left her phone at a kiosk! After the show I called her and a man answered (who was not nice) so we went searching for mom to let her know. Thankfully we found her quickly and she was able to locate her phone!









The kids were so excited to see Kevin-their favorite Disney movie is UP!

















Snack at Flame Tree BBQ. So good! Notice the hungry little fella trying to sneak our food.

Tough to be a bug. Super cute show.

Finally made it to Pandora!

Flight of Passage. Hands down our favorite ride of the trip. Well except Ike but I'll get to that later!

Rounded out the day with meeting Russell and Doug.













We really loved Animal Kingdom! It felt a lot more manageable than Magic Kingdom and we just loved the theming. The shows were fantastic and also it wasn't raining! I would definitely recommend this park for anybody with kids who like animals or more adventurous rides. Also for anybody out there planning a trip to Disney-make good use of your fast passes! Using those and planning our day around them saved us so much time waiting in lines.

Favorite rides: Flight of Passage, Expedition Everest, Dinosaur!, Kilimanjaro Safari

Disney or Bust and Magic Kingdom

Over fall break my mom and I took the boys to Orlando for a fun-filled week in Disney and Universal.






Waiting to board.

Reading on the plane-melted my heart!

Riding in the Uber to our hotel.

While we were waiting on Gamma to get to town the kids and I walked to dinner and found this great sign!

Gamma arrived and brought some awesome Harry Potter gear.













We knew going in that a tropical storm would likely hit while we were there-it came in full force on Saturday which was our day for Magic Kingdom. So we donned our ponchos and went for it!







It was pretty much empty when we got there for early magic hours.

First ride-the tea cups! Made me super dizzy!

Dave got really into the Buzz Lightyear ride.

Barnstormer.

May as well get wet...we loved Splash Mountain!

We all rode Space Mountain once but Ike and I loved it so we went again!

It's a small world :)

Sun came out just in time for the parade.

Had to get a sunny picture to go with our rainy one :)













The rain didn't really slow us down any, in fact it let us ride a bunch of rides since people didn't really come to the park until after the sun came out. Unfortunately several rides were closed most of the day and we decided to leave around 3 because we were worn out! We enjoyed Magic Kingdom but definitely preferred Animal Kingdom which we went to the next day. The kids were not into meeting characters-the only one we met was Ariel and Ike was so adorable!

Favorite rides: Space Mountain, Splash Mountain, Peter Pan, Barnstormer.