Day 4 - Animal Kingdom

We got home a little later than expected last night, so it was a little tough getting up this morning. But, Julie and the kids are all troopers, and maybe a little scared of me. I'm not driving them really hard, but the lack of a car makes it hard to head to the hotel for a mid-afternoon break like we grew to enjoy at Disneyland. Live and learn. Something else that we have discovered over the first few days is that the free dining plan is giving us much more food than we expected and therefore our box of breakfast food is going to have to find it's way back into our luggage for the ride home. Woohoo, pop tarts on a plane.

Back to the day at hand, we hit the Animal Kingdom today. Connor was especially excited because they have an entire part of the park dedicated to dinosaurs and you can't beat dinosaurs. After grabbing some fast passes for Expedition Everest, I met the family over in Dino land. The kids liked the Primeval Whirl which is the combination of Mulholland Madness and the tea cups. Needless to say, it wasn't high on Julie's list. The Dinosaur ride was themed fun and the kids loved it. Which we found interesting since it is the cousin to Indiana Jones and we can't drag Connor or Mallory onto Indy. Theming really does make a difference.

Next we made the trek to Asia and discovered Julie's favorite ride in all of Disney World or Land. It is a great ride; smooth, plenty of twists and turns and again cool theming. Next on the ride mix was the Kali River Rapids. Note to future me, don't go on Kali River Rapids again. Unlike the river rapids ride in California Adventure, it is virtually guaranteed that you will get soaked. The ride delivered, we all got soaked. It didn't seem to last as long as the California river ride either. We tried our best to dry off by exploring some of the animal exhibits. That was one of the cool things there were all of the animal exhibits. The tigers were a bit hit.

Unfortunately, we didn't get a sunny day, like those we had been enjoying, and the restaurants were still cranking the AC. We had lunch at the Yak and Yeti and it was our favorite restaurant so far. The ribs were awesome.

After lunch, the weather made a turn for the worse. By the time we got over to Expedition Everest, the heavens had opened. Roller coaster + heavy rain = a completely different experience. Luckily the rain wasn't hard enough that it hurt, but the eyes were closed. Also on this time through, the kids started talking with the kids in front of us. They were from Jersey, but the little boy said that he wanted to go to the University of Oregon. Connor thought that was cool and Court ended up going on the ride with one of the little girls. Nice that the kids can make fast friends.

The rain didn't let up. We had to don the ponchos. The rain limited the rest of the day. It cut the bird show short (too bad, it had great promise), impacted the number of animals out and about on the safari ride and discouraged more time looking at the animal exhibits. It didn't impact the Nemo play. It was very cool. Everyone enjoyed it.

We decided to skip the wet parade and head home early. We finished the night by checking out DisneyQuest. It was a little crowded (and confusing to find things) so after doing the design your own roller coaster ride (pretty cool, but tamer than advertised), we spent most of the night just getting our bearings for a return trip. The rains had finally let up, so we rode the boat down the river back to the resort and grabbed dinner there before going to bed. Another fun day. Good night.