Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Disney Part 1: Animal Kingdom

We made it on the tram!  The boys LOVED the tram!

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Tickets purchased and “1st Visit” buttons received!

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You know its going to be cool when you have to cross this to get inside….

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our first glimpse of the tree of life!  (I love Finn in the foreground of this picture, he is just SO excited!  has his little autograph book ready to go!)

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We got there right as the park opened so there weren’t any lines for anything….including, Flick who happened to walk on by!  Finn accosted him (even though we’ve never seen the movie) and we were “encouraged” to go stand in line to meet him instead!  Ha!

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And so we did!

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This was our first character encounter and the whole autograph books and markers (recommended by one of those HUGE books I read) was a bit of a mess.  We eventually got the process down, but not without the boys (and characters) being covered in marker!  Ha!  (note to others, maybe buy one of those really big, thick pens instead).

And as we were about to enter DINOLAND

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Eeyore came out of nowhere and waved for us to follow him….

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Next we hit up DINOLAND while waiting for the Redmond’s to arrive!  We rode the Triceratops Spin (I think we ended up riding this like 4 times in total that day)….

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And again at the end of the day….

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The boys going for a drive…..

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And The Redmond’s arrive!

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We played around in the Bone Yard

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Before heading to see the Lion King show, which was awesome and sadly I don’t have any pictures from, except this one:

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Next up lunch with an awesome view of Mt Everest!

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Where it started to rain.  It rained on us for a good bit while we were eating lunch under a covered patio.  But then it would let up, then rain harder, then let up and finally we just said “Let’s Go!” and we wandered out in the rain to go to the Safari!  But not before TODD stuck this plastic bag on grandma’s head!  This one is for you Aunt Gail!

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The back side of the tree of life

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Next up, the safari!  It was AWESOME!

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rhino

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hippos swimming

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Gators!  So many of them, all laying on top of one another, perfectly still.  Seriously, SO creepy!

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Finn’s face on this entire safari was just priceless.  He was so eager to see everything and was in awe. 

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HUGE Ostrich Eggs

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There was a whole story line about poachers and at the end we were chasing them (I think) and Finn got a little worried, so Maggie took care of him.  :)

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Next we headed over to find a spot for the parade!

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Right up front at the very start of the parade the kids got ALOT of high five’s.

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Mickey Mouse was the very last of the parade and it was the first we had seen him.  And Riley pulled me through the crowds following Mickey.

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Eventually we had lost our group and we needed to stop following the mouse.  and Riley was NOT happy about that at all.

Our plan was for the grown-ups to ride Mt Everest before leaving for the day, but we got there to find out it was shut down.  :(  So we rode Triceratops Spin again and went to the Tree of Life.  I knew there was a show inside the tree that was supposed to be kind of scary, but I *thought* I had read there was more to see there so we went over to check it out.  Only to find it was just the scary show.

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Then Todd took the bigs to ride Kali River Rapids, which they ended up riding twice in a row without even having to get off because there was no one else on.  Needless to say they were soaked!  The park was closing, so we walked through The Rainforest Cafe on our way out…

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And this is how Todd drove home….

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