2013 Orlando - Disney's Animal Kingdom

Animal Kingdom was probably my least favorite area of Disney.  It definitely seemed aimed at younger kids.  And it didn't help that it poured for quite a while in the middle of our visit.  My niece and nephew really enjoyed the Everest roller coaster, and the woman next to me on the ride screamed like a mad woman, so it really was toned down.  Eryn perused the ride list looking for anything marked "over x inches" so she could be assured of non-kid rides.  She did enjoy Everest, however and went through the single rider line several times.

I watched a Netflix video about behind the scenes at the park when I got home in order to see what the attraction was that I didn't understand.  It's an amazingly large park when you watch the video, rather than miss half of it due to rain.

Eryn and Mom posing at the tree of life.  We went to A Bug's Life near the end of the day and didn't even realize it was sort of built into the base of the tree.  I'll admit, that was neat, both as a ride/presentation and realizing it was built into the tree (I learned that from the Netflix video).


From the dinosaur area.  Animal Kingdom did have the best food deals out of any of the parks.  Our food was much more edible than elsewhere and came with an endless supply of soda while we sat in the cafeteria.  Definitely a change from all the other parks and a refreshing perk on a very hot and humid day.  Eryn and I went on the single car roller coaster near here that purports to take you back in time to see the dinosaurs (it's a time machine) in a silly way.  As we rolled up the first hill, there's a spinning disk that indicates you're time traveling. The kid in the car with us yelled Hypnotoad! Hypnotoad!  Which would have been funny if he hadn't been non-stop talk for the prior three minutes.  When no one responded he kept yelling Hypnotoad! until he gave up and said, "I'm sure I'm the only one who understands that reference."  Poor dork.  Denied on the roller coaster.  He's like a modern geek Jesus back from the dead.  Before you feel too bad for him, he talked non-stop the entire ride.  He was even annoying Eryn, and her geek tolerance is amazingly high.


The safari ride was open, thankfully, so we got to see all the animals separated by the hidden barriers so they look like they're co-mingling.  I have a limited selection of pictures because while Eryn was in charge and took many photos, there was a family on the ride with us who kept sticking their fingers in all her pictures while pointing at the animals.  More annoying than the pointing was that every time they saw a new animal the dad would say, "Oh, , snap!"  It was funny.  Then annoying.  Then funny.  Then hilarious when we rode through a puddle near the end and he exclaimed, "Oh, water, snap!"  I told my brother in law the story later and he realized they'd met the exact same people during the downpour.  It was the wife in that family who also announced at the start of the ride, when we saw the Okapi, "Look at the cock-ee, look at the cock-pee!"  Probably close enough.

Eryn's picture of a rhino butt.


A giraffe attempting to hide.


Elephants doing something elephant-y.


At the end of the day, trying to stretch everything out because our shuttle wasn't due until 2 hours after the park closed, we went to the Lion King acrobat, circque-de-soleil (I don't care to look up the spelling; hope I'm close), circus, Heart-of-the-Beast type thing.  It reminded me I hate those things on so many levels, including because it's Lion King.  That may be right up there for me comparable to Ming's dislike of Avatar.  Quite a coincidence given the big tree featured at the park and in the movie (Avatar).  Maybe we have a mutual dislike of anything revolving around enormous trees.  It was impressively choreographed, but I was brutally bored.  Give me Our Town over pageantry when it comes to plays any day.  But as I've ended several of these posts, Eryn loved it, and that made me happy.