Day 6- Animal Kingdom

Day 6 and we were rested and ready to hit the parks again! 

Animal Kingdom was meant to be warm, relaxing, and certainly an earlier night than at Epcot since the night show started at 6 PM instead of 9, so we hopped on the bus and were headed to see some animals! 

These beautiful 50th anniversary golden statues were all over the parks, but we didn't take many pictures of them.  I'm not sure why Bambi got the honors. I knew Google would have better pictures anyway!

We were all expecting a less crowded, slower paced day at Animal Kingdom, and that is mostly what we got.  But it didn't feel quite like it when an absolute crush of people were also headed to our first ride of choice for the day- the Kilimanjaro Safari!  It was a not-so-subtle reminder that out of the two years worth of people who had to postpone their trips to Disney due to coronavirus, some of them were surely there mid-January just like us.  Every park was busier than we hoped it would be, but that's Disney!  You don't remember the lines or the crowds nearly as much as you remember these smiles! 

We basically walked onto the ride and enjoyed an 18-minute escape into the African savannas. 

Noah calls this his smolder. 

This is so exciting!!!

Trying to identify all of the animals- 

Ahh that beautiful sun!  We were soaking up as much Vitamin D as possible. 

Leah does an excellent job of taking videos, which don't translate to our blog books but are fun to watch on the blog online!

This one is an sweet throwback to Noah's cute "rice-on-er-ous" days.

After the safari we made our way over to Gorilla Falls, 

and spent a good long time watching this big family enjoying their morning. 

One of my favorite views at Animal Kingdom!

There is lots of loud and live music all around the park. 

We were all hungry by then (it was our last morning of eating breakfast in our hotel room and I don't think there was all that much to fill us up by this point in the trip) and we happened upon a perfectly tasty quick breakfast stand that satisfied everyone.

Notice the popcorn- yes, it was 9:30 in the morning- and the not-so-hidden giant Mickey!  That was actually a really good cinnamon roll!

We *thought* we were waiting for the hourly show of The Lion King to start, but it turned out to start on the half hour and we had missed our window.  So we headed over to one of the most highly anticipated rides of the park- Kali River Rapids!

This ride was closed the last time we were here but everyone has seen the pictures from our ride back in 2012.

We packed ponchos just for this ride, and the first time through we didn't really need them.  We got a bit wet but the people on the other side of the raft really got it!

So we decided to ride it again!

Waiting for the big drop was the scariest part!

And boy did we get wet the second time.  

It was all good and fun!

But soggy!

We peeled off our ponchos, dried off quickly enough, and then hurried over to The Lion King show, which was the perfect example of why you can't expect everything to be just as magical as it was the first time you experienced it.  The show was heavily altered due to Covid restrictions, so no acrobatic monkeys and no flying bird ballerinas.... the show overall was pretty meh compared to what it used to be.  Oh well!  We definitely didn't think we could win them all on this trip. 

We loved watching the boats with drummers and occasionally Mickey, Minnie, Pocahontas and other characters float down the river and around the park all day!

In the early afternoon we wandered over to the new and most crowded section of the park- Pandora and the World of Avatar. 

Most of us (except maybe Daddy) have zero frame of reference for this movie and world, but it was still neat to see a new part of the park- especially the floating mountains!

Two tall boys!

We didn't take the time to find many photographers this day, but we got lots of pictures in Pandora. 

Oh my we all look a lot happy and a little tired.  

Daddy and the big kids hopped on to the Flight of Passage- a motion simulated ride that we decided would best be enjoyed by everyone else and not Mommy and Noah.  Like Hagrid's motorbike, we'll make sure to ride this one next time around and skip some of the less worthy rides. They all said it was awesome flying on the back of a real, breathing banshee!

Noah and I had a perfectly nice time waiting for them. 

Next up we all waited (too long) for a ride on the Navi River Journey, which had lots of blacklights and glowing strange creatures and flowers and was quite relaxing. 

And then it was time for lunch!  The "Asian pigeons" were alive and well at the Flame Tree BBQ and the kids had fun chasing them off whenever they got too close. It was pretty entertaining!

The 50th anniversary lemon cupcakes were one of the highly anticipated treats of the trip, and wow were they over the top sweet.  We split three and I don't think any one of us finished ours off. 

Emma took a lot of fantastic pictures and videos at the Birds of Flight show- one of our favorites! 

And then we wandered through the beautiful Tree of Life. 

These babies are my life!

A Bugs Life, which was just as silly and scary as ever.  I think Noah kept his eyes closed for most of it, and during most 3D shows he kept pulling his glasses down and up and down and up to figure out just how close those characters on the screen really were.  

The Asian land was just as foreign and beautiful as we remembered, although far less exciting since Expedition Everest was closed during our visit.  

Our ice cream of this day was espeically cute!

A selfie!

And a family picture from a nice stranger. 

We knew that Animal Kingdom would be a relatively calm day, and at this point, with no Finding Nemo show to enjoy, we settled in to watch the very cool Kite Tails over the water, armed with more popcorn of course.  I think that we were set on having all the popcorn all the time because on our last trip (in 2017) Jason spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to track down one box of popcorn at the end of a long day and finally gave up once he saw how long the line was.  So this time around, it was all popcorn all the time! 

We were just waiting for the sun to set at this point, which meant we had time to visit DinoLand!

Thrill seekers Daddy and Adam went on Dinosaur, but everyone else was happy to skip it in favor of the TriceraTops Spin. 

So glad Leah captured this memory for us!

Creepy!

After that we headed over to the Tree of Life for the night show. 

Only at Disney World do you feel completely comfortable plopping down in the middle of a "street" to pull out snacks, check a map, and wait for a show.  And that's exactly what we did. 

The show was beautiful, colorful and short and there was a solid wall of people leaving the park when it was over. 

So we linked hands and snaked our way through the crowds to make our way over to the bus stop- but not to the one that would take us back to our resort.  We had another leg of fun planned for this night!