Disney World -- Day 3- Animal Kingdom

It's no surprise that Animal Kingdom was our favorite.. we anticipated that.  

The Baobab tree was magnificent when you walk in to the park.  It was gigantic! And it was covered in beautiful carvings of hundreds of different animals.  We spent a lot of time just trying to name all of the animals we saw.  

As soon as we got there we headed to the Animal Safari which did not disappoint.  We  loved seeing the animals close up.  Noah loved the storyline and believed we were being chased by the animals and that we were racing the poachers to save the animals.  

We walked through the rest of the animals on display and spent a lot of time watching the gorillas.  We loved the birds and small animals as well. 

On the way out of the Safari area we stopped for a drink and Noah and I got caught up in an African street dance.  We had sooo much fun!!!

Noah was big enough to go on the roller coasters and so we headed to Mt. Everest coaster.  The storyline was about a Yeti who ran wild in the mountains.  As we went through the ride the Yeti appeared and broke the roller coaster track and we had to go backwards the way we came.  After we exited the ride Noah ran up to the staff person and exclaimed that the track was broken by the Yeti and he needed to go fix it quickly so that no one got hurt!!  The staff took him very seriously and promised to remedy it immediately.

Next we headed to Dino Land where Maeve could finally run and play in the Bones playground.  We went on a few kiddie rides and then to the Dinosaur Expedition.  We were warned this was scary but Noah wanted to go.  What it really was was terrible!!!  Giant fake dinosaurs roaring incredibly loud and a terrible safari car that was jerking all around.  Noah left crying and we all felt that we wasted our time.  Maeve played outside and she probably had a better time!

We decided to head to the Lion King show before we left and Maeve fell asleep on the way.  Nana sat outside with her in the stroller while we watched the show.  It was really wonderful... however, much of the Disney "magic" was lost on my children because they refuse to watch Disney movies (because of the scary parts) and they don't see a ton of Disney tv at our house.  Noah had never seen the Lion King before this show and didn't know the characters or story but it was wonderful anyway!

 Of course we collected lots more autographs.

And as we headed out we took a family shot in front of the magnificent tree.

And had our daily Mickey ice cream!

We picked up some Mickey gloves at AK and Paul had a blast with them all week.  Noah and Paul tried to do everything with them, which wasn't so easy!!!

My little cutie on the balcony before bed...  Another wonderful day!!!