Saturday, February 04, 2012

Day 3 at Disney 2012 Animal Kingdon

On Day 3 we took the Disney bus from the hotel to the Animal Kingdom.

While the Animal Kingdom is the largest park by area, most of that space is for the animals so it was pretty crowded on the people paths and ride waits were the longest we had at any park, but were still quite tolerable.

The Kilimanjaro Safari ride was packed so we got a Fastpass and in the meantime to the tram to the Affection Station portion of the park. The kids could roam around and pet and brush various goats, sheep and other cute animals. Leah really enjoyed brushing the goat and the goat apparently enjoyed the attention.



We then went back and did the Kilimajaro Safari ride.

On the ride you go on a truck and can see lots of African wild animals wandering about and quite a few were being active that day.








In addition there's some special effects like a deliberately rickety bridge and a storyline with evil poachers kidnapping a baby elephant.


The baby elephant is a model, but looks very realistic when driving by.

The kids were very concerned about the poachers and the baby elephant. They were reassured that the park ranger had caught the poachers and would be returning the baby elephant to its mother. This then led to a discussion about the distinction between poachers and hunters.

Lunch was a buffet with Disney characters at Tusker House. The buffet was awesome with lots of great food to choose from. The seafood stew was great over rice and the Marsala chicken was superb.


We then went and saw It's Tough to be a Bug! - a 4D viewing experience. Not only was it in 3D but it had smells and buggy feelings from the seats that scared the kids a bit but was great fun.

We also did the Triceratop spin, a standard rotating and elevating ride perfect for the kids. The kid in the front controls the tilt and the kid in the back controls the elevation:


We then stayed for the parade and then got on a bus to the hotel.



The end of the third magical Disney day.

2 comments:

ProudHillbilly said...

Rides don't interest me, but you could leave me brushing and petting the goats all day and I'd be happy.

Aaron said...

Yep, they're pretty sweet and gentle creatures and rather tolerant of kids clambering to groom them, at least the ones in the petting zoo were.

Of course they're not the brightest of creatures, a few years back Abby was wearing a flower print dress and the goat tried to eat it, much to everyone's dismay and amusement.