17th August - a Visit to the Animals

After an uneventful night, I wake up to find it is boiling in our room. Notice that hubby has turned the air conditioning off and there is heat coming from the vents instead. Apparently he got cold in the night so instead of there being cold air, we now have warm air coming into the room. Head off for breakfast after dragging the kids from their bed and making them have a shower for which I get tagged a cruel mum!

The heat hits us as we head outside our room. It is only 8am and the pool is already full, it is at least 86 and I know it will get hotter. We decide to head off to Animal Kingdom today anyway, which is always at least 10° hotter here than any other park at Disney.

At the entrance to the park there were a couple of characters, whose names escape me, that Richard wanted his photo taken with and to get their autographs, so at least half an hour was used up while we waited in line for this to be done!

The park has 7 main themes in it; Oasis, Discovery Island, Camp Minnie-Mickey, Africa, Rafiki's Planet watch, Asia, and Dinoland. It is also home to the tree of life full of beautiful carvings SS851608

Once inside everyone headed for the new attraction, which was being built when we last were there, Everest. A rollercoaster ride, which I opted out of deciding to people watch instead. SS851496 Met a lovely woman who was also waiting for her husband and children to get off the ride and we sat and chatted for a bit, swapping details of our journey over and where we were staying! They were very wet having been on a water ride before going onto Everest and the poor woman stood there dripping as we chatted!

Then they all went on a water ride, which again I opted out of and so did S ans she didn't want to get wet, so while they were on the ride, we found somewhere to sit and had a drink while we waited for them. Lots of ducks around us hoping for a bite to eat.

We then wandered around for a while then went on a Dinosaur ride where you whoosh back to primeval times for a wild ride of an expedition to rescue a stray dinosaur, and must beware the hungry clutches of one large meat-eating predator and the devastating power of an impending asteroid - which was quite fun!

After lunch of Pizza we split up, M & S going their own way while we went to explore on our own. No trip to animal Kingdom is complete unless you have done 'It's tough to be a bug', a 3D film about the life of bugs, with characters from A bugs life. Nig and I remembered to move our backs away from the chair and lift our feet up as the 'bugs' left the auditorium but forgot about the ones that run under your bum so we had a bit of a shock!

We then did the Safari ride, a pleasant trip looking out for animals that are looked after there SS851627SS851633SS851640

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Feeling over heated and having drunk more water to fill a lake up, we decided to make our way back to the resort, to encounter the tail end of the parade SS851711SS851717SS851724

We all sat by the bar at the resort, the kids swimming in the pool while us adults had a drink or two and watched the lightning in the sky. Apparently it was a few miles away and no wasn't going to hurt us even though the tables we were sat at and the chairs we were sitting on were aluminum. If there was going to be a problem they wouldn't have been showing a movie on the big screen would they? reasoned my hubby as we sat there wondering if we would be hit. But no, we weren't we survived, it did seem to be miles away, the sky above us was clear and the air was humid, but no storm headed our way despite us being able to hear it wherever it was.