The ducks at our hotel started their day out with a splash. They appeared to be having a great time beginning their day with a nice, leisurely swim.
But, Oh My Heavens, the day started out badly for us. Mainly due to tactical errors caused by vacation brain as well as poor pre-planning when making food reservations and not fully realizing that just because something is on a named resort doesn’t actually mean it’s even remotely close to the similarly named theme park.
First issue: J left his wallet, complete with cash, debit cards, and driver’s license, in the hotel. He discovered this just about the time we got to Animal Kingdom the first time. Since I had nothing beyond an ID with me, we had to turn around and go back to get his. About an hour lost here.
Our sit down meal of the day was at Boma in the Animal Kingdom Lodge. We found our way there only after driving to the park (twice), parking a gazillion miles away, taking the tram, getting almost all the way to the gate, and then realizing that just about the time we would make it into the park we would have to turn around and head right out to go over to the hotel. So we trudged back out to the car and headed for the lodge with all of us grouching the whole way. In hindsight, we should have ditched breakfast and just stayed at the park.
Made it to the resort and had a bit of time to walk around. Lovely place and we were there early enough to see some of the animals being fed. Ava loved this part, of course. What she didn’t love was being made to go back inside to actually sit down and eat breakfast herself. What I didn’t love was the fact that Boma was a buffet. In fact, I really, really hate buffets when it’s just two parents and a toddler. You can’t have an ongoing conversation over a meal because one person is always up when the other is sitting down with the (unhappy and loud) kid. Again, poor planning on my part. (We saw our China adoptive family from the WL hotel here, too. By this point I’m sure they thought we were stalking them and they clearly had no intention of even looking our way.) After breakfast was finally, blessedly over and I’d pilfered half the buffet bakery into Princess ziploc bags for snacks later in the day we convinced Ava to stop whining by letting her play on the little playground and look at the pool. By the time we were finished here it was naptime and Ava was conked out in the car before we could drive the short distance back to the park – so J drove around Orlando (duh – geocaching) while she napped in the A/C.
What this all means, of course, is that we didn’t even make it in to Animal Kingdom until around 2PM after being forced to park even further away (and walking across the miles of parking lot because the tram was slow). We thought this was okay because the park was open longer for Extra Magic Hours and a good friend/Disney veteran told us that we really only needed half a day here at AK.
He was wrong. We loved this park and we didn’t get to see/do half of what we wanted to. It’s probably my biggest disappointment from the whole trip – in part because I failed to understand that even though the park is open for extra magic hours it doesn’t mean that the attractions you want to visit are open. Most at Animal Kingdom weren’t so we missed a lot that Ava would have really liked.
Ava and I sat down to check out our guidebook while trying to (belatedly) formulate our plan of attack.
Our planning was futile however. It was about this time that J spotted Expedition Everest and nearly left us in the dust in his hurry to get there. He and I both rode it (at separate times) by utilizing the single riders line. J waited 4 seconds and I waited not at all to get on. It’s a good coaster. I just hope, one day, to actually ride a roller coaster with J again and not with random, screaming stranger in the seat beside me.
Next we headed toward Chester and Hester’s Dino-Rama where we all rode the TriceraTop Spin.
She was thrilled, can’t you tell?
She actually quite liked this area. Just not the part where we made her stand on a wooden box behind a fake car with dinos around her. (Ohhh, spotted another China adoptive family here – they actually SMILED at us and pointed out Ava to their daughter. Shame they didn’t speak much english. I think they were probably Dutch.)
And she LOVED this playground. We ran across it while we were looking for the Boneyard (which we never found, by the way). I think her goal here was to give me a heart attack as she started swinging from the bars in an attempt to reach the top of the slide without actually walking up the stairs. The very next picture (not shown) is of me rushing over to pluck her from the faux rocks and direct her back up the stairs.
And then we get the “Who, me? Holy terror? No way – I’m too sweet and innocent.” look.
After bribing her away from the play area with leftover muffins from breakfast we headed over to the Nemo musical. Now you must understand that we love, love, love musical theater and I desperately want Ava to be able to experience and enjoy live entertainment as much as we do. It’s hard to find age appropriate (read – short for the 2 year old attention span) shows so we were excited to see this one.
Except they seated us in the very front row. Right in front of the big singing puppets and people dressed up like fish and turtles and sharks. It was kind of loud and scary and not good.
Until they started blowing bubbles into the audience and then all was mostly well in her 2 year old world again. Except she had to tell the whole audience, loudly and at the most inopportune times (like the dramatic moments when it was dead silent in the theater), that “Mama, I POP the bubbles.” She also now thinks all fish are named Nemo. Mind you, she’d never seen Nemo before we got to Disney and, honestly, I still couldn’t tell you anything about him other than he’s a clownfish with a little fin and an overprotective parent.
While waiting outside the theater Ava and I were goofing around while J was, unbeknownst to me, taking pictures. I love these shots and can’t choose which I like best – that’s why you get to see the whole series. I can’t help it. I think she is just breathtaking. That laugh had EVERYone who walked by smiling and laughing right back at her.
We detoured down a few side streets and did a little shopping until Ava found some “wa-tuh”. It was super hot so we were happy to let her soak herself in the hope that it would cool her down some.
She made some friends and then asked J to lift her up into the fountain so she could stick her feet in the water. He did…
except she didn’t want her FEET in. She wanted her head in.
And she most definitely did not want to leave here so she threw the worst and longest lasting tantrum we’ve ever seen. Seriously bad, y’all. I’m not usually the type to get embarrassed or upset with things like that – but man, this one had me wanting to crawl into a hole. She was madder than a hornet and made sure everyone in the Maharajah Jungle Trek knew it – all of whom apparently thought I was the worst mom on earth for allowing it to continue ’cause I sure got some nasty looks. J was conveniently 400 feet ahead of us purportedly photographing everything for me since there was no way I could actually see anything as I was schlepping 24 pounds of howling righteous indignation around.
She finally calmed down about the time I began considering feeding her to the tigers.
After the tigers we rushed through the rest of the trek so we could grab something to eat and head over to another part of the park seeing that we still hadn’t even made it out of Asia and into Africa. It was about this time that we realized our planning and time management sucked. Most of the restaurants were closing as were the animal attractions and the (gasp!) train. I was about to get seriously mad about missing the Kilimanjaro safari so we took off at a gallop in that direction. Thank goodness they were running slightly extended operating hours. We were able to get right on a truck with a great driver and and we happened to hit the animal jackpot. Because it was around 5:30PM and the animals are normally fed and watered about this time we saw everything – lions, giraffes, elephants, and lots of other African animals that I’d previously only seen stuffed on my boss’s office walls (he’s a big game hunter).
J took pictures (see immediately preceding post) and I held Ava. She was over the moon with all the animals to see – so close she could almost reach out and touch them – and I was sure she was going to vault over the side if given the opportunity. I did have to do a quick litter grab after she sneezed all over the woman’s arms in front of us (“I schneeze, Mama.”) and immediately tossed the tissue in her hand out the open side of the truck. I was able to do a successful save and realized that I need to teach my kid about litterbugs.
We walked around a bit after the safari but everything else was closing – except the gift shops, naturally – so we headed toward the entrance with a short detour through the gardens to admire the landscaping. Pretty amazing, actually.
Ava appears to have the same fascination with pink flamingos that I do. I knew my girl had taste.
We wrapped it up soon afterwards with a very late dinner (for us) and an early bedtime (for me, anyway). One more day of Disney to go…