WDW Day 2 - Animal Kingdom





Day two, we were blessed to find out, three months after scheduling our meals out at each park (you have to do that about 180 days in advance, so I counted backwards from December 31st and called WDW to get reservations each evening), that Disney added morning extra magic hours (where only people staying on site can get into the park) to Animal Kingdom and Magic Kingdom. We were able to get into the park at 7am, before they officially opened at 8am. Our bus ride was about 30 minutes and we wanted to get there before 7 so we got up at 5:30am to catch the 6:20am bus. The girls did fantastic getting up so early, and of course they loved riding the bus.

So, did you catch that? I randomly chose an order to our four day trip, and a few days before our trip, Disney chose to add morning extra magic hours to two of the parks we were going to be at. We were so grateful and it ended up being a key part of making our days successful. And by successful I mean, actually getting to ride rides, see shows and parades without a lot of waiting. It was our goal to never wait more than 30 minutes for any ride in any of the parks.

You are seriously going to regret that we went to Disney World, I am going to talk too much and go into way too much detail. But I really want to remember this.

 

Girls on the bus, super excited!

Early morning. We were about the 20th person in line.

They loved getting up early.

It was a bit weird that everything was still decorated for Christmas and we heard Christmas music all week.

Tricera Top Spin, the girls loved it.

Tree of Life. Not to be confused with the Tree of Life in the garden of Eden.

The following are (too many) pictures of the Kilimanjaro Safari. It was awesome because we got a fast pass as soon as we got there, for one of the very first safaris. Because it was so early and so cool still, the animals were very active. So active, in fact, that our normal 12 minute tour took about 25 because the animals wouldn't get out of the way of the bus. Too cool.
Hannah was so good at seeing the animals and then finding them on the chart. I loved that she was paying very close attention to the guide.

Waiting in line for the Festival of the Lion King. They enjoying stomping in the puddles.

Festival of the Lion King was amazing! I have a million pictures but I won't make you look at them.

Tricera Top Spin was a hit.

They wore their matching princess shirts, I thought they were too cute.

Hannah was very sad that Minnie wouldn't acknowledge that Hannah was holding a Minnie. I thought it was cute.

We got front row seats to Mickey's Jingle Jungle Expeditions.

We ate at Yak and Yeti's that night, and Olivia ate a fortune cookie along with the fortune. I was cracking up at Matt digging it out of her mouth. We were unable to fit the peices together to read her fortune.

Everest Expendition. We went back and forth for a while debating if I should ride it. I would have been all for it, and Matt was on the fence. In the end, it was an emphatic "NO" text from my mom that made our decision. Too bad. I never would have thought in a MILLION years I would have been pregnant for this trip when we planned it in May.

We accomplished everything we wanted to at Animal Kingdom, we sucked the life out of it, for lack of a better phrase. It was awesome that we got to experience just about everything we wanted to this trip.
We also ate a late breakfast at Pizzafari, which was fantastic (all the food was fantastic) and when I went to buy my morning latte at Kusafiri, the barista told me I was her first customer of the morning. Matt then said, "That means she's the first customer of 2013, shouldn't we get a prize?" She then gave us two huge chocolate chip cookies and a muffin for free! Which, as we all know in WDW is about a $15 value:)

Other things we saw:
Flights of Wonder show
Finding Nemo the musical
Living with the Land boat ride
It's Tough to be a Bug (located in the Tree of Life and scared the daylights out of the girls)

It was an awesome Day 2.