disney day 1: it's a jungle out there!

we spent the first half of both our first & last days at disney at the animal kingdom. by far, our favorite part of all of our disney trip was riding expedition everest, a new roller coaster that you see behind us in this picture. we rode it twice, and it was even more thrilling the second time around! riding backwards down the mountain at a crazy fast speed will definitely get your heart racing!!! and thanks to the brilliant invention of the fast pass, our wait for this 80-minute wait ride was only about 10 minutes. but it would have been worth an 80 minute wait! obviously, the picture below is not of us actually riding everest, but i get excited just thinking about zooming down that slope! :)


we enjoyed a delicious bbq lunch with this huge himalayan peak as our scenery.. don't worry-- we ate bbq AFTER we rode the roller coaster!


animal kingdom is creatively themed for different parts of the world, like africa and asia. there's also a "dinosaur" section that we figured we'd spend enough time at when the kids are with us next time, so we spent most of our time in the other areas. there are music and activities that go along with the themes, and we had so much fun soaking in the "culture". in africa, we saw beautiful animals on the kilamanjaro safari. we ended up on a bus row by ourselves, which allowed us to really get a good look at the animals! brian was hoping to see some lions, but they must've been over at mgm for lion king: the musical. :) we did find a group of giraffes that moseyed with us for a little while, and we also saw zebras, antelope, elephants, and some other animals that i've already forgotten about. you should've seen us passing the camera back and forth to capture pictures on both sides of the bus... unfortunately it was a quick and bumpy ride, so most of the pictures ended up pretty blurry! here is one picture of a tour bus and our giraffe friend....


the "tree of life" stands tall in the middle of the animal kingdom park. it is home to what seems to be hundreds of carved animals on its trunk... every time i thought i'd found the last one, brian pointed out a new carving! such a neat piece of artwork! at the base of the (fake) tree is a cute 3-d show, it's tough to be a bug. this is based on the bug's life movie, and boy was it cute! below you'll see a couple of the carvings on the tree, as well as us in front of the whole tree. it's huge! click on the first picture and see how many animals you can find!




these last two pictures just give you an idea of the theme of animal kingdom. this concession stand is an asian "tea company", and the village beatniks were a fun band that brian really enjoyed. the zendrum sounded really neat, and i'm sure brian told me more about it, but i was too distracted by the fun all around us to remember any details. :)



we did not visit every nook & cranny of this park because like i said before, we figured that ethan & caroline will want to see every animal and do every little thing on our next visit... so my pictures probably do not give a fair representation of what there is to do at the animal kingdom! we enjoyed the few attractions that we visited there, and even if you just park hop to ride everest, it is well worth the effort!

next stop on the disney blog train.... epcot!