Family Trip of a Lifetime - Animal Kingdom

In the months leading up to our trip, we tried to do some planning on how to attack each park and what to see. Mom and dad have been to Disney World before and said the first thing we had to do in Animal Kindgom was the Safari so that is what we did.

I have been to the Wild Animal Park in San Diego and that doesn't even begin to compare to how amazing I thought this was. I remember thinking to myself, "this is Disney?" It didn't feel like you were in an amusement park.

Some of our crew. Sorry no animals to share, but had to share some of our adventure on the Safari.

My cousin LOVES giraffes. Seeing them makes me smile because of it. They were magnificant.

These Rhinos got so close you could almost touch them

I don't remember what these are called, but we were all impressed with their horns.

There were a few trees like this along the safari ride. I just thought they were cool.

Flamingo Island is in the shape of a mickey head. One of the girls noticed and was excited she spotted a "hidden mickey".

We took some time to ride some rides. Kali River Rapids and Expedition Everest were awesome. The boys loved the Rapids so much  that we went on it twice - and got super wet and had loads of fun. We also ate some lunch.

Rachel and Sarah showing some sisterly love

I love this! Rachel and Matthew looking at a few fish.

There was no shortage of animals and we saw all sorts of animals from all over the world. Dad caught this one of us looking at tigers.

We saw several species of birds we had never seen before that just walked along the foot paths.

After spending several hours outside we decided it was time for some airconditioning so we went to see A Bug's Life. Here's Matthew with this 3-D glasses.

One of the best parts of the day....our first ice cream Mickey Ears. Yum!

We headed over to the Dinosaur Land area of Animal Kingdom and played there for a while.

Here I am with Jonathan on the Dumbo like ride. He liked that he got to control when we went up and down.

The "scary" Dinosaur ride is so like the Indiana Jones ride only with dinosaurs. Do we look scared? The boys got to play on a super cool playground while we went on this ride.

We then went to the Lion King show which was awesome. The boys sprayed themselves with the fan sprayer grandma and grandpa bought them because they were so HOT. I love that this picture caught Jonathan "praying". What cute boys!

A very wet Matthew. Jonathan was just as wet.

The show was pretty cool. The costumes were amazing.

This guy was one of the "story tellers" of the show. At one point when he was standing at the side - near where we were sitting, he tried to get Matthew's attention. No matter what we did we could not get Matthew to look at him. It was hysterical. Either Matthew was ignoring him or he was so captivated by the show he couldn't look away. Either way it was funny.

The Rainforest Cafe - our first experience with the free Dining Plan. Holy smokes that is a LOT of food. It was good, it was noisy, but we were grateful it was free because it was expensive!

As we were leaving the park we asked someone to take our picture. She snapped several for our and here is the best one. What a great way to start our trip!

Do you think we wore him out? Happened to at least one of them every single day.