Day 5: The Magic Kingdom

Day 5 took us Magic Kingdom.  We all look forward to the character meal at the Crystal Palace.  The food is always yummy and we love seeing the Hundred Acres Gang.

We happened upon Tiana signing autographs.  Tiana is Lyla's favorite princess and we've never seen her at the parks before so we decided to get her autograph.  She was so nice and I love how she bantered with the girls about them growing up in Mississippi.  

We caught a Jack Sparrow show in Adventure Land.  

The newish thing in Magic Kingdom is the Magic Card games, which is really similar to the EPCOT missions.  Except you have cards to collect in real life that you can interact with screens in order to beat bad guys in the game.  Celee and I were really the only ones who wanted to do the challenges, so we only did one, but it was fun.  If we'd had more than one day to spend in Magic Kingdom I would have done more, but now that we know how it works we can look forward to it next time.

We hadn't seen the Country Bear Jamboree in quite a long time.  Lyla had never seen it, so we caught it this time.  I have fond memories of this show, but all I can say now is that its pretty weird.  I still don't know why the one bear is singing about blood on everything.  Bizarre.  Did parts of the show get cut?  Because the storyline didn't make sense to me.

We all love It's a Small World.

We got to ride the Seven Dwarf's Minecart ride a few times too.  It's a tame coaster, but we all liked it.  The lines were short though and we actually wanted to spend more time playing the games in the wait line, but we always had to keep moving.

The Little Mermaid ride is always nice.

Lyla likes the Barn Stormer.

Once again, we all try to beat Jason's score in the Buzz Lightyear ride.  Alas, we will all keep trying.

Day 4: Animal Kingdom

We ate breakfast at the Polynesian's Ohana Restaurant.  The food there is so yummy!  And it comes out family style which is fitting as Ohana means family.  This is one of Lyla's favorites of course because you're guaranteed to see Stitch and Mickey.  Gwyn and Celee are getting to where they are a little embarrassed to do the character parade and stuff like that.  But they still do want to do it, and I'm glad they can use the fact that they have a younger sister to blame it on.

I love how each park has some kind of interactive thing that permeates each park that families can opt to do.  At Animal Kingdom its the Wilderness Explorer field guide.  There are different stations and people and things to hunt all over the park.  You get stamps and stickers for completing tasks and when you're done you're inducted into the Wilderness Explorers.  We even got our picture with Russell from Up  to start off our mission.

We all couldn't wait to do the Kali River Rapids.  We all knew we'd probably get wet.  And that is ok when its hot and sunny.  This was a mostly sunny warm day though.  So it took us all forever to dry off and we were pretty chilly in the meantime.  It's a super fun ride though.  And I love that we all get to ride it together.

I like this saying.  Our feet do get wet, don't they?

Celee REALLY wanted to ride Mount Everest.  No one else wanted to though.  So I took one for the team because I didn't want her to ride it by herself and I didn't want her to miss out.  I think it's good that it was built up so big in my head because I'd rather be a little disappointed than sick to my stomach.  We survived and Celee got to ride it and now we don't have to do it again.  :)

Disney does a really good job with the Safari Rides.  The animals appear to have a very natural-like environment and to have freedom of movement in large spaces.  But they're also out where you can see them and get pretty close.  We even got to follow a giraffe that decided to take a stroll on the road. And even the lion was out showing off.

As part of the Wilderness Explorers activities, the girls stopped at stations and learned all about bats, skulls, poop, and tracks to name a few.

We got a look at the baby gorilla!

Now it's hot... so we need a treat.

And Celee and I waited in the hot sun for Daisy.  We'll always wait for Daisy.  She's a favorite.

We found this random statue of a dinosaur back behind a building.  So we needed a picture with it.

The little Mouse-Trap-like coaster in DinoLand is a favorite.  Now that Lyla's bigger she's really enjoying the tamer coasters.  This one had no line so the girls came off and went straight back on a gazillion times.

Lastly, because Animal Kingdom closes earlier than the other parks, we ate at Rainforest Cafe on the way out.  It's more spectacle than good food.  But it's nice to sit and eat after a long day walking.  And it is a fun place.