Animal Kingdom

Wednesday was Disney park day. Let me preface our Disney adventure by answering the question that will be asked - Do you always dress your kids alike? No, we don't. But when we go to places that are crowded and keeping a close eye on them is often a challenge we do try to dress them similar enough that we can easily keep track of them. We used to dress them all in the same color pattern like blue shirts and khaki shorts until the older boys decided it was dumb to match the little boys. So then we had to go with two separate color plans. It's easier than four leashes : )

We started our morning at 8:30am with the first stop -

Animal Kingdom

Flik was right inside the gates greeting everyone to the park, promoting his It's Tough to Be a Bug show. The boys were excited to get out their new autograph books and get right to it.

As soon as we entered the park we headed in the exact opposite direction of the crowd. We figured it would give us an advantage on ride lines to start at the opposite end. We knew we would probably run into problems when we all met in the middle, but it did work out. We didn't wait for more than 5 minutes for any ride we went on in the Animal Kingdom.

The Dinosaur ride was our first and everyone went on. We were sent back in time on an expedition to recover a dinosaur and bring it back with us to present time. The only problem was that an astroid had hit the eart in the dinosaur period making our expedition quite dangerous ; / It was a little touch and go, but we were successful. Thankfully we weren't responsible for the dinosaur once we got it back to present time. It was loose in the park : )

This is the picture that was taken while we were on the ride:

You can tell that JJ is petrified by the dinosaurs that kept popping out and growling. Justin actually had nail marks on his arm from JJ grabbing onto him. Lucas just didn't watch at all. He leaned forward and covered his eyes.

Tanner, Justin, and I then headed to Expedition Everest where we were on a Yeti search party. We saw the Yeti, but capturing him was not a successful venture. This roller coaster went forward, backward, and around some killer turns. Tanner loved it, although you can't tell that since Justin's big self is blocking him in the picture. Justin was ecstatic because he was riding a roller coaster without getting sick. It's been ages since he's done that. Thanks mom for introducing him to non-drowsy Dramamine. : )

While we were on the roller coaster, my mom took JJ, Hayden, and Lucas back over to DinoLand to ride some of the smaller rides. Lucas enjoyed the dinosaur ride (kind of like the Dumbo ride but with dinosaurs). He like that you could control them and have them rock side to side and up and down. While in DinoLand, we caught up with Pluto and Goofy:

Our next stop was Kali River Falls, but we ran into Terk before we got there:

and King Louie:

who was in the jungle with Baloo:

After getting drenched on the Kali River Rapids, we headed to the Kilimanjaro Safari. As we walked back the line, we had a couple minutes to get a little snack (Ritz crackers) from our well stocked snack bag.

On the safari bus checking out the hippos:

We then saw some african alligators, which are apparently much larger than the American gators. These ones can get up to 20 feet long!

The baby elephant - just a few weeks old.

Tanner was super excited to see the rhino. It was even better that our driver stopped and it walked right up to our safari bus and stood right beside us before we drove away.

A treat from grandma - funnel cake with whipped cream and strawberries!

Lilo and Stitch

After we left the Animal Kingdom, we had a picnic lunch that we had packed for the day. After we were reenergized, we headed to Universal Studios.