Disney World - Animal Kingdom

On Tuesday, May 12 (Tiffany's birthday!), we went to Animal Kingdom.

Out of all the parks we went to I think Animal Kingdom was my favorite. Despite the massive amounts of walking that it required because it is the largest acreage of all the parks. There were a few specific things that made it stand out to me - sitting right next to a giraffe, seeing 4 tigers very close up, and the Lion King show.

The first thing we did was Kilimanjaro Safaris, which "provides the chance to see African animals including giraffes, black rhinos and lions, as they roam the 100-acre savannah in the Africa area" of the park. We say plenty of animals, but we got very personal with a giraffe who stood right next to our vehicle.

Unfortunately, we have no pictures of the tiger experience because it happened all of sudden and then we were too mesmerized to remember to take pictures. We were just in the right place at the right time. For some reason, the Maharajah Jungle Trek was nearly empty when we went in the afternoon. After stopping at the first overlook of the tiger area, which was empty, we overheard a park worker talking to a little boy and his family that the tigers were getting ready to be moved from one area to another and will be passing by the window at any minute. He asked the boy to count to make sure all 4 tigers came through the tunnel. It was really neat to see the 4 tigers slowly walk right in front of us because you usually just see them sleeping in the distance. If there was no glass between us we could have reached out and touched all of them.

There were these great maps that showed you what animals to look for in each area. Leland was quite the tour guide (just like her dad) and would tell us what we were trying to find and where to go next. It was so cute.

The other highlight was the Festival of the Lion King show. It was part musical, part parade, and part circus. We had front row seats due to me being pushed in a wheel chair (there were some perks to it).

At the beginning of the show, a few people were pulled from the crowd to participate - Leland being one of them! Each of the 4 sections of the audience was assigned an animal and had to practice making their animal's sound. Our section was the giraffe. Check out the video.


In case you couldn't catch the dialogue, it went something like this:
Woman: "Leland is going to demonstrate the sound that a giraffe makes. Okay, giraffe, go"
Leland: "I don't know what it makes?"
Woman: "I didn't know either, so I looked it up. A low bleating sound, like a sheep. Okay, giraffe, go
Leland: "Baaaa."

As the show continued there was all sorts of acrobatics, musical numbers, huge parade floats, and amazing costumes (like the Broadway musical). We have seen Lion King on stage and I felt it was just as amazing, only shorter.

The Lion King show was our last adventure of a very long day. Animal Kingdom closed at 5 PM, so we did not have time to go back to the resort for naps, but the girls were really good that day and loved every minute.

Other highlights from the day was the dinosaur ride and the kids meeting Tigger, Pooh, and Eeyore. (notice Lucy's sitting, silly girl)