Category: Trip

Disney’s Animal Kingdom is their animal park, famous for a large ‘savannah’ section through which guests go on guided truck tours. It’s quite a spectacular experience, and different almost every time since the animals are free-roaming. These photos are from the two ‘safaris’ we went on today:

That last shot was taken just after we had waited for the rhinos to cross the road. Here’s a shot that shows just how close the animals get to the (very open) truck:

The safari is fun, and especially beloved by KLS. We’ll likely return to the park later in the week to ride it again.

Of course as a Disney theme park there are rides and shows here as well and we did them all! The most famous is the ‘Expedition Everest’ coaster, which has gargantuan lines and made me motion sick!

We also went on the other ‘big’ rides; Dinosaur and Primeval Whirl (a wild mouse with spinning that interestingly didn’t make me ill), and saw the Finding Nemo and Lion King shows, the latter being especially entertaining.

There we are on Dinosaur, one of the rare occasions where Disney still allows guests to photograph the on-ride photo display screens (to save the cost of purchase!)

Animal Kingdom is the most beautiful of Disney parks, with intricately sculptured structures and so-perfect-it-must-be-by-design landscaping. The above and next photos were taken at various points in the park just walking around.

The giant tree is artificial, and the park’s centerpiece. The sculptured trunk contains hundreds of animals, and underneath the tree is a cavernous theater in which a 3D attraction is shown. It’s a nice place to avoid the rain…

For rain it did today! It was never heavy, and in fact was welcome since it lowered the temperature significantly. It also gave the few photos I took whilst my phone was in a plastic bag a nice soft focus effect:

I’ll end today’s post with a photo of a crystal tree we’ve been growing in our hotel room (we bought it at the airport!)

Pretty isn’t it? At home it may have lasted for years, but here it’s life will be measured in days…

…oh, the ant of the title? Yeah, I found it in my undies after it tried to bite my bum 🙂

The weather today was dangerous to human life, so we avoided the parks for some R&R.

We hit some of the local souvenir shops looking for one of my favorite travel experiences – the tacky postcard! And we were successful, so watch your mailboxes since 10 were sent today alone 🙂

Speaking of souvenir stores, this was one we went to:

They sold oranges and tacky souvenirs! I’ll spare you most of the details (beside, I may have purchased some…) but this photo should give an idea of the caliber of many of the shops we visited today:

Note particularly that the two shirts are stocked right next to each other 🙂

We also went to Downtown Disney, the Disney outdoor mall, where KLS had a cake…

I wore a hat…

And we saw the best Lego sculpture in the world!

In the afternoon I visited the hotel game room (rare these days) and sunk a few dollars into two pinball machines.

Tron Legacy is such a cheap game! Very often the ball just comes out of the launcher and is lost immediately! But I couldn’t stop playing because of Olivia Wilde’s pretty face on the board:

Yes, I’m simple like that 🙂

Today’s wildlife shots include one showing better how good our view is:

And two through-the-monocular shots of exotic beasts:

In the evening, we lazed in the pool and spa for a while:

Before I ended this relaxing day by blogging, which itself concluded with a photo of a Disney squirrel…

I remember back when I was about 15 – back during the time I wanted my own copy of Michael Jackson’s red jacket – how much I wanted to see the created-for-Disney MJ ‘movie’ Captain EO. Today, for the first time, I did. And it was terrible 🙂

We saw it at Epcot, which was today’s destination. In no particular order, today we…

…drunk soda from all over the world. My favorite was beloved by Genghis Khan apparently!

…saw a $37,500 Swarovski crystal copy of the castle in Magic Kingdom.

…saw a great exhibit linking Japanese traditional spirits to anime/manga heroes of today.

…made funny faces during the Spaceship Earth ride, and..,

…watched some fireworks!

We were at Epcot for over 12 hours in total, with highs today in the mid 90’s (Fahrenheit). To say we’re tired now is an understatement.

I’ll end with another shot taken from our hotel balcony, through the monocular: