Our Dream Disney Vacation - Day Six

Another day at Animal Kingdom?! Shocking, right? While Animal Kingdom is my least favorite of the four main parks, I have been trying to find more ways to enjoy it. I find that traveling around more slowly and taking in the small details helps me appreciate the park.

We started our day off experiencing the different walking trails. This is where I really enjoy Animal Kingdom. The staging is amazing and so well thought out. They really know how to make it feel un-zoo like. At every turn there is a cast member willing to tell you about the creatures you're viewing. Since I've done these trails so many times I feel like I always take the same type of pictures but this time I really aimed to get different shots and edit them differently once I got home.

One of my favorite parts is the bird trail. Although, I do tend to watch to make sure our winged friends don't lay a white creamy dollop on me. That happened to me once at the beach... inside my bathing suit top.

It was our goal to get more pictures with characters. No matter how long the line was we decided to stop and take pictures if we wanted since we hadn't met very many characters up until then. Luckily, we managed to hit the lines at perfect times constantly. Anyone else miss Lilo and Stitch being in AK? I do!

The hot spot to meet characters is definitely at Camp Minnie-Mickey. We decided to go see Festival of the Lion King and then do some character meet and greets. Note that I have no pictures of Festival of the Lion King. There are only so many pictures you can take of jumping monkeys. I got to meet someone I'd never met before... Thumper. Our friend Thumper told Matt that his tattoos were really cool. We decided to hit up the second walking trail in the park and saw lots of fun gorillas being awesome. We had to drag Matt away.

Then it was time for us to get lunch and we had the genius idea of going to Restaurantosaurus again. I told you in a previous entry that we fell in love with this place, right? Everyone got the same thing except for me. I ditched the amazingly delicious vegetable sandwich for the shrimp po' boy. I only had a bite of Matt's before and it was so good that I knew I needed to have one of my own. I'm drooling now just thinking about it.

Our original idea was to go to Typhoon Lagoon straight from AK after lunch but we all decided that we'd kind of like to chill out back at the pool and not bother with a water park.  We were torn because Typhoon Lagoon is so much fun but at the same time we didn't feel like bothering with the travel and what not.  So, after snapping a quick picture in front of the Tree of Life we went back to the Polynesian and swam for a few hours.



After a very long relaxing time on the beach at the Polynesian, we got dressed back into our park clothes, grabbed a dole whip, and headed off to Disney's Hollywood Studios for Fantasmic.  As I recall by the time we got there we didn't have much time for doing any attractions since the line to get into the nighttime show was building quickly down Sunset Boulevard.  I'd never seen it like this!  I remembered lining up outside of the amphitheater on previous trips but never did the crowds basically swallow the street! 

While Matt and my mom held our places in line, Diane and I ran off to get some popcorn.  I handed off my popcorn to Matt and ran across the street to get a beer.  I felt like alcohol was the only way I was going to be able to tolerate the hour long wait with about a million people.

In line I made friends with a beautiful little Indian girl.  She was loving my "peek-a-boo" and silly faces.  Eventually she curled up in her dads arms and fell asleep.  It was adorable!

We got our seats almost dead center in the theater.  The show was amazing!  It's easily my favorite nighttime show anywhere at Walt Disney World.  What a perfect way to end the day...