Disney World - The Animal Kingdom

The last time I was at Disney World, the Animal Kingdom didn't exist.  I was excited to see a new park, but I was worried it was going to just be a zoo, and not be that interesting.  I loved it!  It was one of my favorite days in Florida! We found a singles ward not too far from the park, so made a quick stop at the ward for sacrament meeting and then it was off to the park.

Ready to being our adventure

They had this great learning center that showed some of the behind the scenes care for the animals, my favorite though was the exhibit all about feces.  

The had a fun little petting zoo for the kids as well.

Then it was off to our safari through the African jungle.

This was a highlight of the trip. They have so many animals to see!

I really thought this giraffe was going to ram into our jeep, he just came walking right up to us, it was so cool!

We even got to see the lions out sleeping in the sun

I loved the gorilla exhibit as well, I think I took 20 pictures of this guy!

All of the carvings in the tree of life were so incredible!

After our African safari we headed to Asia, and the Yak & Yeti restaurant for lunch, so good!

I was pretty excited to go on the Expedition Everest ride, but first we had to check out more animals.

The bats were kind-of creepy, but cool!

I loved this ride, at the end of the day we went back over and rode it a couple of times because there were no lines - it was fabulous!

All of the shows at Disney World were amazing, and Finding Nemo was no exception - how they come up with the different puppets is just incredible!

 

At the end of the day we raced over to the other end of the park for the Lion King show. 

 

It was so much fun - the acrobatics were amazing!

At night all of the birds come back to nest in the trees, it was so beautiful!

One last shot of the Tree of Life at night.

Animal Kingdom closes earlier than any of the other parks because the animals go to bed, so we picked up some Ben and Jerrys and had another jacuzzi party in our room. Another great day over!