Disney World - The Magic Kingdom

Our last day at the parks was spent in the Magic Kingdom.

 Julie let me borrow her Minnie Mouse hat, which I saved especially for our day with Mickey.

It's a small world, I had to get the Russian sign!

I love the castle at Disney World, the first time I went back to Disneyland I was so disappointed in the small castle, this is a lot more like what I was expecting!

We all had to pick our favorite princess and play dress-up.

The still have the country bear jamboree at Disney World, that brought back some childhood memories.

I was super nervous about losing Julie's hat, so most of our pictures I have one hand up and one hand holding on to the hat!

 

Our last ride of the night was Space Mountain, it was really fun to come out and see the firework show had just started.  If you ignored the people mover track, we had a pretty good view!

My favorite ride!  

I loved how they had the castle all lit up at night, it would change colors at random times.  Pretty magical!

We spent way too long trying to get a picture just right, bright enough to see our faces, but dark enough to see the castle all lit up.  

 

Finally, it was time for the moment I had been looking forward to ALL day! 

The Main Street Electrical Parade!  I loved this parade as a child, and I was so excited that they brought it back at Disney World!  The music starts and I am instantly transported!

My favorite was always Pete's Dragon, so I had to get a bunch of pictures as it went by!

The next morning I had to take a quick picture of the view from our balcony and then we checked out and headed to do some window shopping at downtown Disney before our flight left.  It was such a wonderful trip - I had a blast with my friends!  

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!