Day 7 - Animal Kingdom

After our late night at Hollywood Studios, we slept in and didn't get
to Amimal Kingdom until early afternoon. We headed straight for
Finding Nemo, the musical. It was hard to get pictures, but here's my
best attempt. This is the aquarium scene in the dentist's office. The
Nemo musical has large puppets similar to Lion King, including a
gigantic bicycle with Mr. Ray, the manta ray, to glide around the
stage.

Next we traveled to Africa for the Lion King Stage Show. Even in the pretend Africa it was hot! 95 degrees and muggy. Marley was trying to keep cool in the misters provided in line.

The Lion King show was a very cool "in the round" type production with a lot of audience participation.

Simba was there and Timon with his "flying monkeys"

And we thought of the Satarakas when the fire-knife dancing hyena came out! Sorry in this picture he looks like he is on fire, the iPhone doesn't really do him justice.

While Michele tried to get Maya and Macie to take a nap, we took Marley on "Expedition Everest". This is a new addition to the Animal Kingdom and looked similar to the "Matterhorm". But this rollercoaster went backwards and much of the ride was in the dark! Marley was brave and relieved that there was no "big drop" that made her stomach shake! On the left side of the picture you can see the cars climbing up to the top of Everest. We ended our Animal Kingdom day with a "Grand Gathering". This was my favorite experience of the trip. We got to stay in the park after it closed and had a private safari ride. We got to see real life wildebeast, hippos, ostrich eggs, and got close enough to touch a rhino (but we didn't). Then we went to the "Tuskerhouse" which is Animal Kingdom's upscale restaurant (air conditioned, thank goodness) and had an African feast, Timon and Rafiki from the Lion King made an appearance, and we were serenaded by musicians from the Congo. When it was time for the audience participation, of course the three girls were the first up!

We ended a great day with a late night swim in the hotel pool. We were able to soak for a few minutes in the Jacuzzi and realized we should have ended every night there!