Again awakening bright and fresh, Shannon and I had plans to hit the parks early with extra magic hours at Animal Kingdom! The park opened at 8 am so we caught the bus from our hotel around 7:45 am. Another thing I really loved about Coronado Springs was how convenient and easy it was to travel to all of the parks. We only waited 20 minutes for a bus once (because we arrived at the bus stop right after one had pulled away) -- we had good bus mojo during our trip!
We made it to the park right before 8 am and went straight to the Kilimanjaro Safaris to start off our day. We saw lots of animals out and about (probably due to the cooler weather of the morning) -- one of my favorites is the Ankole (the cattle with the HUGE horns -- they use them to radiate heat and cool down).
After our safari, we went to Expedition Everest in search of the yeti. This is a fun, fast, but slightly scary ride (especially when you are zooming backwards really fast in the dark!).
The park still wasn’t officially open and there were very few people around as we walked to the Dinosaur ride. This is my favorite ride at Animal Kingdom -- probably because it is a clone of the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland (my all-time favorite Disney ride!). Shannon didn’t really like Dinosaur -- especially the Carnotaurus!
To relax, we went on the Kilimanjaro Safari ride again and saw lots of nice animals (the giraffes and ostriches came especially close to the truck). After saving the baby elephant, Little Red, from poachers, we took our time looking at the animals on the Pangani Forest Trail. I really love the detailed atmospheric touches that Disney sprinkles throughout the parks -- everything looks so cool!
Feeling hungry after our forest trek, Shannon and I split a jalapeño cheese pretzel -- it was really tasty and not spicy at all!
Feeling rejuvenated, we took a little train to Rafiki’s Planet Watch and Conservation Station where we saw some tamarins and wandered around a little learning center. There wasn’t much to do here so we took the train back and wandered the Maharajah Jungle Trek. From there we found some tasty lunch at the Yak and Yeti counter service restaurant. I really liked this lunch (I had a refreshing chicken salad and frozen lemonade), but Shannon’s honey chicken was way too sweet.
After lunch, Shannon indulged me and went on Dinosaur again (what a good sister!) -- our last ride of the day at Animal Kingdom. It was around 2 pm and getting pretty hot; this park is brutal in the afternoon sun so we decided to go back to the hotel to take our break before dinner.
After a couple of hours, we took a bus to EPCOT for dinner at Les Chefs de France. Upon arrival at EPCOT, we rode Spaceship Earth before heading over to dinner.
Chefs de France was really good -- especially Shannon’s onion soup! We wandered EPCOT for a while after dinner, eventually returning to the hotel around 8:30 pm (an early night!). We played 2 games of skee-ball each at the arcade (woo hoo free arcade card worth about $1!) before hitting the hay. Tomorrow was another day at the Magic Kingdom!
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