Disney World Day One: Arrival/Animal Kingdom

Earlier in the year we all decided to move up our Disney/Harry Potter 2009 trip to this year so that Joel could get his first hair cut at Disney World like Annie did. We talked Matt and Dad into going so it would be us, Matt, Dad, Kara, JJ, Anne, and Joel. Our flight left at 8 so we all piled into Gaba and Papa's suburban way too early in the morning and headed out.

Here we are waiting on our flight. Looks like the guys could use some of Kara's early morning cheerfulness.

Matt was so excited about his first airplane flight.

When we checked into our hotel, All Star Movies, we had a towel Mickey on our bed. Little things like this make me so happy. After arriving at our hotel we ate lunch, dropped off our stuff, and headed straight to Animal Kingdom.

We got there around 4 and Annie was so excited because she said she couldn't wait to see the animals. When I asked her what animals she was most excited about seeing she said "The Dinosaurs." We headed back to ride Kilimanjaro Safaris first and somehow we managed to get blocked by the parade twice. Annie got a lot of attention from people because she was wearing a Snow White dress.

Once we could finally get to it the safari didn't have any wait at all. Joel loved the animals. He growled at every lion he saw.

After the ride Kara took the kids to meet Lilo and Stich.


And the rest of us went to watch It's Tough to be a Bug.

After we met back up Matt, JJ, and Kara left to ride Expedition Everest while Dad, the kids, and I got in line to ride Triceratop Spin.

Joel wasn't sure about it at first but loved it once we got going.

We all met up at Flame Tree Barbecue to eat. After supper, Kara, JJ, Matt, and Annie went to ride Kali River Rapids. They were saving it for last so that they wouldn't be wet all day. Annie absolutely hated the ride and hated being so wet. We were at Animal Kingdom until 8 when extra magic hours were over and we were all exhausted.

When we got to our bus stop there were about 30 million people in line in front of us but lots of buses were coming so the line moved pretty fast. We got back to our hotel around 9. When we were getting ready for bed John bolted the door between our connecting rooms but forgot about the outside door. When I pointed it out to him he said "Oh I'm not afraid of those people out there, it's always the people you know that kill you."