Marty came down to Florida with his kids, Robin and Jay,
to do Disney World.
Since he was so much closer than his usual location of Massachusetts,
I took the opportunity to come up for the day and visit.
We all went to Animal Kingdom.
Feb 26, 2000
by Sherry
Marty came down to Florida with his kids, Robin and Jay,
to do Disney World.
Since he was so much closer than his usual location of Massachusetts,
I took the opportunity to come up for the day and visit.
We all went to Animal Kingdom.
Here they are, in the classic shot with the Tree of Life in the background.
The first place we went was to the bird show in Asia.
It was amusing,but dopey me, I didn't get any pictures there.
Staying in Asia, next
we walked through the Maharajah Jungle Trek, where we saw
a Komodo dragon (world's largest lizard),
flying foxes (worlds largest bats),
tigers (worlds largest cats), and other interesting
critters.
(Here's another picture of a tiger,
being typically catlike in not looking at the camera.)
We even walked thru an aviary with lots of
unusual birds.
(Here's a cute picture of Jay in
the aviary.)
(We skipped the River Rapids ride in Asia, because Jay's
only 3 and doesn't meet the height requirement, and
Robin's a wimp about rides.)
The kids had seen the exit sign for "It's Tough to be a Bug!"
earlier, and wanted to go see it.
They started chanting "bug-GEE, bug-GEE", so we had
to put it next on our list :-)
It was a longer walk than we thought because the
entrance is nowhere near the exit that we'd seen.
Then to get from the entrance to the show is a lot more walking,
but it's really pretty cool because you walk all around and
into the big Tree, and you get to see it up close.
The Tree is really much bigger than it looks in any picture I've
ever seen... it's 14 stories tall!
The picture here doesn't do it justice either, you can't
really see the all the animals that are "carved" into it.
In any case, the show, billed as "a 3-D, special effects experience",
was pretty cool... it was definitely worth all the walking.
It was time for lunch, so we decided to try the
Rainforest Cafe.
There was quite a bit of a wait, but it seemed to go quickly because
there was plenty of stuff to keep us entertained, like
live tropical birds and of course shopping.
(Right, the kids play in a fountain... you can't tell in the
picture, but the water is coming out of an elephant's trunk!)
The Rainforest is an interesting destination in itself, with
animatronic animals, occasional indoor thunderstorms, and
large aquariums with tropical ocean fish.
And the food is good too!
Following lunch,
we went to the Africa section and took the safari bus ride
where we saw lots of interesting animals, including elephants,
rhinos, hippos, cheetahs, lions, and various antelope-like
critters. The giraffes were so close we could almost reach out
and touch them!
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Next we took the train to the Conservation Station, where
Robin, Jay, and Marty too, all seemed to enjoy the petting
zoo (which was called the "Affection Section" :-)
(More pictures
here and
here.)
It was starting to get close to closing time, so we decided to
close our day by seeing the "Festival of the Lion King" show
in the "Camp Minnie-Mickey" area.
But
as we walked back to that area, before we left
Africa, we couldn't resist pounding on some drums (right).
Also, we had to walk back thru the Safari Village, past
the entrance to "It's Tough to be a Bug."
Every time we walked by there we'd see weird creatures like
here and
here.
In any case, the Lion King show was nothing short of spectacular.
Great costumes, songs, dance, and
some very impressive acrobatics!
A great finale to a fine day. We never did get to the
Dinoland area, but hey, we'll have to come back!
