Florida Vacation Part 3

Disney World's Animal Kingdom

On Thursday, February 7 we visited the Animal Kingdom. It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining and the temperature was in the mid-seventies, a far cry from the temperatures at home at the time! We had a quick lunch at the Rainforest Cafe, BBQ Beef wraps with Mango Chutney, very delicious. We sat under the watchful eye of this elephant, peering over Mom's lovely gray hair. We had to make it snappy though, we had fast passes for the Jungle Safari ride! That was my favorite part of the whole Animal Kingdom.

Here we see a meerkat proudly ignoring my pleas for him to get up and sing "I like to move it move it". Oh wait, were those lemurs? Not sure, but I still wanted him to sing. He just kept thinking if he ignored me I would go away, and eventually I did. ***sigh***

Once again, I cannot resist the birds. How can they possibly be this beautiful and fly too? These are macaws, just lovely.

Will you just look at those rhino butts? I'm telling you, I think they may even be bigger than mine. These are white rhinos, they also have black rhinos there, but the names are totally misleading. All of them were gray.

Here is a baby gorilla. Isn't he the cutest thing?

Over here I have a zebra. The hills you see behind him are actually termite mounds. The elephants like to use them for scratching their backs, they are very hard and rough. And the termites don't seem to mind.


This antelope was totally into having his picture taken. Unlike the one behind him,, he even made sure I got his good side!

These must be the biggest bats in the world! I have seen my share of bats, but never anything like these. They were the size of footballs, and I am not exaggerating.

So who was it that decided the lion was the king of the jungle? I guess they hadn't yet met this Siberian Tiger. He certainly looks regal to me...

I was very disappointed that there weren't more rides at this park. But there is this one, Expedition Everest, which Savannah really wanted me to try. However when I got there and read all of the warnings I decided it would not be wise considering the whiplash injury I incurred many years ago on a roller coaster. So I missed out on the one good ride, maybe next time!



We ended our day at the Animal Kingdom with the show "Finding Nemo, The Musical". It was just wonderful! The songs and dances were great, the sets were colorful and elaborate, and the finale brought down the house in a cloud of bubbles. It was really fantastic.

Other fascinations I found at the park were the baobab trees, the giant carved tree that is the park's centerpiece, and the strangest tree I had ever seen; it appeared to us to be growing giant corndogs, hanging from ropelike threads! I wish someone could tell me what kind of a tree that was.