Florida Day 3 - Disney's Animal Kingdom

 We decided to do a day at Disney with the Knudsen's. We decided to go to Animal Kingdom because it is the least busy of the parks. Unfortunately, it was still a weekend and the National Cheer competition was going on that weekend. So we opened the park and ran straight to the Avatar ride. It was still an hour and a half wait. And the wait times only got worse. The avatar line was really well decorated so between cousins and the entertainment in the line, it went pretty quickly.

 The ride was amazing and everyone was so happy coming off of it.

Our next stop was the safari ride. We had heard that you want to go early because that is when the animals are most active. The line was about an hour and everyone was a bit disappointed that we waited an hour for a safari ride. And then the driver got upset with someone in the back that kept standing up, so about halfway through the ride he didn't stop anymore and seemed a little more rushed in his explanations. Later in the day, the safari ride only had a 5 minute wait. We totally should have waited to do it later.

After the safari, we walked through the little trail near the exit that had more animals to look at. However, our legs were already tired by this point so there were a lot of complaints from the group. The mom's tried to talk the rest of the group into going to "The Lion King" show, to give our legs a rest, but the kids all vetoed the show, and any other show we might think of taking them to that day. They were all eager to get to Everest, the only roller coaster in the park. So we headed there, hoping that if they got that ride out of their minds, then they would be more willing to try the other stuff. 

Everest was a BIG mistake. The line claimed to be 80 minutes, if I remember right. But we think it must have broken down because there was a 15 minute stretch when the line did not move AT ALL. We literally sat down in the line and didn't need to move for 15 minutes. By the time we finally got on the ride, we were so disappointed with the 2 hour wait that the ride did not seem worth it. It was cool, but not 2 hours of waiting cool.  Claire and Alyssa purposely posed in a very unimpressed way for the picture. LOL

After Everest, we headed to the last main attraction, Dinosaur. It had the shortest line of the day to that point at around 20 minutes. The ride was a little outdated and Becky later got a kick out of my and Danny's unimpressed faces in the picture compared to Alyssa's scared face.

By this point, we had done everything, without doing the shows, besides a little slow boat ride in the Avatar land. But the line was so long (75 minutes) when we got there, that most of us vetoed it. We decided to go eat instead. After dinner, we split up. Becky, Jake, Connor, Alyssa, and Claire went to the river float ride. Danny, Ashley, Tamma, Tyler, Camden, and I decided to go back to the Dinosaur ride which claimed to have a 15 minute wait on the app. By the time we got there, the line had gone up to 45 minutes so we went back to Everest instead. It was a much better experience the 2nd time through. The 60 minute line only ended up being 20 minutes. The river float group got done with their ride as we were heading back onto Everest for a second ride, so they joined up with us. We ended up riding it one more time all together and then we headed over to Avatar for the last ride of the night.

Here are some other pictures from the day.

Alyssa and Claire were twinning it.

In the line for Dinosaur

Also in the line for dinosaur

Some pictures of Ashley and Tamma.

We were exhausted by the time we got off of Avatar. The park was closed, so we headed out. We took this picture on the way out. We should have done it on the way inside because the lighting was all wrong. 

It was a fun and tiring day. The kids all had a lot of fun together. Animal Kingdom was a little less Disney-ish than other Disney parks we have been to. My biggest disappointment of the day was that it was sooo crowded. And with so little to do in the park and with kids that wouldn't go to shows, it just meant a lot of time standing in long lines and very little time actually riding rides. But at least there was a lot of bonding time while standing in line.