July 26, 2018

Summer Road Trip & Disney Day 1

Vacation # 2 is creeping up on us and I realized I haven't even shared our first trip!  Hello! My name is Kim and I am a slacker!  But you guys, I took so many photos and videos it has been a little overwhelming.  But I have finally sorted them all out, by park, and am able to breathe a little better when I look at the folders on my computer.   And I have deleted them all off my memory card so we can do this all over again in a week!


Lucky for us, the boys love a good drive.  Alex slept most of the time and Anthony was pretty content to just watch movies and videos on his phone.  I tried to sleep but I feel so bad leaving David to drive while we all take a nap.  So I was taking pictures and video the whole way.  I may have put my glasses on and dozed off a few times.  I wonder if he noticed!

First things first, a little video of the drive to Florida.  It was long, rainy and then when we got to town, we were hit with a million memories.  We moved to Texas over 10 years ago and still, our memories were so fresh!  So fresh we missed a turn. Or two!



Once we got settled in the house, we quickly decided that we would make Disney's Animal Kingdom our first stop!  I'm not going to lie, I was so excited because going back to DAK felt almost like going home.  This is where David and I worked while we lived in Florida.  The memories that came flooding back were awesome.

There are so many photos to share but considering there are more than a thousand, I am going to really have to contain myself.  The scary part is, I feel like I didn't get as many photos as I wanted.  Of us anyways.  Going to Disney as a guest is a lot different than going as a cast member.  Boy did we take that for granted!

We could start with the obvious Tree of Life photo.  Because who goes to Animal Kingdom and doesn't take this photo!


And another shot from the other side of the park.  I just love this tree with all the animal carvings in it.  I wish I could remember how many we counted!


Our first stop was Dinoland USA!  Because that's where we used to work and because that's where the Dinosaur Ride is!  We have all been looking forward to this ride so we had to go straight there. 



And then the boys talked us into The Primeval Whirl. I was shocked when David agreed to it, because he hates spinning things.  Alex talked us into the Triceratops Spin after that. All the spinning things!  Nothing a walk along the Cretaceous Trail couldn't fix.  And 2 more runs on the Dinosaur Ride.



We took a walk around Asia's Maharajah Jungle Trek but the Tigers were hiding.  We did get to see some giant bats and lots of birds and bugs! I will have to finish the Animal Kingdom video so and share that too.


After that quickly headed to Africa to go on the Safari.  I'm not going to lie.  I was a little let down here when we didn't get to chase poachers.  I guess they cut that part out of the ride now.  And there were no lions!  But we still got to see lots of other animals. Babies too so I guess it wasn't so bad!





After Africa our we headed to Pandora!  I don't think my photos or video will do it any justice.  It's a beautiful land.  And in typical Disney form, the attention to detail is what makes it so amazing.  There ware alien plant life, the giant floating rocks and everything is so colorful!  The ride was a 2 hour wait so we did pass on that but just walking around felt like we really were on another planet.  A tourist packed planet but still!



By the time we finished exploring Pandora, it was time to find our seats for the Rivers of Light show.  I was so excited for the boys to get their first look at real Disney Magic.  They were already impressed but I know Disney goes hard on its shows so we were in for a treat.  And we were not disappointed at all!  Again, I will have to put together a video and pray it comes close to as amazing as it was in real life.  The boys were blown away!  We all were!



The lagoon looks so different once the sun goes down, but once the dark settles in they sure do light it back up again!

We spent the whole day at the park.  I think it was after 10 when we left. It sure was fun going back to Animal Kingdom.  We stopped by all the places we used to work and could not believe how much everything has changed!  The boys were already looking forward to the next day of fun!


Next up:  Magic Kingdom

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