Disney Trip 2012 – Day 3

On our first full day at Disney, we spent it at Animal Kingdom.  I thought we might end up park hopping in the middle of the day because AK isn’t that big and closes at 5. However, we got there at 10 and stayed until closing.  Hud vividly remembers AK from last year and was excited to see all the animals again.

They have animals from the minute you walk in and so we took our time checking those out.  Eventually, we headed to Hudson’s favorite ride (from last year) the safari!

Harper was happy to be there:

Hud was extremely excited about the lions:

Then about halfway through the ride, we came to a stop. For a LONG time! Okay, really only ten minutes, but a ten minute standstill on any Disney ride seems like an eternity.  A giraffe decided to take a rest right in front of one of the trucks.  I am not sure how the enticed it to move, but they finally did and we finished the ride. I am fairly certain they cut our ride short, but we were now running late for our lunch so I was okay with that. And the kids didn’t know the difference. :)

We headed to our lunch – Donald’s Safari Lunch at Tusker House. This was a new one for us! Donald was waiting for us outside:

Aaaaaand that was as close as Harper got.  Hudson was thrilled to see Donald:

We headed inside.  Inside Goofy, Daisy and Mickey would be coming by to see us.  Hud was chomping at the bit:

Look carefully, y’all…this is one of the only bites of food Harper took all week! Sister did not want to eat!

I was grabbing our lunches at the buffet when Daisy came by:

Mickey came by!  Harper freaked out (more on that later) and Hud was again thrilled:

Can’t forget Goofy:

….the character not Trent:

Ha!

Daisy stopped by one more time:

After lunch, we headed over to the Jungle trek. Hudson really can’t get enough animals:

The mountain you see in the background is the ride Expedition Everest or as Hud called it “the ride with the ye-ti”. It is a pretty intense ride and I wasn’t sure how Hudson would do on it.

Apparently, I had zero reason to worry:

See his hands?  They were up in the air on every.single.rollercoaster.

He rode the “ye-ti” ride 3 times in a row.  Trent and I finally needed a break from it! We took turns riding it and hanging out with this sweet girl:

I tried to trick Hud into a picture:

You can tell Hud isn’t getting really tired here:

This was the first ride Hud ever rode last year:

We tried to head back for one more Yeti ride, but the park had closed. We had no idea! We drove back to the hotel and then caught the boat to Downtown Disney for dinner:

We went to one of our favorite places for dinner (Wolfgang Puck Express):

Then on the way back to the buses we stopped at one of Hud’s favorite places. The dancing water. He got soaked:

Harper was not about to get soaked:

Wet boy = very happy boy:

Sister getting wet because of brother = not so happy:

Disney Trip 2012 – Day 2

Day 2 – we slept in the morning after our long drive.  We got up and got on the road around 10:00 – thankfully we didn’t have that much farther to go!

We saw a blimp on our way…however, the kids were not as impressed as we thought they should be!

Harper did some yoga:

FINALLY!!!!

We got checked in and explored our room at the resort.

Hudson checking out “his” bed that he was going to sleep in all week (spoiler alert: he didn’t):

     

  

Since we had our own car, the days we weren’t park hopping we drove.  We were having dinner at O’hana that night, so we parked at the Polynesian and caught the monorail to the Magic Kingdom:

First glance at the Magic Kingdom!

Hud pointing out the castle to Harps:

Our first ride was Buzz Lightyear. But, after that we headed to the People Mover:

Next it was time for Dumbo!  Disney got smart and put in TWO Dumbo rides in the new Fantasyland:

We made the mistake of riding “one more ride!” before our dinner reservation and therefore were a little late to dinner. But, they do give you a grace period and we just made it.  Dinner at O’hana was a treat just like last year! We have decided it is going to be our traditional first meal at Disney every time.