Disney Day 1 - Animal Kingdom

The MHE's are in Orlando! Last vacation of the year and we headed down to Orlando for Bailey's third birthday (25th). We came with mom and dad Bailey (Nana and Papa) and our friends the Weavers are down here too - Chase turns three a few days after Bailey.

The Edison's and Bailey's are staying at the Monterey Lake apartments. This is a property across the street from Sea World, Orlando and owned by McKinley, a large property owner in the Ann Arbor area. McKinley donated a week at Monterey Lake as part of Dawn Farm's annual Jamboree silent auction last year (2008). Well, long story short: we bid, we won, we are in Orlando.

After an uneventful travel day on Saturday we got right to the fun stuff on Sunday. Day One was spent at Animal Kingdom (pics below). First thing, it is hot down here this week - low 90's (feels like over 100) and humid - but no rain (yet). It makes for some tough long days. Number two, Robin and Mike picked up a cold bug on the flight down here and spent the first half of the week battling a cold.

Number three, Disney is truly a magical place, they really know how to put on a show, put together an attraction and make you feel welcome. With respect to the heat, I swear I have yet to see a Disney employee sweat. The rest of us are messes, but the people in the shows are in full costumes, full make-up, all smiles and not a drop of sweat - if its not magic, I want to know why CVS doesn't sell it in a bottle.

So what did we do while we there? Here you go:

1) Showed up before park opening at 9am
2) Straight to Kilimanjaro Safaris - the boys loved the animals - and the trucks we were in
3) A nice walk through Pangani Forest Exploration Trails - more animals
4) Robin, Mike, Corey and Dad headed over to Expedition Everest - great first ride of the week, but the backward fall in the dark was a little tough to recover from.
5) We stopped for some lunch - the Weavers scored a meal plan with their package at the Wilderness Lodge grabbing something in the Asia area and MHE's brought lunches.
6) Robin and Mike shot over to Kali River Rapids - we were on the loosing end of that one, ended up soaked!
7) We needed to have some chill time so the boys played for awhile at DinoLand, the Boneyard was a fun spot for Bailey.
8) An instant highlight was Finding Nemo - The Musical. A short, but entertaining musical stage version of the movie... some of us cried, not going to name names, but there were tears.
9) After that we were pretty much wiped out and just walked around a bit.

We headed back to Monterey Lake and had a nice light dinner and all of us crashed pretty early. Day 2 starts before you know it. Here is the picture show: