Day 5: Animal Kingdom, cont'd

After our morning of exploring, we decided to get some AC at The Festival of the Lion King. This show was AMAZING. Broadway quality singing, dancing and acrobatics. Awesome special effects. Giant floats and animatronics. I was so impressed. The kids, not so much... Sam loved most of it but was terrified of the flame thrower. Ellie was bored and sleepy and spent a lot of the time crawling under the bleachers.

The theater was dark and the pictures I got were pretty terrible:

These gymnast "monkeys" were incredible. Sam said he wants to learn how to do that.

After The Lion King, Ellie started fading fast. We didn't want any more chocolate-cake-throwing and were so, so lucky to have Nana on standby back at the resort. We called her up and she met us at the entrance to Animal Kingdom to take Ellie back for a much-needed nap.

Trying to get a family picture in front of the Tree of Life before Ellie left. 

Next we took Sam to DinoLand, which honestly was not as fantastic as I had hoped. Sam loves dinosaurs and knows a lot about them so I thought he'd love DinoLand. Which he did, but it just seemed kind of cheesy theme-parky to me. Sam had fun, though, and that's all that matters.

Sam digging for dinosaur bones at The Boneyard.

A tired, sweaty boy

Driving the Archeologist Jeep

After The Boneyard, we went to the Fossil Fun Games. Think Chuck E. Cheese with dinosaurs. And no air conditioning. Again, not my favorite place at Disney World. But Sam and Clay had fun playing the games and winning prizes.

Sweet boy picked out this stuffed bat for his sister.

After we were done at DinoLand, we went to watch Mickey's Jammin' Jungle Parade. Friends of ours had said this was the best parade at Disney World. So even when it started to drizzle, we waited on the parade. Even when it began to rain a little harder, we pulled out our ponchos and stayed put. And even when the sky opened up and dumped buckets, we didn't leave. Finally, a Disney employee came out and announced the parade was cancelled. Thus ended our day at Animal Kingdom. :)

We had planned to go back to Magic Kingdom one last time that night since we were leaving the next day, but it stormed the rest of the night. We ended up having a really fun time at the arcade at the resort- bowling, air hockey, race car games and chocolate-covered Mickey Rice Krispie treats. Good times.