Nervous Dad's first trip report Day 10 AK part 2
Continued...
The last thing we had time for was the Festival of the Lion King. As we were making our way towards the theater, we were cut off by the Jammin Jungle Parade. This was a nice detour and I was able to get some good pictures. We didn’t plan to catch the parade, but I’m glad we did. The Festival of the Lion King started about 10 minutes after were seated. We sat in the elephant section and the King helped us get our elephant sound going. The show was filled with high flying monkeys, fire eaters, dancers, singers and large moving Pumba, Simba, Elephant and a Giraffe. By the time the show finished we were all bopping in our seats. At the conclusion, I was able to get some nice pictures of the animals. The Festival of the Lion King was the best production I had seen all week and it made the rather ho-hum day into a great day. I will be seeing this every trip from now on.
My overall experience with the Animal Kingdom was positive. I realize as I read back through that I did quite a bit of complaining about the day, but all in all I really enjoyed the park. The landscaping was beautiful. Everywhere you went, you felt like you were in a rainforest surrounded by lush vegetation and exotic trees and plants. I guess I just felt that Disney seems to go above and beyond all expectations in everything it puts out and I felt that Animal Kingdom was great but not excellent. I guess that happens when Disney is always exceeding your expectations – sometimes they might not meet up to what someone might expect.
The park was closing and we made our way to the exit. It was sad walking out knowing that we wouldn’t be back to a WDW theme park for awhile. We stopped at a shop near the exit and the kids traded pins with the cast members at the counter and one of the cast members that was taking out the garbage. The trams to the cars were full and lines were long so we walked back to the car. Once in the car it was a very quick drive home – in fact, I know it was longer to walk to the car than to drive back to the resort. I wanted to get a few more pictures around the resort and stopped at a few places while Kelly and the kids went back to the room.
We told the kids last night that we wouldn’t have time to swim and we didn’t want to pack wet swimsuits, but I was in a bit of a depressed mood and talked Kelly into letting me take them down to the pool and stop by The Mara for some ice-cream. After our ice-cream we swam for about an hour and then headed up to our room from the pool for the last time. Kelly went back up to the room after ice-cream and was putting our luggage together for tomorrow. We dried off, changed and headed out the door to Fort Wilderness for our dinner at the Hoop Dee Doo Review.
The ride to Fort Wilderness was easy. Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party was going on at the Magic Kingdom so the Cast Member at the toll booth gave us more candy. We found Fort Wilderness no problem, but what we didn’t realize was that once we parked, we would have to board a bus and get off at “The Settlement”. I had just assumed we could pull up and go right to Pioneer Hall for the show. Good thing we allowed some extra time. We parked and the bus was pulling into the station so we had to run for it. We ran and jumped on and then found out that the drivers were switching out. No need to run, but who knew. In all the excitement, I didn’t find out what stop we had to return to so when we exited the bus driver helped me out (thank you!).
We checked in and got in line about 15 minutes prior to show time. When I booked back in March, I reserved balcony seats, but when we were seated we were upgraded to the main floor 3rd table back from the stage! We ordered drinks and ate the salad and cornbread and then the show started. Johnny Ringo walked right past our table and said Hello! The cast was dancing and singing and then Johnny came back and asked where we were from. We told him Wisconsin and he sang a line about “From Wisconsin were so glad to sees ya, we’re glad to meet all these cheeses!” The chicken, ribs, and potatoes came out and were delicious and then Jim Handy and Flora Long sang a duet right in front of our table. Later Sixbits divided the audience in half and had a contest to see which side of the hall was loudest. Well the way he split the audience it cut our table in half. Matthew and I were pitted against Kelly and Mara. Matthew and I are sure we were the loudest, but that call is being disputed by Kelly and Mara. Strawberry shortcake was served for our dessert (one of my favorites) and then we were twirling our napkins and playing the washboards that the cast handed out to us. The finale included a few members from the audience and the coup de grace was a big burly guy playing the ghost of Davy Crockett came out on stage dressed in a pink tutu. The Hoop Dee Doo Musical Review was the most fun that we had at a meal all trip. On the bus ride back to The Outpost, we were laughing and joking about who was the loudest and some of the other bits when I looked down and noticed that Mara had fallen asleep in my arms. My little princess slept until we got back to The Outpost and then fell asleep again on the ride back home. I started to carry her in but she woke up and walked the rest of the way on her own. A little bit of last minute packing and we’re off to bed for the last time.
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Originally Posted by faline
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