After another long day and late night at the parks, we were all dragging this morning. But we managed to get out the door and head to Animal Kingdom in time for an early lunch at 11am at Yak & Yeti. But first, we will have to talk about the screaming monkeys.
Before we headed out, while we waited for Aly to get ready (see, 11 going on 15), we played some pool and air hockey with Leah here at the house. She’s very competitive and she tends to cheat a bit lol.
The parking lot wasn’t tremendously busy, but the entrance line was.
We actually got to Asia a bit early for our lunch reservation, so we stopped at a PhotoPass spot just outside the restaurant. The photographer there made repeated rock band puns that we slaying us.
We still had about fifteen minutes before the restaurant opened, and we heard some loud monkey noises, so we walked around the corner near the entrance of Kali River Rapids, which gave us a good view of Monkey Island and the area with the lemurs. They were crazy agitated in both places, making all kinds of racket, and swinging around like crazy. I’ve never heard anything quite like it, and it drew huge crowds.
After enjoying that spectacle for about ten minutes, we headed back to Yak & Yeti for lunch, which was excellent.
We started with Limeades and wok-fried green beans – awesome all around, and pretty much the only way to get Aly to eat vegetables.
Rachel had chicken fried rice, Aly had the teriyaki chicken, and I tried something new: the korean beef, which is my new favorite, knocking off long-time favorite honey chicken. Leah, of course, had mac and rice.
We also had the amazing wonton skewers for dessert, but I think Aly was eating it before it even hit the table, so no pictures of that one.
We headed over to the Tree of Life and had a rip-roaring good time seeing the 4D It’s Tough To Be A Bug show, which was packed with lots of people who were obviously first-timers. Their screams and laughter made it great.
Next up, we had FP for the Navi’ River Journey over in Pandora. It’s quite peaceful and a lovely slow boat ride, but it’s way too short for the wait (which was 105 minutes when we rode). It needs to be longer.
We wandered back to Africa with some time to kill before our FP for the safari, so we walked the jungle trail and saw lots of animals there.
Finally it was safari time and we were all exhausted, but enjoyed seeing a lot of active animals, who were probably happy to have their first warm-ish day in quite a while.
We exited the park, tram’d back to the car, and then came back to the house mid-afternoon for our first visit to the pool.
We were all in the pool for a long time, which was great. But we are all exhausted. Well, okay, three of us are. The untirable Leah is of course blazing with her usual energy. She’s very excited for her birthday in two days, and wants to swim, which will be interesting, since there’s currently a freeze warning here for tomorrow night. Oh well, we’ll figure something out.
