Disney World Vacation, Part 1 of who knows how many

Oh where to begin!


Our family has been planning a Disney vacation FOREVER! We haven't been to Disneyland since Madison was 21 months old. If you don't know us, you know that since she's FIVE now, not being back for so long is just crazy for our family. We *used* to go multiple times a year.

This trip ended up being different because we found it more cost effective to go to DisneyWORLD! So... the Florida vacation planning began! We started a family count down chain with 109 days to go!

10 days of Disney, 2 days of Sea World and then another day just hanging out at our rental house - it was great!

Minus all the rain.

And BOY did it rain.

While we still have a bunch of photos, we have almost none from our first week there. It was raining too badly to pull the cameras out and since we had to haul around rain gear, there was just too much to take. All of our cell phones etc. were placed in zip lock bags. The rain was insane.

So here are some photos of Disney's Animal Kingdom we took when the rain stopped for a moment or two. (Our clothes/hair are wet in most of the photos.)

Hooray! Animal Kingdom! And it looks like it's going to be a great weather day!


Don't let that blue sky fool you. We walked in the gates and got poured on.


Our family:



Our entire group: (Brian, Heidi, Taylor, Jordan, Madison, Reagan, Mom, Dad and sister Kellie)


Dinosaur area


Taylor dressed in the poncho. Seriously... we should have had group photos of us all in them since that's how we remember the trip.


Kali River Rapids
Waiting for the bird show. (This is the first time we got to experience really HOT Florida weather. The bird show was great though and about 5 minutes afterward, we were back in our ponchos.)

The birds were amazing.





We had to get a photo of us in front of Expedition Everest. Madison went on it 3 times as did Jordan. Taylor only twice and Grandpa once (and he said a bad word.)

Seriously, one of the highlights of the trip was the Kilimanjaro Safari. The animals must have loved rain because they were all out, right next to the van every time we went on it. AMAZING. The ride was a bit bumpy, so most photos didn't turn out... but it was so worth seeing the rhinos, elephants, hippos, etc. We LOVED it.











After the safari, there is a great walking tour with amazing animals.








More quick photos of the kids before Everest. Loved that ride.

We were so excited to see the parade on our last day! It was canceled ever other time we were in Animal Kingdom because of rain.


So many things that we loved about this Disney Park. We saw Finding Nemo the Musical twice, ate at Tusker house which was YUM, and just enjoyed being up close to so many animals and beautiful landscape. We MUST go back to Disney World and this park with DEFINITELY be in the "must see" category!