Animal Kingdom with friends

We spent most of the day at Disney with Jerry and Cindy, who haven't been to Disney in about 20 years, so there have been a lot of changes! They wanted to see Animal Kingdom so we started there, with a ride on the Kali River Rapids. We got a bit wet but not too much, so we went on the Jungle Trek, which is a walking tour through the area with Komodo dragon, huge bats (who were not visible today - it's mating season), and beautiful, graceful tigers. 

Nearby are grazing water buffalo, who look like 100% muscle. 

When we were finished there, it was time for the Lion King show. This is the most popular show here and we were glad to see they are replacing/updating some of the costumes. These folks work really hard at this show and it's always amazing!

Time for another ride - the Kilimanjaro Safari. There is always something a bit different on this ride, because the animals can come and go in large areas. Hippopotamus, cheetahs, crocodiles, elephants, giraffes - today we even saw the lion resting on top of his rock. He doesn't do much else during the day, but it's rare to see him. We had a small delay while, a couple of cars ahead of us, three rhinos sat in the road until they were good and ready to move. And there are several different branches of antelope family represented here, all of them ignoring us completely.

We finished with a walk through the Gorilla Falls Exploration walk. Here we watched a hippo grazing on the other side of his underwater viewing area. Then we waited a few minutes at the gorilla viewing area while care-givers tossed fruit around and exited the area, before half a dozen gorillas ran back out to see what was there. The new mom had her baby snuggled against her belly. Last out was a large male - not so big that he needed to move to the bachelor herds, but pretty darn big. 

By then we were getting tired, so we went back to our car and drove to Epcot while we could still enjoy it. Cindy thought that Soarin' might trigger her vertigo but she had her wristbands on and a great attitude so we all went on it. And everyone loved it, of course! Afterwords we talked about what to do next, and getting a beer at the restaurant won out. We all decided it wouldn't make sense to push on to the World Showcase - that's an awful lot to cover in one day, and there was more to do and see right where we were. So we left Cindy and Jerry to get a sandwich at Sunshine Seasons before going on the Land ride, while we chose to take the ride home. Long day, but lots of fun!