Chef Mickey's is a character meal, and it was a lot of fun. The restaurant is in a very open area on the 4th floor of the hotel, and the monorail runs through periodically just above, and to the left of the restaraunt! And since a fairly large opening is required to allow the monorail to come in, there are also some feathered friends flying around inside the hotel. They provided some amusement when several perched just above our table...
Character meals are the ones where 4 or 5 characters circulate throughout the dining room during the course of the meal, stopping at each of the tables to sign autographs and take pictures with the guests. This is by FAR the best way to "meet" the characters. I was amazed by the number of people who would stand in lines for quite a long time inside the parks to meet characters, thus wasting valuable time that could be spent actually enjoying the park.
At Chef Mickey's we got to meet Pluto, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy and..... Mickey Mouse, himself! It was quite exciting. Okay, maybe not exciting, but it was fun. And it's very low key, so even Olivia wasn't intimidated and allowed her picture to be taken.
The food was good, as usual. The kids really got a kick out of the PB&J pizza! Lots of fresh fruit--yummy. And my favorite was an egg and veggie pie with tons of veggies and corn tortillas and some jack cheese and salsa over top. I would love to get the recipe.
After a very leisurely meal, we headed over to The Animal Kingdom for the afternoon. The kids really enjoyed the area when you first walk in, The Oasis. It is full of all types of tropical birds and other creatures tucked into nooks and crannies that you discover as you follow the meandering pathway. Then, as you emerge from a cave-like structure, you are greeted with your first sight of The Tree of Life
The Tree of Life is the focal point for the entire park and sits in the center of Discovery Island. The "tree" is man-made, and is covered with intricate carvings of animals from all over the world. It is really beautiful, and the kids enjoyed discovering different carvings.
We went inside the Tree to watch the "It's a Bug's Life" movie. This is another of the amazing 3-D Disney movies. Olivia did not like this one because she found the bugs to be scary. And there are some scary parts like the hornet attack on us humans (complete with actual pokes in your back that come out of the seats). Fortunately Olivia was sitting on my lap, or she would have started screaming for sure!
Then we headed over to Dinosaur Land. The kids really enjoyed the "Dig" area that allowed them to explore and climb all over life-size dinosaur fossils. There was also a great area for climbing with slides in this attraction. And the best part was when we discovered the shaded spot that contained a life-size wooly mammoth "fossil" that is buried in tiny pebbles. All the kids just immediately set to work unearthing the fossil. It was a lot of fun for me, too. Kevin ran over to get a FASTPASS for the Dinosaur attraction while we were digging.
Kevin convinced Olivia to get on the flying Dinosaur ride, and she realized that she did like this type of ride (exactly like flying Dumbo, but Dinosaurs). Then while he and Ryan rode a really cool roller coaster (the individual cars ride on tracks and the cars spin while they go over the tracks--ulp!), the girls and I played some of the arcade games.
Kevin, Ryan and Katy went on the Dinosaur attraction while Livvy and I went back to the "dig" site to work on unearthing the wooly mammoth. Then we all headed over to Africa for our FASTPASS time to do the Safari. Thank goodness we had that FASTPASS, because the line was REALLY long. The best times to do the Safari are either first thing in the morning, or later in the afternoon (it was about 3:30 when we went). All of the animals were awake and visible except for those lazy lions.
After the Safari, we staked out our prime spot to watch the Jammin' Jungle parade. This was the best daytime parade we saw all week. Lots of characters, but the best parts to me were all the colorful and elaborate "animals" that were powered by people. They were a lot like the characters featured in the Broadway version of The Lion King.
There were also lots of people in colorful costumes walking on stilts, and the kids thought this was really fascinating.
We even got to slap hands (paws?) with the gorilla from Tarzan, Pluto (!), and Brer Rabbit.
By this point in the day, we were all feeling a little tired, so we headed over a little early to The Rainforest Cafe for our dinner reservations. Kevin and I would have preferred the new Yak & Yeti, but the kid's menu there just wasn't going to interest our particular eaters. The kids had a lot of fun at the Rainforest Cafe, and even asked me to take pictures of them being silly:
After dinner, it was back to our resort for an early (7:30) bedtime. Kevin and I laid down with the kids with the plans to watch a little TV once they fell asleep, but we both ended up crashing too...
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