Surprise!

I woke Lon up early this morning, I told him I had to go to the store before school to pick up some things for the school.  We would stop by the house on the way home to pick up his backpack.  We were on the freeway headed to I-95 for about 10 minutes when he said, um, mom shouldn't we be getting to the store now?  I said, oh, I thought we would just go to Disney.  NOW? yes, now. He was so happy. He was laughing and giggling. Then he wanted to know if there were any more surprises, I said yes. And then did not say anything else. THAT drove him crazy!  I enjoyed it.  The drive down was easy, we made good time till we got to I-4.

Good Morning! Driving into the dawn

What is that?  We have no idea.  We saw this on I-4.   We laughed about this car for a long time

YAY!   We are here. Took about 7 hours, with stops and the horrible I-4 traffic.

Waiting for the bus to Animal Kingdom.  That was the second part of his surprise.   He was so thrilled. I am very glad I did not purchase the tickets before we arrived! I wanted to make sure we got here in enough time. After 2pm, the park tickets are discounted! WIN!

The view from our room!

It is a wonderful view

So excited!!

The birds are gorgeous!

One of the first things Lon did was to get himself a backpack. He did not want me to carry all the stuff.

Big fish, there were 15 Lon counted

Glad they have signs up telling us what we are looking at

Mickey Bar!!!

Flick needed to take a break for a few minutes, just as we were next. It really was just a few minutes too. We did not find Thumper. Not sure where he came from

Lon looked at the carving. There were lots of fun things in it! Snakes, lions, birds!

Flick wondering why Lon is wearing a Mickey shirt, not a Flick shirt. I told him as soon as I found Flick material I would make Lon a Flick shirt. He seemed to like that. He did a little dance

Kilimanjaro Safari Ride.
The wait was only 30 minutes.  Not too bad

There was  lots to see while we waited

The last time we went to Animal Kingdom, two years ago, the Safari ride was good. We had high hopes to see lots of animals.

The crocodiles! There were LOTS of big crocs!

TWO baby giraffes!  This was not zoomed in, they really were that close.

Isn't he beautiful?

We had to stop for a while, since the white rinos were in the road.  THIS close to the cars. They were amazing

The lions. There were two females, and one sleeping male.

After the Safari we stopped in to see King Louie and Baloo.
King Louie was asking Lon the same thing Flick did, and I had the same response.

King Louie still does not sign autographs

On our way to Everest!

Only a 20 minute wait on Everest!

Getting closer!

It was about 6 when we got off Everest and we were starving!  Tusker House had nothing available, so we tried Yak and Yeti.  We were able to get in right away!
Lon is entertaining me with a skit he is putting on with his new pins.
It was very cute

Of course we both got a souvenir cup. Pandas!
The food was great! Lon got a burger and I got the stir fry orange beef. I ate as much as I could, but it was a touch too spicy for me.

Sadly, the last ride on the Kali River Rapids happened while we were eating. I felt bad. That was the only other thing at Animal Kingdom Lon wanted to do.   Lon was very nice about it and said he was good with it. We can do it next time.

Sunset

We went around the Tree of Life as our last thing before leaving

Tree of Life.

So pretty in the dark.

We got back to our hotel around 9, and now it is time to get some sleep. We have an even bigger day tomorrow!