Baby's first WDW trip - Day 3

The day before appeared to wear DS out. He slept peacefully through the night and so did we! Breakfast was at the house again and everyone was full of pancakes before we headed out.

Today we were off to Animal Kingdom first. It was warm but cloudy and we were hopeful the clouds would burn off by midday. We were at Animal Kingdom far before opening, 8:20 for a 9am opening. We had miscalculated how close we were staying to this park.

They opened the gates shortly after we arrived and we were able to grab some photos in front of the tree of life. In addition we caught a brief show where dozens of large parrots free flew to their handlers in front of the tree. They swooped so low we were ducking to avoid them! It was amazing. My mom is a huge parrot fan and was in total awe.

They slowly opened up the park farther and farther back and we made our way to the safari. After a very brief wait we were on our first trek across the preserve. This ride was good (though one later in the week would prove to be even better) and we got to see the African Wild Dogs their very first day on view! We also heard a bit about how they will be lighting the savanna for the new nighttime safari and that the African dogs will be swapped at night for hyena. All very cool!

Once off we headed back to dinosaur. My dad has never been a fan of this one and offered to wait with DS. Its one of my favorites and I skipped it last trip due to my pregnancy. We were on and off with no wait and scooped up DS for a ride on the triceratop spin. He LOVED this! Next up we decided to let him stretch and burn off some steam in the bone yard. The park was quiet and this area was almost deserted. He had a blast climbing and sliding.

We killed time playing here until it was time for the Nemo musical. This is my favorite show in WDW and a new one for the rest of the gang. DS did great and with the lure of a crunchy rice stick sat happily and watched the show. We grabbed a train to the Conservation Station next. "Choo-choos" are a big winner in our house and DS loved that he could sit on his own and watch the world go by. We did the petting zoo although DS was unimpressed, probably because our dane mix is bigger then any of the goats he pet.

Train back to the rest of AK put DS to sleep so we loaded him back into the stroller and struck out for Expedition Everest. Line time said 30 minutes so we left DS with my dad and the rest of us hopped on. 30 minutes was exaggerated and we were on and off in 15.

We had late lunch ressies for Yak & Yeti so we went to check in a little early and were seated quickly. We shared some appetizers, pot stickers and green beans. I had orange beef for lunch. It was delicious! DS happily plowed through his grilled chicken, corn and grapes.

Can I say how much I loved kid's menus in the park? DS is not a french fry/chicken nugget sort of dude. He likes grilled meats and fruits and we never had a problem getting him great options.

After lunch we figured we best go give the dogs a potty break so we headed out to the car. Short trip home, a quick bath for DS and we were back out the door to the MK.

The lot was fairly full at MK so we grabbed a tram (another big winner with DS) and then the monorail over to the park. We headed back towards fantasyland to use our Fast passes for Peter Pan. Next was Philharmonic, DH's favorite, and then a fast pass for Pooh which DS really enjoyed.

From here we headed back to Tomorrowland. The people mover was down the day before and we wanted on. Unfortunately not only was it down today but they had large walls in front of the entrance. Shoot. We headed into the Carousel of Progress instead. This was enough to knock DS out and he transferred into his stroller after. By now the sun was well down and it was getting cooler then we expected.

We headed over to use our final fast pass at Big Thunder Mountain. My mom waited this one out with DS who was still out cold. At this point everyone was getting hungry. We didn't have a dinner ressie so we decided to try out Casey's. It was PACKED. We managed to grab an indoor table though and DS woke up in time to eat a hotdog.

After eating we decided we'd better stay close if we wanted to catch the electric light parade. We ended up watching that, the castle show and wishes. By Wishes the area in front of the castle was wall to wall people. Wishes was great as always but it made for a rough trip out of the Kingdom.

When we finally made our way out the line for the monorail was ridiculously long. This wasn't good. We headed to the ferry. Also a monster, people were jam packed and pushing and shoving. No good. At that moment I had a flash of brilliance and suggested we walk to the Contemporary and grab the monorail there. This was a fantastic idea. I'm not sure it saved us any time but it saved us a lot of aggravation of being packed against thousands of other people.

We finally hopped on the monorail and made it back to the car, then the house, by 1130pm. It was a late night and we were all beat!