Plenty of photo ops as Bennett family visits Disney’s Animal Kingdom

Posted in summer fun, Things to do, Travel
by Shaun Bennett

This is the third in a six-part blog series detailing the Bennetts’ biennial trip to Disney World in Orlando. I’ll spend one blog entry on each of the four Disney parks, and two more on the two Universal Studios parks we visited before we hit Lake Buena Vista.

We hit the Universal Studios theme parks to begin our vacation, then it was on to Disney’s Animal Kingdom, one of the most picturesque (and toughest to walk) theme parks in Orlando.

Dad’s pick

Finding Nemo, the Musical. It’s no secret that I love attending Broadway shows, and I particularly love Disney-based shows because I can share my love of the theater with my children. My lone actual Broadway show — meaning right in the theater district of New York City — was “Beauty and the Beast” with the whole family in tow, and we’ve seen “The Lion King,” and my daughter and I are going to see “Mary Poppins” in two weeks at the Playhouse Square in Cleveland.

So Finding Nemo is a nice miniature version of those blockbuster shows, spanning about 45 minutes and cutting the story down to about four or five essential scenes. But it’s a show that can be enjoyed by anyone of any age, and one that our group loved. Mostly because the show was great, but also because it was in an air-conditioned theater away from triple-digit temperatures and because we received preferred seating after our buffet lunch deal.

Mom’s pick

Festival of the Lion King. Mary doesn’t even try to hide how much in love with this show she is. It’s obvious when you run through the 1,000-plus pictures she took during the vacation, and nearly 50 of them are from this one show.

The show features bright colors, African music and costumes and the characters of the beloved animated movie. Live characters interact with the four audience sections — named the lions, warthogs, elephants and giraffes — and Timon, Pumba and Simba are on hand to help keep the audience laughing.

Stephanie Bennett, right, and friend Eliana Duncan stand in front of the Tree of Life at Disney's Animal Kingdom. The Tree of Life stands in the middle of the park and has hundreds of animals carved into its branches, trunk and roots. Inside is a 3-D theater.

Gymnasts dressed as monkeys perform elaborate routines on the trapeze and trampoline, another dressed as a blue-plumed bird does a wire act and all the royal characters take turns serenading the crowd.

Daughter’s pick

Expedition Everest. Stephanie tagged this as her favorite ride before she ever stepped on it. Just the fact that she was tall enough to ride a roller coaster — the height limit is 44 inches — during our trip had her psyched to jump on board the “train” and roll up the side of the Himalayan peak.

We explained to her that the story behind the ride described the legend of the Abdominal Snowman, but she couldn’t quite get the phase out so we offered her an easier term, and this ride has since been known as the “Yeti, Yeti, Yeti” ride. She likes to scream it with a high-pitched shrill that only a 7-year-old girl can do.

The coaster is one of the best on Disney property and mixes forward and backward motion, as well as shadow animation and a large animatronic Yeti inside the caves that your train dives into.

The ride was such a hit with Steph that she received three different Expedition Everest pins — multiple family members bought them for her without knowing the others were doing the same — and a stuffed, yet adorable Yeti that she still has sitting in her bedroom.

Son’s pick

Flights of Wonder. I’m not sure if this show was truly interesting for Jacob, or if he was just in the right mood when it was going on, but he sat on the bleachers and watched in amazement as the zookeepers trotted out a wide assortment of bird species to amaze the crowd.

There were brightly colored birds, small birds, big birds and birds of prey — such as falcons, hawks and owls. They swooped over the crowd with their talons sometimes knocking off hats and making women’s hair blow up from the rush of air from their wings.

The show was similar to what you can find in many zoos across the nation — which may have been another reason Jacob liked it as we have visited many of those zoos — but Disney added the fantastic atmosphere to the show that gives it that something extra that you only seem to find at their parks. The carefully detailed greenery, the clay-covered walls of the hut the zookeepers came in and out of and the African tent that covered the theater … all made you feel like you were in the animals’ habitat, and Mickey Mouse and a guy selling water fans at $20 a pop weren’t waiting right outside the exit gates.

If you’re a camera fanatic, which my wife is to a degree and others in our party are to a fault, then this is the park for you. The Tree of Life stands in the middle of it all, with hundreds of animals carved into the branches, trunk and roots, and inside is a 3-D theater that runs “It’s Tough to be a Bug” which is a great show based on the “A Bug’s Life” movie.

But the three top attractions for shutterbugs are Kilimanjaro Safaris, Maharajah Jungle Trek and the Pangani Forest Exploration Trail. Kilimanjaro is a ride through an African safari with free-roaming animals, while the other two are walk-through attractions with a ton of amazing animals and foliage to take in.

There is also a great dinosaur-based area for kids, with rides and play areas that will keep everyone happy when the shows and rides are getting to be too much.

Coming next: Epcot.