Today’s Wild Wednesday post is from Animal Kingdom. Specifically on the Kilimanjaro Safari ride. It was a pretty hot day and one of the younger elephants decided to cool off in one of the ponds for the elephants in the area. I managed to grab a couple shots with just its trunk and tusks sticking up out of the water with a couple of its friends on the shore in the background.
Its tough to get to see something like this anywhere else really. Very cool – one of the reasons the Kilimanjaro Safari ride is one of our favorites or must dos when we get to Disney World.
swimming elephant on Kilamanjaro Safari ride at Animal Kingdom
I am going to try another new type of post today. Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are all specifically Disney and Disney World related but we have a lot of photos and memories of our trips to Orlando that aren’t specifically Disney related. I am thinking that is what Tuesday posts will be – Trip Tuesday – things to do with our family trips that aren’t necessarily Disney.
To start off with today I want to throw up a picture from Kennedy Space Centre I took in January 2010. We were down in Orlando for 3 weeks staying in a townhouse and my brother came and stayed with us for a while. We did a family day at Kennedy Space Centre but my brother and I also went back one day on our own and I took a crap load pictures while there.
This is one of my favourites from that day. I was standing underneath one of the Saturn V’s and mostly by fluke got this awesome shot. I love the colours and the sharpness and detail.
Today’s day late Magic Memory Monday post / image comes from the area just outside the International Gateway at Epcot in Disney World. We walked there from the Beach Club and had to delay our entrance when the kids saw grass. “Green grass in January? Everything stops until we frolic!”
Once again it is the simple things and the little details that bring back some of the best memories.
So another Thinking Disney Thursday post about the Beach Club Resort at Disney World. Obviously this is one of our favourite resorts at Disney World and one of the reasons for this is the wonderful lobby.
We had just done the character breakfast at the Cape May restaurant in the lobby and we were walking through the lobby and I jumped a bit further ahead and turned and took this shot quickly and took everyone by surprise. So it was a relatively candid shot and the camera grabbed an interesting focus.
I like this picture and how it make me feel to see it. Lovely colours, nice light and a great feeling overall. Just a feeling of comfort and peace.
This picture today was taken on our first family trip to Disney World (also our first Disney World Marathon Weekend). We spent the day at the Animal Kingdom and I was taking some shots of one of the gorillas when my wife snagged this shot…2 gorillas in one shot.
Kind of funny that I was in a black shirt that day to match the gorilla (plus I’m not a puny guy so the size comparison is there too).
So we just recently booked a family trip to Disney World for February 2014 – spending a week at the Beach Club Resort. We love this hotel and when I think of it I always get a feeling of peace.
On our last family trip to Disney World we stayed there too – it was a rough trip down what with driving to Minneapolis through a rough winter storm and then the flight down, etc. We were a bit stressed but then we got in the pool and all the stress went away – instant vacation mode.
We are obviously looking forward to the next trip – so that we can have moments like these again.
So today isn’t really a picture of a real wild animal but one day I managed to catch a good clear shot of the tiger built into the big tree at the Animal Kingdom that I wanted to put up.
I see more and more details every time I look at the tree – the awesome part I like about this shot is that the tiger seems to be looking down at the Disney guests. As I mentioned in a previous Wild Wednesday post I really like the big cats and that may be why this picture speaks to me.
But once it again the whole tree points to the details that Disney puts into things – I am continually impressed.
I’ve missed a couple posts in the past week as we have had company over and I haven’t been able to get at the site and still do my Goofy Challenge training. But that should all be sorted now and I can get back to putting up some more posts.
For the Magic Memory today this picture caught my eye as I was reviewing some old pics from our December 2010 family trip to Disney World. We were wandering out of Epcot to take the monorail to Magic Kingdom when we randomly ran into Stitch and Daisy doing greetings. A bit of a strange combination but it was good – plus there wasn’t any wait so we were able to come up and visit them really quickly.
Our daughter couldn’t get to Daisy fast enough – basically flew into a hug. I managed to snag a couple quick pictures and our daughter was just so excited. She was less than a month over 2 at this point and getting that hug from Daisy was a huge highlight for her. Any time we went anywhere for the rest of the trip and we saw characters she would ask for “Daisy hugs”.
It is pretty amazing to me how much the Disney characters can touch people (kids and adults) and become such a big part of them. Our daughter still loves Daisy to this day 3 years later. Considering what kids could latch on to instead, I’ll take my daughter looking for “Daisy hugs” any day.
Following in the theme of the post from earlier today of our daughter K’s meeting with Cinderella in Magic Kingdom – this next pic was from a few minutes later when K met with Rapunzel.
The cast member playing Rapunzel really captured the fun of the character from Tangled and spent a lot of time laughing and joking with K. The laughter and fun seemed very genuine and our daughter certainly had a lot of fun with her.
I don’t know if it was because it was pretty quiet or just what, but K got to spend a lot of time with the princesses that night and she loved every second of it. She was so happy and excited and this picture seems to capture it.
I love seeing moments like this where the kids can just let go and have fun. Awesome.
Today’s memory comes from our last family trip to Disney World (in Jan/Feb 2013) – our daughter (K) had a few Disney Princess dresses with her on this trip and it was a bit of an imperative to see as many of the Princesses as possible on the trip.
We got lucky a few times during the trip where the meet and greet area in Magic Kingdom for the Princesses was pretty much a walk up with only a few families in front of us. Both times we stopped in they had Rapunzel, Aurora and Cinderella (with the order reversed one visit to the next) meeting with folks.
The cast member who was playing Rapunzel both times was awesome, she really captured the energy of the character as portrayed in Tangled. But today’s memory was of Cinderella.
We were next in line and while we were waiting the PhotoPass photographer had some issues with her equipment and quickly wandered off stage to fix it. Once Cinderella had finished with the people she was visiting with she noticed the photographer wasn’t there and wandered over to us in line and took our daughter’s hand and walked her over to the greeting area to talk.
Luckily I had our camera out ready to go – even still I almost didn’t get this shot – luckily the Canon T4i I use frequently is a pretty quick camera and good with lower light conditions.
It was a big moment for our daughter and the cast member playing Cinderella really made her day. It was a pretty cool.
