"In the Jungle, the Mighty Jungle..."

We absolutely LOVED the Animal Kingdom.  It really was such a neat park.  If you were expecting a big theme park it wouldn't be so fun, but as a zoo it really was quite incredible.  I felt like the animals seemed much more in their "natural habitat" than at a normal zoo (I mean ESPECIALLY compared to The Hogle Zoo).  

Spencer loved this giant mural of the animals.

And this one too.  :)  (If you couldn't tell, he's being eaten!)

Here are Mike and Spencer "holding up the dinosaur" at the little Dino Park.

The birds at the Animal Kingdom were incredible.  Even the local birds just walkin around.  This little guy liked following us all over the place--probably cause we kept feeding him.  :)  He was significantly more exotic than any birds I see in Utah!  :)

The birds in the bird show were quite amazing.  This hawk was beautiful.

 I don't know what kind of bird this was, but it was pretty cool.

This owl was my favorite though.  It looks straight out of Harry Potter.  Can you believe I got such a great picture?!

We liked this owl too.  :)

Here is Spencer holding a rhino horn.  Cool huh?  Did you know that's really just made up of hair?  It's like a giant ingrown hair.  EW!  Apparently sometimes they get broken or infected and they have to cut them off, but they grow back easily.

Here are Spencer and I with the tiger.  LOL!

The animal hospital was pretty neat and it was located with the insect/bug area.  The spiders freaked me out!  We also got to meet this friendly insect.  :)  Gotta love Jiminy Cricket.

Spencer really liked the little petting are where he got to brush the goats.  This little guy was his favorite, he just laid their relaxing as Spencer brushed him.

This was one of our favorite animals.  Spencer would know what it was called but I cannot remember.  I think it started with a J.  Apparently he is of NO relation to the zebra (crazy huh?) but IS actually related to the giraffe.

Here's Spencer meeting Baloo in the parade.

Here's Minnie driving her cute safari jeep.  :)

We saw Rafiki in the parade

and in real life!  :)  Ok, fine, that's not Rafiki (Rafiki is MUCH bigger and is actually a Mandrill) but this guy looked a little like a TINY Rafiki.  :)  He's significantly cuter than a mandrill though.

One of our favorite parts was the safari.  These hippos were pretty cool.  Look at those teeth.

And these alligators...or crocodiles (I wish I knew the difference...) were pretty scary and cool.  We were SO CLOSE to them.  It was freaky!

And the elephants were so majestic and beautiful!

We really enjoyed the Lion King show (it really is a must-see if you go there.  We got to see Simba in the show, AND in real life!

 This big guy was roaring and putting on a whole show during the safari.  It was pretty exciting.

 Timon was the star of the show.

 And was fun to see in the wild too.  :)

But our favorite Lion King character was Pumba! 

He was one of our favorites on the safari too!  Apparently he grew out his hair... lol!  I had no idea warthogs had such long and blonde hair!  Crazy!

My personal favorite part of the show, though, was when they picked Spencer to be the leader of our group.  He was so cute and was the leader for our Lion growl.  (We were the lions of course.)

Here he is growling and doing the hand motions to the rest of the audience.  He was a natural.  :)

The Animal Kingdom was incredibly beautiful too.  We really had so much fun.  I really enjoyed the Bug's Life show.  I guess they have the same one at California Adventure but I've never seen it.  It was really fun.  I think Spencer's favorite part of the Animal Kingdom, though, may have been the ride, Expedition Everest.  It was pretty awesome.  It's very similar to The Matterhorn, but cooler.  We really loved it.  Mike and Spencer went on it 3 times!  It was a little rough for me and my pregnantness to I only went once.  Here they are with Expedition Everest in the background.

There were some other fun rides there too.  My favorite ride was Dinosaur.  You go back in time to save a dinosaur.  The track is pretty much the same as the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland, but for some reason I liked this ride even better.  It was one of the few rides (if only rides) where I actually screamed out loud at times out of fear.  No, I wasn't afraid of the dinosaurs for real, they just startled me.  :)  

My very favorite part of the Animal Kingdom, though, was getting to see Terk...

In person!  Isn't he adorable?!  "Mommy!  Wait for me!"  Oh my gosh he was so dang cute.  I want a little baby gorilla of my own.  :)  LOL!  (I just LOVE baby animals.  We got to see a baby elephant too but unfortunately I didn't get a picture of that.)

He was so playful too.  I love how his mom is just looking at him like, "WHAT are you DOING?!"  I feel like that with Melia quite often.  :)

Here's a closeup of him from the picture above.  :)  Seriously, how cute is he?

 

 Even more than the little guy, though, Spencer loved the daddy ape.  He was pretty funny.  He was walking around and got right up to the glass, looked at all of us then turned around and totally posed and flexed his butt.  Spencer was cracking up!  Those are some serious muscles there!  :)  LOL!

And of course we had to include one of these pictures of Spencer posing like a big ape!  :)

 It was sure a fun day!