Second Day in Disney - The Animal Kingdom!

After the character breakfast, we went back to the hotel for a bit.  Just to relax, and to figure out what to do next.  We thought it would be a good day to see the Animal Kingdom.  So, we hopped a bus from the hotel, and went on over!  We were walking in, when Sydney saw the above sign, and said, "Ummm, Dad, why's there a dragon on the sign?  They have all real animals, except that one?"  I told her I didn't know, but she wanted a picture of it.

Animal Kingdom's Christmas Tree

We then wandered in, and started looking around at the park.  She saw the Tree of Life almost immediately, and she knew that was the centerpiece of the park.  We noticed that a showing of "A Bug's Life Adventure" was starting, so we filed away in line.  This line seemed to go on forever, and it wound around and through the roots of the great tree, until we were under it.  And we were in an ant hill, and I felt quite claustrophobic. Luckily it was only a ten minute wait till the show started.  The show consisted of poofs of air being blown at us, and fog, and lot's of spiders dropping from the ceiling.  Sydney wasn't not amused.

We then made our way back to the Asia exhibit, to see the tigers.  We spent a short time looking at a couple of monkey exhibits, and then wandered back into the habitat.  

First thing in the exhibit were giant fruit bats.  They were very active, and HUGE!  I think I got a couple good pictures of them.  Then, moving on we came to the Tigers.  They were very active for a change, and were walking around quite a bit, and cleaning themselves.  I also spotted a gentleman getting a picture of flat stanley at the exhibit, too!

We then stopped for lunch.  Syd had some chicken tenders, and I had a mandarin chicken salad.  Quite good, actually!  It was our Quick service meal of the day.  We then wandered on over to the Africa side of the park, and got in line for the last safari of the day!  We didn't wait in line all that long, it moved fairly quickly.  We were both excited and Sydney was hoping to see an Okampi.  Well, it was the first animal we saw!  

She was a little scared when the bridge started to collapse, but it was all in good fun.  The ride ended shortly there after, and we headed back to the entrance of the park.

On our way, we saw this Saddlebeak stork, which was being fed by a keeper.  We watched it for a couple minutes, when this guy flew up into the tree above the stork!

Just a normal Red-Tailed Hawk, but this guy had a purpose in mind.  He knew it was feeding time, and he waited until the stork turned it's back, and then he snatched the food from the stork.  The stork freaked out a little bit, but the keeper gave him more food.  It's not the first time the hawk had done that, and they were trying to catch him to re-locate him.

We saw a bunch of birds all roosting as we made our way out.

Afterwards, we took the bus back to Epcot, and wandered around for a while.  We had something to eat, and saw the firework show.  It's a big production with lots of fire effects, and this huge globe in the middle of Epcot's lake.

Epcot's Christmas Tree is pretty at night, too!