It means no worries for the rest of your days. It’s a problem free philosophy. Hakuna Matata. We went to Animal Kingdom on Thursday. On our way to the Safari ride, we stopped to let the kids get their faces painted. Let’s play a little game – try to guess what the kids chose to have painted on their faces.
Here’s a little more.
Any guesses?
Can you tell what they are? Ty’s is pretty easy and not too terribly surprising. He made the intelligent choice based on prior face painting experience and selected a dragon mainly because it did it have any paint around his eyes. Lily, on the other hand, went right up to the board and pointed to the picture that has the entire face covered with mostly black paint. She wanted to be a bear. When I asked her later why she chose the panda, she said that she likes bears, like the Bear Necesseties. I am pretty sure there isn’t a panda in that (could be wrong), but OK Lil. Most little girls choose princesses and fairies – not my Lily. So silly.
First fast pass of the day was for an African safari. We saw rhinos, crocs, antelope, a young elephant, cows, lions, wild dogs, monkeys, gorillas…we didn’t see any giraffes because they are about to have babies, shucks. Maybe someday we will take the kids on a real African safari.
Next up was the show It’s Tough to be a Bug inside the tree of life. I laughed pretty much the entire time. They hit up all of your senses – 3D glasses, venom (water) squirts, stink bug spray, stings in the back, and bugs crawling under your seat. Love it.
We then got in line to see the Lion King – one of my favorite shows. It is a round theater with no stage, just 4 sets of bleachers around the center. Once the show begins, they pull out a stage and giant floats with a warthog, giraffe, elephant, and lion on them. Lily got super excited when the monkeys started doing gymnastics. Jay had to hold on tight so that she wouldn’t run on stage and show them all her cool tricks. 🙂 Such an awesome show.
We grabbed a quick bite to eat. Hint – eating an early lunch (around 11:00) saved us time waiting in line or for a table.
We made our way to Dinoland where Memaw took Lily on the flying dinosaur ride before we headed to the Nemo show. 
At this point Jay was about “showed out” so he went to catch a ride on the Everest roller coaster. 
Lily was on the edge of her seat for the entire Nemo show. At one point she asked if we were under the sea. It is incredible how the performers make you forget that there is a person holding a puppet and your eyes stay focused on the puppets. So many awesome effects!
Back to Dinoland where the kids played in the playground (where do they find all of that energy) and had lots of fun at the dig site. Such a cool playground. When the boys and I went off to use our fast pass for the Dinsoaur ride, Memaw and Lily went back on the flying dinos 3 times. I was a little worried that Ty might not like the Dinosaur ride because it is a little intense – lots of shaking, darkness, quick turns, and scary dinosaurs, but he LOVED it!
And we walked some more…
Ty and Jay wanted to do the Crazy Dinosaur ride (like the Crazy Mouse ride at the State Fair), so Memaw and Papa ran back over to the Dinosaur ride. Lily and I tried to catch a photo of Ty and Jay but they snuck back into the ride on the other side. Once they were finished we made our way to the entrance for dinner reservations at the Rainforest Cafe. The kids were pretty squirrely at this point – Lily hadn’t slept yet, but they ate a good meal. Ty fell asleep on my lap while we waited for the bill, which ended up being just enough for him to recharge his batteries. We went back into the park To watch the Tree of Life light show (short but cool), and got our family photo before heading home. 
As you can imagine, we were all pretty exhausted, and Lily’s face paint was a hot mess. At dinner she was being extra silly and making funny faces. We told her she looked like a zombie panda. This is what she did…
She inspired us to take one more family photo to end the day. Pretty much sums up how we all felt at that point…
Shearer Adventure 