Bay Oaks Seniors on the Go: Part Three - Bay Oaks Social Seniors visit Walt Disney World

THE ANIMAL KINGDOM

On Sunday, the Bay Oaks Social Seniors checked out of the Swan Resort and headed for the Animal Kingdom. The Animal Kingdom is one of the largest animal theme parks in the world. The park is located on 500 rolling acres with over 1700 animals and 4 million trees and shrubs.

Checking out in the lobby of the Swan Hotel

Madge is waiting for the slowpokes

Irma and Mary getting into the van

The entrance to the Animal Kingdom

The Tree of Life

A closer look at the Tree of Life and the animal carvings on its trunk

The Tree of Life is an iconic symbol of the park. It is huge and has hundreds of animal sculptures carved into its trunk and spreading branches. It is 14 stories (145 feet) tall and fifty feet wide. Ten artists worked full-time for 18 months to create the 325 animal carvings on the Tree. There is even a theater housed in the Tree of Life root system, where the “It’s Tough to be a Bug!” show is performed. The artistry of the carvings, their size and their positioning all over the tree trunk are amazing. The animal renderings can also catch you unawares because you’ve probably never seen anything else quite like them.

Do you see the “hidden Mickey” in the tree trunk? Hidden Mickeys are all over Disney World. Some are obvious, some aren’t. It consists of a circle for Mickey’s face and 2 smaller circles where Mickey’s ears would be. Give up? The hidden Mickey is kind of a dark grey blob roughly in the shape of Mickey’s face and ears, and to the left of the buffalo head on the lower right half of the trunk.

An aardvark and beetle side by side

A grasshopper poised to take a huge leap

A frog clinging to a rock

Flamingos on a Discovery Island Trail surrounding the Tree of Life

A duck pond on a Discovery Island Trail

A chimp at the entrance to the theater housed in the Tree of Life root system

(The story goes that a likeness of David Greybeard the Chimpanzee, one of Jane Goodall’s real-life chimps, was added to the tree of life after Jane Goodall visited the park and saw that there were no chimpanzees on the tree.)

A “theater marquee” carved into a tree branch

The name of the show is "It’s Tough to be a Bug!"

A walrus and a rhino

A primitive-looking salamander (?)

A horse leaping from the trunk of a tree

Baboons

Entrance to the Kilimanjaro Safaris

Kilimanjaro Safaris is an attraction that simulates a safari ride in an open-sided vehicle through the savanna of East Africa.

Waiting to board the safari bus

Our safari driver and bus

Harambe Wildlife Reserve

The 110-acre Harambe Wildlife Reserve is a sanctuary dedicated to the protection of African animals. Aboard an open-air safari vehicle, we had a bumpy trip through rugged terrain and saw an array of exotic animals in various habitats. The real Harambe Reserve is 800 square miles of natural terrain located in Harambe, East Africa.

The safari bus winding through the reserve

A mother elephant and her baby

White flamingos and an ibis or two in the reserve

There is speculation that this island is part of a "Hidden Mickey."

White pelicans

Rhinos

White rhino

Factoid: In 2006, Nande and Hasani, two of Animal Kingdom’s white rhinos, were transferred to Uganda’s Ziwa animal sanctuary, in the first attempt to re-introduce white rhinos to the country. Due to civil strife, the white rhinoceros had become extinct in the area. In June 2009, Nande gave birth to a male calf, the first such birth in Uganda in over 25 years. As of June, 2013, there are 13 white rhinos in the sanctuary. The Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary has become a tourist destination to observe rhinos in their natural habitat.

Gnus taking it easy

Gazelles

A giraffe munching on a tree frond

An ostrich squawking at us. Is she warning us to stay away from her nest?

Lunch time

Nicole, Robert, Jan, Laurie and Mary in front of a jungle mural in the Pizzafari Restaurant

The Festival of the Lion King Show was full of pageantry and fun. It is a live stage musical that is an interpretation of the Disney animated film. The show is inside an enclosed theater and the performers are in costumes inspired by traditional African dress. The show does not follow the story of the movie but has songs from the movie and other sources which are interpreted by a troop of singers and dancers. This is combined with aerobatics performed by the Tumble Monkeys, performers dressed in orange monkey costumes, and an aerial ballerina/bluebird with her mate.