Day2, first park

Animal Kingdom
It took us a bit to get to the park today, waiting for our tickets and such, so we decided to use the short day for the Animal Kingdom Park, which turned out to be a great choice. We started off with "It's tough to be a bud", which we've seen before in DisneyLand but this time we didn't get stabbed in the back (a long whiney story there...). The show was still great, with some fresh changes since the last time. The best part of the show is that it takes place under the Tree of Life, an amazing sculpture that according to Maegan has 324 animals carved into it (she researched it). We then went to Dinoland, which was a disappointment in my opinion. The only ride we went on was the the..ah..Dinosaur ride, which is a sad copy of the raiders of the lost arc ride. Gwyn seemed to like it, so that makes it ok. Maegan was having none of it and didn't go on the ride. She did go on the Mt Everest ride, which is a ball. A roller coaster that goes backwards, corkscrewing down the inside of the mountain...awesome. We got the picture developed, which we later lost...more to come on that.
The asian area was amazing, very well detailed with some really cool ideas. At this point we were on our way over to the savannah ride when we stopped to get our faces painted. Maegan got a cheetah face, and Gwyn a bird of some sort while I got a tribal symbol on the side of my face...pretty cool. We had just finished getting them done, and we were taking pictures when this lady in a Disney uniform approached us and asked us what we were doing. Not sure what to say because I thought we were in trouble, and I'd never been in trouble before at disneyland, I said "Taking Pictures..."
She then told us that a family that had been chosen to be in the parade hadn't shown up, and would we like to take their place. So of course we said "YES!"
So we sat on a float with just the four of us, dressed up as explorers waving to everyone for the next half hour. And that's alot of arm waving...my arm is still killing me. Needless to say it was a blast. The girls thought it was the coolest thing ever, and even though you could see the same look of "who are these people" on everyones faces, when they saw us beaming and waving, they smiled and waved back and took our picture. We felt famous. Even afterwards we would see people pointing us out to others and whispering. It was cool.
We were given a disposable camera to use during the parade, so once the film gets developed I'll put up some pics. It was definately the highlight of our day.
The only downside to it was that when the day was done we realized that when we went back to the locker after the parade we left our Mt Everest picture sitting on the bench. And thanks to the great customer service we are going to get it reprinted, so it's all good.
After the parade we went to the Kilaminjaro Savannah ride, which was pretty neat. Real animals in some pretty realistic natural environments. We got some pretty good pics during that too.

So at the days end the vote for the best event and best part of the day is:

Maegan: best event: Mount Everest best part: Parade
Gwyn: best event: Mount Everest best part: Parade
Martha: best event: Mount Everest best part: Parade
Meesh: best event: Mount Everest best part: Parade

Pictures will be coming...I promise.

By special request we are going to post about my interaction with a hologram. Gwyn and Maegan had found this desplay of a certain creepy type of spider. Of course Martha didn't care for it and we all laughed. Then with my certain innate curiosity, i reached in to touch the glass or whatever was holding the spider, when the spider moved. I jumped. I jumped far, and loudly causing the girls to scream and jump even further. It turns out that they had the spider on some sort of hologram, which was designed to wiggle when you put your hand inside. The jerks. Unfortunately the scare caused my back to spasm, which made it hurt badly (I am recovering from back problem anyways). The girls think that this is very funny.