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We decided to do a short three day stay in Disney before starting our cruise. We fit all four parks into three days. Pretty impressive.

My Mom's favorite part of the Magic Kingdom is Cinderella's castle. We actually had lunch inside the castle, which pleased her to no end.

Here's my Dad studying the map of Animal Kingdom. My brother and I were teasing him that he was planning military maneuvers to see every square inch of the parks in three days. He was not amused.

The only park that we got decent pictures from was the Animal Kingdom. Central to the park is the Tree of Life.

The Tree of Life is a man-made sculpture. Every little twist or knot in the wood is actually a sculpture of a different animal.

Here is a shot from behind the tree. It is really spectacular.

And here is a close-up of some of the carvings. There are 324 carvings in all.

Apparently, when Jane Goodall visited the part, she noted that there were no Chimpanzee carvings in the tree. Disney added this sculpture, Jane Goodall's favorite chimpanzee, Graybeard.

After the Tree of Life, we started exploring the park for wildlife. This picture reminds me of a Dennis Leary bit. "What are you?" "I'm an otter." "What do you do?" "I do cute little human things with my hands." "Okay, your free to go."

It was tough getting a picture of the tigers through their glass enclosure. This one came out pretty good.

And here's a fruit bat.

A komono dragon. My brother would kill for a pet komono dragon. Probably more like my brother's pet komono dragon would kill him.

The gorilla enclosure was very impressive. At first, this large silver back was hiding out in the forest.

He eventually came out and gave us a good view.

This is a cool shot of him drinking from the water fall. Absolutely incredible creatures.

Next stop was the "African Safari" ride. I was here before and didn't see squat. I was really looking forward to this ride.

We saw a wart hog and a kid on the ride told his Mom it was Pumba (from the Lion King). Cute.

These are an African antelope species called bonteboks. They are very tiny.

Here is a white rhyno. You can tell it is a white rhyno because it's mouth is wider than a black rhyno.

Apparently they got their name when someone noticed they had wider mouths than the black rhynos, and someone misunderstood him and thought he said white instead of wide. Interesting.

This is another African antelope species. It is called a Bongo.

Here is a pride of lions soaking in the sun.

And here are some African elephants.

And another elephant.

This isn't a great picture, but you can't have an African safari with out Zebras.

Here are some giraffes.

Here are some Hippopotamus chilling out in the water.

And we wrap up the safari with an alligator, even though they are native to North America and not Africa. I could be wrong, though.

Here's another shot of the gator with it's mouth open.

Another part of the part that was cool was the area dedicated to dinosaur. Here is a skeleton of a T-rex.

Here's a close-up of another T-rex skeleton.