Animal Kingdom Recap
Happy Monday friends!
Anyone else just completely mind blown that it is already July?
The start of a new week, month and quarter all on a Monday feels like good luck and the perfect little scenario for my nerdy brain (lol) so I am excited to jump into my work day today! I will say, I feel a little swirly because I took off Friday (which I will recap today, the girls and I spent the day in Animal Kingdom) and then this week it’s a short week for the holiday so really, I am trying to cram so much into a short week and the start of all the things gives me a little extra motivation!
Let’s jump into today’s blog post, shall we?
I’ve mentioned before that we became Disney Annual Passholders this spring so this summer the girls and I are going about every other week and knocking out our Disney Park Bucket list! We had never been to Animal Kingdom so on Friday we woke up early and drove the 2 hours to Disney to experience it!
Spoiler alert, we absolutely LOVED it and can’t wait to take Joe because we all agree, this will be his favorite park once he goes.
We left the house around 7:30 AM and got to Animal Kingdom around 9:30 AM, traffic wasn’t bad at all going to the park and we were thankful for that. We were so excited to go inside!
First stop, the tree of life for a few photos and then we honestly just started wandering around and grabbed rides as we wandered. The wait times weren’t bad at all (the longest was Avatar at just over an hour and everything else was 30-45 mins). I felt like we could take our time, there was a ton of shade and the rides were well spread apart! When we travel I love to just wander and not really have a plan so that is what we did!
The girls absolutely love the River Rapids ride. It was about a 40 minute wait and the water did feel nice to cool down but, I got soaked. The girls wet and of course, out of the 3 of us I was soaked, like dripping wet and it lasted all day, LOL. So maybe don’t do this as the first ride unless you don’t mind being wet.
We failed and didn’t take a picture before this ride so every other photo I look like a wet dog but, yolo! LOL
Paisley wanted to stop everywhere and take pictures. Savannah didn’t but she amused her sister throughout the day. I felt like Animal Kingdom was such a chill park and there was plenty of time to hang and take photos, stroll between rides which makes Disney more enjoyable in my opinion.
Paisley loves the Dumbo ride at Magic Kingdom so when she saw the Dino ride, she begged us to go on it. It was a 5 minute wait so we were in and ya’ll when it is blasting hot outside nothing feels better than the wind on a ride. These rides make me nervous, I don’t love heights and they messed with me all ride going up and down.
After some rides, we grabbed lunch. We took our time because it looked like it would storm but it didn’t thankfully so after we ate we made our way to the safari which I was really excited about. Savannah was kind of blah about going on it but she ended up loving it.
The animals were beautiful, the grounds were amazing (hard to remember we were in central Florida in an amusement park) and the drivers were so knowledgeable and fun!
From here we were SO freaking hot and ready to start heading home but we absolutely wanted to do the Avatar rides. For whatever I didn’t get any pictures as we went that way and rode those rides and then ya’ll, we came out of Avatar to a hurricane. It was sunny when we went inside and storming so so bad when we got out so I definitely didn’t get pictures then.
We ended up running to the gift shop, getting soaked and trying to wait it out but it wasn’t stopping. We bought ponchos and went to the car and we were so wet. It never stopped raining so our 2 hour drive home turned into 3 and driving soaked with wet shoes and socks was awful but we made it and all agreed it was worth it! Lol.
We already can’t wait to go back and it’s safe to say, we are becoming bigger Disney fans each visit!
On this trip this is what we did:
Rides/Attractions:
It’s Tough To Be A Bug
River Rapids
Everest Rollercoaster (Savannah)
Nemo’s Big Blue and Beyond show
Dinosaur
Triceratops Spin
Safari
River Journey
Avatar ** This has been my favorite ride at Disney so far, such a fun experience, so well done and so so pretty inside the ride. I cannot wait to go back on this ride and the girls agree too!
Food:
Dino Restaurant for lunch
Fruit Bars from a kiosk for dessert while we waited in line for Avatar
