Disney's Animal Kingdom was the one Disney theme park in Orlando that I had never been to. Of course, when I was at Disney Hollywood Studios it was still called MGM Studios, and George Lucas was the only one with the rights to mess up the Star Wars franchise. So, this past weekend I wanted to make my first visit to Animal Kingdom since Jen was down here.
I want to be a Disney person. There has been political stuff going on between them and Governor Desantis. There has been the stupid stuff that Disney has done with ESPN and with the Star Wars franchise, as I mentioned. However, some of my earliest memories are of going to Disney back when they actually took tickets for each ride. Remember the A, B, C, and D level tickets? Just me? Also, when Jen is down, she turns to Disney movies, and I am really grateful for that. The Magic Kingdom is still truly magical, even now.
Some of you may know I have become more of a Universal person. I have a Universal Orlando Annual Pass, and it has been a great investment. Still, that 3 year-old Dumbo ride rider in me really wants to be a Disney person, so we went to check out the one park I've never seen. (I have been to Disney World in California as well, though I have never been to any of the overseas parks.)
We started (relatively) early. Animal Kingdom is only open until 6 pm. We planned to set out around 9 am to be there at 10. That gave us 8 hours, which I figured would be about right. Animal Kingdom is relatively smaller than Magic Kingdom and Epcot. I could spend a few days at Epcot.
Like anything Disney, tickets are ridiculously expensive. Prices vary depending on the day. You want to reserve all your Disney tickets ahead of time. For reference, I spent $350 for our two tickets on the day we went. I like the Disney mobile app fine, but it was hard to figure out how to put both our tickets into my Google Wallet. Disney wants you to do this. It does make things like getting your photos (those ones that rides take just as you are barreling down the hill of the rollercoaster) easier. Ridiculously expensive purchase number 2 was the parking. $30 per car. I will just sum it up here - If you go to Disney, any park, expect to pay three times what you think you will. Afterward, I did consider it this way: If you buy a Porsche, you have to expect that routine maintenance on that car is going to cost several times more than if you bought a Ford. If you go to Disney for vacation, you have to expect you are going to spend several times more money than if you were to just vacation at the beach.
So we park and take the shuttle to the park entrance. Honestly, it's a little underwhelming. Other than having to ride the tram from the parking lot to the entrance, the entrance and the first ten minutes into the park aren't all that different than a visit to the Brevard County Zoo (which, admittedly, is a pretty cool experience). In fact, upon entering Animal Kingdom, the feeling is very similar to a zoo with animal enclosures with spoonbills and babirusas (a pig-like animal) at the start
The park is broken up into six areas: Oasis, Dinoland, Asia, Africa, Pandora, and Discovery Island. Oasis is the entrance, with the aforementioned spoonbills and babirusas, guest services, and, of course concessions to get your sunscreen and mister fans on the way in. Discovery Island sits in the middle of the park, with the other areas around the perimeter. From Oasis, Jen and I made our way first to Dinoland.
As the name suggests, the animals highlighted here are dinosaurs. The first ride we did was rather unoriginally named "Dinosaur". This is a thrill ride, but by thrill ride standards it's pretty tame. Your party gets into a transport that takes you back to the late cretaceous period where you avoid dinosaurs and meteors over some rather rough terrain. It's a bumpy ride with flashing lights and animatronic scares. Not a bad warmup ride.
If your little ones are into dinosaurs then Dinoland will be heaven to them. There are all sorts of dinosaur facts to fill their heads with and a dino-themed play area. For those of us who have grown out of the dinosaur phase, the Dinosaur ride was about all the thrill to be had in Dinoland, so we headed to Asia.
The Asia area is home to the park's one roller coaster, Expedition Everest. The wait for it was 45 minutes, which wasn't bad, and the waiting line is neatly decorated as if you are at a base area or supply merchant. There are Buddhist prayer flags and pictures of Everest and facts about sherpas. Overall, the ride itself is pretty good. There are elements of it that are similar to the Hagrid's Motorbikes ride at Universal Isles of Adventure, though Universal's is still the better ride. It's a ride I would do again.
I ride I will not do again is the Kali River Rapids. Being as the weather had heated up to about 100 degrees with no breeze to speak of, I figured a river ride would be the thing to cool us off. Kali is one of those rides where you strap yourself into one of those big round boats to bounce through some river rapids, getting splashed as you go. After an hour wait in line, that was just what we got. Usually, these rides end with a kind of flume down into a big pool and a big final splash. That we did not get. After traversing some bumpy rapids for a couple minutes we were back at the loading area. I looked at Jen, "That's it?" That was indeed it. The little I was splashed cooled me off a moment. A couple of the young girls across from me in the boat got the brunt of the water and probably enjoyed the ride more.
We were hungry and thirsty and put our name in at the Yak and Yeti Asian restaurant. We were told it would be 75-90 minutes but they took Jen's phone number and would text when our table was ready. We decided to bide our time by seeing the bird show next door.
"Feathered Friends in Flight" is a sort of theatrical presentation with birds trained to soar over the audience and do various tricks. Crows pluck dollar bills from audience members, a parrot does a surprisingly good rendition of Camptown Ladies, and owls and cranes and other birds show off their birdliness. It was quite a good show and perhaps the highlight of the day. The one annoyance was halfway through the show, about a half hour after putting in our name, the restaurant said our table was ready. This had us anxious that our table would be given away when we finally got back to the restaurant.
Thankfully, it wasn't Yak and Yeti has a big variety of mixed specialty drinks that all sounded delicious. I went with flavored lemonade, which would have been better with vodka, of course. Jen stuck with water. The menu is a mix of Asian cuisines, Indian, Japanese including Sushi, and Chinese. I had the Chicken Tikka Masala, which was really good. It had nice spice and big chunks of breast meat. (I prefer when places use more flavorful dark meat as well, but for some reason the American public has opted for texture over flavor.) Jen had the sweet and sour chicken, which rather surprisingly had processed chicken akin to chicken nuggets. So lunch was hit and miss, though the prices weren't bad considering we were at a theme park.
After lunch, we were on to what I was expecting to be the highlight of the day - the safari. Kilimanjaro Safaris is in the Africa section of the park, of course. I had had this idea that the safari would take up most of the park. I am not sure really why I thought that. Perhaps because when the park first opened, that was the most advertised or talked-about exhibit. It does still cover a pretty large area, and it is nice to see the animals having a lot of room to roam and real grass to eat. Obviously, or perhaps not so obvious depending on your expectations, the predators are kept in separate areas from what would be their prey. There are, however, a lot of the local vultures that were hanging around for something dead, it seems. The area is a series of very large enclosures with electrified barriers in the crossings between them.
Lions, giraffes, an elephant, and a couple of rhinos are probably the highlights of what we saw. There are okapi, ostriches, and ankole, an African cattle with these enormous horns. The circuit takes about 15 minutes or so. It was nice to get off of our feet for a bit as well.
After that ride, we took a stroll around the Gorilla Falls Exploration Trail. More zoo-type enclosures with some more animals including a large gorilla enclosure. The gorillas are always fascinating.
The African area was probably my favorite of all the areas in terms of decor. The scenery of Asia reflected Tibet, Nepal, and SE Asia. The African village, "Harambe", felt more realistic than the melange of decors in Asia. I think the heat and humidity also made things seem more real! There were African dance performers and a wood carver, and the "architecture" seemed more authentic.
Overall, I believe Animal Kingdom to have the most beautiful scenery of the Disney parks. Wherever you are in the park has the feeling of a botanic garden. The views over the artificial lake in the center of the park are really impressive. If I only had to pay for the parking ($30), it would be worth it to just stroll through without the animals and rides.
I think Discovery Island, the area in the center, is mostly more zoo-type enclosures and walking trails. There is a fake, oversized baobab tree that is the centerpiece of the entire park, really. It actually kind of reminded me of the old Matterhorn or even Cinderella's Castle at Magic Kingdom - that central landmark. Other than that, I felt like Discovery Island was mostly gift shops. Animal Kingdom seems to have a high ratio of gift stores and concessions to rides compared to other theme parks. It felt everywhere you looked there was someone selling something. We only saw Discovery Island to cut through on our way to "Pandora".
I reminded Jen that Pandora referred to the made-up world of Avatar, and not the little charm store. She still found the Pandora charm store in the park, anyway. She has a nose for them. We went to Pandora for the Na'vi River ride, our final ride of the day. It is a "bioluminescent" tour. I put that in quotes because down here in Cape Canaveral/Cocoa Beach a bioluminescent river tour has real bioluminescent organisms. The Disney ride, is fake mushrooms, amphibian-type creatures, and plantlife lit up with LEDs or backlights. It's one of those very tame river rides - think Small World or Pirates of the Caribbean. It is perhaps the most beautiful of those sorts of rides I have ever been on. There are things to discover wherever you look. By the end, the music got to me even more than It's a Small World, though I didn't go around singing it the rest of the day.
We got a full day in, though there was a good deal of standing in line, as is to be expected. Like I said, it also felt like you were being bombarded with things for sale given the limited amount of rides and attractions. We did not hit every ride and attraction, however, either. So, I think a family could make a pretty full day of it. Was it worth it? It was worth it for me to do once. I would not pay full-price to go back. Perhaps if one day I get a Disney Annual Pass, which I am not likely to do at this point, I would go back. The Brevard County Zoo is almost as good for seeing animals and for the beautiful walk, at a much cheaper price.
A couple things to add: There are several character encounters. Some you need to wait in line for and several are simply roaming the park - what you would expect at a theme park and especially Disney. There is also an educational program for children where they can visit little kiosks throughout the park, learn about the animals, and get stamps into a passport. I thought that was a nice touch.
If you go, take sunscreen and water bottles. There are water refill stations throughout the park, though for a visit at the beginning of July it felt like they could have used a few more.
Great article full of information for anyone thinking about visiting Disney’s Animal Kingdom. For me, I’ll pass on this one. For the cost, I think I’ll stick to the Brevard Zoo.