A day at Animal Kingdom, DisneyWorld
We visited DisneyWorld Florida in October 2024 for two weeks. We arrived at around 9pm on our first day so it was pretty much straight to bed and up early in the morning for our first day. Thank you for coming to read A day at Animal Kingdom, DisneyWorld.
As Animal Kingdom is the park that opens the earliest in the morning (with jet lag we were up around 4am in the morning and raring to go!), and felt like an ‘easier’ park to start our visit with we opted to go there on our first day.
We arrived at 7.30 am for an 8 am opening and were some of the first into the park. We timed it perfectly, I was really pleased. It was also due to be a really hot day so it was nice to get there before the heat kicked in. As I’ve said in other blogs, always give yourself more time that you think you’ll need to get to the entrance – it can take time to get parked/dropped off and to walk from the there to the entrance.
There’s a Memory Maker photographer at the main entrance so it’s a great opportunity to get a photo in front of the sign. I would recommend keeping your eyes out for these photographers in the parks and at ‘popular’ spots. We got some lovely family photos from them. When they’ve taken them they can link it straight to your phone, so you receive the photos within a few minutes usually, which is brilliant.
Walking into Animal Kingdom and seeing the Tree of Life in the morning light is one of my favourite memories of the trip. It’s stunning!
We did have a multi pass lightening lane for the day so I had some slots lined up for popular rides. But we headed straight to Na’vi River Journey which didn’t have a line first thing (and it gets BUSY). Its a really sweet ride and a nice first ride of our trip!
After that we made our way around the park going on the following rides:
Dinosaur (hold tight, it’s quite jolty!) – lightening lane
Expedition Everest Rollercoaster – One of the top tier rides at Animal Kingdom, we loved it. lightening lane
Kilimanjaros Safaris – a very popular Safari, worth getting a lightening lane for. It’s also worth trying to go early when the animals will be out and about. They retreat in the heat.
Kali River Rapids – prepared to get soaked! Lightening lane
Shows and Entertainment:
Feathered Friends in Flight. Such a good show, birds fly VERY close to your head.
It’s Tough to be A Bug – inside the Tree of Life it’s a cute show and a lovely sit down in the air conditioning.
Maharajah Jungle Trek – we saw precisely zero animals as it was hot hot hot. But its a nice trail with great theming.
Meet favourite Disney Characters at Adventurers Outpost – we went here first thing whilst there was only a tiny queue. We saw Mickey and Minnie and it was SO cute. We had been given some Autography books as a present before we went and the girls LOVED getting autographs from Characters during our visit.
For lunch we ate at the Rainforest Cafe (the shop there is worth a visit alone) and it worked really well for us on our first day. It was air-conditioned, incredibly themed and reliable kid-friendly food! We had pre-booked our table as it gets very busy.
I felt like we achieved SO much on our visit but we did not get around it all (those who say Animal Kingdom is a half day park are lying!). We didn’t manage to do Flight of Passage, The Lion King Show or the Finding Nemo Show. We also didn’t get to Rafiki’s Planet watch which is where there’s opportunities to be hands on with farm animals and so on – the girls would love that so it’s 100% on the list for next time.
Thanks for reading A day at Animal Kingdom, DisneyWorld. I hope it’s helped you research! If you’d like to find out more about our DisneyWorld experience check out our blog on EPCOT here and Magic Kingdom here. For more information about Animal Kingdom, check out the website here.
