Favorite Attractions: Animal Kingdom
I will fully admit that Animal Kingdom is my least favorite park. It feels ridiculous even saying it because there are SO many things I love about Animal Kingdom. But, it’s the hottest park on property (for real, it’s not in your head) and I hate the layout. Regardless of all that, tho, I do have lots of favorites there and this post will share what I love to do during a day at Animal Kingdom.
First off, I really love just staring at the Tree of Life. That’s totally not an attraction, but the Tree of Life is home to an attraction, and its intricate details make it truly remarkable to examine.
Everything in Animal Kingdom is absolutely beautiful and it’s such an amazing park to slow to stroll and just take everything in.
Harambe Market, while (again) not officially an attraction in and of itself, is home to hustle and bustle and so many of those intricate details Disney is so well known for.
Plus a few instagram-worthy walls.
I can’t say this next one is a favorite attraction of mine, but it is my husband’s all-time favorite ride: Expedition Everest!
I have ridden it before and I really loved it, but despite my history of having an iron stomach for rides, there’s something about the backwards around a curve in the dark that just throws me off for the rest of the day. It’s such an amazing, thrilling, fun ride that I am going to get some Dramamine the next time we go and give it a try. I’ll just make the FastPass for a bit later in the day, in case it doesn’t work. 😉
I think it’s a tie for me on favorite ride in Animal Kingdom. 1 is the Kilimanjaro Safaris! I love love love this ride! It’s said to be better to get on early in the day for optimal animal viewing, but our most recent time we were on mid-afternoon and saw SO many animals, including a female lion actually awake and a huge tower of giraffes (Did you know the word for a group of giraffes is a tower?? I had to Google it because I knew gaggle of geese, murder of crows, school of fish, etc., but not the term for giraffes).
My other favorite ride in Animal Kingdom is Dinosaur! This ride used to scare the crap out of me when I was a kid (back when it had a way cooler name: Countdown to Extinction).
I love roller coasters and Dinosaur certainly isn’t one, but it has the thrilling excitement with how fast the ride is and the bumpy-type movements. It’s actually a decent length (I always feel like roller coaster rides and Tower of Terror are just too short).
Pandora just opened in May 2017 and, when we went in November/December, the whole area was still crazy. It was virtually impossible to get FastPasses for Flight of Passage, and we knew we just didn’t want to spend hours devoted purely to standing in line. We did manage to get a FastPass to Na’Vi River Journey and we loved it!!
Definitely one of my top favorite attractions. The details were stunning and it was pretty awe-inspiring to see all the creativity. I just wish it were longer. I could sit in that boat all day taking in every last detail.
Finally, I’m not sure if a show is considered an attraction, but I’m deciding it counts so let’s talk about Rivers of Light! I know I talked about a lot of things in this post in my Family Disney Trip 2017: Day 4 – Animal Kingdom post, but Rivers of Light is definitely a must-see for me now. It was short, which I have heard some complaints about, but I thought it was perfect. We didn’t have to sit too long before the show started, and I think it was the perfect duration. Our 5-year-old niece didn’t get bored at all during it (which means we weren’t sitting for too long) and it kept it interesting.
I feel like it could have been easy for them to drag it out and make it longer than it needed to be, and I’m glad they didn’t.
What are some of your favorite Animal Kingdom attractions?
magically lirio 