Friday, April 7, 2017

Animal Kingdom, October 2016

Our second park day brought us to Animal Kingdom.  The park was open 9-7:30 with extra magic hours from 8-9.  I know some people choose their park based on magic hours either heading to a park that has them or avoiding them all together.  We are a little hit and miss with them.  Honestly, I think we chose this park on this day because it was originally the only dining reservation that could get for our entire party of seven.  If you've read any other posts from this trip, you know we ended up with many dining reservations.  Regardless, we ended up at Animal Kingdom this day, taking advantage of the extra morning magic hour.

8:00
We didn't rush into the park as early as usual, because a dear friend of ours was working at the entrance and we wanted to be sure we went through her line so that we could say hi.  And of course, we had to stop to get our picture taken in front of the iconic tree.  We have learned that if we don't take this picture as soon as we enter the park we struggle to get it at all.


Hi Ruth!


After our picture, we headed to Dinoland so we could ride Littlecjc's favorite Animal Kingdom ride, Triceretop Spin, attraction #1.


While Patrick and Littlecjc went on a repeat ride of Triceretop Spin, attraction #2, I rode Primeval Whirl, attraction #3.


This part of the park was basically empty, as everyone enters and runs to either the Safari or Everest.  So, I was the only one on this ride.  We picked up a rider's swap pass for this ride to use for later, but I don't think we ended up using it.  Dinosaur was closed for refurbishment during this trip, and we knew that we wanted to meet Dug and Russel, so we decided to just wait until their set started in a few minutes.  En route, we passed a coffee stand so we decided to get some coffee and a pastry snack for Littlecjc.

9:00
So, at 9:05 we met Dug and Russel, characters #1 and 2 for the first time.


Dug was so much fun and Littlecjc really enjoyed this interaction, I'm so glad that we decided to just kill a little time so that we could meet them.  It was still a little cool this morning for a water ride, but we knew there would be a huge line later in the day and there was no wait at all at this time for the Kali River Rapids.  In the past, we would have just passed this up, but Littlecjc was just tall enough to ride this time, so this is where we headed.  She was given a bracelet after they measured her to alert the ride attendants that she was tall enough to ride but small enough that she needed a lap bar that is available on a few seats in each boat.  So, with her new bracelet we entered Kali River Rapids, attraction #4.  


Once we were nice and wet, we made our way to Everest, taking time to see the monkeys along the way.  You really do need to move slowly through Animal Kingdom, so that you can take it all in.

10:00
It was after 10 by time we made it to the front of the line at Everest.  We both had fastpasses in the 9:30-10:30 hour, but we've learned to always get a rider's swap regardless when Littlecjc is too little to ride.  I rode first, making Expedition Everest attraction #5.


Thank you to the girls in front of me that decided to make this picture more fun.  When I got off the ride and found Patrick and Littlecjc, we were still within our fastpass window, so we decided to save our rider swap pass for later.  Patrick then used his fastpass to ride Expedition Everest, attraction #6.


Our second fastpass selection was for Safari from 10:50-11:50, so it was time for us to cross the park again.  We had to stop along the way to explore the drums set up for everyone to play.


11:00
Our entire group had these fastpasses together, so we met our friends here before we all rode Kilimanjaro Safaris, attraction #7.


When our safari ended, we decided to split from our friends again.  They had breakfast at the Rainforest Cafe inside the park that morning so they weren't hungry for lunch yet, but we were.  We really enjoy the Flame Tree Barbeque so that's where we were headed.  Along the way, we came across Flik, another character we had never met, so we decided to stop making Flik, character #3.


12:00
We finally made it to Flame Tree and as usual there was a large line, but there are many seating areas here if you just keep walking further down the path.  We all had fastpasses together again at 12:30-1:30 at the Adventures Outpost to meet Mickey and Minnie.  Therefore, we quickly ate our food and met back up with our friends to use our final fastpass and meet Mickey and Minnie, characters #4 and 5.


1:00
After we scanned our bands to use our last fastpass, we searched to see if anything else was available, and we were able to get fastpasses for an upcoming Finding Nemo show with an entrance time of 1:30-1:50.  So, when we finished seeing Mickey and Minnie, we headed back to Dinoland where we rode Triceretop Spin, attraction #8.


When we finished our spin, we had enough time for a bathroom break and grabbed a drink before getting in line to see Finding Nemo.  Once we got in line, we also searched the app to see if any other fastpasses were available for us to get after the show.  We ended up with It's Tough to be a Bug from 2:45-3:45.

2:00
This hour was basically spent inside the very nice theater, home of Finding Nemo the Musical, attracction #9.

3:00
Upon leaving the Nemo show, we headed to the Tree of Life to use our fast pass for It's Tough to be a Bug, attraction #10.


Again, once we had scanned our bands to enter we looked to see if any other fastpasses were still available.  Our friends still hadn't ridden Kali River Rapids so we decided to pick this up at 5:55-6:55.  When we finished the attraction, we decided to head to the Lion King since we still hadn't seen this show today and no trip to Animal Kingdom is complete without this show.  Our friends had caught one of the morning shows, so it was just the three of us that went to wait in the standby line for the 4:00 show.

4:00
This hour was devoted to Festival of the Lion King, attraction #11.  This is definitely my favorite show in this park, since it seems to have a little bit of everything.

5:00
After the Lion King, we didn't really have enough time to do anything else before our 5:20 dinner reservation at Tusker House, which is right next to the Lion King theater.  Once seated for our dinner, we met Safari Mickey, Safari Donald, Safari Daisy, and Safari Goofy, characters #6, 7, 8, and 9.





6:00
After our dinner, we quickly headed over to Kali River Rapids, attraction #12 to use our final fastpass for the day.  Here's Littlecjc with her extra lap bar that I mentioned earlier.


7:00
Our day at Animal Kingdom was mostly over at this point.  We made our way up to the front of the park and sat down to make sure that we got to see the Tree of Life come alive at least one time before calling it a day and heading back to our hotel.

Animal Kingdom always seems a little calmer than the other parks, but we still got a lot in.  On this day, we saw 9 characters and 12 attractions.






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