Animal Kingdom & Hollywood Studios

After driving down Friday night, we were ready to hit the ground running first thing in the morning on Saturday! We planned to arrive early at Animal Kingdom to squeeze in as much as we could before the park got too full. And it worked great! We pulled in the parking lot at sunrise, and we were ready to roll!

I had done tons of research on all the parks, learning the best routes/plans, with all the rides that would be the best for our group, and of course all the food and drinks and treats we wanted to try as well. I had a note in my phone for each park with tentative itinerary’s I made, plus tips & tricks for each park, and food and drinks at each park. I was SO prepared!

So first, we ran straight to Pandora to hit up the Na’vi River Journey boat ride. The world of Pandora was awesome, and it was such a fun, easy ride to start off with. It got us all in the mood for more fun to come.

Next up was a walk over to Africa for a coconut cold brew and pistachio croissant from Kusifiri on the way to the safari.

I had seen that the animals were most likely to be out and active early in the morning, and that proved true, because we saw so many animals! Elephants, giraffes, lions, monkeys, hippos, gators, goats, ostrich, hyenas, antelope, rhinos, pelicans, flamingos, and a few more I can’t remember the names of.

Animal Kingdom also has all these fun stops for the kids to do to earn their Wilderness Explorer badge (like from “Up”), and we had fun finding those as well.

Addison was a little too shy for some of the characters, but Emerson was so excited to meet so many of them! First up was Goofy, Donald & Daisy (who Addie was not scared of), then Mickey & Minnie!

And we just so happened to come across Kevin out adventuring across the lands, and Addison got super excited to see him.

After a great viewing of the amazing Tree of Life, we wound our way underneath the tree for the Zootopia 4D show, which was super cool, and definitely one of all of our favorites.

We headed back to Africa for lunch from the Harambe Market, where Nana and I shared a tandori chicken wrap (or something like that), and the girls shared a chicken finger kids meal. And next up was the Festival of the Lion King show, which was awesome. And we also went to the Finding Nemo musical show too.

We were all ready for another pick-me-up and a snack after that, so I got the Bunny Burrow Brew (creamy blueberry cold brew) and we all shared a Mickey pretzel and some truffle garlic fries from Flame Tree BBQ.

We had park-hopper passes, so we finished up at Animal Kingdom, and then hopped ourselves over to Hollywood Studios for the late afternoon/evening activities. It started flooding rain right as we got in, so people were leaving, which worked out perfectly in our favor, because we got to walk right in to the Frozen show with now wait, which usually has a super long line. Next up was Star Tours, which Addie was just barely tall enough to ride, but so very brave!

We headed back to Toy Story Land after that, and waited in a longer-than-advertised line for Toy Story Mania, and the girls absolutely loved that one.

We wanted to have dinner back there at Woody’s Lunch Box, but there were about a zillion people trying to eat there, and approximately three tables, and we were all tired and hangry and it was almost 8pm already. So I consulted the Disney app for a huge quick-service restaurant with plenty of seating, and we ended up at ABC Commissary (which wasn’t even on my list), and all very much enjoyed our meals here, and had cushioned seats in an air-conditioned building, which was just what we all needed to reset our attitudes by that point 😉

We hoofed it alllll the way to the edge of the park in time for the Fantasmic light show at 8:30, and that was a truly amazing show! We loved all the music and the water and lights, but we could have done with a little less of the villains and such during that point.

We made it back to the hotel a little before 10pm, and pretty much just crashed right away! We had been up since 6am, and walked over 20,000 steps, so we were very much ready for bedtime!

 

Video for Animal Kingdom:

 

 

 

Video for Hollywood Studios: