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Thursday, March 31, 2016

Day 2 of WDW Trip: Reviewing Animal Kingdom



Day 2 of the Traveling Through Disney WDW trip took us over to Animal Kingdom to explore all that is nature and conservation. The park opened an hour early from 8-9am for extra magic hours. 

For those of you unfamiliar, you can find extra magic hours at one park each day and there are AM or PM magic hours. During these hours the park is only open to on resort guests. This gives them ample opportunity if they choose to take advantage of the park having less crowds and being able to ride the majority of the rides prior to the park opening up to everyone else. 

In the past, I have shied away from extra magic hours but on this trip I decided to test them out again and boy did it make a difference. Especially useful during last week when it was super packed and the crowds were overwhelming by noon each day. 

Now, let me preface this post by saying I'm a big lover of Animal Kingdom. It has become one of my families favorite parks over the years solely because it is the best park where we do not feel rushed and overly crowded. Animal Kingdom is a great place to have a slower paced day and also be able to still see and do everything in the park. 

They are also currently expanding Animal Kingdom to include a new land called "Pandora - The World of Avatar." Just like the movie, this new land will completely catapult you into the movie and feature Avatar based rides, restaurants, and more. I can't wait to see what they do with the new land. It's slated to open in 2017 right now so we will have to wait a while.

Pandora - The World of Avatar projection

Another change we noticed while at AK was they are hard at work on the new Rivers of Light nighttime show. We saw the lake being transformed into quite a large amphitheater right near the entrance to Expedition Everest. This new light and firework show will surely draw in the crowds to AK whereas this park normally closes at 6pm daily. Not any longer, AK is adding Rivers of Light on top of nighttime safaris over at Kilimanjaro Safaris. It is truly going to become a much busier and exciting park over the next year. Rivers of Light is expected to open in late Spring 2016. 

    
Now that we've discussed all that we saw going on in the parks let's talk about what the Traveling Through Disney team did on our day at the park. As I said, we took advantage of the EMH and headed straight for Expedition Everest. We ended up riding the backwards and forwards roller coaster twice before the wait time got to be a little too much for us. We enjoyed it immensely! 
  

After fun with ride photos we headed over to Dinoland USA and hit up another of our top rides called Dinosaur! We love this ride and did it twice as well before the lines got crazy. 


   

Can you tell we love the on ride photos yet? My little traveler is also a big fan of character meet and greets and AK does not disappoint. AK features some rare characters that you can only meet at AK so we took full advantage of these meet and greets. 

She met Flik, Pocahontas, Tarzan, and Baloo and King Louie on our first day at AK. We had an absolute blast!!

    
  


After dinner we had an amazing buffet meal inside the Animal Kingdom Lodge at Boma. They had such a great selection of food and don't even get me started on the deserts. It was so good I forgot to take photos haha! 

So that was our day 2! Comment below with your favorite things to do at Animal Kingdom, we'd love to hear from you!!

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