It was another absolutely gorgeous day in Central Florida, one of the main reasons I moved down here from Wisconsin almost 20 years ago (hard to believe I have been here half of my life). Since Emily gets more than her fair share of quality time with the boys, coupled with the fact that she had a ton of things she wanted to get done around the house, I decided to take the boys to Animal Kingdom for a guys’ day. Animal Kingdom is a favorite park for the boys in the family as it is a beautiful place to explore even if you don’t want to do any attractions.
We set out on our journey at about 11:30 and decided that we should grab some lunch on our way in. Since sandwiches were requested, we decided on Firehouse Subs in Hunter’s Creek. It was halfway to our destination and perfectly located just off the 417. The boys demolished some grilled cheese sandwiches and I got my traditional Italian Sub. We hosed down the crumbs on our table, hopped in the car, and headed to the park.
Our first mission of the day, since we were renting a stroller, was to ride the tram. Many times when we go to the park we bring our stroller and end up walking the parking lot to the front gate. The boys enjoy all forms of transportation so the tram was a great way to kick off our guys’ day adventure. After making our way into the park, we rented a stroller and headed back to our first destination, the Wildlife Express Train to Rafiki’s Planet Watch. Having worked at Disney’s Animal Kingdom for a few years I know that Rafiki’s Planet Watch isn’t always a place that most Guests take the time to visit. Because Hunter has been so into reptiles, it is really a cool place to go to see some exotic scaled creatures.
We completed our traditional trek around Rafiki’s with a couple passes by the reptile windows and also stopped at the new Lion Guard location to pick up a map and a couple buttons for the boys. The boys also enjoyed the backyard scavenger hunt on the trail as we were headed back to the train. One of the great Cast Members there got the boys started on their Wilderness Explorers book and badges for the day. After seeing what we needed to see it was back on the train for our return ride to Harambe (Africa).
Being so close to the Pangani Forest Trail we agreed to explore the walking trail to see some of our favorites. We made pretty quick work of the trail because Sawyer decided he would wait until the halfway point to proclaim his need to use the bathroom. We hustled through the rest of the trail and worked our way back to the Asia section of the park. After emptying the 30 minute bladders we made our way to one of our traditional guys’ day spots at the park, watching the descent on the Everest attraction. I captured the speed and screams in the video below (I still haven’t been on that one).
Being that it had been 2 hours since lunch it was only fitting that our boys were “starving”, an often over-utilized word in our house to define a feeling of “I am barely hungry but I need sugar.” Since Dinoland was one of our next stops we made our way to the Dino Bites location and got ice creams and a pretzel. It was a perfect stop and delicious midday snack to give us the boost we needed to make it to the end of our day. Sawyer indicated that he wanted to ride TriceraTop Spin after snack time. I used my traditional 243 napkins to get the chocolate ice cream film off the entirety of Sawyer’s face before strolling over to the attraction. Sawyer loves the spinning attractions like Dumbo, Magic Carpets of Aladdin, and Triceratops Spin. Lucky for me, those are ones that I can handle. I caught some fun footage of the boys in the video below.
We had intended to do some digging at the Dino Dig site but the area was closed for refurbishment, along with Kali River Rapids, which I was tempted to ride at the end of our day. We decided that we would go back to Africa and see what the wait time was for the Safari. Once we arrived we saw the sign read 45 minutes which wasn’t an amount of time I was eager to wait with boys who were ready to head home. We agreed that we had seen our fill of the park for the day so we made our way back to the car and headed home. It was a great day spending time with the boys on what could not have been a more perfect day weather wise. The video below captures the highlights of our fun day at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. Hope you enjoy!
That was so awesome! (As always!) Loved the pictures and the video and the music with it. DAK is so much fun and this is a great capture of it.