We answer your questions, we give advice, and help you plan your magical vacation; then we get to take our families to Walt Disney World. What is it like when a travel agent takes her family to Disney World? Well, let me tell you.
We are in Florida visiting family so this wasn’t a full Disney vacation, but you can’t be an hour away from Disney and not spend any time in the magic! We decided to go to Animal Kingdom for the day. Last year we visited Magic Kingdom and Epcot so I thought this year we would hit Animal Kingdom. On this visit my children are 8, 5, and 3. I made reservations for a character lunch at the Tusker House Restaurant at 1:40pm so that we would have a chance to visit the characters. The park hours today are 9 am-7 pm and according to touringplans.com the crowd levels are at a 3.9 out of 10 so it should be a great day!
This is how are day went…
We had to travel from a little over an hour away but we want to get there when the park opens so we left the house at 7:30am. We arrived at the park around 8:45 am and got a great parking spot in unicorn 24. We probably could have walked to the park but the kids wanted to take the tram so off we went.
Tip: If you plan on taking the tram don’t load up your stroller since in a few steps you will have to unload it to fold it up for the tram.
We went through security and headed into the park. We walked onto Discover Island and went to the right toward “Its Tough to be a Bug”. 
Right before the entrance we saw Dug and Russell from the movie Up and stopped to get our autographs and picture. Then we went to see “Its Tough to Be A Bug”. After that we went back to the right to head to Camp Minnie-Mickey to see the 10:30 am show of Festival of the Lion King. Its a long walk into that area but the show is worth it. After the show the bathrooms and characters are mobbed so we did it before. The Festival of the Lion King show was awesome as expected and then we followed the mob out of Camp Minnie-Mickey and worked our way to Africa.
The next stop was the Kilimanjaro S
afaris. There was a 60 minute wait but the fastpass return time was during our lunch reservation so we decided to get in line. Of course about 20 minutes into the line my youngest had to use the bathroom. I left the line with him and headed for the nearest bathroom. We checked with the cast member and he said we could get back in line after our trip to the bathroom. (the rest of our group was still in line) I felt terrible about trying to get back in the line so the cast member said we could go to where they collect the strollers from the line and wait for our family there. When our family got to that point we jumped back in the line. We really enjoyed the safari.
After the safari was a quick ride to Rafiki’s Planet Watch on the Wildlife Express Train but we didn’t do much since we had to get back for our lunch reservation. We never made it to the main building. We did an activity at the Kids Discovery Club and then rode ba
ck.
We got to the Tusker House just in time for our lunch reservation. We had a great meal here and worked with Chef Mary for my daughters dietary needs. She was AMAZING!!! I contacted Disney ahead and filled out the form but forget to mention it at check in. My mistake but they caught up quick. ALWAYS remember to remind them when you check in if you have a special dietary need. We had a great picture with Donald Duck and then met Goofy, Daisy Duck, and Mickey Mouse inside.
After lunch we decided to skip the parade, although at 3 pm people were already lining up, and went over to Dinoland USA. The first stop was the Dinosaur ride. My 3 year old did not like it but the other kids did. It was definitely scary and dark at times. Next we decided to split up and I took the older two on Primeval Whirl while my youngest rode TriceraTop Spin a couple times. We had a few minutes before heading over to the 5 pm show of Finding Nemo – The Musical so I took my daughter on TriceraTop Spin and then it was off to the show.
Finding Nemo – The Musical was also a great show. We sat in the far right of the left section when looking at the stage in the 3rd row up from the middle. These were great seats. The actors move around a lot and we got several up close views of Marlin and Dory since they exit on the left side several times.
After the show we decided to split up again. I took my daughter to ride Expedition Everest and the boys went to play in the Boneyard. Its just a playground but everything is more fun in Disney. They had a great time while we rode Expedition Everest. Thankfully there was only a 5 minute wait so my daughter and I rode the ride twice. Expedition Everest is a great roller coaster. Although it may not be the scariest one out there is has some great features such as a pretty fast speed as well so going both forward and backward. My favorite part is going backwards in the dark really fast.
After we all met up together we ran over to Kali River Rapids in Asia. It was our last ride of the day and some of us got really wet. Everyone enjoyed it! We wanted to try and squeeze in one more trip on the safari but there wasn’t enough time. Instead we just made our way back out of the park to the trams.
We had a really fun day although I don’t feel like we did everything. With the exception of Kilimanjaro Safaris we never waited more than 10 minutes for a ride. We missed the parade and didn’t stop for any of the animal encounters. As I always say, “Enjoy everything you do and don’t try to do everything!” That’s exactly what we did. We will just have to come back again!
