Is AK still considered a half-day park?

[_19disnA]

How much time you spend at any Disney park depends on what you like to do and how crowded it is. If it is wall to wall people, simply getting from one place to another will take a long time and the wait times will be long. I don't get where any one Disney park is any more hot then another..........this is Florida after all and it is going to be HOT/HUMID for much of the year. That is true of every Disney park in Orlando. All of them have paved paths/walkways, that isn't something unique to AK.

 

[gharter]

We were there last week. Have always LOVED AK. With Nemo closed and Everest closed, Lion King still in its modified form, the park seemed more like a half day park. And we've never felt that way in the past. We did all the other attractions and walked all the paths. And we were done by 2 without Genie +.

 

[Disneyfan754321]

It's one of my family's favorite parks, we went to the Bird show, Lion King and such.. my favorite part of this park is it's really relaxed. Great park for mid week. With all the shows and animal attractions you could not do it half a day

 

[luv2cheer92]

Not even remotely close. I can spend more time there than any of the other parks.

It's never been a half day park, lots to do, and always the most repeatable since most things are a different experience every time.

 

[bakerworld]

Every park is half day for us - LOL - but I could see being able to spend a whole day in AK between the Yak and Yeti, Dawa Bar and Nomad Lounge with a few attractions sandwiched in and Rainforest Café on the way out.

 

[thanxfornoticin]

Not even remotely close. I can spend more time there than any of the other parks.

It's never been a half day park, lots to do, and always the most repeatable since most things are a different experience every time.

Agreed - especially now that EE is back, and the park is almost back to being fully re-opened.

 

[CaptainAmerica]

I need two days at Animal Kingdom, though we do take an afternoon break each day. We can EASILY spend two hours in each of the trails watching the tigers and gorillas, and another hour chatting with the cast members at Rafiki's. I don't need to ride a single ride to have a rich, fulfilling DAK day.

 

[Smugpugmug]

I love AK in terms of theming (I think it's the best themed Disney park in Orlando hands down) but it is still a half day park for my family and I. We are rope droppers so we're about knock out all of the rides, the trails and the bird show by 1-2pm. I wish there was just a little more to do ride wise. I can definitely drag it out to early evening if I reride Everest a few times.

 

[CaptainAmerica]

We are rope droppers so we're about knock out all of the rides, the trails and the bird show by 1-2pm.

I'm sorry but that's just factually impossible. Even if you had a teleporter, the duration of the rides and shows makes this impossible unless you're skipping things.

Now maybe that's true, and there's only a half day worth of stuff you WANT to do, but that's different than doing everything.

 

[Smugpugmug]

I'm sorry but that's just factually impossible. Even if you had a teleporter, the duration of the rides and shows makes this impossible unless you're skipping things.

We always skip the Lion King show, Kali and the Dumbo clone ride in Dinoland but I've been able to do FOP, Navi, the Safari, Everest and Dinosaur before lunchtime with a combination of early entry and Fastpass+ (I haven't gone to AK when Genie+ was a thing). Maybe it's impossible now but it was entirely doable in the past.

 

[gottalovepluto]

3. There's only one show.....

Two. There is currently the bird show and the lion king show.

 

[ellbell]

Two. There is currently the bird show and the lion king show.

3. It's tough to be a bug

 

[luv2cheer92]

3. It's tough to be a bug

4. Kite Tails

Plus a couple other small ones (Winged Encounters, the performers throughout the park, ToL awakenings/beacons)

 

[Anthony1971]

By far AK is not a half day park it is very easy to spend an entire day there being there is a misunderstanding in that the entire park is an actailly an attraction. Stop and look id the best advice I have. With that spending the entire day in hot weather is very difficult so for us it have been gone by 10-10:30 AM when it opened at 8 and we could park hop at that time. But if you go in October and the rest of the cooler months...... I also find MK to be a half day park as it gets almost as hot as AK but what it lacks in the small heat difference it makes up for with crowds of people who are less than happy by mid day. I miss those late nights when MK was open to 1AM normal in the summer with extra magic hours.

 

[EilonwyWanderer]

It's a half day park for us. With two little kids it takes us maybe 4-5 hours. They like to do the wilderness explorer badges which take you all over the park and then of course the safari and Dinosaur. Kali River Rapids was down last time we were there and we didn't check back in later and of course Everest was as well. But after that amount of time we feel like we've seen everything (wilderness explorer thing takes you on all the trails AND Rafiki's train) and are ready for another park.

 

[NavyDad]

I write this facetiously.

AK is my wife's favorite park. Mine....not so much. The reasoning is because I feel there is less to do here than other parks. Don't get me wrong, I love the theming, animals and shows, however, I feel like by mid afternoon I am done. The park has less than 10 ridable attractions (I think maybe 7-8) which increases wait times exponentially. Increased crowds with little attractions to deter those crowds equals LONG wait times. Last time at AK each ride was minimum 1.5-2 hours wait. Navi River Journey, Flight of Passage, Everest, Kilimanjaro....forget it! Almost 3 hours. You have spent half your park time in line for 2 rides. Even with Genie+ things were sold out by 10am which made Genie+ useless. Around 3pm we pulled up shop and headed to Disney Springs.

I know with extended hours and Pandora lit up at night it was supposed to be considered a full day park. After my last trip, I'm still not sold that it is not. Am I the only one that feels with all the added stuff that it still feels like a half day park?

Our first trip (2009) as a family to WDW, I did a lot of pre-planning using these boards as one of my main references. I learned a lot of good information here but the worst piece of advice I got was that Animal Kingdom was a "half-day park" with most people saying it was essentially a zoo with a few rides and shows. I planned accordingly and only scheduled 1 morning at AK with an afternoon at HS that day.

Well, our family, including 3 kids, ended up loving AK and everyone was so disappointed that we not only had to leave early to make our early dinner reservations over at HS, but we were not coming back at all that trip. Flash forward to 2012 for our second trip and we planned an entire day. We did the Safari, Everest, Rapids, animal trails, rode the train to the petting zoo, rode dinosaur, ate lunch in an airstream, watched two fantastic theater shows, did more animal trails, did Bug's Life, watched a bird show, met some very unique characters, did the Safari again closer to dusk and had a fantastic dinner at Yak & Yeti. When we came out of dinner, our only disappointment was that there was no night time element to the park and we had to leave right away. Fast forward though many more awesome full days at AK and were had the opportunity to check out Pandora on opening weekend. One of our favorite parks now had an amazing night time atmosphere with a beautifully lit up and unique area, a cool night time show and our new favorite thing: Everest in the front row at night = amazing!

I think every person and every family are different. For us, Animal Kingdom has always been one of our favorites and a full day park even as Epcot and Hollywood Studios ebbed at times with construction.