Too much for our animal kingdom day?

[mrsincredible3]

I am working on our touring plan for our animal kingdom day and i feel like we may be trying to cram too much into one day. We will have DS7 and DS2. Can you please advise me if this is a feasible plan for a crowd level 7 AK day. Not sure of the order yet of the attractions, but this is what we would like to do. Contemplating heading to AK on arrival day (from AKL) for a few hours as well because this sounds like a really exhausting list for the day! Can we get all of this done in one day (using FP+). My kids love animals and we take our time on the trails.

Safari
Pagani trail
Festival of Lion King show
Train/Rafiki's Planet/Affection/Conservation sections
Everest twice (with rider swap both times)
Maharajah trail
Flights of Wonder
Discovery Island Trails
Find Pocohantas!
Primevil whirl (with rider swap)
Triceratops spin
The Boneyard
Lunch or dinner at Tusker House


Plan to arrive for rope drop, park hours are 9am-7pm. The baby usually goes to sleep around 7:30pm. Not sure if this is just too much too accomplish in one day without totally running around and worrying about missing stuff. If you think it's doable, great. If you think i need to add like another 3 hours on a partial day, that's doable too. Thanks.

 

[ArwenMarie]

I think it's a lot just from eyeballing the list (I'd have to map it out to get a better idea). I think the two shows and Rafiki's and the ADR are where you are going to use up a lot of time. I would use the partial day and break it up a bit for our crew. Especially if you like to really enjoy the trails, maybe do one each day.

 

[LSUfan4444]

I think you should be able to get it all done, especially with FP+. If anything, cut out one of the walking trails.

I would do something like this:

Pagani trail at arrival as you wait for Rafiki's Planet Watch to Open
Rafiki's Planet Watch
Safari (FP+)
Festival of Lion King show (FP+) 11 am
Everest twice (FP+) (use rider swap, then use single rider)
- do this while the other parent has the kids in the boneyard...just swap out as they play or dig for "fossils".
Primevil whirl (FP+) (with rider swap)
Triceratops spin
- things like Triceratops Spin, Dinosaur, Boneyard etc can all be done as you guys are using rider swap passes for Everest, Primeval Whirl, etc
Lunch or dinner at Tusker House
Maharajah trail
Flights of Wonder
Discovery Island Trails
Find Pocohantas!


You will want to make FP+ for everyone to do the Safari and Lion King. You will want to make a FP+ for one parent to do Everest and the other parent to do Primeval Whirl then use rider swap. As far as the kids third FP+, it really doesn't matter what you choose.

 

[Cando86]

I think it's doable, especially if you arrive at rope drop

 

[nat8199]

The Rafiki planet watch/Affection station can easily take 1-2 hours depending on how into it your kids are. We spent two mornings there.

The trails also took my kids about an hour each time, and we repeated them two days in a row.

My kids love AK and it is easily a two day park for us, and that is without Everest, Kali, Dinsosaur, or Whirl, all of which my twins were too short for.

 

[Mikie]

Looks pretty do-able to me. We did all of that except Flights of wonder and Tusker house when we spent a 9-5 day there. Depends on your kids and what they,re enjoying. We had a big group and split a couple of times. The 2 and 3 year olds ended up with a lot of time in the boneyard and were still sad when they had to leave it. I didn't feel like I had quite enough time to thoroughly explore the discovery island trails, but we did justice to the other trails. We did Rafiki, but no one was terribly into it, so we didn't spend a lot of time there - if someone had been engrossed, we may not have been able to hit ALL the rest.

 

[nighttowll]

I am working on our touring plan for our animal kingdom day and i feel like we may be trying to cram too much into one day. We will have DS7 and DS2. Can you please advise me if this is a feasible plan for a crowd level 7 AK day. Not sure of the order yet of the attractions, but this is what we would like to do. Contemplating heading to AK on arrival day (from AKL) for a few hours as well because this sounds like a really exhausting list for the day! Can we get all of this done in one day (using FP+). My kids love animals and we take our time on the trails.

Safari
Pagani trail
Festival of Lion King show
Train/Rafiki's Planet/Affection/Conservation sections
Everest twice (with rider swap both times)
Maharajah trail
Flights of Wonder
Discovery Island Trails
Find Pocohantas!
Primevil whirl (with rider swap)
Triceratops spin
The Boneyard
Lunch or dinner at Tusker House


Plan to arrive for rope drop, park hours are 9am-7pm. The baby usually goes to sleep around 7:30pm. Not sure if this is just too much too accomplish in one day without totally running around and worrying about missing stuff. If you think it's doable, great. If you think i need to add like another 3 hours on a partial day, that's doable too. Thanks.

Honestly, I don't think this is too much to do in one day. We have done much more at AK in a day before; although, we normally go during the off season. I wouldn't do it in your order though. You will end up with extra walking and backtracking, and I don't think you are maximzing your wait times with your plan either.

This is what I would suggest:

1. All ride Primevil Whirl first at RD.
- This is a slow loading ride that gets long lines, and it isn't worth the wait comparable to how long the ride lasts. Get it out of the way first without waiting. Plus it is right near the entrance and most people will make a mad dash to either Everest or Safari, so you should be able to get to it quickly even with kids and ride before you see a wait start, maybe even a few times. The line will get long in the afternoon.

The next step depends on if you are ok with riding Everest alone and splitting the family up or want to stay together.

2. If you don't mind splitting up, have one parent go over and ride Everest. Depending on how late it is after you finish with PW, you may still be able to use the standby line, if the wait is over 15 minutes, use the single rider line. Have the other parent stay with kids while they play in the dino area. They can ride Triceratops Spins, play in the boneyard, at the arcade, or visit the Wilderness Exploeres outposts that are there. Then switch off. This way the kids get to play the whole time the adults are riding.

Option2. If you want to all stay together, make a FP for Everest for sometime between 10:00 - 11:30. Use the time between riding PW and the FP for Everest to explore the beforementioned dinoland attractions. Then head over to Everest. If your Everest FP is closer to 11:30, try to fit in the animal trail by Everest before riding.

3. If you have not already, explore the nearby Animal Trail.

4. Watch Flights of Wonder. I'd try for either the 10:45 (long shot, but possible) and 11:45 (more realistic)

5. Lunch either before or after FoW depending how you are doing on time.

6. Train/Rafiki's Planet/Affection/Conservation sections
- give yourself the afternoon for this.
- There are so many steps involved in this attraction. Even if each only takes about 10 minutes, not likely on a crowd 7 day, you are looking at 1 hr 10 minutes time frame. You could easily wait to get on the train for 30 minutes.
i. Walk to train
ii. Wait for train
iii. Ride the train
iv. Walk to exhibits from train
v. Experience 3 attractions there.
vi. Walk back to train.
vii. Wait for train.
viii. Ride train back.
ix. Walk to next attraction.

7 or 8. FP for Safari in late after or evening / do nearby animal trail after or before where you have extra time waiting for next FP.

7 or 8. FP for Lion King in late after or evening
- This will give you more time with a garenteed seat without having to worry about showing up early. Also, doing this later at the end of day you will be ready to sit down and watch a show, not stand in lines and walk over for rides or playground time.

9. Discovery Island Trails / Find Pocohantas!
- Disney lists her location as being here, but you will need to check times to see where you can fit her in. Luckily, the trails are in the middle of the park, so pretty easy to get to no matter where you are scheduled to be. I was thinking last becuase this would be on your way out, if you followed this schedule, just making a simple loop around.

10. Dinner at Tusker House
- Note: Dinner has no characters, only lunch. So you may want to do lunch instead. Again, I placed this here only because it is the least walking and backtracking. If you do lunch, try to get in FoW before eating, that way you don't have to backtrack.

So your day would look something like this is everything went smooth:

9:00 - 10:00 (10:30) - Dinoland
10:00 - 10:30 (11:00) - Everest
10:45 or 11:45 - Flights of Wonder / Animal Trail
11:30 - 1:00 Lunch, Yak and Yeti is located here, Tusker House is across the park
1:00 to 3:00 (4:00) - Train/Rafiki's Planet/Affection/Conservation sections
4:00, 5:00, 6:00 - Lion King show depending FP availability.
4:00 - 7:00 - Safari FP depending availability & nearby animal Trail
4:00 - 7:00 - Discovery Island Trail depending Pocahauntis availability
6:30 on - Dinner in park at end of day or out of park if you wish

I know this is kind of breaking the FP in the morning rule becuase it prevents you from getting more, but you don't really need them.

 

[RebeccaRabbit]

It looks doable to me. We have done a similar amount in about 3/4 of a day (arriving at about 9:30 and leaving around 3:00). We've never been able to stick around all day at AK because we just get too tired!

The only thing we did not do on your list is both trails in one day (Pangani forest and Maharajah Jungle). We would have had time, had we stayed longer, but we were just too pooped to do any more walking by the end. We would do one walking trail per trip. Both are great - hard to pick just one.

We have never managed to see both theater shows (Nemo and Lion King) during one day. Always did one of these + Flights of Wonder. All the AK shows are excellent - my favorite!

Personally thought Affection Section/Conservation Station was a big let-down. Did not spend much time there - possibly not worth the (essentially boring, view-less) train ride.

We did spend a fair amount of time exploring the Oasis. I love that area - my DD had lots of fun looking for the creatures in each little area. Enjoy your trip!

 

[nkereina]

I think your plan is doable if you plan the order right. If you need to omit something, for me it would be Rafiki's Planet Watch. It's time consuming to get to and from there (sometimes for us the commute is longer than we spend in the area) and I believe part of the area is closed for refurb - not sure when it's reopening. Only thing though is I THINK Pocahontas only meets here.

Here's the order I would go with:

1. Safari at rope drop
2. 10am FOTLK show - even if you do a FP for this, you'll still want to arrive early.
3. Flights of Wonder show/Pangani trail (depending on the times of the FOW show)
4. EE
Lunch
5. Dinoland activities

The trails can be done at your leisure, when you can fit them in. We also love the Its Tough to be a Bug show and Dinosaur but your kids are probably too small for the latter. We do just about all the things you've mentioned as two adults, and finish up around 4pm however it's primarily during low crowd season.

 

[MrInfinity]

That's a lot. Could you do these? Sure. But it would be double-timing it thru every one of them.

Maharajah can be 10 min or it can be an hour. Is it really fun to run thru a trail, skip all the activities, just to say you did the trail? There are things to do along the way, and if you stop at the stations, your kids can / will spend 10-15 min at every station. For example in the bird room, if you're just walking it, you'd walk thru, glance at the birds, point at a couple, and move on. If you do the activity, your kids get a big colorful chart with 20 or so birds on it, and you have to find, match, and identify them, write them in your book, then get stamped. This takes a good 15 min. Then it's not just the bird room you ran thru, but a valuable experience.

Rafiki's is the same way.

I would give it the extra 1/2 day.

Even if you don't, don't feel like you're "missing stuff". It's trails. You can see one and be good! You do not have to do all 3 or you'll be trailed out by the end.

I am working on our touring plan for our animal kingdom day and i feel like we may be trying to cram too much into one day. We will have DS7 and DS2. Can you please advise me if this is a feasible plan for a crowd level 7 AK day. Not sure of the order yet of the attractions, but this is what we would like to do. Contemplating heading to AK on arrival day (from AKL) for a few hours as well because this sounds like a really exhausting list for the day! Can we get all of this done in one day (using FP+). My kids love animals and we take our time on the trails.

Safari
Pagani trail
Festival of Lion King show
Train/Rafiki's Planet/Affection/Conservation sections
Everest twice (with rider swap both times)
Maharajah trail
Flights of Wonder
Discovery Island Trails
Find Pocohantas!
Primevil whirl (with rider swap)
Triceratops spin
The Boneyard
Lunch or dinner at Tusker House


Plan to arrive for rope drop, park hours are 9am-7pm. The baby usually goes to sleep around 7:30pm. Not sure if this is just too much too accomplish in one day without totally running around and worrying about missing stuff. If you think it's doable, great. If you think i need to add like another 3 hours on a partial day, that's doable too. Thanks.

 

[laura428]

If your kids are like mine (who also love animals), they'll likely want to stop and watch them, ask questions of the CMs who are near. And you will, too.

We love AK - it's our favorite park mostly because of how beautiful and peaceful it can be. For this very reason, I would definitely try to add a second day. If you're too focused on fitting everything in, you'll miss way too much.

 

[cigar95]

Plug it into a personalized plan at touringplans.com and see what they say.

Their predictions will likely be a bit optimistic, as they tend to assume things like only 20 minutes for the walking trails. But if they say you aren't even close, that's a decent indication that you won't be able to do it all.

ETA - I second what Laura said just above me. Just because you *can* do it all doesn't mean you'll get the most enjoyment this way.

 

[mylittlebuttercup]

If you are going at rope drop, the only thing that I would worry about possibly not being do-able are the shows. Unlike the other attractions, they have set times they run, and I have found that sometimes I had to cut a show I wanted to see at Animal Kingdom because none of the show times ended up working for us--we were at the other side of the park, needed to eat, baby was napping, etc. But if you are flexible about the shows and willing to miss one if need be, I think you can do the rest, but it will be a long day.

Also, use FP+ for some things, especially Everest, since you aren't doing that first.

 

[DISNEYD14]

I am working on our touring plan for our animal kingdom day and i feel like we may be trying to cram too much into one day. We will have DS7 and DS2. Can you please advise me if this is a feasible plan for a crowd level 7 AK day. Not sure of the order yet of the attractions, but this is what we would like to do. Contemplating heading to AK on arrival day (from AKL) for a few hours as well because this sounds like a really exhausting list for the day! Can we get all of this done in one day (using FP+). My kids love animals and we take our time on the trails.

Safari
Pagani trail
Festival of Lion King show
Train/Rafiki's Planet/Affection/Conservation sections
Everest twice (with rider swap both times)
Maharajah trail
Flights of Wonder
Discovery Island Trails
Find Pocohantas!
Primevil whirl (with rider swap)
Triceratops spin
The Boneyard
Lunch or dinner at Tusker House


Plan to arrive for rope drop, park hours are 9am-7pm. The baby usually goes to sleep around 7:30pm. Not sure if this is just too much too accomplish in one day without totally running around and worrying about missing stuff. If you think it's doable, great. If you think i need to add like another 3 hours on a partial day, that's doable too. Thanks.

** We were able to do it almost exact itinerary with 3 kids in October except with started with Tusker House breakfast ** We lucked out and Affection Section was closed which would have taken my kids an extra hour - this is our family's favorite park next to MK.

My kids all participated in Wilderness Explorer program for kids but because of that we missed FOW show.

 

[JZCubed]

I'm inclined to suggest going directly to either Safari or Everest first, and then the other immediately thereafter (unless you plan on using FP+). These are the longest waits and wait times are shortest first thing in the morning (or late afternoon). Followed by Dinosaur (not on the list), Primeval Whirl, & Triceratops. And when you locate Pocahontas, that with might also be over 30 minutes.

Flights of Wonder has fewest shows, so figure out which is going to work best for you. Lion King is every hour on the hour and right next to Tusker House.

All the rest are self-guided and can be accomplished at your own pace. But be advised, as others have pointed out, some of these trails and treks can take a bit more time that people budget.

But my bigger concern is that all the planning books I read before bringing my then 2 y.o (now 5 y.o. with 11 trips under her belt) suggest that most young children can really be overwhelmed after about 4 hours. The conclusion being - doing more might not make for the best vacation.

So I would look at some planning books (or easywdw.com cheat sheets) and determine my 'Must-Do's' and create a shorter list. If you accomplish more than is on the list, great. But if you have a long list and feel pressured to get it all in, you are likely to be setting yourself up for disappointment.

Also, traveling with a 2 y.o. comes with challenges. Having to change a diaper will not wait if you are standing in line for a ride. And no, you cannot get back in your place if you need to make a diaper change.

Finally, I use a 'cubes system' to fill in time slots to see if my plans are doable. Something like:

7am - Breakfast
8am - Travel to Park
9am - Rope Drop
9-9:30 - Safari
Potty Break
9:45-10am - Everest
10-10:40 - Everest (lines will be longer at this point)
10:45-11:15 - Flights of Wonder
11:15-12pm - Discovery Island/Pocahontas
12:-1pm - Tusker House
1-2:45 - Pagani and/or Maharajah
Potty Break
3pm-3:30 - Lion King
3:45-5:30 - Rafiki
5:45-7:30 - DinoLand (Boneyard, etc.)

You'll be exhausted, but it's doable.

 

[Fratthouse]

Like others have said, it can definitely be done. We did all of this, plus met EVERY CHARACTER on our last trip (although we did the finding nemo show instead of Flights of Wonder). However, we did rush through a lot of it - which is just how we roll - and it wasn't our first rodeo.

My suggestion would be to create a schedule, but have some "give" in it - in the back of your mind, have a few activities that can be scratched if you fall behind in your schedule. That way you experience the things that are most important, and know you maximized your experience.

We LOVE AK park, but if I had to cut some things, I would eliminate Rafiki's planet watch (unless meeting Rafiki is extremely important. It's a fun enough area, but really takes awhile to get there and back on the train), and the Flights of Wonder show (it's a good show, but when I was there with my 2yo he was COMPLETELY BORED. He loves FOTLK and Finding Nemo, though). I would also skip Primeval Whirl - I found it boring and painful, but that's just me.

I would suggest starting with the Safari, and spending the morning in Africa then moving to Rafiki's planet watch. After lunch, knock out the trails and flights of wonder while the crowds are the highest. Hit Dinoland after 5:30 and do Expedition Everest last thing. Crowds are REALLY light the last hour on a 7 pm close night.

 

[soniam]

For grins, I piped your plan into Touring Plans for 3/19, which is predicted to be a 7 at AK. It's definitely doable. Here's the order that TP suggested. This is also without any FP+, so if you get them, it will be even faster.

RD 9am
EE 2 times
PW
Characters @ Disney Outpost
Triceratop Spin
Boneyard
Flights of Wonder 11:45am
Maharaja Trek
Discovery Trails
TH 1pm for 1 hour (Could do it earlier)
Pangani
Train at Africa station
Conservation Station
Affection Section
Train from Rafiki
Safari
Lion King 5pm
Finish @ 5:30pm

TP suggests getting FP+ for Safari, EE, and M&G. I would do get them earlier in the day, so that you could get more at the kiosks, if needed.

 

[ammag]

We love Ak too! We've gone twice, first time my kids were 5 and 1, second time they were 6and 2. We all love animals. I think that's a little too much to try and do....and now that tusker has dinner maybe put that off until the end of your day unless you want a nice break off your feet in the middle. Our first trip we did conservation station and tusker for lunch, we were unable to make any of the shows except for lion king. Both times we did open to close. I always do the safari first because the animals are more active in the morning, though that's also true in evening sunset time apparently. And I don't know how true this really is but both times the people on the right side of the car saw a lot more animals. Actually second trip my daughter was on the left, missed her favortie animal so ye went on again
We found that taking our time on the trails, chatting with CMs, and doing the adventure thing..apologies I can't remember the actual name....you get a little book then go around to stations to learn and play with the CMs and get a sticker in your book. My older one loved this on the second trip and I was glad we made the time to relax and do some of them.

Conservation station is great but a huge time suck. We did it only the first time, my daughter wants to be a wildlife vet so ye watched them do a procedure (actually just a check up) of an animal, saw a demonstration on macaws, met chip and dale, she was scared of rafiki lol. It was great but we didn't do it the second time because of time. The Nemo show is fantastic too, I was happy we went to that..the last show of the night was easy to get in no lines.

The boneyard was awesome, both kids played for about an hour total. We didn't do EE or primeval whirl, so we had time. They really liked it as a break between attractions. Also your older kid Might like dinosaur? Watch a ride through on youtube and see if they would find it scary. I love that ride
Also the theming is so amazing, we got a lot out of looking around Africa, shopping, listening to music around the park. We shared one of those fantastic cupcakes from Kusafari..wiht a big chocolate elephant on top! And just pretended we were in Africa, enjoyed the surroundings. I think AK is the best park if you're taking some time to relax.

 

[Kimosabe]

Definitely could accomplish that. We decided this summer that we had never given DAK a full shot of respect, and our kids really wanted to explore a bit more. We had a very similar list. Didn't do Triceratop, Primeval or Discovery Island Trail/Pocahontas, but we did do an extra safari, the Nemo show, a table service lunch at Yak & Yeti (in addition to Tusker breakfast) and our kids also managed to complete the entire Wilderness Explorers book and get sworn in before the park closed. By the end of the day, DAK had vaulted near the top of our favorite parks list.

Once I started planning the day, I had gotten pretty concerned that we were going to run out of time but we managed to get it done. We didn't do much lollygagging, but as noted, we did have a nice break in the early afternoon for a sit-down lunch and also had "breaks" during the Lion King and Nemo shows, as well as the train rides to and from Rafiki's (where we all spent more time watching operations than petting animals).

 

[mrsincredible3]

Thanks for all of the input! I think we are going to split up our long ak day into two partial days. I think on arrival day we will check into AKL and head over to AK for expedition Everest (ds7 fave ride!), maybe lion king show or the safari, maybe one trail and tusker house dinner. Then on our actual ak day we can use FP again for Everest and hit dinoland and the shows. I think we will skip the whole rafiki area. We will also have ds2 late morning nap schedule to work around and rafikis area is just not calling to me even though I know ds7 would like to do it. This way our actual ak day will be shorter and we can go back to the resor t for a swim. Last year my kids did great with shorter park days. The only day we started to get cranky was on our very long epcot day. All other days were partial days and this worked best with our kids (we don't go back to rest, just stay till we're done and go relax). While I think we could accomplish everything on my original plan I think it would be rushed, hectic, exhausting and not as enjoyable as taking it a bit slower. Plus I think starting our trip with a character meal would be nice. Not sure how to break up the attractions. I anticipate arriving at ak maybe around 3:30? So not enough time for safari, Everest, lion king and pagani trail with a 6pm dinner.