Our first day at Walt Disney World was spent at Animal Kingdom! (Click here to go back and check out our travel and hotel experience at Disney.) I had already planned out 3 fastpasses and a character dining experience for lunch. I figured he’d be too scared to go on many rides, but fully expected him to embrace every character since he LOVES them on TV. I’ve never been more wrong.
Fastpasses:
These are FREE with the purchase of your park ticket. You can start planning them 60 days before you go. You get 3 per day, and once you use up those 3, then you can get another one. (And can continue getting fastpasses this way for the rest of the day. I highly suggest downloading the ‘My Disney Experience App’ to keep track of fastpasses, look up ride times, and check out your photos.)
- Meet and Greet with Mickey & Minnie at Discovery Trading Post:
Our first stop of the entire trip was to meet Mickey and Minnie. I thought this would be a great way to kick off our Disney experience. Since we had a fastpass, we only had to wait about 5 minutes, and had about 4 people ahead of us in line. While we waited, Braxton was so excited and bounced up and down squealing and pointing at Mickey. When it was our turn, his face changed instantly and the second he was up close to Mickey he completely freaked out and wanted nothing to do with him.
Disney Outfits of the Day: (Links to Products)
- Blair: Donald Duck ShirtÂ
- Braxton: Mickey Mouse Shirt
- Me: Minnie Mouse Shirt
- Minnie Mouse Ears (From Disney Parks Shop, but currently sold link. Link to other Park Ears.)
2. Kilimanjaro Safari:
There are actually quite a few rides at Animal Kingdom that don’t have a height requirement, but with Braxton’s love of animals, I knew this was a must. He absolutely LOVED this ride. And it was a pretty long ride as well. He got to see so many real animals, and was so happy and excited the entire time. (Usually at least a 45 min. wait for this ride, but we had only about a 5 minute wait with our FP.)
3. Na’Vi River Journey:
This is a brand new ride in the Pandora (The World of Avatar) area of the park. It’s not a very long ride, but it’s worth it. The animation is incredible, and the entire ride feels like you are transported to another world. (Usually at least an hour wait, but we were able to walk right onto the ride with our FP.)
(Pictures from Pandora area, and one on the ride.)
Other Attractions:
The Boneyard:
This isn’t a ride, but more like a playground in the Dino Land part of the park. It was perfect for Braxton to get out his energy! Lots of soft spots to bounce around, minature jeeps to play in, lots of different size slides and more! It’s all fenced in as well, so parents can easily watch and get a break.
(Dino Land was one of Braxton’s favorite area’s of the park! I should have taken some photos of him in the Boneyard, but it was at night and dark anyways. Plus we were pretty exhausted at this point.)
Meeting Donald Duck:
Walking around you can meet different characters. We saw the line for Donald wasn’t long and decided to try it out to see if we’d get a different reaction from Braxton. We didn’t. It was even worse then the Mickey experience. (And he never cries like this, so call me a horrible parent, but it was kind of funny to me.)
(Even though we bought him his own stuffed animal Donald first, he still hated him.)
Dining:
Snacks & Drinks:Â
We took our own water bottles into the park, but bought snacks and other drinks to try.
- Mickey Pretzel: A must have! So delicious, and a great value! (It was enough to feed both of us and came with cheese dip.) (About $6)
- Beer: Blair tried a few beers here. They have lots of walk up bars you can go to. (About $8)
- Night Blossom: A non-alcoholic drink found at Pongu Pongu. It’s a frozen drink that’s a mixture of limeade with apple and desert pear topped with passion fruit boba balls. (About $6)
Lunch at Tusker House Restaurant:
This is a character buffet that I thought Braxton would love. Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy and Goofy all dress up in Safari outfits and walk table to table. The food was alright, but not something I would consider overly delicious or special. And it is expensive considering lunch was $45 per person. Braxton was so terrified of the characters that he didn’t even eat anything. (In fact, he was so stressed out that he fell asleep at the table sitting up. I’ve never seen him do this before.) It’s not something I would do again or recommend unless you are really going for the character experience. (And you know that your child for sure wants to see the characters.) We ended up cancelling all our other character dining reservations.
Tips:
- Strollers:Â You can’t take strollers in line for rides, at restaurants or meet & greets. They have stroller parking outside each attraction though and usually there is a cast member watching the strollers. We were nervous to take our Bob stroller, but knew Braxton would nap the best in it. So I put a giant red bow on it (to easily identify it) and we made sure to always take our valuables with us. We never had a problem leaving our stroller in the stroller parking areas. (I did see some strollers that had the family’s last name laminated and zip tied to the stroller to make it easily identifiable and I loved that idea.) This was the same for all the parks.
- Photopasses: We bought the “Memory Maker” package before going on our trip and I am so happy we did! There are cast members all over the park with cameras set up to take your picture, and it makes it so much easier then asking a stranger to take your picture. (They are usually set up in front of “iconic” places that you’d want to have a photo in front of anyways.) They take your picture, scan your magic band, and it automatically syncs with your account! (These automatically upload to the app as well so you can view and post them.) They will even add some animation and “magic” into some of the photos. We were able to get almost 300 pictures of the 3 of us together this way! This was the same for all the parks.
- Refilling Water:Â We brought our own water bottles into the park, but we wanted to refill them rather then buy more water. This was the easiest to do at Animal Kingdom! The Starbucks had a water jug sitting out with fresh water and ice that was free to refill your water with. It was cold and delicious. This was the ONLY park that had this.
- Backpack Leash: Blair was against this for months. I bought one awhile ago to take to the Dallas State Fair and it worked well there, so I brought it to Disney as well. Whenever Braxton wasn’t in his stroller, he was on his leash. We both agreed this was well worth the money and embarrassment for his safety. Braxton had no problem with it, and we were able to still look around and enjoy the parks without worrying about where he was. (We actually saw tons of kids on leashes, we got no judgment from anyone, and many people commented on how cute he looked with it. So well worth it!) We used this everyday and I’d highly recommend getting one for your toddler if you go!
- Toddler Naps: My toddler usually naps once a day. Even with the free transportation system with our Disney resort, I didn’t want to waste part of our day going back and forth to the resort for him to nap. What we did instead, and it worked great, was just letting him fall asleep in the stroller when he was tired. With the Bob stroller, we were able to fully recline him when he fell asleep, and use the hood to cover him from the sun. He napped just fine like this everyday around his normal nap time. While he napped, Blair and I were able to look around and explore the parks without wasting any time!
Even though I LOVE Expedition Everest and Dinosaur, and would have been super pumped to ride the new Avatar Flight of Passage, I wanted this trip to be about family time. We could have utilized the “Rider Switch” program in order to only stand in line once, which is a great system that Disney has! But there were so many other things to do and see that I didn’t feel like I missed out on anything. I’m excited to go back when he is older and do the bigger rides with him, but don’t skip out on a Disney vacation because you think your toddler is too small. There is TONS for them to do!
(Lots of fun places to just stop and explore along the way!)
(He napped so well in his stroller, and we were still able to have fun and look around while he napped. Just FYI, this is without him reclined or the hood down so you could see him in the photo.)
(Someday we will go back and ride Expedition Everest together!)
We left the park around 6:30 to go back to the hotel and eat dinner and relax. We had a whole week to spend at Disney and didn’t want to get burned out the first day. Even with leaving “early” we got to do everything we had wanted to!
(Christmas time at the parks is so magical, the lights at night is my favorite part!)
This wasn’t even half of the pictures we took! We were able to capture and have so many memories in one day. It was a great start to our vacation, and I can’t wait to go back someday.
(Click here for a list of height ranges for the attractions at Animal Kingdom. This is a great tool in planning your trip!)
**Stay Tuned…Hollywood Studios is next!**
