Disney World Trip January 2020- Part 3

Hi everyone! Today I’ll be continuing on with my recap of our most recent trip to Disney World! If you missed my previous posts you can click the links to catch up here:

Disney World Trip January 2020- Part 1

Disney World Trip January 2020- Part 2

In those posts I covered our Magic Kingdom Day, our trip to Ft. Wilderness, Storybook Dining at Artists Point, and our Hollywood Studios day. I left off with day three of our trip, so today’s post will begin with:

Day 4

We got up, got ready, and ate a quick breakfast in our room before grabbing a bus to Animal Kingdom! I LOVE Animal Kingdom so much- so I was super excited for the day. This might be my favorite park of them all. It is SUCH a beautiful park. Everywhere you look there’s something pretty to see. If you love animals you’ll be in heaven- this park is park zoo and part amusement park, so there is something for everyone.

Our ride to the park was very quick since our resort(The Animal Kingdom Lodge) is super close to the park. We arrived to a beautiful sight: low crowds! We entered the park and stopped for the obligatory pictures in front of The Tree of Life.

Our first stop of the day was Dinoland- we had a Fast Pass for one of my favorite rides: Dinosaur! Cooper and I LOVE this ride. It’s so fun! It’s fast and dark, with quick drops, twists, and turns. Plus there’s dinosaurs- what more could you want in a ride?

Just as we were exiting the ride and walking towards the gift shop, we ran right into Pluto!

We walked through to the Asia area of the park and we explored the The Maharajah Jungle Trek trail. We saw a tiger, gibbons, a Komodo Dragon(!!!), tons of birds, water buffalo, and more. We really enjoyed walking around and learning about the animals. This trail is big, and the animals all have so much land to roam around on. You definitely have to get lucky with your timing, and it helps to have a sharp eye.

Next up was Up! A Great Bird Adventure. This is a show featuring Dug and Russel from the movie Up. They bring out all different sorts of amazing birds. It’s educational and really fun to watch. The birds fly freely all over the place, and some even swoop right down through the audience. It was our first time seeing the show and I LOVED it. There was this African Gray Parrot that blew me away. I don’t want to spoil the details, but this wasn’t your typical bird show where the parrot has just a few catch phrases and imitates a telephone ringing- there’s much more. I highly recommend catching this show- we were so glad we stopped for it!

It was time for our next Fast Pass of the day, so we headed in to Africa section of the park to board Kilimanjaro Safari! This safari is one of my favorite things about Animal Kingdom. I could happily watch animals roaming about all day! The giraffes, elephants, and the lions are probably my favorites. The guides are always full of information- I feel like we learn something new on each visit. They also do a great job of emphasizing how important it is that we do our part to protect these animals and their habitats.

I was very impressed to learn all that Disney does to contribute towards wildlife protection. For instance, the Disney Conservation Fund has directed more than $85 million towards saving wildlife. You can read more about their conservation efforts by clicking HERE.

 

After we returned from our Safari, it was time for our lunch reservation at Yak and Yeti. We eat here every time we visit this park. The menu is what I consider Asian fusion, and we really like it! If you’d like to take a peek at the menu you can click HERE. We really like the dim sum basket, the Tikka Masala, and the Firecracker Shrimp. This trip we both got the Lobster Garlic Noodles. I had heard how delicious this dish was and we both thought our food was amazing! The portion was huge too! For once, I actually remembered to take a picture of my food:

Yum! This dish has so much flavor! There was a decent amount of lobster, along with shrimp and scallops. If you like seafood you’ll be very happy eating this.

Cooper had the kids chicken tenders, and they were not your typical chicken tenders! They were lightly battered whole pieces of chicken breast that came with a really good Asian-honey dipping sauce. I thought they were so good!

For dessert I tried the Fried Pineapple Wontons and they were AMAZING! I’m not even a big dessert person, but I would come here for these wontons alone. So, so good!

Before we left, we had to continue our tradition of rubbing the Buddha belly for good luck:

 

After lunch we went for a walk along the Gorilla Falls Forest Exploration Trail. This trip we didn’t get to see the Gorillas. They must have been lounging just out of sight. We did however get to see the hippo swimming underwater with his mouth wide open! It was crazy to see how gigantic the teeth are inside a hippos mouth! I had no idea.

Next we traveled over to Discovery Island so we could watch the It’s Tough to Be a Bug show! We grabbed our bug goggles and were ready for the show.

This show is always fun to watch. It’s a 3D show hosted by Flik from A Bugs Life, and there are some unexpected surprises throughout. We really like it!

After this show we always like to walk around the trails surrounding the Tree of Life. It’s fun to see all the animal shapes carved into the “tree”. It really is so beautiful! The amount of detail carved into this thing is amazing.

Along the trails there are some animal habitats. We stopped to see the tortoise, the lemurs, and my favorite: the Kangaroos!! While we were watching the kangaroos, some of the keepers entered the enclosure to do some training with the Lappet Face Vultures. One of the keepers came over to say hello to us, and ended up talking with us for a long time about the vultures. We learned so much about these amazing birds, the importance of their roles in the food chain, and the dangers they face from poachers. He told us that vultures often give away the location of poachers and their illegal kills, so the vultures are often poisoned or killed by the poachers. The keepers are making great efforts to breed these birds in captivity in hopes of preserving this endangered species. These vultures were really interesting to watch, and I really enjoyed getting the personal attention and information from the zookeeper.

After we were done looking at the animals we stopped for a Lion King photo:

I mean, who doesn’t love Simba, Timon, and Pumba??

Finally, it was time for us to head to Pandora!! I love this section of the park! It’s so incredible! I’m not even a fan of the Avatar movie, but this land is just gorgeous. The floating mountains, the foliage, even the ground is cool here.

They feature this “Moss Wall” in a commercial on the Disney channel, so Coop was super excited to get a picture here.

We had a Fast Pass for Flight of Passage, so we headed straight for that. This is the BEST ride I’ve ever been on. It is AMAZING. I honestly can’t think of any other way to describe it, other than it’s like you’re in the best dream you’ve ever had, and you’re flying. Everything about it is cool. It’s a virtual reality ride, where you are riding on the back of a Banshee, flying through jungles, mountainsides, over oceans, etc. Even the smells on this ride are awesome. I can’t wait to ride it again!

When we exited the ride and walked right out into the Pandora Rangers show. It was fun to watch the guy walking around in the utility suit.

These guys have the coolest job!

After check the My Disney Experience App, I noticed that the wait for Expedition Everest was really short, so we headed straight there. This ride is INTENSE! We love it… but it is not for the faint of heart. It’s a really fast roller-coaster, with a huge drop, and it goes backwards at one point! It’s super fun, and super thrilling.

We had to ride Dinosaur again once more before that rode closed for the night. Cooper decided to pose for the picture this time around:

Since the park was closing soon, we decided to head back to Pandora to get onNavi River Journey. This ride is really beautiful, but definitely not worth waiting a long time for. My suggestion is to jump in line at the end of the day. We waited less than 10 minutes!

After that it was time to head back to our hotel. We had an amazing day and we were exhausted! When we arrived at our room, Cooper was excited to see that Mousekeeping had made a special “nest” for one of his Pokemon figurines:

He was a very happy, very tired kid!

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That’s all I have time for right now- I will continue on with the rest of our trip in another post. Thank you for reading!