Florida 2019: 21st October - Animal Kingdom

Gwen loves Disney. She has spent the last few months watching You Tube videos, reading blogs, and generally getting all the insider tips on the best way to do Disney. What rides to do and which to skip, what food to eat, how to avoid the worst of the queues. So when she told us we had to be at Animal Kingdom before rope drop, we went with it, and arrived there around 7.30am, just as the sun was rising.

It meant we could pick up our tickets quickly and easily, but unfortunately didn't give us the desired result of avoiding the queues on the most popular rides due to extra magic hours - that hour before the park opens when Disney Resort guests get it to themselves. Gwen had known this, of course, but I hadn't factored it in. The queue for Avatar: Flight of Passage was already 75 minutes when we got into the park so we didn't bother.

Instead we went on Kilimanjaro safari since it had only a ten-minute queue (and cancelled our later fast passes for it) which we really enjoyed, and we saw all sorts of animals, including rather lovely lions. There were also two "walking safaris" which were well worth doing since there were, of course, no queues at all for those.

We had a fast pass booked for Kali River Rapids - my favourite Disney ride - but the ride broke down and it looked as though we might not get to do it. Happily it was fixed about an hour later, so we jumped on it, fully expecting to be soaked - and barely got wet. The queues quickly went up again to impossible lengths, so although we all wanted to go on it again we didn't want to face those wait times. We went to see It's Tough to be a Bug instead, and all enjoyed it.

We had lunch at a burger restaurant in Dinoland. (I'd enjoyed a Mickey pretzel earlier so only had Hari's chips.) The restaurant wasn't cheap ($52 for burger, chips and drink x 3) but it was very tasty, and there was a lovely condiments bar where you could add everything you could ever want to your burger including eight different sauces. They were also very slow serving us, so we got three complimentary brownies.

Pandora

We'd booked fast passes for Expedition Everest later in the afternoon, but over lunch Gwen and Harley texted to say that they were tired and wanted to go home, so we cancelled those, had a quick explore of Pandora - the one part of the park we hadn't done - and met up with Gwen and Harley to head back instead, arriving back at the resort around 2.30. Then Gwen, Harley, Ceri and I headed to the pool and the hot tub, returning to the apartment only minutes before a dramatic thunderstorm hit.

Pizza for tea, although Gwen and Harley ordered Panda Express but were a little disappointed it. It didn't live up to expectations. We were all pretty shattered even  after only half a day at the park - and all in bed by 9pm.

My tip for Animal Kingdom: Think of it as a safari park/zoo rather than a theme park. The easiest and most relaxing thing to do there is look at the animals, and there are plenty of them, everywhere. The shows are also good, but the queues for the rides tend to be rather long.