Disney's Animal Kingdom (Update)

As promised, here is an update since our last visit to Animal Kingdom. This year (2014) we are Disney Annual Passholders for the 1st time ever. Now that we have had the opportunity to be passholders, we know a lot more about the ins and outs of each park. This review will have a lot more detail than the previous review. Unlike our past Animal Kingdom review, this review will include our pictures as well.

Disney's Animal Kingdom

Lake Buena Vista, Florida

Dates of Visit: Several Times in 2014

We went to Animal Kingdom often this year because we have the annual pass for Disney. In fact, we will go a few more times before these passes run out in January. We will probably even go this upcoming weekend. Love this park. For seeing animals it is better if you can go on the safari. You cannot ride the Kilimanjaro Safari ride while pregnant so we missed the biggest attraction at this park when Jenna was pregnant during the last review. Not this year though! Disney's Animal Kingdom is still a fantastic time no matter what. In fact it is the favorite park of several in my family. Our favorite Disney Park (mine, Jenna, and Jr.) is Magic Kingdom because of the amount there is at that park, but this is a close second for all of us. We love Animal Kingdom! Enjoy our comments, and pictures!

Highlights: This is one of the best if not the best animal attractions in the country. You could easily spend the whole day there! They have an amazing "African" area and "Asian" area! The animals are all awesome! There are some spots where you can't see certain animals, but there are so many viewing decks, you could probably move somewhere and get a view of them. The Kilimanjaro Safari is easily the best part and it is probably the closest thing to a safari there is outside of Africa. The up close views of animals on the safari are incredible and some even cross the path. We have never seen rhinos that close and so many of them. The rhino is my favorite animal so it was awesome for me to see them so close. You always get a good view of rhinos and I have never gotten a better view of a hippo than this safari.  It is Noland Jr.'s favorite ride and he wants to ride it over and over again. He loves pointing out the animals on the safari and telling us what they are. The look of amazement on his face is truly priceless everytime we ride this ride. I definitely recommend using your fastpass+ for this attraction at AK. Usually you can walk on this attraction in less than 1 hour too if you get there within the first hour of park opening. Another good idea for riding it is checking the Disney app for wait times and going there anytime there is less than a 30 minute wait. During non-peak season it shouldn't be difficult to ride with little to no wait. You see more the second time around when you go on it. We always try to ride the safari twice when we come. The Komodo Dragon exhibit was another highlight for us as we saw one of our favorite animals and we could see it outside of the safari. Also for Florida Residents you can go to Disney 3 days for $99 which makes tickets extremely affordable. There are also several seasonal and annual passholder options for you to visit this theme park.

You can look at some pictures this time from our many trips to Animal Kingdom. 

When you first enter the park you are directly in front of a spoonbill exhibit. We love the spoonbills.

Another creature featured early in the park is this awesome Iguana.

Waiting for the now extinct parade an awesome worker drew this Mickey for our boy. Disney workers are fantastic at creating magic for the family.

We saw the kangaroos very well from a walkway that goes by their exhibit.

We love the Komodo Dragon it is one of our favorites. This can be seen on the Jungle Trek in Asia.

This is a gorilla from the walking trail in Africa.

Kilimanjaro Safaris is the best place to see hippos that we know of.

We love the rhinos on the safari.

The Nile Crocodiles are crazy looking.

At Disney World we have learned that a group of flamingos like this is called a flamboyance. Check out the elephant in the background of this shot Jenna took.

The rhinos are mine and Jr.'s favorite part of this safari.

This is my favorite photo from Animal Kingdom of just the animals!

This is from his first safari where we got front row. It was a bit chilly that day, but he loved it.

On a different visit he was waving at the rhinos.

Animal Kingdom is a ton of fun!

Disappointments: We did not have many disappointments for this place! We both wish that there were some more walk throughs where you could see more of the African animals outside of the safari. However they did have the underwater hippo viewing area and a walkthrough of some of the animals. This inability to see many of the animals made us miss some of our favorite part of the park when Jenna was pregnant. The safari is not recommended for pregnant women, so you should avoid it if you are. Another good idea would be to add some more bones/plastic dinosaurs in DinoLand for the little ones, but other than that, WE LOVED THIS PLACE! This park is a big reason why someday we will get annual passes to Disney again despite the expense.

We gave it a 5 out of 5!

That's all for now!

Leave a comment or your opinion if you have been to Disney's Animal Kingdom!

-Noland

Our Trip to Dinosaur World

Recently, Noland and I had a friend (Anaclaudia) visit and wanted to do something fun and affordable. The forecast for the entire weekend was RAIN…RAIN… RAIN. We woke up Saturday morning to find that it wasn't raining yet so we should do something fun before the rain began.

We decided to head towards Dinosaur World. We've driven by it on I-4 plenty of times and have always wanted to check it out. We went in the morning time. The park opens through a large gift shop, where you purchase your tickets for the day.  You can purchase your tickets on their website here.  Adult admission is $16.95. Child admission is $11.95. Kids under 3 are FREE.

I was truly shocked by the amount of things to do. As I stated earlier, we've passed Dinosaur World several times before and I always thought it was just a park full of giant dinosaur statues. It was very large with trails all through out the statues. My son is 23 months (almost 2) and loved running and looking at each of the dinosaurs! He would yell, "Rawrrrr!"

Besides viewing the life-size dinosaurs, the park had:

• bone yard (where the kids could pretend to be archaeologists and excavate dinosaur bones)
• cave show
• fossil dig (dig for real fossils, and they even tell you what each fossil is, you get to keep 3)
• giant dinosaur puzzle
• large gift shop with all kinds of goodies (many are very affordable).
• museum (with lots of fossils and artifacts)
• playground
• plenty of picnic tables (for parties or packed lunch)
• station where children could mine for gems

Check out some of our pictures from the day ( I don't have a professional camera, all of these were taken on my i-phone.)

I really loved Dinosaur World. They had a deal when we purchased our tickets in August, and we got a free pass to come back in December. I know that Noland Jr. will definitely want to go back and I'm excited to spend more time there. You can call them and ask about deals and they also have some more information on their website.

If you live in Florida, or are vacationing in the Tampa or Orlando area, I'd say that Dinosaur World is definitely worth checking out... especially if you have a little boy or little girl who loves dinosaurs! Most of the dinosaurs, you are not allowed to touch but, as you can see above, they do have a few woolly mammoths that you are allowed to touch. There are plenty of great picture opportunities. All in all, it's a very affordable and fun family outing! Here are some more pictures:

This post was NOT sponsored or paid for by Dinosaur World. We went as a family for fun. All opinions found in this post are my personal opinions and information that I've gathered from our visit and the website found here.

Have you been to Dinosaur World? Is it a place that you are interested in? I'd love to know your thoughts in the comments!