Welcome to our one-day itinerary for visiting Animal Kingdom. Years ago, Animal Kingdom was a real challenge to fit into a day. The good / bad news is that’s no longer the case, and until anything major changes, we expect the park to fit pretty easily into a full day while still filling that full day nicely. Let’s talk about how to spend a full day at Animal Kingdom!

Introduction

Animal Kingdom is pretty similar to Epcot in that you’re looking at about three rides you really need to worry about, plus a handful that you’re hoping just to walk right onto but realistically will have moderate waits for.

And, like Epcot, you’re in a tough position where if you don’t want to spend money on Lightning Lanes, you’re probably going to have a long wait or two. But buy some mix of these things, and there’s a good chance you get to about 5PM and feel like they weren’t really necessary. (Not to get ahead of ourselves, but this is why we think a table service dinner can be worth the time at Animal Kingdom.)

Animal Kingdom has a lot of flexibility. Activities like the two main animal trails (Maharajah Jungle Trek and Gorilla Falls) can be done at most any time of the day (they do often open later and close earlier than the park, though). Same with “It’s tough to be a bug” and visits to Rafiki’s Planet Watch.

Streetmosphere entertainment is scheduled frequently throughout the day. Keep a close eye on the schedule, though, because you easily can miss out on fun offerings like Tam Tam Drummers or Winged Encounters if you aren’t vigilant.

The major stage shows have multiple showtimes. And a successful rope drop will get you through most of the major rides quickly.

Bottom Line: As long as you’re doing something at the park, you’re probably making good use of your time. I’d say “as long as you’re not wandering aimlessly,” but as long as you’re taking in the scenery while wandering aimlessly, even that’s a fine use of time at this park.

This post assumes an opening time of 8AM. It does not use Early Entry or Lightning Lanes. If you’re using one or all of these, your day will go somewhat faster, but the overall structure will be pretty similar. Throughout the post we build a sample itinerary based on our experiences in the park. Your experience will vary.

While we have a toddler, this post does not cover visiting with a toddler specifically, or rider swap at Animal Kingdom. If you’re visiting with a child, you’ll want to confirm the height requirements for different rides before visiting.

Before You Get to Animal Kingdom

Lightning Lane Multi Pass and Single Pass can be purchased either 7 days before the start of your hotel stay (guests of Disney resorts and select partner resorts), or 3 days before your park visit (all other guests).

On most days, you won’t need Lightning Lane Multi Pass at Animal Kingdom or the Single Pass Lightning Lane for Flight of Passage. That said, you’ll be better off with Lightning Lanes if you choose to sleep in—Animal Kingdom opens particularly early many days—and you can pretty well fill the operating hours with non-ride activities if you skip the lines.

If the park doesn’t particularly enthrall you, you might consider getting Lightning Lane Multi Pass (and maybe Single Pass) but only spending a half day here. Use Lightning Lane Multi Pass to get through what you can here before hopping to another park and using it to check off some boxes there, too.

If you choose to get Multi Pass, we usually recommend an initial lineup with three picks from Kilimanjaro Safaris, Navi River Journey, Expedition Everest, and Kali River Rapids.

Arrival, Early Entry, and Rope Drop at Animal Kingdom

When it comes to mornings at Animal Kingdom, the park can be broken into two parts—Pandora and everything else. If you have Early Entry, you have a good opportunity to get through the two rides in Pandora—Avatar Flight of Passage and Na’vi River Journey—which are (more or less) the two most popular rides in the park.

If you don’t have Early Entry, you probably won’t bother with these, instead focusing your time on the short waits everywhere else, leaving yourself two possibly long waits to sit through later in the day.

One nice thing about Animal Kingdom is that major rides can open at three different times. Most rides open at Early Entry. Kilimanjaro Safaris usually opens at the time the park is scheduled to open. Kali River Rapids sometimes opens an hour after the park opens.

With Early Entry you could potentially be at three rides right when they open. Even without Early Entry you can still maybe make it to two rides at their opening times.

One of the biggest challenges of a morning at Animal Kingdom is the distance between the rides. Rides like Everest and DINOSAUR see short waits early in the day because they’re long walks from Pandora. They’re also short rides themselves (unlike Kilimanjaro Safaris). This makes them worth visiting early, in our mind, but be prepared for people in your party to complain about walking basically the entire park in an hour or so.

Everest has a single rider line (a backup option if waits get too long for you) and a very enjoyable queue, so it’s probably fine to delay it a bit. If you’re not into running back and forth, by far the most natural way to go through the park in the morning is Pandora (if you have Early Entry), then Kilimanjaro Safaris, then Everest (maybe with a stop at Kali River Rapids), then Dinoland USA.

After an initial surge of rides, maybe about 2 hours into the day, you can slow down a bit. Streetmosphere typically starts around 10AM, so you might want to catch some of that. One strategy we use a lot is to go to Creature Comforts—the Animal Kingdom Starbucks, near Africa—get coffee, and watch entertainment in Africa. Then, time permitting, you might also head to nearby Gorilla Falls Exploration trail.

On the day we’re basing this itinerary on, we skipped the coffee stop and went to the other major animal trail:

7:44 Arrive
8AM Park Opens
8:12 Everest (walk on)
8:36 Kilimanjaro Safaris (14 min wait)
9:16 DINOSAUR (walk on)
9:33 TriceraTop Spin (walk on) (closes permanently January 13, 2025)
10:10 Kali River Rapids (walk on)
10:15 Maharajah Jungle Trek

Things went very well on this particular morning, but even 20 minute waits for DINOSAUR and Kali River Rapids would have simply required us to delay Maharajah Jungle Trek into the afternoon.

Late Morning at Animal Kingdom

I really like to keep my afternoon open for shows / walking trails / Rafiki’s Planet Watch. I also like to have lunch at Satuli Canteen. All of this unfortunately means the end of morning is a “good” time to wait in a ridiculously long line for Flight of Passage or Na’vi River Journey.

If your morning didn’t go smoothly you might still have some other major rides left, but I think you basically need to have two of Flight of Passage, Na’vi River Journey, and Kilimanjaro Safaris done before lunch.

12:20 Avatar Flight of Passage (89 minute wait)

Lunch at Animal Kingdom

As always, we don’t recommend table service lunches in the parks. At Animal Kingdom our preferred quick service is Satuli Canteen, but we like to note that Flame Tree Barbecue is another fan favorite and has absolutely beautiful outdoor seating (that you won’t notice just walking by the restaurant).

You can mobile order at either of these restaurants.

12:54 Lunch at Satuli Canteen

Afternoon at Animal Kingdom

During lunch I take a few minutes to make sure I’ve got a good handle on my schedule for the rest of the day. The major shows are Festival of the Lion King, Finding Nemo, and Feathered Friends in Flight. On busy days Lion King can fill up well in advance of showtime. A Lightning Lane via Multi Pass will guarantee you a seat, or you can arrive way early (say, 45 minutes). We like to try our luck arriving about 15 minutes early, and if that doesn’t work, we come back earlier for a later show.

You can fit all three of these shows into a day, but you might have to take quicker walks through the zoological trails, or skip them altogether, or else skip a ride. We’re fine visiting just two shows, and our typical picks would be Festival of the Lion King and Finding Nemo. On the sample day here we watched Feathered Friends instead of Finding Nemo.

Rafiki’s Planet Watch, home to Affection Section (the petting zoo) and the Animation Experience (drawing class), along with a few other offerings, is usually worth at least a short visit. You’ll take the Wildlife Express Train five minutes each way as part of the visit.

There’s also the two main animal trails— Maharajah Jungle Trek and Gorilla Falls—if you haven’t done those. I’ll typically budget about 30 minutes for each. If you can only do one, we personally prefer Maharajah Jungle Trek.

Finally, there’s a popular character greeting, Meet Disney Pals. If characters are important to you, don’t save this one for later in the day because waits can get long.

2PM Festival of the Lion King
2:45 Rafiki’s Planet Watch
3:30 Feathered Friends in Flight
4PM Gorilla Falls Exploration Trail
5:15 Meet Disney Pals (30 min wait)

Evening at Animal Kingdom

Animal Kingdom has no core nighttime show like you’ll find at the other three parks. The Tree of Life has various projection shows that occur on select nights, particularly during the holidays.

These are nice effects, but I’m not upset to miss them if I need to be on a ride late (they’re also short enough that unless you’re one of the last people being hustled out of the park, you can probably stop to watch them on your way out).

Final showtimes for the major shows are usually a few hours before the park closes, and most things other than rides close before the official park close. That leaves basically two things to worry about after about 5PM / 6PM – rides and drinks / dinner.

Tusker House is a character meal and a good restaurant. We’ve had a few meals here now and enjoy it. We still haven’t been to Tiffins, which is a nicer restaurant.

Attached to Tiffins is Nomad Lounge, one of our favorite bars at Walt Disney World. To visit Nomad Lounge you need to join the “walk up list” in the app—the bar doesn’t take reservations.

In our case, we still had one ride to get on:

6:26 Na’vi River Journey (46 min wait)

As of this update, Animal Kingdom has lots of 6PM/7PM closes, so I don’t want to add too much here. For the sake of thoroughness, I’m going to add one last thing even though we didn’t actually do it as part of this day:

6:45 It’s Tough to be a Bug

Final Itinerary and Conclusions

7:44 Arrive
8AM Park Opens
8:12 Everest (walk on)
8:36 Kilimanjaro Safaris (14 min wait)
9:16 DINOSAUR (walk on)
9:33 TriceraTop Spin (walk on) (closes permanently January 13, 2025)
10:10 Kali River Rapids (walk on)
10:15 Maharajah Jungle Trek
12:20 Avatar Flight of Passage (89 minute wait)
12:54 Lunch at Satuli Canteen
2PM Festival of the Lion King
2:45 Rafiki’s Planet Watch
3:30 Feathered Friends in Flight
4PM Gorilla Falls Exploration Trail
5:15 Meet Disney Pals (30 min wait)
6:26 Na’vi River Journey (46 min wait)
6:45 It’s Tough to be a Bug

Obviously this day went pretty well, with the morning being basically perfect. On busier days, you’d spend a little more time going through those rides, which might cause you to cut one of the zoological trails or a show.

In moderate to high crowds, Animal Kingdom becomes about trade offs. You can either pay for Lightning Lanes or accept you won’t be able to do the entire park. The upside is that even if you don’t pay for Lightning Lanes, you’ll at least have plenty of rides, shows, and other activities to fill your day.

All Your Other Disney World Planning Questions Answered

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Don't forget to master your Disney World Lightning Lane Guide and Strategy a few months in advance. We'll keep you out of long lines so you can maximize the magical time in the parks! We've got park-specific guides as well: Magic Kingdom Lightning Lane Strategy, Epcot Lightning Lane Strategy, Animal Kingdom Lightning Lane Strategy, and Hollywood Studios Lightning Lane Strategy.

Know what to ride with our guides to: Magic Kingdom rides, Hollywood Studios rides, Epcot rides, and Animal Kingdom rides! Plus learn about the water parks with our guide to Blizzard Beach and our guide to Typhoon Lagoon! And for some some fun prep, check out our Ranking of Every Ride at Walt Disney World.

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