The Animal Kingdom Rivers of Light Dining Package includes a table service meal and VIP viewing for the nightly Rivers of Light show. In this post, we’ll walk you through this package, including how to book it, a brief look at Tusker House (where we had our meal), a look at the VIP show viewing, and an explanation of how you might decide whether or not it’s worth it. Read on to learn all about the Animal Kingdom dining package!
Rivers of Light Dining Package Basics
The package is pretty straightforward. It includes two parts. First, you’ll pick your meal. Your options are:
Tusker House Restaurant for Breakfast, Lunch, or Dinner
Tiffins Restaurant for Lunch or Dinner
Unlike the Festival of Fantasy Dining Package offered at Magic Kingdom, you actually get a choice of restaurant at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, and these are two very different restaurants (we’ll compare them briefly below).
The other part of the package is VIP viewing for the nighttime show, Rivers of Light.
How Much Does The Rivers of Light Dining Package Cost?
The price varies by the meal you pick (prices are adult / child, pre-tax, pre-gratuity):
Tusker House Breakfast — $50 / $32
Tusker House Lunch / Dinner — $63 / $41
Tiffins Lunch / Dinner — $68 / $26
Is The Rivers of Light Dining Package On The Disney Dining Plan?
Yes. You can also use a table service credit (Tiffins requires 2 credits) if you’re on a Disney Dining Plan that includes those credits.
If you look at the above prices and note that we value table service credits at around $45, you can easily see that the dining package at Tiffins is a bad use of dining plan credits! This will come up again, but it’s really hard to justify using two credits for the dining package at Tiffins instead of using one credit at Tusker House.
Booking the Rivers of Light Dining Package
You can reserve the dining package on the Disney World website the same way you’d reserve any other Advance Dining Reservation.
You’ll need to pick your mealtime, and you’ll be assigned a Rivers of Light show if there are multiple showings per day. You can see the Rivers of Light times for a day on the Disney World calendar. Before you book your reservation, you’ll see which showing you’re assigned:
All things being equal, I’d usually prefer the second showing because it’s usually after the park closes. That said, despite my love for Animal Kingdom it’s rare that guests are clamoring for every extra second at the end of the day. You’re probably fine with whichever time.
We’ll compare the restaurants briefly next, but we recommend lunch be your chosen meal. Breakfast will run the risk of interfering with your rope drop strategy at Animal Kingdom, and dinner could leave you with awkward timing trying to fit something between dinner and the show.
Payment is not due in advance—you’ll just pay at the end of your meal. Separate park admission is required.
Tusker House vs. Tiffins
As mentioned above, guests on a Disney dining plan are getting poor value from their credits if they use two for the Tiffins dining package. It might still make sense for you to pay out of pocket for Tiffins if you really want to go, though. That issue aside, these are very different restaurants.
Tusker House is a character buffet. You’ll have a collection of adventure-dressed characters. The standard lineup is Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Daisy. The buffet is mostly African food for lunch and dinner, but breakfast is mostly typical American fare. You can see the menu here.
Tiffins is a signature dining restaurant at Disney World, serving a mix of African, Asian, and Latin cuisine. There are no characters, and this is a little nicer than the average Disney table service restaurant. You can see the menu here.
We’ll discuss the prices at these two restaurants more in our closing “Is it worth it?” section.
At Tusker House, the package includes the buffet and a beverage. At Tiffins, the package includes one appetizer, entree, and dessert per guest. I believe but have not confirmed that guests using Disney dining plan credits will also get an alcoholic beverage.
Our Meal at Tusker House
We chose lunch at Tusker House for our meal. It’s been years since I’ve been to Tusker House, so I was happy when our followers selected it for us as part of an instagram poll.
We checked in at 12:45PM for a 12:50PM reservation and were almost immediately seated. Donald and Mickey were already making their way through the room, so we quickly got our photos with them.
The server started off by bringing us our Rivers of Light tickets. These specified the show time, recommended arrival time (15 - 35 minutes prior to showtime), and where the entrance was.
We’re vegetarian non-foodies, so definitely not the go-to for restaurant reviews, but we had a great meal at Tusker House. We found plenty of delicious vegetarian options and quickly filled ourselves up.
We find the character meal format quite efficient for getting your character greetings in. We had to wait a little bit at the end of the meal for Goofy to visit, but we were in and out of Tusker House in under an hour with a great meal and four character greetings done.
VIP Rivers of Light Viewing
We arrived the minimum recommended 15 minutes before the start of the show. The entrance is—as the ticket indicates—directly opposite the entrance to Finding Nemo the Musical (between Dinoland USA and Asia). It’s pretty hard to miss, and there’s a small sign that says “Dining Package.”
Arriving “late,” we were in some of the last rows of the viewing area for the show. One nice thing is that unlike the standard seating area that fills every seat in, guests in the reserved seating area, moreso in the back, were somewhat sparse.
Once the show started, being in the back was completely fine. I actually like being far back because if no one is behind me I can be a little more aggressive with my photos and video. You can tap through the below gallery:
Is the Rivers of Light Dining Package Worth It?
Let’s start with price. I’ll use adult pricing (you might run your own analysis for your family makeup). Here’s a rough comparison of the cost of the dining package vs. an typical meal:
Tusker House Breakfast — $50 vs. $42
Tusker House Lunch / Dinner — $63 vs. $55
Tiffins Lunch / Dinner — $68 vs. $50 to $98
One of those numbers probably really caught your eye. At Tiffins, the Surf and Turf entree is $65, meaning your entire $68 of the dining package is nearly covered just by getting that. So your analysis ends pretty quickly if you can plan a meal at Tiffins that immediately justifies the price of the package.
Since meal prices will vary so much at Tiffins, let’s focus on the $8 per person premium you’re paying at Tusker House for the VIP Rivers of Light seating.
First of all, this is much better value than the Rivers of Light Dessert Party. Which gives you albeit slightly better seating but costs $89 and includes only some small desserts and alcohol.
But just how good of value is it? The truth is that no Rivers of Light seating is really that bad. The show occurs in the water, but the stadium seating keeps most views pretty good.
For the most part, you’re watching colorful flowers / statues move around on the water and different scenes being projected onto a water screen.
There are days when you won’t be able to get a FastPass+ and you might not arrive early enough for a good seat, but those are rare.
If nothing about Tusker House or Tiffins appeals to you, then I’m comfortable saying it’s not worth it to get the dining package because you’re mostly interested in the VIP seating. Just get a FastPass+ or arrive 20+ minutes before Rivers of Light showtime.
But if you’re already planning a table service meal at Animal Kingdom…at $8 per person “extra” for the viewing it’s hard for me to say it’s a waste.
Nighttime shows are always something of a wild card. I remember having our group of ten rushing around trying to find good viewing for Rivers of Light one busy night, and there was none available. I really wish we had gotten the dining package that day.
Some days a FastPass+ for the show will be easy to come by. Or there will be multiple shows but not high enough crowds, and you’ll walk into a great seat as the show starts. But you can’t predict those days.
The Rivers of Light Package is a small enough premium over the regular meal for me to say it’s worth it to save yourself a bit of stress. If a table service meal was already in your plans, moving up to the dining package is a good option.
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