Welcome to our trip report covering the start of Christmas Season at Walt Disney World! The primary purpose of trip reports is to supplement our existing content to let you know how our strategies are actually working at a given time! This post covers a day at Animal Kingdom!
About This Trip Report
This trip report covers a five-night visit to Walt Disney World for the beginning of Christmas season at Walt Disney World. Following the end of Halloween season, Walt Disney World takes a few days to transform into Christmas mode. You can read the full introduction in part 1.
We don’t know exactly how we’ll be breaking up this trip for the purposes of this report, but posts will go up here as we publish them:
Disney World Holiday Trip Report Part 1 — Introduction, Booking, and Arrival
Disney World Holiday Trip Report Part 2 — Updates from around Walt Disney World
Disney World Holiday Trip Report Part 4 — Rainy Day at Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party
Disney World Holiday Trip Report Part 5 — Day at Animal Kingdom (you are here)
Recommended Reading
Our trip reports supplement our existing park content. For more about Animal Kingdom planning, you’ll want to read:
Finally, while this post was part of our holiday visit, you’ll find a more comprehensive look at holiday things in our post on the Holiday Season at Animal Kingdom.
Arrival and Rope Drop
I honestly forgot it was a holiday weekend (Veterans Day), but I’m not sure I would have gotten up much earlier. We aimed to catch “the 7:30” bus (the actual times aren’t scheduled), and wound up getting picked up at 7:36AM.
At 7:56AM we were at Animal Kingdom to pretty decent crowds. With the caveat that you need to read on, this continues to support our position that an hour early is good for fitting in just Flight of Passage in the morning, but if you’re looking to also ride Na’vi River Journey, you’ll want to target 75 to 90 minutes.
Guests were let through the gates just before 8:15AM, and we were then held up at the bridge from Discovery Island into Pandora, which is when things got weird…
We weren’t actually escorted into Pandora until 8:55AM, and no guests would have been on the ride until after 9AM. We found out a few days later this was not a one-time thing.
You might think “ah so your morning gets pushed back a bit,” but the problem with “late” openings is actually more significant.
Most…or at least a lot of…guests coming to the park assume the 9AM opening time means the park opens at 9AM, so that’s when they aim to arrive. Maybe 8:45AM “to be safe.”
If the park actually opens 30 minutes early and you’re off the first ride by, say, 8:40AM, then you pretty much your pick of rides to walk onto. The only other people in the park at that time are those who knew to arrive early and are in line for Flight of Passage.
But if, like today, I’m not off Flight of Passage until 9:35AM, then all the waits are going to be inflated by everyone who arrived around 9AM, which you can see:
There’s really no right way to handle these waits. The best bet is to tackle whichever of Kilimanjaro Safaris or Na’vi River Journey you don’t have a FastPass+ for. If you didn’t have either, I’d probably prioritize Na’vi River Journey just because I don’t trust its posted wait times in the morning.
As it happened, I was sitting on both of those FastPasses, so I was faced with a different decision. I wanted to choose between going all the way to Expedition Everest or trying to catch DINOSAUR and add in a quick ride on TriceraTop Spin. I went with Everest.
The wait for Everest wound up being 23 minutes, and we boarded at 10:09AM.
Another Example Morning
As a quick aside, I want to add that I came to Animal Kingdom a few days later and had the following experience:
7:52AM Arrive
8:15AM Turnstiles Open
8:58AM Rope Drop
9:26AM Flight of Passage
10:14AM Na’vi River Journey
While neither of these mornings was ideal, if you had three FastPass+ reservations at Animal Kingdom (including Kilimanjaro Safaris), you’re in pretty good shape. If you needed to ride Flight of Passage, Na’vi River Journey, and Kilimanjaro Safaris in the morning, you’d face a bit of a time crunch.
But now back to the day at hand…
Fresh off Everest at 10:15AM. After we exited, DINOSAUR was sitting at 25 minutes.
Now, if I weren’t a blogger, there’s no way I would have gone to that DINOSAUR line. Sometimes 25 minutes for DINOSAUR is actually 10 minutes, sometimes it’s 30 minutes, but either way I’m personally quite comfortable banking on getting a FastPass+ for it later.
But I thought most readers would be inclined to fit in just one more “short” wait, so we headed there…
One thing I haven’t mentioned yet is that when I was tinkering with my FastPass+ selections around 9:15AM, I noticed a ton of space on Everest, DINOSAUR, and Kilimanjaro Safaris that wasn’t there when I was searching at 8:15AM. Well, FastPass+ space always has its downsides…
While we were in line for DINOSAUR, there were massive flows of FastPass+ riders. Our posted 25-minute wait actually took 37 minutes, and we exited the ride just after 11AM.
Afternoon at Animal Kingdom
I spent my 37 minutes with my face in my phone trying to piece together an entertainment schedule. I do this pretty much every full day at a park. You open up the “Entertainment” section of the My Disney Experience app and write yourself a note (in your choice note app) with all the entertainment times, and you piece together a plan.
This is also a good time to note what times attractions close or characters stop greeting. Yea…more on that below, too.
The biggest challenge with Animal Kingdom morning entertainment is the Tam Tam Drummers. They perform in the morning and usually finish their last set at 12:30PM. That means there’s usually a tight window for you to catch them after rope drop.
Well, when we got to Kilimanjaro Safaris and the FastPass+ line was all the way to the tap point, I decided to change plans. If it wasn’t for the tight entertainment schedule, I have no problem trusting the line to move at an acceptable pace. But I didn’t have time at the moment.
I decided we needed to start knocking off entertainment and hope we could push our Kilimanjaro Safaris FastPass+ to the afternoon.
I don’t love the safari FastPass+ in the afternoon because the animals tend to be less active during that time, but this is a bigger issue in August than in November. I was luckily able to pretty quickly modify my safari FastPass+ to 1:55PM.
We wound up back near Dinoland, eating lunch at Flame Tree Barbecue at 11:30AM. They have a new plant based sausage. It’s okay, but definitely not a threat to Satuli Canteen as my top quick service pick at Animal Kingdom.
Flame Tree has amazing seating though. It’s honestly maybe the best seating in all of Walt Disney World, with a lot of space and gorgeous views.
After lunch we grabbed coffee and watched the Tam Tam Drummers, and the 12:30PM performance by Kora Tinga Tinga.
Around 12:45PM we headed to The Festival of the Lion King. My general rule for Festival of the Lion King is just to walk into one of the later shows, but again I was feeling more pressure to check things off, so when the timing works you have to seize it.
This theater always fills very slowly, particularly at the end when they’re trying to find every last seat, but we were inside at 1:04PM, while the show was basically still in the introduction part.
We both thought this was a better show than some of our past visits. I think most guests would love it any day, but when you’ve seen it a hundred times you start to get unnecessarily picky.
After the show we headed over to Kali River Rapids to use our FastPass+ (12:45PM to 1:45PM window). On warmer days you might just visit Kali right when it opens (usually an hour after the park) to grab a short wait. On cooler days, if its operating, you’ll want a FastPass+ for the hottest time of the day (between noon and 4PM).
Entering the queue at 1:40PM we boarded at 1:56PM, the standby wait was 50 minutes. Having caught the tail end of that FastPass+, we went over to Kilimanjaro Safaris to use our 1:55PM to 2:55PM FastPass. It was a pretty good safari.
We finished the safari at about 2:45PM and then caught the 3PM performance by the Harambe Acrobats. I wandered over to Harambe Market and was disappointed to find out they no longer carry Bibo. Presumably Disney’s supply chain was contingent on Club Cool at Epcot, which is now closed.
After the acrobats we headed to the 3:30PM showing of Up! A Great Bird Adventure. This show has really struggled for a while, seeing multiple modifications since it debuted in April 2018.
The problem with the show is that people who come for bird tricks will feel like there’s too much plot and not enough cool bird things, and people who come for Up! won’t find enough of a story.
On this particular show, we had the fun bonus of some macaws who weren’t supposed to be out yet flying around eating all the hidden treats.
After the show we took a quick walk along the Maharajah Jungle Trek, which was closing at 4:45PM. I always like to tell people these trails sometimes close earlier than the app says, so it’s good to swing by this one and Gorilla Falls earlier to ask when they’ll be closing.
If we’d wanted to complete our show schedule, we would have gone to the 4:30PM performance of Finding Nemo the Musical. We opted against it. It’s a good retelling of Finding Nemo, but we decided to head to Rafiki’s Planet Watch quickly instead.
Evening at Animal Kingdom
We only had time for a quick lap around Rafiki’s, which is home to a petting zoo, the drawing class (The Animation Experience), and other zoological exhibits.
There’s a veterinary station, which does have a schedule for the day. I’m unsure if Guest Services or the Guest Experience Team could track down this schedule without you having to go all the way to Rafiki’s for it, but I assume so.
Our last FastPass+ window was 4:20PM to 5:20PM for Na’vi River Journey. After taking the train at 5PM back to Harambe, we walked over to Pandora, where we waited just 5 minutes in the FastPass+ queue, boarding at 5:20PM.
Satuli Canteen continues to be our favorite quick service restaurant at Animal Kingdom, so we grabbed dinner there. They had a seasonal pumpkin cheesecake mousse that was delicious.
At this point we had little by way of attractions left, and were mostly focused on taking in the holiday atmosphere. You can read more about that over in our Holiday Season at Animal Kingdom post.
We watched It’s Tough to be a Bug at 6:05PM. This remains one of our favorite attractions in Animal Kingdom pretty much solely for other guests’ reactions.
TriceraTop Spin had no wait at 6:55PM. Primeval Whirl has not returned yet, but will be open for a few days beginning November 24 and then again (presumably) around Christmas and New Year’s.
At 7:33PM we headed to Meet Mickey and Minnie at Adventurers Outpost. In a painful twist, we had left that line earlier for some nonsense like walking around, and now we arrived back to find it actually closed at 7:30PM, not 8PM with the rest of the park. This is 100% on me for not checking the attraction times, but I do find the 30-minute savings a bit odd.
There were two showing of Rivers of Light at 6:30PM and 7:45PM this night, but we weren’t interested in it.
We closed out the day with Tree of Life Awakenings. During the holiday season, Tree of Life Awakenings has special holiday segments. It’s a fun change to an already great show.
Final Animal Kingdom Itinerary
Here’s how this day shaped up:
7:56AM Arrive
8:55AM Rope Drop
9:27AM Flight of Passage
10:09AM Expedition Everest
10:58AM DINOSAUR
11AM Lunch
11:45AM Viva Gaia Street Band
12:00PM Tam Tam Drummer
12:30PM Kora Tinga Tinga
1:00PM Festival of the Lion King
1:56PM Kali River Rapids (FastPass+)
2:21PM Kilimanjaro Safaris (FastPass+)
3:00PM Harambe Acrobats
3:30PM Up! A Great Bird Adventure
4:00PM Maharajah Jungle Trek
4:22PM Rafiki’s Planet Watch
5:20PM Na’vi River Journey (FastPass+)
Dinner
6:05PM It’s Tough to be a Bug
6:55PM TriceraTop Spin
Tree of Life Awakenings
7:45PM (Skipped) Rivers of Light
Learn More About The Holidays at Walt Disney World
Want to learn more about Christmastime at Walt Disney World? For starters, we've got a Guide to Christmas at Walt Disney World, which introduces you to everything you need to know.
Need more specifics? You'll want to read about the park that gets the most Magical decorations in our post on Christmas at Magic Kingdom. You'll also want to read about Flurry of Fun—the Christmas celebration at Hollywood Studios, the Epcot International Festival of the Holidays, and the Holiday Celebrations at Animal Kingdom.
But the flagship event of the season is Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party—and our guide has you covered with everything you need to know. Or check out the quick version in our 12 Tips for Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party.
Last but not least, let's not forget that the celebrations don't stop at the parks! You can visit our post on Christmas decorations at the Disney World hotels to see how even the hotels get into the spirit!
All Your Other Disney World Planning Questions Answered
Don't be overwhelmed by Disney World planning! Take a second to check out our most important content and you'll not only be an expert, but you'll save big $$$ along the way.
Just starting out? Check out our Walt Disney World planning guide! If you're still picking dates, we've got everything you need to know about Disney World crowd calendars. For picking your hotel, check out our Walt Disney World hotels guide.
When it comes time to book we’ll help you find discount Disney World tickets. Decide whether you need a dining plan in our Complete Guide to Disney World Dining Plans! And at 180 days out it's time to book those Disney World Advance Dining Reservations!
Don't forget to master your Disney World FastPass+ 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 FastPass, Epcot FastPass, Animal Kingdom FastPass, and Hollywood Studios FastPass.
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.
Finally, before you head out, be sure to check out our to-the-point packing list, 10 essentials you forget to pack for every Disney trip. And if you're interested in saving, there's no better list than our 53 Ways to Save on your Disney trip from start to finish.