Disney's Animal Kingdom: Wilderness Explorers, Zuri Sweet Shop, Flight of Passage, and more!
We are continuing to break in our annual passes, and our latest trip was to Animal Kingdom. This is Cash’s favorite park hands down, and it may be mine as well. What’s funny about that statement, is so far we have only explored maybe half of it!
Cash was recovering from the flu, so his energy wasn’t quite up to it’s usual levels. We slept in a little, and hit the park around 11 am. We knew that we wanted to do some of the things we’d loved from our first (and only) visit, so we were going to spend most of our time in Africa and Pandora. I also wanted Cash to be able to try out something else I had heard about: The Wilderness Explorer program.
We went in the park, and headed right. On the way, we had to stop and take a picture with the tree character. I have no idea it’s official name, but it’s a woman on stilts, covered in vines and she is so stinking cool. If you look super closely at the background in the first picture, you’ll see her. She eventually gets out and walks around as well.
We stopped and looked at some animals, then after we passed a bridge, on the right, heading into Discovery Island there was a pavilion where you can pick up your Wilderness Explorer book. The woman on duty gave Cash his book, and taught him the official “call” of the Wilderness Explorers, earning him his first badge. She explained that the book has a map in it that shows all of the Wilderness Explorer sites where you can earn badges; 29 in all! When you get to each site, you look for the worker with a yellow bag, and they will help you earn your badge.
Next we went to check out the Tree of Life. One of our biggest goals is to see it lit up at night, but is very cool during daytime as well. There were two beautiful tropical birds hanging out in the viewing area in front of it, and we watched them for awhile. Then we headed off to Africa.
Africa is one of my favorite places to walk around and look at things. Cash loved studying the hand carved figurines. We love the street performers. I don’t love that there seems to be only one bathroom for this entire section of the park; which is pretty busy. Perhaps I’m missing something, or maybe we caught it at weird times, but I recommend taking pit stops elsewhere before venturing this way.
I had read all kinds of really great things about the Zuri Sweets Shop, so I ventured in with Cash to check it out. They had a few fun Christmas gifts out, like ornaments and large Mickey and Minnie Nutcrackers that were fun to look at. It’s a smaller store, and a lot of the sweets were pre-packaged goods you can take home with you. I tend to stay away from these as much as possible, because I feel like a sucker is a sucker, even if it does have Goofy’s face on it.
We went to check out the display case instead. They had sooo many fun items that were certainly unique. There were lots of cupcakes, decorated sugar cookies, and - Cash’s favorite- caramel apples. One particular caramel apple was in the shape of an elephant, and was so cute. I got Cash one of the plain caramel apples (it was about $4 less than the $9.99 elephant one; we aren’t on vacation here).
Passholder Tip: They were one of the few places we’ve discovered that accepted the pass holder discount! My guess is because it is probably considered more “gift shop” than a restaurant. This might be a good thing to keep in mind when we want to get a treat, since most of the quick service places don’t offer the discount.
The woman behind the counter was super amazing, and asked Cash if he wanted it whole or cut up. I’ve never been anywhere where they offered to cut up the apple for you! Genius. He opted to have it cut up. Once he got full, I snuck a few bites for myself and oh. my. The caramel was incredible. Definitely a great treat to get here.
After our treat, we hit the Gorilla Falls Exploration Trail. We got to see hippos, gorillas, exotic birds, and my favorite - a three pound frog! I love how they set the whole place up to feel more like a research station than a zoo. Cash was able to earn lots of his Wilderness Badges on this trek.
Next we had a fast pass to the Kilimanjaro Safaris, and got to walk right on. This is definitely one of our favorite spots at all of Disney World. You get to ride around and see all kinds of animals on a tour that feels like a real safari. The tour guides are always fun and manage to make it feel really unscripted.
After this, we ventured over to Pandora because….wait for it…the best mother in the world (that’s me, of course) managed to score FAST PASSES for FLIGHT OF PASSAGE the day before. If you’re not real familiar with the whole fast pass world, this is basically unheard of. We spent maybe 20 minutes (max) in line, and were ushered into the room. You can find descriptions, videos, and all sorts of reviews on the internet, but to throw in our two cents: Hands down, the best ride we’ve ever ridden. You can literally SMELL the forest as you are flying over it. I will also add that Cash, who is SUPER afraid of “drops” and hated the Frozen ride, loved this and had no problem with it at all. It’s also 3D, which often makes me feel nauseous (I can’t keep my eyes open for Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey at Universal), but I didn’t have that issue on this ride at all.
We ventured back over to Africa then, because we had fast passes for Festival of the Lion King. We had a little bit of a wait to go in, but got pretty good seats. Cash fell asleep in my lap while we were waiting for it to start, which gave me a clue that he was about done. We watched the show (our second time…it’s becoming a favorite!). I love it because it’s very different, not too long, and has really fun things like acrobats and flame jugglers.
After the show was over we hit a bit of a planning snag. We really wanted to stay and watch the evening show, and the tree all lit up, but there wasn’t much on our list that was going to be open during the in between time. Wilderness Explorers shut down at 5pm, as did most of the character spots. We had about an hour and a half to kill just walking around. Since Cash was pretty wiped out, he opted to go ahead and head home. It was a good choice, but one of these days we WILL see that darn night show.
Next time we go I also really want to venture out and explore Asia (the Yak and Yeti, even their quick service counter, is raved about in every review I’ve ever read), and over to DinoLand where most of the character meet and greets are. I’ll be sure and update! Here is a little video of clips from our day. Enjoy.
Next time we visited, we made it all the way around to Asia and Dino Land as well.