As a theme park all about exploration, Disney's Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World rewards the guest who ventures off the beaten path. We recently shared about the park's incredible lounge and a dessert that we think is better than the viral ice cream sandwich. Other than food, several animal experiences make this park special, particularly when crowds are low.
One ride at Disney's Animal Kingdom is best saved for the end of the day. Keep reading for our experience trying this out and our tips for maximizing your time. Mickey Visit brings you the latest Disney news and planning resources, including Disney World expanding a popular hotel perk to more guests and a Disney World menu item that's only available for two hours each day.
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The Best Way to End the Day at Disney's Animal Kingdom
Disney's Animal Kingdom regularly closes at 6:00 PM, much earlier than the other three Walt Disney World theme parks. This is even true during the busy summertime season.
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Due to this abnormality, the flow of crowds at Animal Kingdom on any given day works differently from the other parks. Animal Kingdom's guests tend to dwindle toward the late afternoon. With no nighttime spectacular to keep them around, and with the park closing before many people are ready to eat their evening meal, crowds can be remarkably scarce in the final hours of operation.
As I write this article, at 4:50 PM on a summer Monday, the usually hours-long wait for Avatar Flight of Passage is 45 minutes. On the other side of the park, the wait for Expedition Everest – Legend of the Forbidden Mountain is 20 minutes.
These low-crowd hours are a win for guests not interested in purchasing Lightning Lane access or waking up early to brave the typically low crowds of rope drop. However, if you are interested in either of those strategies for Animal Kingdom, tap the links for our tips.
Today, though, we're sharing our experience staying at Animal Kingdom almost until the park closed at 6:00 PM and finishing the day out with a ride on Kilimanjaro Safaris.
The ride only had a 5-minute wait at the end of the day, and we saw tons of animals. It was wonderful to see them all. The cast member driver even said she had never seen one of them before. We captured all of the Kilimanjari Safaris photos in this story during the same ride.
Remember, you can get in line for any ride at a Disney World theme park right up until closing time. If Animal Kingdom closes at 6:00 PM, you can enter the line of Kilimanjaro Safaris through 5:59. With Kilimanjaro Safaris especially, this is a nice way to stretch your time in Animal Kingdom and get more for your money, since the attraction is long.
If Animal Kingdom closes at 6:00 PM and you get in line for Kilimanjaro Safaris at, say, 5:55, your ride is unlikely to finish until around 6:25 or 6:30. You just got a half-hour of “free” park time. As a bonus, since the ride is located at the back of the park, you'll likely have a very pleasant walk to the park exit through an almost-empty Animal Kingdom.
The only days this strategy may not be true are when the park hosts Extended Evening Theme Park Hours on select nights later this year for guests staying at Disney World hotels in the “deluxe” tier. On those nights, the typically low afternoon crowds might be higher as an influx of guests arrives. Even then, though, the park hours won't last much longer than shortly after sunset.
Shortly before riding Kilimanjaro Safaris at the end of the day, we recommend checking out Gorilla Falls Exploration Trail nearby. It's so much more relaxed back here at the end of the day vs. earlier during busier park hours. The animal activity does start to wind down here earlier than the actual park closing time, though, so do Gorilla Falls before Kilimanjaro Safaris.
While we're discussing the abnormalities of Animal Kingdom's operations, we should mention that Bluey's Wild World at Conservation Station closes at 3:45 PM daily. See our report from visiting this new Animal Kingdom attraction, which requires a train ride to get there.
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Some guests may wonder if Animal Kingdom would ever try out longer operating hours. To varying degrees, it has. The most extreme example was the summer of 2016, when the park committed to closing at 11:00 PM nightly. This was also when the park introduced nighttime lagoon shows and an after-dark version of Kilimanjaro Safaris with an artificial “sunset” special effect. Neither of these initiatives lasted long.
Disney is currently building a new land for Animal Kingdom called Tropical Americas, complete with rides based on Encanto and Indiana Jones. This area will replace DinoLand, U.S.A., which closed earlier this year. I suspect that once Tropical Americas opens, Animal Kingdom might implement another spurt of nighttime hours, at least for a little while, as it did around the time Pandora – The World of Avatar opened in 2017.
See how construction is coming along for Tropical Americas and 6 other lands Disney is currently building.
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