Thursday September 18th 2025

It has been about two months since I visited Disney’s Animal Kingdom. I going to use my favorite excuse and blame the weather. The animals hide during the hot part of the day so you need to go early or late. Animal Kingdom isn’t open at night and it rains a lot in the late afternoon. That leaves the morning as the only real time to visit and I sleep in too much.

I’ve been trying to get my act in gear early all week, but it has been approaching noon before I was ready to leave the base camp. Today was only a little bit different timing wise. I was ready to go before 10:30. The real difference was the temperature. It was only in the low eighties and the animals seem to like that temperature. I made to the park entrance by 11AM.

The crowd level in the park seemed to be on the low side even though I had to park a long way away. My first order of business was picking up my free annual pass holder magnet. They distribute the magnets a few times a year. This one is of Crush from Finding Nemo.

Then it was on to the Safari ride. Today was a big Giraffe viewing day. It was hard to take pictures today. There were two very big guys in the row in front of me. It seemed like every time I lined up a shot one or the other big guy would lean into my sight path to take his own picture. There is nothing you can do about it except taking another safari ride right after the first, but the wait time discouraged that idea. It had almost doubled from 45 to 80 minutes.

I wandered around the park checking out other animals and a few oddities of the human kind. My visit didn’t last long. I was on my way home for lunch around 2PM.