This is part two of our Animal Kingdom Early Entry article. In the first article, we covered the logistics and experience of riding Flight of Passage during Animal Kingdom Early Entry. In this article, we’ll talk about our experiences following the end of the Early Entry period and during the rest of the morning. We’ll discuss how to prioritize your morning and what we were able to accomplish.
For a primer of how we got to this point, check out our earlier article covering the Early Entry experience.
Picking up where we left off: it’s 9:03am and Disney’s Animal Kingdom is open to the masses and they are pretty much all heading for one attraction – the one we just exited – Flight of Passage.
Our priority list for the rest of our morning is as follows:
- Na’vi River Journey
- Kilimanjaro Safaris
- DINOSAUR
- Nomad Lounge
Ideally, we’d be at Nomad Lounge by the time it opens – 11am. Let’s see how we did.
Kilimanjaro Safaris and Na’vi River Journey wait times would both build early in the day, but we choose to go to Na’vi River Journey because it had a posted 10-minute wait and because it was physically close to Flight of Passage.
The queue was rather empty when we rode but would build to a maximum wait time of 70 minutes just after lunchtime. Our actual wait time would turn out to be 10 minutes.
If Na’vi River Journey isn’t a priority for you, we’d suggest heading straight for Kilimanjaro Safaris before slowing down. The wait time will build quickly there and reach anywhere from 60-120 minutes by midday.
From Na’vi River Journey, we made our way to Kilimanjaro Safaris. When we arrived, the posted wait time was 20 minutes, but it became clear that we probably arrived a little bit too late as the crowds didn’t represent the posted 20-minute wait. Again, if Na’vi River Journey isn’t a priority for you, make sure that you go straight to Safaris (if that’s on your list).
Here’s a look at some of the slow-moving, crowded queue that would ultimately take us 30 minutes until we boarded the ride. Certainly not bad compared to the maximum posted wait of 75 minutes later in the day, but we had hoped it would be closer to 10-15 minutes.
It’s always fun to ride Kilimanjaro Safaris in the morning as the animals are generally quite active for breakfast…or sleeping.
We would exit Kilimanjaro Safaris by 10:31am, roughly 60 minutes after we first entered the queue.
At this point, we had 30 minutes until Nomad Lounge would open and only one ride left – DINOSAUR.
Expedition Everest is currently closed for a multi-month refurbishment, otherwise, we’d work that into our morning plan. We’ll try this again when Expedition Everest reopens and we’ll reshuffle our priority list as well.
Making our way over to DINOSAUR, we found a posted wait of 15 minutes, but the attraction was essentially a walk-on with no wait beyond the pre-show.
We finished DINOSAUR at 10:59am, one minute before Nomad Lounge would open and we could join the walk-up waitlist.
Overall, we felt quite happy with our morning using Early Entry and not purchasing Disney Genie+. We were able to ride Flight of Passage during Early Entry, and then make our way to Na’vi River Journey, Kilimanjaro Safaris, and DINOSAUR with enough time to make it to Nomad Lounge before noon. If Expedition Everest was open, we could probably expect to add another 30 minutes or so to our morning.
Other attractions like It’s Tough to Be A Bug and Triceratop Spin could be easily added with little impact on your wait times, but you don’t need to prioritize those in the morning. By riding Flight of Passage during Early Entry, we can now leisurely enjoy lunch and some afternoon shows without having to worry about wait times for some of the headline attractions.
As always, keep checking back with us here at BlogMickey.com as we continue to bring you the latest news, photos, and info from around the Disney Parks!