Since its opening in April of 1998, Disney’s Animal Kingdom has continued to grow in both size and popularity. What started off as what many derisively termed a “half-day park,” has now turned into a busy and attraction filled theme park worthy of an entire day’s exploration. This is especially the case since the addition of “Pandora: The World of Avatar” a few years back.
All this change has resulted in some things falling under the radar with regards to things to do at the park. The animal trails fall under that category.
For the third edition of our video series titled “Disney Date Hopper,” where Molly and I show off great date options for couples at Disney World, we walked these animal trails.
We decided to walk both trails, grab some unique Animal Kingdom drinks and grab some quick service Asian food as well. You can check out the full video below and listen while we get into why the Animal Trails are underrated.
The best part of Animal Kingdom to me is the appreciation of animals without the feeling of being in a zoo. Zoo’s have always felt dirty and cliché with animals being trapped in cages without a lot of room and many animals being too close together. This park creates perfect environments for each animal and gives them far more space than you would normally think.
We first walked the Gorilla Falls Exploration Trail. This trail is in Africa and put us face to face with Meerkat’s, Monkeys and Gorillas. We were fortunate enough to spot the brand-new baby monkey located on this trail as well which was very popular.
All the animals were out, which was fortunate for us. Molly especially loved the Meerkat’s who were very playful animals.
We loved taking our time as we took in the sights and sounds of this trail. The Gorillas are the highlighted animal of this trail and we really enjoyed every minute of it.
We then journeyed over to Asia for the Maharajah Jungle Trek for the second half of our day date. This trail boasts Asian Tigers as its main animal but also entails Gibbons, Elds deer, Blackbuck, Komodo dragon, Malayan flying fox, Water Buffalo and over 50 species of birds.
Although this trail is shorter than the other trail it was still very interesting. We preferred the collection of animals on the Africa trail, but our favorite part of the day was seeing the Tiger on this trail. We snagged some incredible footage on the camera that we posted to our Instagram page of the Tiger playing with its ball and getting some play time in within the water.
Both trails brought us laughter and constant views that did not get old.
To finish our date, we grabbed two Himalayan Ghosts at the Thirsty River Bar near Expedition Everest. This refreshing alcoholic beverage contains Snow Leopard Vodka, guava and Odwalla lemonade.
We drank these on our way to grab food over in Asia right next to “Yak and Yeti.” We love the quick service Asian food at this park, and it was the perfect conclusion to the daytime date at Animal Kingdom.
I went into this day expecting to wander around and waste some time until we grabbed food but was pleasantly surprised by the whole day. It constantly made me realize that more people need to walk these animal trails and enjoy what comes with them. They are both underrated aspects of the park and I will be walking both in the future.
I hope you enjoyed this article as well as the video attached to it as well and highly recommend you check out these trails on your next visit to the Animal Kingdom. For more content from Molly and I, you can check out our videos on our YouTube channel where we post weekly vlogs from the Orlando area. You can also find us on Facebook and Instagram where we post Disney/more photos and videos daily and run monthly giveaways. Continue to follow the Disney Blog for great Disney content in the meantime.