Florida Walt Disney World Animal Kingdom & Epcot (Part 1 of 2)

walt disney world animal kingdom

Today I’m going to post a continuation of my trip. After New York (read about my New York trip), we flew to Florida where we met up with our good friends Jiawen and John.

In Orlando, Florida, unless you have a rental car, there really isn’t that much to do besides visiting theme parks. We had two full days in Florida, so we decided to split our trip up as follows:

  • Day 1: Walt Disney World Animal Kingdom & Epcot (there are actually 5 Disney parks, but we only visited 2 of them)
  • Day 2: Universal Studios Islands of Adventure

Therefore, in this post, you will see our Day 1 trip and Day 2 will be posted next week! Let’s begin!

 


 

We left New York early morning for our flight to Florida. Once we arrived, we had to take a shuttle to our hotel to meet up with our friends. We didn’t really do anything the remainder of the day besides eat at Olive Garden for dinner. It’s a good thing too that we knocked out early because Day 1 of our trip in Florida was a long and tiring one.

The day started off early in the morning at a Time Share meeting. The meeting was very boring and the sales representatives were a bit pushy, but what we got out of it was $100 off of our Disney theme park tickets.

I don’t think I’ll ever go back to a Disney park unless I have kids. It’s simply too expensive! I’ve never been a big fan of going to Disneyland in California (unless it’s a first date), but I do have to admit that Disney World won my approval. Their entertainment was flawless, decorations were beautiful, and they had the best ice cream ever. Actually all of the food and drinks in the park were pretty affordable from what I expected it to be. The only thing that cost a leg and an arm were the entry tickets.

walt disney world animal kingdom

The first park we went to was Animal Kingdom. I really didn’t know what to expect when I first got here, but wow everything was a feast for me eyes! I’m not sure if I just went to the Disneyland park in California too much or something, but I feel like it doesn’t look anything as nice as Orlando’s. Actually, I’ve been do Tokyo’s Disney Sea before too and thought that was gorgeous as well. Maybe the California one does suck, haha.

Look at the tree of life! It was HUGE.

walt disney world animal kingdom

Here’s Jiawen and I walking through the Maharajah Jungle Trek. I loved looking at the tigers sleeping, they were less than a foot away from us!

walt disney world animal kingdom

The park was just beautiful. I feel kinda crazy to even think something like that. But wow, look at Expedition Everest and the lake in front of it. Such a beautiful painting. This was the first ride (roller coaster) that we went on, so much fun!

walt disney world animal kingdom

Not to far away were also these interesting structures with real monkeys hanging around and playing!! WTF, they don’t run away? I think Disney really takes great care of all of their animals which I truly applaud them for.

walt disney world animal kingdom jungle

The rest of the day I wandered around entirely soaked because of the Kali River Rapids. I didn’t think this ride was as fun as the river raft rides that we have in California, but this one sure did get about 90% of the riders completely wet. Too bad for me that I was on my period and wearing a pad. Horrible.

walt disney world animal kingdom water ride

After we decided to watch a couple of shows. The first one that we watched was Finding Nemo – The Musical. I must tell you, I was impressed with the quality of performance and how innovative each scene was. Despite the fact that the musical followed the same storyline as the movie, it was a fresh take on it. Below is a snapshot of the scene when the turtles are swimming through the current towards Sidney, Australia.

walt disney world animal kingdom finding nemo show

After Nemo, we headed over to the Festival of the Lion King. Once again, I was blown away by the cast performers. They had acrobatics, flame throwers, singers, and dancers of all sorts. It was a great show and I highly recommend checking it out if you get the chance.

walt disney world animal kingdom lion king show

We went to a few other attractions but I won’t bother showing you pictures of them. Rides are rides and they really aren’t much fun to see pictures of unless you’ve experienced them before.

But here’s Erick and I. *pose pose pose* He ended up shoving ice cream in my face. What a jerk, lol. I had so much ice cream that day. Disney really has bomb ice cream, no joke.

walt disney world animal kingdom ice cream

The last ride that we went out was the Kilimanjaro Safari. THIS WAS THE BEST!!! I’M NOT KIDDING. I can’t believe Disney owns this??? This safari puts all zoo’s to shame!

I just couldn’t believe how much land Disney owned and how much was dedicated to these animals. The safari went on for as far as the eye could see and all of the animals were allowed to roam however they pleased. They were not kept in gates or fences, but were allowed to actually travel around. How did they not eat each other?? Lol. There were lions, cheetahs, elephants, warthogs, crocodiles, rhinos, and the list goes on…

walt disney world animal kingdom safari

The safari was the last attraction that we cared to visit, so we headed over to the Epcot! To be honest, Epcot sounded so boring and all I really knew about it was what I saw in that one episode of Boy Meets World. But this is probably my favorite park of the two, and is very ideal for adults. I can’t imagine children enjoying this theme park at all.

walt disney world epcot center

What makes Epcot so enjoyable is that you feel like you are visiting a bunch of different countries in one day! It’s even more fun if you go with friends because you can drink in every country. Disney actually imported workers from each country to try to keep the experience as authentic as possible.

walt disney world epcot center countries

The first country we stopped at was United KingdomWe ended up getting fish and chips and beer. I had a horrible lunch because I kept getting attacked by this squirrel. Not fun.

walt disney world epcot center london

Next we stopped in France. I actually started crying here for a brief minute which was really awkward and embarrassing.

Like I said earlier, I was on my period and I needed to get a tampon or pad from their machine in the bathroom. I put in all my money that I had and their machine wasn’t working. To make things worse, I put my last quarter in and it got stuck and I spent about 10 minutes trying to get it out. I got so frustrated and almost broke my nail.

I went to one of the workers to try to get a refund on my money and he acted like he didn’t understand me. That’s when I learned that the workers were actually from France. Their accents weren’t fake! I spoke to several male workers (that’s all I could find) to try to explain to them my story. I felt so stupid and embarrassed that I ended up tearing up while I was waiting. They wouldn’t even open up the register for me to give me change for my dollar. Ughh~

walt disney world epcot center france

We are chillin’ in Morocco! I think we have found which country we need to visit next in real life. This was our favorite destination out of the countries we visited in Epcot. I guess it’s because it was so different and appealing?

walt disney world epcot center morroco

JAPAN! I’ve always loved visiting Japan and I can only look forward to the next time I get to visit. I ended up getting a Rilakkuma fan from the store since it was so hot in Florida.

walt disney world epcot center japan

Here we are in Italy. I can’t wait to get to visit the real country. It’s gorgeous! How fun to think that my brother-in-law is from this beautiful country.

walt disney world epcot center

In Germany is where we discovered that there are a lot of cute guys. Haha all of the male workers from Germany were good lookin’ cuties! Don’t tell Erick I said so, he won’t like that.

walt disney world epcot center

In China we walked around a bit and bought a drink to support “our country.” Lol. It was so fun talking to the workers in China too. Their name tags actually say what province they are from as well!

walt disney world epcot center china

By the time we got to Mexico we were already exhausted. Didn’t get a chance to go inside and explore so I just took a picture from the outside.

walt disney world epcot center mexico

After our tour of the world, we went on a few rides like Test Track and some shuttle simulator that made me nauseous. Then we went on another ride that was super slow and boring. Turns out we ended up missing the fireworks show. Oh well, who cares, I don’t. Isn’t the globe thing so pretty though? I love geometric shapes.

walt disney world epcot center

Once we had throughly exhausted ourselves at two Disney World parks, we headed over to Downtown Disney. That was another adventure in itself. We got some dinner at the cheapest place that we could find and then went back to our hotel rooms to pass out. I was so tired from that day that I couldn’t imagine that we were going to Harry Potter World the day after! But then again, that’s what I came to Florida for, Harry Pottaaaa!

Visiting Epcot has got my blood flowing, and now I wanna travel!
Where are you dying to travel to?

Stay tuned for my Part 2 of my Florida Trip next week!

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Thanks for reading!
xoxo Sarah

8 Replies to “Florida Walt Disney World Animal Kingdom & Epcot (Part 1 of 2)”

  1. cool photos, looks like fun!

    xx fameliquorlove.blogspot.com

    1. thanks for looking!

  2. Beautiful photographs seems you had fun a lot, very nice indeed your top, the zoo safari looks great. I hope to see your new post about more of your adventures.

    1. thanks so much! the safari was the best! you must visit 🙂

  3. I love looking a travel photos! Looks like you had a lot of fun! Epcot looks really interesting, like a sample of a country before you decide if you want to travel there for real haha!
    Thanks for sharing!

    1. lol thats exactly what my friends and i were doing. sorta figuring out which country we want to visit based off of epcot! hahaha~ funny

  4. ooh looks like a lot of fun! <3

    1. it really was, thanks for visiting! 😀

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