Disney Vacation Day 2: Animal Kingdom & Hollywood Studios

On Day 2 of my Christmas vacation to Disney World, we went to both Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios. I haven’t been to either of these parks in years so it was nice to return. The last time I was near Animal Kingdom it was a few years ago for lunch at the Animal Kingdom Lodge, but I wasn’t at the actual park. And the last time I was at Hollywood Studios was when I was a freshman in college, I believe, and that was quite a number of years ago.

The parks are always being updated and new things being added. This year Pandora – the Avatar section – opened up and it is very cool to walk around in. They have those big stone/tree structures that look like they’re floating and the food was really good too! As mentioned yesterday, I’ll be talking about all the food from this trip in a separate post coming up! Pandora is extremely popular right now so I wasn’t able to get any FastPasses for any of those rides and the standby lines were hours long! Maybe next time!

We still did get to go on a few rides like Expedition Everest twice thanks to FastPasses. We also went on the Safari ride which I hadn’t been on since I was a kid when the park was new. We got to see a lot of animals which was great because according to my parents we didn’t see many that first time.

Halfway through the day we headed over to Hollywood Studios. We had no FastPasses for this park, but dinner reservations so we decided to go there, walk around, look at the decorations, and try to get on some rides that didn’t have ridiculously long waits. As with all the other parks, the Christmas decorations were great! We saw a few shows that were going on, a Stormtrooper parade, the Indiana Jones show which I think I’ve seen 3 times now but is always entertaining, Muppets 3D, and at the last minute we saw Toy Story Mania had only a 25 minute wait so we ran over there. By the time we got out, the park was closed and it felt so weird but cool to see it so empty!

I’ve been enjoying wearing my Disney and Christmas gear this week. My Minnie Mouse hoodie with the bow/ears is from the Disney Store and I think my t-shirt is as well although that’s a few years old. I bought the Christmas Minnie ears my first night here at Disney Springs.

I’ll be back tomorrow with the next part of my trip! In the meantime, enjoy my Stormtrooper parade video below!