DisneyMania- An Evening in Animal Kingdom with Rivers of Light

Park hopping is NOT my favorite. My kids know that- but with such limited park time, it was a must on this trip. We headed to the busses and waited 30-40 minutes for the Animal Kingdom bus to arrive. Not terrible I guess, but we left the park later than we wanted to and we had a reservation for a Rivers of Light Dining Package at Tusker House as tonight was the first public viewing of this new nighttime spectacular. Tense and stressed out isn’t the right word to describe how I felt waiting, but the immense relief when the bus came was certainly a rush of emotion!

Helpful Hint: Disney offers a new service, Express Transportation, that will pick you up and drop you off inside the theme parks while park hopping- by passing security and admission lines. For our purposes, Express bus would have dropped us off very close to Tusker House- which would have been a HUGE perk for me that evening!

We made it to the park with 10 minutes to sprint to Tusker House… needless to say, we sent the girls ahead (My daughters know the parks as well as they know their way around our home).

Tusker House is another tricky dining spot- you won’t find your typical menu here, but it is certainly worth checking out- much healthier options can be found here as well as a few special guests…

And the perk of booking a Rivers of Light Dining Package?

Premium seats to the Rivers of Light show! Once you arrive, you are given your paper tickets to the show, which are dated and marked with which show you are seeing (1st or 2nd show).

After dinner we headed over to Expedition Everest- with minimal wait times, everyone rode twice!

As we watched the stadium fill, we decided to head over to our seats, which are located on the side closest to the Finding Nemo Musical and Dinoland USA.

The show is just simply spectacular… even the pre-show is mesmerizing!

But the show… nothing short of magical…

Help Hint: When exiting Rivers of Light from the first show, exit to your right. If you turn left you will run into huge crowds who are both exiting and entering the arena for the next show. Nothing good can come of these immense crowds going in opposite directions- families separate and adults have been known to behave badly. Your best bet is to try and avoid this all together.

Once through the crowds, we decided to ride the safari as the park was open for a bit longer. Kilimanjaro Safari at night is just incredible, so much more to see…