Animal Kingdom has now officially reopened to guests!
Tree of Life
And we’re here to see what it’s like to spend a day inside the reopened park! Now that we’ve gotten a peek at the crowds in Animal Kingdom, let’s see how the attraction wait times stack up throughout the day!
Animal Kingdom opened its gates at 8AM today. So, let’s start by taking a look at the wait times an hour after guests began entering the park!
July 11th, 9AM
On a typical park day, wait times have generally started to climb when the park has been open for an hour, as guests have had time to start filing in. But at 9AM today, most of the attractions in Animal Kingdom still had a 5-minute wait — including popular rides like Expedition Everest and Kilimanjaro Safaris!
Animal Kingdom Wait Times as of 9AM on July 11th
The attractions located in Pandora only had slightly longer lines — both Na’vi River Journey and Avatar Flight of Passage had a wait time of only 10-minutes!
Animal Kingdom Wait Times as of 9AM on July 11th
Here’s a look at a nearly empty Pandora around 9AM– which is definitely an unusual sight!
Pandora Crowds
We’ll continue to keep an eye on the wait times throughout the day to see if they stay super low!
Check out our live coverage from reopening day at Animal Kingdom!
July 11th, 10AM
Okay, now that the park has been open for two hours, how are the wait times looking? Well, here’s something you don’t see every day — the wait time for Flight of Passage is just 5-minutes!
Animal Kingdom Wait Times as of 10AM on July 11th
At this time, the two attractions with the longest wait are Na’vi River Journey and Kali River Rapids, which both have a 10-minute wait!
Animal Kingdom Wait Times as of 10AM on July 11th
And there aren’t a ton of guests wandering around the park either! Here’s a look at the crowd level in the Discovery Island area.
Tree of Life
We’ll see if the wait times start to climb later in the day!
Click here to see what the wait times are like in Magic Kingdom on reopening day!
July 11th, 11AM
Now that the park has been open for three hours, the wait time for nearly every attraction (including Flight of Passage!) is still just 5-minutes!
Animal Kingdom Wait Times as of 11AM on July 11th
Check out that 5-minute wait for Kilimanjaro Safaris!
Kilimanjaro Safaris
Kali River Rapids currently has the longest wait in the park of 15-minutes!
Animal Kingdom Wait Times as of 11AM on July 11th
We’ll check back at noon to see how the wait times are looking!
Check out the “Welcome Back” merch we spotted for sale in Disney World!
July 11th, 12PM
It’s noon in Animal Kingdom, and the wait times are still super low! In fact, there are almost no changes since we last checked at 11AM — and yes, Flight of Passage still has a 5-minute wait!
Animal Kingdom Wait Times as of 12PM on July 11th
Kali River Rapids still has the longest wait of 15-minutes, and it looks like the only change is Na’vi River Journey, which is temporarily closed.
Animal Kingdom Wait Times as of 12PM on July 11th
We’ll see if there are any shake-ups in the wait times when we check-in later this afternoon!
July 11th, 4PM
Wait times have stayed steadily low throughout the afternoon, but let’s check back in for an official 4PM update! Once again, almost all of the available attractions have a 5-minute wait — and we still can’t get over how wild it is to see Flight of Passage included in that group!
Animal Kingdom Wait Times as of 4PM on July 11th
The only attraction with a longer wait is Na’vi River Journey, at 10-minutes!
Animal Kingdom Wait Times as of 4PM on July 11th
The park is open until 6PM tonight, so we’ll see if anything changes in the last few hours!
July 11th, 5PM
It’s one hour until park close and the wait for every open attraction in Animal Kingdom is 5-minutes!
Animal Kingdom Wait Times as of 5PM on July 11th
Now that’s a sign of some light crowds!
Animal Kingdom Wait Times as of 5PM on July 11th
The wait times will fluctuate daily, but on reopening day, Animal Kingdom was definitely the park to visit for walk-on attractions!
Follow along with our live coverage from reopening day at Animal Kingdom!
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Which of these wait times are you the most surprised by? Let us know in the comments!
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We got to Animal Kingdom at 12:00 today and was absolutely blown away at how empty the park was. We rode Flight of Passage 3 times!!! Each time we walked right into the ride. My wife and I couldn’t believe it. We’ll see how Magic Kingdom is tomorrow. Should be a little more waiting there, but judging from what we saw on the Disney App, probably not going to have much waiting there either!
Ryan, I hope you had a fun day at MK!
To me, this just shows that Disney let too many guests in pre-Covid. By restricting the amount of guests, it’s much more pleasant for those attending, and there’s no need for Fast Passes.
Thank you DFB crew for these posts about MK and AK!
Admittedly, I am not a supporter of WDW opening as FL hits 2nd epicenter status and I hope that the precautions keep everyone safe who was brave enough to go at this time. I also hope that the “reward” of these relatively empty walkways and super-short wait times is positive reinforcement for guests to continue minding the precautions. I mean, 5m for FoP, PPF and 7DMT – that’s alone is worth the price of admission!
Somehow I missed that CC was getting a pink and gold Sleeping Beauty castle makeover and I attributed the glowing blue “shingles” on the top image for the MK crowd pic article to some over-punched saturation in post-production. After learning of the remodel and looking at the pic again, it almost made me cry at how beautiful and magical it looks. So much better than the birthday-cake debacle for the 25th!
Our family of 7 went in in mid-Dec 2019 and departed the week before Xmas week, crowds felt above average for that time of year but with a couple of rope-drop-dash’s and well-timed FPs, we were able to ride all of the favorites for our group and had a wonderful trip to our OKW 3BGV. It was our first “big” family trip since finally buying into DVC, so I’m glad we went. However by Xmas all but the two oldest (including all three 8-10yo kids) in our group developed a nasty, feverish flu that sidelined our holidays until after the new year. At the time, I had only heard about the novel SARS-like coronavirus spreading in China from the BBC global news podcast. Months later, I’m about 90% convinced it was COVID-19 based on symptoms.
Kudos to the WDW cast members that are making this reopening happen in as safe a manner as possible. I hope the WDW powers-that-be are prudent with increasing the capacity of the park reservation system. Thanks again to the DFB crew for these glimpses into what it’s like right now! Fingers crossed that our family’s plans for the 50th anniversary trip in Dec 2021 can stay on track too.
Lastly, I hope that I’m just overly cautious and that everyone there for this unprecedented time – cast members, guests and DFB crew – stay safe and healthy!
Thanks for writing, Michelle. 🙂