An All Animal Kingdom Day

The Animal Kingdom park is an interesting element in my honeymoon planning. It's the park that you can do the fastest, and it closes earliest, of all of the parks, meaning it's not really a full-day experience, and it's unlikely to be a park we return to on one of our subsequent park days. However, there is a lot to see...once. I've been thinking a lot about how I want this day of our honeymoon to go, and here's what I'm thinking.

First, I know that we're going to want to do Wild Africa Trek, and we're going to want to do it early in the morning. That way, we get done by late morning/midday and have the entire afternoon for the rest of the park. Given that we'll have walked on the tour of the savannah, I'm guessing that we won't need to ride Kilimanjaro Safaris, eliminating one of the biggest time consumers at the park. When we get done with the trek, I imagine we'll want to hit up a few rides and attractions in the vicinity before heading over to Flame Tree BBQ, which, in my admittedly limited experience, is one of the best restaurants in the entire park, even if it is just counter service. Living in the Pacific Northwest, the fare at places like Yak & Yeti is far less exotic for us than it would have been when we were living in Tennessee (Teriyaki take out places are more common than Starbucks in the Seattle area, and that is not an exaggeration in the slightest), so I think a quick counter lunch is best.

This dish is available at teriyaki joints situated every 100 feet in Seattle.

After that, we'll have the whole afternoon to see the rest of the park, and I'm genuinely unconcerned about getting everything in that we want to see. By the time we leave the park in the afternoon, I feel like we'll be done with Animal Kingdom for the trip. Originally, I'd thought that, at this point, we'd want to head back to our hotel, relax a bit, and maybe walk in the International Gateway entrance to Epcot and hit up somewhere like the Biergarten or Via Napoli for dinner.

However, one restaurant that has kind of flown under the radar for me, up until now, is Jiko. I've actually never been in the Animal Kingdom lodge at all before, and I've been hearing nothing but good reviews of Jiko. There's a part of me that loves the thematic cohesion of a day at Animal Kingdom followed by dinner at Jiko, but that's going to make it a bit harder to hit all the places I want to try out at Epcot over the course of the trip. Still, I think Jiko sounds like a great place to eat, not only for the rave food reviews, but because I've never been there before. It would be a new experience for both of us, and something I want to make sure of on our honeymoon is that we forge some new memories for the both of us, instead of just hitting all the highlights of things I've done before. The other option is to go to Jiko for dinner on the day after our wedding, after we've parted ways with our wedding guests, but I'm kind of thinking that someplace more convenient to reach, like Kouzzina or the Yachtsman Steakhouse, would be better for our post-wedding relaxation day.

Jiko, you had me at "steak with macaroni and cheese."