Review of Starbucks at Animal Kingdom-Why you should AVOID it!

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Where to have breakfast in Animal Kingdom

Where to have breakfast in Animal Kingdom? Finding the perfect breakfast spot can make your day start that much better. The wrong one can ruin it!

Why have breakfast in Animal Kingdom?

I love Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World, it is one of my top four WDW parks! hehe…
However something I don’t like about it is the distance from it to most hotels. Unless you are staying in an Animal Kindgom area hotel this is likely to be the park furthest away from your resort. To this end we thought we would trying having a long day in the park. Arriving at rope drop and then having all day at the park maximising park vs travelling time.

To accomplish this we thought it would be a great idea to have breakfast in the park. Boy how wrong we were. You can happily eat a snack breakfast at all the other parks but it appears not this one!

Lack of options

When we arrived the only things open were Rainforest cafe for sit down meals (we wanted quick and had just experienced a bad dinner at the Disney Springs location) and the Starbucks. The first ‘Disney’ food place to open would have been the pizza window. This only opened around 11.30 that day, a hangry family is not a happy family so no waiting for us.

Starbucks in Disney’s Animal Kingdom

So off we trotted merrily to the incredibly busy Starbucks-obviously more people had this wonderful idea! Once we battled through the queue my fiance bought himself a sandwich-esque thing, my mum and I shared the hugest Mickey cinnamon bun on one snack credit (impressive I thought!). As well as three various drinks (snack credits) we all have normally from Starbucks (a frappuccino, a chai latte and a latte).

Next, to find somewhere to sit to eat it. No seats. There was maybe two tables available but these were full. No benches near by, so perching on a wall it was. Whilst perching here we saw so many coffee and snack based accidents as people tried to eat/drink without proper tables and seats. So messy and not a great start to your day being covered in coffee. There was so much ‘standing space’ that you really feel like benches or something should be put there.

Something else we noticed is that most people left about half their drinks, we assumed it was because with snack credits a large is the same price. But I was wrong, they were all disgusting! I have no idea how they got it so wrong but blarrgh. I even tried to complain but gave up because I couldn’t battle through the crowd. As someone who hates waste, especially with food, I’m sad to say even I threw away half of my drink! Top off the nasty tasting drink with unpleasant stickiness from holding on to this giant bun with no where to put it down. I definitely would NOT recommend this Starbucks.

Where you should eat breakfast

If you want to have breakfast near the parks, be fancy and treat yo’self to a sit down meal at Rainforest Cafe. Or even look in to the breakfast at the nearby hotels. Otherwise bring it with you. Buy some wrapped pastries/biscuits etc from your hotel the day before for first thing. Then grab some Animal Kingdom snacks when everything comes alive around 12ish. That is what we will be doing in future!

Since our fateful visit to the Starbucks in Animal Kingdom we have tried the Yak and Yeti outside area (not the restaurant) for breakfast which was enjoyable and I would recommend that.

What’s your experience of eating breakfast in or near Animal Kingdom? Let us know in the comments!