My son turns 13 during our trip. In fact, by coincidence it happens to be on our Animal Kingdom day (If I gave him a choice, he would have chosen to be at HS on his bday, but the crowd calendars suggest that wouldn’t be wise.) I feel like this is a “big” birthday, because he’ll be a teenager… officially… So I want to do at least one special thing on this trip to celebrate. We tossed around the idea of taking him to Discovery Cove. His favorite animals are flamingos, and they have a “flamingo mingle” where you can feed them and walk amongst them. I know that would make his weird little heart so happy. But now our washing machine has died and we need to get a new one, so guess where that money has to come from
So I thought I’d ask you all for ideas, preferrably cheaper than Discovery Cove Is there anything special we could do at Animal Kingdom? He’ll be wearing his pin of course, anything else? We’ve also thought of Medeival Times (A favorite of mine from when I was a kid) but he isn’t so sure that’s his cup of tea. (It looks very loud, he says.)
edited to clarify: The special thing doesn’t need to be on his birthday/our animal kingdom day. His birthday actually usually falls on the first day of school for us here, so we rarely celebrate ON his b-day.
Fun! My youngest is turning 5 on our trip next month and 5 also feels like a milestone birthday so I’ve wanted to do something special for her as well. I bought party decorations to put up in our room and am planning on making birthday cake pancakes which is our annual morning of breakfast for our kids on their birthdays.
Otherwise, I ordered some shirts for us to wear in the parks that day…hers says “birthday girl” and ours say “birthday squad” and I’ll have her wear her birthday pin. For touring I just asked her what she’d like to do/ride to which she answered “all the slow rides” so I literally planned the day without a single fast ride. And we’re having dinner at CRT - which my son would be like, um no, but for her it’ll be perfect.
He’s going to LOVE them! We will probably stand there for at least an hour while he talks to them. I thought they were only in the Safari, so thank you for this!
I have no personal knowledge of this place and it’s a bit of a drive, but we’ve had wonderful experiences visiting other wildlife sanctuaries.
You could also check with wildlife rescues around Orlando to see if they offer anything. Sometimes you can get personal tours for really reasonable donations.
We did one at a hedgehog rescue in Wales. For a reasonable donation, we got to spend the morning cleaning out the hedgehog cages and interacting with the hedgehogs. Then they served us a lovely tea.
Covid might make things a bit tougher to arrange, though. But it’s Florida, so maybe?
If you end up going to Animal Kingdom Lodge (where they also have Flamingos - maybe make it a Flamingo scavenger hunt across WDW) you could do the night vision animal watching. I think it was temporarily closed because of covid, but they might start doing it again. It was neat to see the animals at night. It didn’t cost anything.
SeaWorld almost always has extremely discounted tickets and they have a bunch of flamingos and they do a parade out to their enclosure everyday (or they used to at least).
So I want to do at least one special thing on this trip to celebrate. We tossed around the idea of taking him to Discovery Cove. His favorite animals are flamingos, and they have a “flamingo mingle” where you can feed them and walk amongst them. I know that would make his weird little heart so happy. But now our washing machine has died and we need to get a new one, so guess where that money has to come from 
Is there anything special we could do at Animal Kingdom? He’ll be wearing his pin of course, anything else? We’ve also thought of Medeival Times (A favorite of mine from when I was a kid) but he isn’t so sure that’s his cup of tea. (It looks very loud, he says.)