Florida: #TBT The Animal Kingdom

For all the shitting I do on Florida (and lord knows I do a lot of that), in one very important way, Florida wins -- Disney World! Honestly, I am not even going to pretend I'm too cool for it. I fucking love Disney World. And I think it's even better to visit as an adult. I love many a theme park, and Disney World, with all its sickening amounts of money, is the best there is.

If you somehow don't know, it's made up of four theme parks and two water parks. One of the parks is the Animal Kingdom. When I went with my family several years ago, the Animal Kingdom was relatively new and compared to the other parks (the Magic Kingdom, MGM, and Epcot), there wasn't a ton going on there other than copious amounts of "Lion King" marketing. But when we went back to Disney World a few years ago for my parents' 30th anniversary, the Animal Kingdom had developed quite a bit, and I liked it a lot more than I did the first time I visited.

The whole park is centered around the mission of animal conservation, and it's largely made to appear like Africa and Asia (as in the Himalayas part of Asia, not so much Japan). It's the closest I've come (so far) to making it to these parts of Asia and to Africa. And it's pretty damn cool. You can go on a safari and see animals you would see at Kilimanjaro, you can go on a sweet river rapids ride, and you can go on one of the best rollercoasters I've been on -- Expedition Everest.

Even though it's obviously not Asia and Africa, Disney does a great job of bringing these places to Florida, and of course it piqued my already insatiable wanderlust.

Check out why!

-Staci