Hey there, Stefanie. Thanks for stopping by
planDisney with your question!
I often drive myself to the
Walt Disney World Theme Parks and am very familiar with parking lots and how the process works. The short answer is yes, you can do just that, but it will be kind of a hassle for you. To drop Guests off, you'll need to stop at the parking attendant booths at the entrance of the parking lot. You'll notify the Cast Member helping you that you are just there for drop off and they will direct you to which lane you'll need to be in (the far right one). You will not be charged for parking when you are just dropping someone off. You'll follow the signs to the Guest drop-off area. Once you've dropped off your party, you'll then need to exit the parking lot. There isn't a way to access the area that you'll be directed to park in so you will need to completely exit. Then, you'll want to circle back to the same parking attendant booths that you stopped at before, pay for parking and then you'll be directed a different way to the main parking lot areas. If you'd like to pick the rest of your party up after your day at Disney's Animal Kingdom, you'll kind of do the same thing. You'll head to your car while they make their way to the same area where you dropped them off. You'll exit the parking lot area, follow the signs, and then circle back to re-enter again. You'll go toward the drop-off area as you did before, and pick up the rest of your party.
So it totally can be done, but it's a lot of extra steps for you. If you plan to arrive at
Disney's Animal Kingdom Theme Park in the early morning, right before the theme park opens for the day, you can get a pretty close spot to the front. This is a much shorter walk than where you'll park later in the day, so you might want to consider saving yourself some trouble and going early.
I hope this helps! If you have any other questions before your trip, please feel free to stop back by and
ask me. I'm here to help. Have fun and enjoy!