Hi Brian,
Welcome to the Disney Parks Moms Panel! Animal Kingdom Lodge is a beautiful resort. Your family should absolutely love staying so close to the animals!
It sounds like you are facing a dilemma my family has faced many times. Our strategy is to go to our top priority park on the first day of our trip. We are then a little more flexible with the order of parks for the other days. We never are able to take advantage of all of the
Extra Magic Hours at each park but we always have a fabulous time! Since we normally do princess meals, I also try to do those earlier in our trip so that the girls' hair is not yet destroyed.
Like you, we prefer to visit Magic Kingdom first. We typically arrive by early afternoon on the first day and get to Magic Kingdom by early evening. We do one Fast Pass+ before dinner, then have dinner in the park. After dinner, we do our two remaining Fast Pass+ reservations and ride as many other rides as we can before the fireworks.
Having said this, on our girls' first trip to the Walt Disney World resort, we visited Animal Kingdom first and actually got terrific seats at the Festival of the Lion King show. We were on an end of a row just beside where the main characters entered the show. They all waved at our girls during the show and towards the end, one of the characters invited our girls to join the show. It was a perfect way to begin our trip!
Now, our typical order is Magic Kingdom, Disney's Hollywood Studios, Epcot, Disney's Animal Kingdom and then we repeat Magic Kingdom. Your 8-year olds might also love
Jedi Training - Trials of the Temple at Disney's Hollywood Studios. If so, plan to do that early in your trip.
Happy Planning!
-Donyell