My wife and I can spend much more than a day in AK. If you only go on the rides you are right AK may not be an all day park. But if you enjoy the shows and all the animals then it will take much longer. Have you really taken the walk through Asia and all the animals? Have you been out to Rafiki's? There is no doubt doing everything takes time and is not only fun and enjoyable but also educational. Do rush your way through this wonderful park. Take your time and soak it all in. Then think in just a few years you can spend more time and add Pandora and Rivers of Light. Then it will be a 2 day park and maybe even longer.
The day AK becomes 2-day (or longer) park for the average guest will be the day that Walt Disney comes out of cryogenic stasis and starts drawing Marvel characters, the spires come off the castle to shoot missiles at planetary invaders, and Jim Hill actually gets around to finishing a story.
It's great that you and your wife enjoy it. My Grandma can make a day trip out of going to the local thrift store, though. It is different strokes for different folks. That doesn't make it average or normal, though.
To be honest, the problem with AK is that it doesn't do either job very well - zoo or theme park, and the sum of the two doesn't create something better than the individual parts, really, it just ends up an odd juxtaposition. While other zoo's don't have quite so pretty environments, for a park all about animals, AK actually has
very little animal viewing/interaction. Most of it is on the blink-and-you-miss-it, rush-through Safari. I mean, there really just isn't much of it there, compared to say the Bronx Zoo, or other regional zoo.
It is a pretty place, no doubt, and Disney did an amazing job at creating an entirely artificial environment - but the thing is, it sounds like you just have a good marriage and enjoy spending time with your wife, and could probably do that most anywhere. Like WS, there is nothing particularly
deep about AK, which is usually the excuse as to why it lacks so much on the surface.
I don't
hate AK, it is quite gorgeous (though always feels 10 degrees hotter than everywhere else) but so often I find myself going there, doing Dinosaur a few times, maybe the Safari if it's one of the decent times of the day to see the animals (forget it in the middle of the afternoon when they are smart enough to be hiding away from the sun), and possibly hitting ITTBAB on the way out. There is just so little compelling there overall after you've seen it once, or been to any other Zoo, unless you just like to wander around looking at the pretty.
