We saved Animal Kingdom for our last Disney park! It has been years since Keller and I visited this park and pretty much all the rides here were new to Kamy and Caden.
One of the most popular sections of Animal Kingdom is Pandora. It is themed from the movie Avatar and is truly gorgeous! The designers did an amazing job with the scenery and really transport guests to the new world. There are two major rides here — Flight of Passage and the Navi River Journey.
We managed to get fast passes for the safari later in the morning, which meant we needed to rope drop Flight of Passage. It is by far the most popular ride and routinely has waits exceeding 3 hours. The only way we would realistically ride it was first thing in the morning. So we did! We got to Animal Kingdom about an hour before official opening. The gates were actually already open by the time we got there and we joined the mass of people waiting at the bridge to be led into Pandora. 95% of the people were doing the same thing we were — heading to Flight of Passage. The cast members walked us down to the line and there was some jockeying for position but not too bad.
It took us about an hour and fifteen minutes of waiting to actually get to the ride. However, the exterior queue line was beautiful and the interior queue line was quite interesting as well. Considering how much time people spend in the line, it was nice to see it well thought out and give guests something to look at while waiting.
Flight of Passage was AMAZING! It is my favorite ride of all of Disney World. It reminds me of Soarin’ 3.0 but it skipped the 2.0 version and is a huge improvement on Soarin’. Essentially you straddle your banshee flyer which moves and dips and dives in front of a massive screen. It is even designed to feel like the banshee is breathing between your knees and includes wind and mist in your face. The cinematography was gorgeous and I found it incredibly immersive. Quite a highlight for me at least! Everyone else raved about it as well though.
The wait for Navi River Journey was only marked at 30 minutes, so we quickly slid into that line to hit the other popular Pandora ride. This was beautiful as well, but not nearly as exhilarating as Flight of Passage. There was a great animatronic Navi at the end of the boat ride.
We still had about an hour before our safari Fast Pass was ready, so we slid into the Lion King performance for a little break. The show was colorful and fast paced and both kids enjoyed it.
By the time we made it up to the Africa section we could get in line for our safari. There were a lot of animals moving about and active, so we saw hippos, lions, giraffe, elephants, and plenty of other African animals. Our guide was pretty good, but he was a little hard to hear at times.
We worked our way across the park toward the only real roller coaster here — Expedition Everest. On the way we managed to spot Kevin from Up, who the kids thought was very funny.
The line for Everest wasn’t bad either, so we all rode it — with the kids asking for the front row. It was a quick ride with a couple of surprises, but a little rough for me. Once was enough!
Next we went to the Finding Nemo live show — once again inside, seated, and air conditioned. The kids thought it was cute and Keller and I took a brief nap. 😉
Keller’s little program had been working hard all the time and managed to snag Fast Passes for Flight of Passage! This was quite a surprise, but we were happy to ride it again.
Right after using these, we caught another set of Fast Passes for the safari again. We were completely failing at not walking as far, but we were definitely minimizing our waiting times!
We caught the Bugs Life 3D movie in the Tree of Life and did a little shopping. We also rode Dinosaur and walked through DinoLand.
Next we staked out a spot to watch the River of Lights show. The floats were beautiful and quite colorful, but not really as impressive as some of the other things we’ve seen. (Disney has since retired the Rivers of Light show.)
Meanwhile Keller’s little program was working hard again and caught three MORE Fast Passes for Flight of Passage. Caden still wanted to ride Expedition Everest again, so we split up — Keller and Caden going to Everest and Min, Kamy, and me to Flight of Passage. We had to hustle across the park to make our Fast Pass window after River of Lights, but we made it!
Keller and Caden came back to Pandora after Everest and we all stood in line one last time for Flight of Passage. So we all rode it at least three times, some of us four times! It was a perfect way to finish out our Disney parks.
Pandora was quite stunning at night time too. The imagineers created lit plants throughout the zone and used glow in the dark paint copiously to create a bio luminescent effect. My phone couldn’t do it justice, but this gives you a general idea.
We were all tired and happy by the time we ended the day. Once again, we were at a park from before opening until after close. We still didn’t see everything at the park either — we skipped all of Asia and Oasis, as well as Rafiki’s Planet Watch. Pandora was definitely the most unusual though!
Thank goodness tomorrow is a down day!