Yesterday we visited Animal Kingdom, one of the four main Disney parks. We’d been several times before, but recently a new section was added based around the world of Pandora from the Avatar film and we were looking forward to seeing it.
I know I’ve been overusing the word but it was… amazing. As you can see the ‘floating’ rocks are massive and imposing and very, very realistic. The landscaping is a mix of real and fake plants that are blended so well it can be hard to see the difference. It also seems that the Pandoran plants are bioluminescent and would glow after dark. But at the time of the above photo it was 8 am and the park had just opened…
Yes that’s the line as soon as the park opened. How is this possible? Yesterday was ‘Extra Magic hours’ which meant people staying at Disney hotels could get in one hour early. All those people filled up the line for the main Avatar ride even before the park opened for the rest of us 🙂
We never rode it, and never saw the line drop below 95 minutes all day. But we did have a FastPass (reserved position) for the other Avatar ride. Problem was it was 8 am, and our FastPass was for 7 pm. It would be a long day!
Almost immediately we rode the fantastic Everest Expedition rollercoaster and I got very motion sick! I guess I’m becoming sensitive in my waning years…
We went on the safari drive twice (one time was quite memorably since our young female driver seemed drunk), we went to every show (we both napped during Nemo), we did the animal walkthroughs, waited out a rainstorm and soaked up lots of AC in restaurants.
It was very hot and humid, especially after the rain, and I was close to death more than once. I’m fighting off a head cold and was sweating out the water faster than I could drink it.
But we pressed on! More rides and shows, more penny-pressing, (much) more walking and more sitting.
And then… somehow… it was 11 hours later and time for the Avatar boat ride we had reserved our pass for 30 days ago…
And it turned out to be a higher-tech clone of the Pirates of The Caribbean ride! Was it worth the wait? For me, absolutely it was! For most… probably not.
And that was that. Yesterday we proved that yes, you can see everything (except the most popular attraction) in just one visit… as long as you’ve got 12.5 hours and push yourself to the very limit and beyond 🙂