Return of the Fab Five - Aug 2017 - Day 3: In a world of my own (Animal Kingdom)

[rich2820]

Return of the Fab Five - Aug 2017 - Day 3: In a world of my own (Animal Kingdom)

Click here for the Index

Today was our first day at Animal Kingdom. As this is one of our favourite parks – maybe our overall favourite? – we’d planned a couple of days here. We wanted to try our luck on the standby line for Flight of Passage (see how that worked out in just a moment!) so we got there for park opening and went straight over to Pandora once we’d made it through the entrance.

After spending some time there we went over to Africa and Gorilla Falls Exploration Trail. This used to be called Pangani Forest Exploration Trail, but I guess Disney felt the need to signpost to tourists that this is where you’ll see the gorillas. And sure enough there they were! We also saw zebras – who, apparently, are a nasty piece of work, according to the Cast Member that got chatting to.

It may look pretty, but get too close and it will kick you real good. They bite too – nice.

After this we had a FastPass for Kilimanjaro Safaris and then lunch at Tusker House. This is one of our favourite restaurants and, in my opinion, the best buffet in WDW. This was our third time here and the food was great once again, although I got the feeling that we weren’t all quite as up for the character experience as last time. Maybe this is what happens as the kids grow up.

We had a FastPass for Expedition Everest immediately after our enormous lunch – er, great planning Dad! And then a cool down on Kali River Rapids. The sun had gone in by now and it was quite overcast, so it wasn’t quite so blisteringly hot as before but it was still in the thirties, so we were all quite pleased to get wet on this ride. Some of us got very wet.

We then made our way over to the abomination that is DinoLand USA for a ride on Dinosaur and Primeval Whirl. I think that having read about the rationale behind the theming in this area I do appreciate it a little more than I have done previously. But still, it is pretty awful and for the most part it feels like it could be just about any amusement park anywhere. It certainly doesn’t feel like it belongs in Animal Kingdom. Dinosaur is a great ride though.

Check out the reactions of that family behind us – respect!

Whilst we were there we spotted this Yoda backpack. Our kids were slightly obsessed around this time with the Bad Lip Reading video of The Empire Strikes Back (check it out on YouTube – ‘Seagulls (Stop It Now)’ – it’s very funny, and this sentence makes no sense if you haven’t seen it). They were singing it constantly – it was funny at first, but got pretty annoying fairly quickly (stop it please). So they thought this was hilarious. ‘Run, run, run, jump. I can be a backpack while you run.’

From here we walked across to Finding Nemo – The Musical. Then it started to rain so we called it a day and headed back to the Beach Club for a quick freshen up before heading back out to Disney Springs for dinner at Earl of Sandwich. There is a lot of choice here, but I still had to go for my old favourite – the Holiday Turkey sandwich. This is a truly amazing sandwich that I haven’t seen anywhere else, so it had to be done.

After that we ventured forth to do a bit of shopping. We didn’t last too long though because we were all pretty tired by now. We did make it into World of Disney to claim our $200 gift card that was one of the perks of booking over a year in advance though.

So, after what has been a fairly lengthy introduction to the day, here are our best bits – the Fab Five:

1. Pandora

Pandora had only opened a couple of months before, so it was still really difficult to get FastPasses for Flight of Passage – in fact I’d only managed to get them for our second day at AK. The plan was to get into the park as soon as possible and see what the standby line was like for FoP. Ha ha! Good plan – by the time we’d made it over there so had half the population of Central Florida and the standby line looked like this:

It’s a blurry picture, as I took it on the move, but you get the idea. We did get here much earlier than this, by the way, but the queue was already nearly 2 hours long. It was really hot this morning but we spent a bit of time looking around Pandora and taking it all in. To be honest I think the heat was affecting us as none of us totally appreciated the scope and scale of this area, and after a little look around we went in search of air-con in the form of the Windtraders shop.

As soon as we stepped back outside the wall of heat hit us again so we needed something to cool us off. They were selling these Night Blossom frozen drinks outside. Apparently it’s lime, apple and pear flavoured and the balls on top are passion fruit. To be honest, I couldn’t really tell, but it didn’t matter. It was pretty weird, and extremely sweet, but it did the job and kept us cool for a bit longer. It’s definitely worth a try, and if like us you’re on the dining plan, it will cost you one snack credit.

Overall, I thought that Pandora was really well done. However, I did come away from it feeling there was something lacking. On reflection I think that this is due to the fact that I have no real emotional connection to Avatar and the world created around it. Although I don’t hate the movie, I’m definitely not a fan. Perhaps people who aren’t Harry Potter fans feel the same walking around Hogsmeade or Diagon Alley, whereas we love being there. So we walked around Pandora admiring how well we were transported to this alien land, without really feeling anything.


2. Na'vi River Journey

There are two big attractions in Pandora, apart from the land itself. As I said, we didn’t get to ride Flight of Passage today because there were no FastPasses left even at 60 days when I tried to book them, and we were too slow for the standby line. But I had managed to get FastPasses for Na'vi River Journey. I think our feelings about this reflect how we felt about Pandora as a whole. This boat ride in the dark is absolutely beautiful, and I totally recommend going on it if the standby line is reasonably short or you’ve got a FastPass. But again we didn’t really feel the connection with it like we do on other Disney dark rides. Maybe for us it was a victim of all of the hype. Today the lines were over 2 hours long for this attraction and although we did enjoy it we would have been pretty peeved if we’d had to wait that long.


3. Kilimanjaro Safaris

For Hilary and I this is one of our favourite attractions in all of Walt Disney World. It is like nothing else in all of the parks, and every time it offers something new. Our guide today was really good – to be honest I don’t think we’ve ever had a bad one, and we’ve been on this a fair few times now. She was very enthusiastic in her descriptions of the animals that we encountered along the way, with what felt like a genuine warmth for the animals she was talking about.

The giraffes were a little shy today, but it was good to see the elephants (my favourites) out and about and looking like they were enjoying themselves.

Standard pose for this guy!

4. Expedition Everest

This is another family favourite – apart from Hilary, who isn’t too good with the old motion sickness. She only managed this once, but the rest of us went down The Forbidden Mountain a couple of times today, and there would be more when we came back in a few days’ time. I think this is the best Disney coaster and is an excellent combination of thrills and theming. For us it never seems to get old. I even like the queue, with the ‘Yeti museum’, but maybe that’s because I’m a geek. Will’s name appeared on the posters in the queue, like it had done for all of us yesterday on IASW, which was pretty cool and fairly unnerving in equal measure.

Standard poses for all of us on this ride: Hilary – terrified; Beth, Will and Hannah – loving it; me – attempted ironic scream face.

5. Finding Nemo – The Musical

There are two great shows in Animal Kingdom, and we managed to see both of them this time. Today it was Finding Nemo – The Musical. I actually first saw the musical before I saw the movie so maybe that has influenced what I think of this show. I love it and think it is amazingly well done. The standard of singing and puppetry and just the overall production are fantastic, especially when you consider how many shows they must put on day after day. It really is top-level entertainment and not to be missed. If you come to Animal Kingdom just for the rides you might be disappointed – although there are now two of the best rides in WDW – but if you watch the shows and experience all of the animal attractions this park really is the perfect all-rounder in our eyes.

After this we couldn’t get one of the songs out of our heads. ‘Go with the flow-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o…’ (Stop it please).

[fletchie148]

Thanks for posting this, it’s my favourite park and the only Disney Park we are doing this year, and it’s made me very excited about our trip
What we can’t decide is if we will manage Pandora in one day or not, going for rope drop and heading straight there and Q until it’s done then have enough time to do what else we want too
Thanks for sharing the pics I’m so excited to get there

[rich2820]

Originally Posted by fletchie148

Thanks for posting this, it’s my favourite park and the only Disney Park we are doing this year, and it’s made me very excited about our trip
What we can’t decide is if we will manage Pandora in one day or not, going for rope drop and heading straight there and Q until it’s done then have enough time to do what else we want too
Thanks for sharing the pics I’m so excited to get there

See more...

I guess it depends on whether or not you've got FastPasses, and if not then what the crowd levels are like. Maybe the queues won't be quite so bad as last year but Flight of Passage will still have fairly huge waits, and it is absolutely worth the wait in my opinion. The rest of Pandora is nice, but you probably won't want to spend hours there. I think we probably spent about 2 hours, including the river ride, looking round the shop and sitting down with our frozen drink, in Pandora. It was an extremely hot day though, so we wanted to move on.

[fletchie148]

Originally Posted by rich2820

I guess it depends on whether or not you've got FastPasses, and if not then what the crowd levels are like. Maybe the queues won't be quite so bad as last year but Flight of Passage will still have fairly huge waits, and it is absolutely worth the wait in my opinion. The rest of Pandora is nice, but you probably won't want to spend hours there. I think we probably spent about 2 hours, including the river ride, looking round the shop and sitting down with our frozen drink, in Pandora. It was an extremely hot day though, so we wanted to move on.

See more...

I think it always seems hotter in Animal Kingdom than any other Park
I’ve watched a guy on you tube post from rope drop to ride in about an hour or so, that’s what we are aiming for anyway
As long as I get on safari and forest trail after that I’d be happy

[pinktraceb]

Loving your report!

Just googled the seagull bad lip reading thing and OMG I am in hysterics! doesn't help that I'm currently at work!

[MrsSilverStar]

Looks like you had a fantastic day.

[smithlane]

Loving this so far! Your photos are amazing 😃

[Kat11]

You must have a really good camera with a brill long lens as your pictures have great colouring and detail.

Looking forward to the next installment.

I'm off now to go and Google the seagull. 😃

Kat

[mick]

Another great day

Joan

[princessfiona]

wow what a fun day you all had and what fab photos. Loved the Tusker House ones. We have made an ADR for May. Its our first visit there so cant wait.