From Friday night, 8/3, through Saturday morning, 8/11, we were at Disney World for our family summer vacation, with a day trip to Kennedy Space Center (for W) on Thursday (8/9) and for the first Parker Solar Probe launch attempt on Saturday morning.
We’ve been to Disney World several times (and Disneyland many times more) since the boys were born, so I’ll try to focus on the highlights. As I said before, I spent quite a lot of time and effort before the vacation making lunch and dinner reservations as well as making FastPass+ reservations for rides and shows, to avoid or reduce the amount of time spent waiting in lines. However, while we all still enjoy the rides, our biggest expenses were on the meals. I splurged on some really nice dinners.
Saturday (8/4) was our first day at Animal Kingdom. We arrived early (during Extra Magic Hours between 8 AM and 9 AM) to get in the early-morning line for Flight of Passage in Pandora, which is the land modeled after the movie Avatar. Despite signing up for FastPass+’s weeks in advance, I wasn’t able to snag a FastPass+ for Flight of Passage until Monday, which would be our second visit, so it was really important to me for us to try to get an early, non-FastPass+ ride, in case we liked it. I expected to like it, as it is one of the newest rides and very popular, based on the difficulty of getting the FastPass+.
And boy, did we enjoy the ride! First off, Pandora in Animal Kingdom is completely immersive, a step above the already-excellent Harry Potter areas at Universal Orlando, and the queue for Flight of Passage is yet another step above Pandora itself. The attention to detail in the Avatar lab is matched by the build-quality of the items, such that it feels like what a lab from the movie might feel like if it existed in the real world. (See the photos above.)
And then the ride itself uses the same kind of immersive front-view experience to simulate riding on the back of a banshee, but it’s a hundred times better than the “broom stick” ride of Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey at Universal and maybe a thousand times better than Soarin’ at Disney (Epcot, or CA Adventure). For one thing, the Harry Potter ride depends much, too much on heaving the riders about to make them queasy. While there’s a ton of swooping, soaring, diving, etc. on Flight of Passage, it’s more consistent with the idea of a ride on a flying beast and less heaving around simply for the sake of challenging the riders not to throw up. I can ride regular roller coasters for that kind of crap. On the good side, it’s more cinematic, like Soarin, but with 3D glasses thrown in for extra immersion.
I was really glad we took the near-hour in line for this ride; we looked forward to doing it again with FastPass+ on Monday.
Afterward, we rode the Navi River ride in Pandora as well. It, too, is new with Pandora. The line was huge, but we had a FastPass+ for this one. It’s a nice, indoor river ride simulating a nighttime ride on a river in the world of Pandora.
We followed up the morning in Pandora with a the Festival of the Lion King, a ride on Expedition Everest (FastPass+), lunch at Yak and Yeti (reservation), the Finding Nemo show (FastPass+), and a ride on Dinosaur. We also spent a considerable amount of time in a shop, sheltering from the Orlando heat and humidity. We left Animal Kingdom late afternoon in order to return to the Boardwalk to wash up and rest before our dinner at Jiko at the Animal Kingdom Lodge.
When the boys were younger, we’d occasionally stay at the Animal Kingdom Lodge when on vacation at Disney World. It’s a strong favorite of mine, because you can get a room with a view of the central savanna and watch the African animals roam around in the mornings or throughout the day. Or you can go down to the overwatch and get a closer view and perhaps talk to some African guides. The only downside to Animal Kingdom Lodge is that it isn’t in walking distance to any park (e.g. you can walk from Boardwalk to Epcot and even to Hollywood Studios, or take a boat), nor is it on the monorail, so you have to take buses and depend on them being on a regular schedule.
But another highlight of Animal Kingdom Lodge is its two restaurants, both African or African inspired. Boma is the all-you-can-eat buffet, but Jiko is the fine dining restaurant that mixes African, Mediterranean, and Indian cuisine. For me, African food isn’t just an unusual cuisine I don’t get very often. I find it delicious, like warm comfort food, and at Jiko, it’s elevated to fine dining. I got us a reservation at Jiko for Saturday evening, and it was as excellent as I had remembered it. In addition to appetizers, I had lamb (along with, I think, a South African red wine), W had elk, J had beef short ribs, and Hsuan had a seafood curry. After, we went down to the savanna overwatch for a while to watch the animals in the night.
The quickest route back to the Boardwalk from the Animal Kingdom Lodge involved taking a bus from AKL to Hollywood Studios, and then taking a boat (or walking — more on that later) to the Boardwalk. However, since we were arriving before 10 PM, I thought we might as well enter Hollywood Studios (taking advantage, one time, of our Park Hopper option on our tickets) to see the Star Wars: A Galactic Spectacular show, which was basically a projection of scenes from the movies on to some buildings along with some fireworks and other lighting effects.
But, I had one more thing up my sleeve: The show ended around 10:15 PM, while the park closes at 10:30 PM. We walked to the new Toy Story Land which had just opened a few weeks earlier. The new land is a Toy Story themed area that includes not only the Toy Story Mania ride (like the Midway Mania ride in CA Adventure) but also the new Slinky Dog roller coaster and the Alien Swirling Saucers. I was completely unable to get a FastPass+ for Slinky Dog in the weeks before our vacation, despite my signing up at the earliest possible date. Those FastPasses must have disappeared in minutes.
But, I knew that if we got in line before park closing, we would be allowed to stay in line until we got on the ride. So we did, and we finally rode the ride in the dark hours. The roller coaster isn’t challenging in terms of speed or strong drops, climbs, or turns, but it swoops around a very large area of Toy Story Land, providing a very enjoyable experience.
Toy Story Land itself, by the way, is very well done, like immersing yourself at green army man level in Andy’s bedroom with toys strewn everywhere.
After the ride, we tried walking back to the Boardwalk, which should have been a 19 minute walk, but the MyDisneyExperience app that I was using for navigation times didn’t account for construction in the way, and it took almost 40 minutes for us to get back.