Our last park day was another day divided. Kye’s FAVORITE ride out of any park is Everest and Tess LOVES animals so even though it was Britt’s birthday trip, we still wanted to make a stop at Animal Kingdom so we could allow everyone to enjoy some of their favorite things 🙂
The opening of Pandora has been C-RAZY crowded. We knew we wouldn’t have fast passes for either of the new rides but got to the park an HOUR prior to opening and had no problems getting to Na’vi River Journey and walking RIGHT ON the ride! We actually could have easily hopped on Flight of Passage and totally regret not going for it as even after we rode Na’vi there STILL wasn’t any sort of wait time for it but the line by that time for FOP was already through the entire LAND.
Na’vi is the family friendly of the two rides and was BEAUTIFUL. We aren’t big Avatar fans. In our opinion it’s a knock off of Ferngully. Ha! But I will say we plan to watch the film as a family prior to visiting Animal Kingdom again. The kids didn’t “get” the ride and even though it was beautiful and awesome, it’d be more appreciated with some knowledge of the film.
I’ve also heard that Pandora is best experienced at night so I hope to visit again when it’s dark! It was neat but maybe I’m in the minority of people who wasn’t CRAZY impressed?
One of those times where Tess wasn’t in picture mode 😉
They let us into the park well before park opening time (crucial to get there SUPER early y’all!) and we were able to ride Na’vi, get pics and walk all the way over to the Safari before the park even officially opened for the day. We literally walked right on the safari too!
This girl made that face sticker last 😉
Our animal lover!
We had a great experience. Really the safari is ALWAYS awesome! Even if you don’t LOVE animals it’s still super fun.
For sure the closet a giraffe has ever come to us!
Usually the lions are sleeping so it was a rare treat to see them awake!
After the safari the boys ran to ride Everest and the girls and I took our time crossing the park to go meet Pocahontas.
For our outfits this day I wanted us all to have a Moana vibe in honor of Britt’s current favorite movie 🙂 This kimono def helped me achieve my desired look!
Ahhh Fans are THE BEST
We had a very short wait for Pocahontas, which surprised me. But it turns out that because Pandora IS so popular that the long wait times there (it was over 3 hour wait by the time we headed to Safari…before the park even officially opened!) really made the rest of the park barely crowded at all. We had SUCH a great experience because we literally didn’t want for anything!
Pocahontas is a character we’ve never met and she’s BEAUTIFUL. I couldn’t get over how gorgeous she was!!! She was GREAT with the girls talking about animals! It’s funny to me because when Tess was a baby I used to think she favored Pocahontas because she had that super dark hair…well not anymore 😉
Very short line for Everest too!
We hung out and waited on the boys and Britt is just happy as can be to take pics 😉
It’s Tough to be a Bug!
I’ve always recommended SKIPPING this experience because it is pretty scary. Tess is VERY brave for her age. She loved it her first visit but this time she was a little more fearful and said “that was scary!” when it was over but then also still said she liked it haha I think she’s gonna be a daredevil with rides and experiences!
Park opened at nine…and we were done with everything we wanted to do before 10:30! We debated doing Kali River Rapids as we were all HOT and sweaty and knew we were going back to the room after. But Tess wasn’t tall enough to ride it so we skipped it rather than taking up the time to do rider swap on it.
We all really needed some down time and REST and I’m so glad we headed back to the room to allow for that!
Anytime we travel we bring two bags of Mega Blocks. Kye is almost nine and still loves these! We reserve them only for travel and they are easy to pack and provide endless entertainment for the kids during down time in the room 🙂
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