Disney's Animal Kingdom

 

December 17, 2021

Disney’s Animal Kingdom

The third stop on our Disney World tour was at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. The zoological theme park is the largest theme park in the world, mostly due to the many acres devoted to animal habitat. The park is a mix of traditional theme park rides and attractions and a large zoo. The park is accredited by the American Zoological Association and features hundreds of species of animals.

The park, like all of Disney’s parks is divided into various themed worlds including Asia, Africa, Discovery Island, Dinoland, Rafiki’s Planet Watch and the newest section; Pandora the World of Avatar. While all of the sections have their own appeal, we wanted to make sure that we visited Pandora and rode on what currently are the two most popular attractions in the park.

The land's marquee attraction is Avatar Flight of Passage, a 3D  flying simulator that allows guests to fly on a banshee across the Pandoran landscape.^] The other cool attraction is the Na’vi River Journey which places guests aboard a boat ride through Pandora's bioluminescent rainforest The Flights of Passage ride is for adults only, so I got to wait and watch the girls while everyone else rode it.

We could all ride the very cool River Journey ride, which was a peaceful, beautiful trip through a brilliantly colored and impressive Pandoran rainforest. Personally, I find the rides better than the film they are based on. The journey builds to an encounter with the remarkable Shaman of Songs. Like most Na’vi, she is nearly 10 feet tall.  Music is central in Na’vi culture. Guests observe the shaman in the midst of a musical ceremony, playing an instrument and singing. Through her music, the shaman sends positive energy into the rainforest, telling of the sacred bond with nature that Na’vi and humans share.

Our next stop was at the Tusker House Restaurant in Africa for lunch. The restaurant features a family style, all you can eat selection of African inspired food as well as character appearances by Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Mickey Mouse and Goofy, which is the reason we selected this place. Finding character dining that is available can be tricky, but Dakota wanted to make sure that Sloane had that experience and she was able to make a booking at the Tusker House. 

It was a terrific choice as the food was great and every fifteen minutes or so, a Disney character would come in to interact with the families and children present. After lunch and already being in the Africa section of the park, we boarded the Killimanjaro Safari tour to head out and see the wildlife preserve that is packed with native African wildlife.

The ride is a twenty minute excursion through the 110 acre nature preserve aboard a large truck-like bus that winds through the place that has all manner of wildlife including rhinos, cheetahs, crocodiles, elephants, hyenas, giraffes, and zebra. In all there are 34 different species represented and the animals are obviously quite used to the trucks lumbering through their home and come quite close to the vehicles at times.

After Dakota and her family headed back to the hotel for their afternoon naps, Kathy and I stayed at the park where we attended the top-notch live show, “The Festival of the Lion King” which featured characters from the film and colorfully dressed actors singing the most popular songs from the film. It is a great show.

Finally, Kathy wanted to ride her favorite rollercoaster, Expedition Everest: Legend of the Forbidden Mountain. The mountain that is created for the steel coaster to travel up to and through is the tallest artificial mountain in the world and the ride is one of the biggest and most expensive in Disney history. It features a Yeti creature throughout that torments riders and creates havoc by breaking up the track, forcing the coater to go backwards, one of the only Disney coasters to do that.

Disney’s Hollywood Studios

 

December 16, 2022

Disney’s Hollywood Studios

Our second day of our Disney World experience with our friends started out at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. This theme park has never ranked among my personal favorites, though it continues to expand and change and gets more interesting all the time. This park has seen the most significant changes over the years of all the Disney Theme parks. The working studio aspect that was originally featured has been phased out and replaced with more traditional theme park fare.

That is sort of sad to me in some ways as I always enjoyed the working backlot tours as well as touring the working animation center, both of which have been shuttered, torn down and replaced with new and updated attractions that do not focus on the art of making movies much at all. The good news is that the replacements are now some of the coolest and most visited areas and attractions and it is obvious that they are far more popular and thus profitable for Disney.

The main new attraction is the amazing Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge land which opened in 2019 and replaced the old Streets of America section of the park. This amazing recreation of the world of the Star Wars films is masterful in its detail and overall feel. I had been there once shortly after it opened but now it is even more expanded and new rides have opened.

The two major attractions here are Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance and Millennium Falcon Smugglers Run, a flying simulator attraction that allows guests to pilot the Millennium Falcon  through a customized secret mission. Both of these are incredibly cool and super popular but thanks to the new ticketing system Genie Plus, we were able to get in with no major problems or long waits.

The other areas of the park include the Animation Courtyard, Toy Story Land, Hollywood Boulevard, Echo Lake, Grand Avenue and Sunset Boulevard and we had plenty of time to see them all and though it seemed crowded, we really did not have to wait for anything very long.

Sloane was able to ride her first true rollercoaster, The Slinky Dog Dash, which she seemed to love for the most part, she was quite a little trooper. She wasn’t quite as enthralled with the Tower of Terror ride, which is pretty frightening even for me, but again she survived pretty well and hopefully was not too scarred by the experience.  I was really impressed by her bravery and willingness to do just about anything.

We did take her to visit some of her favorite characters from current shows on Disney Plus which she enjoyed immensely. We also had a terrific lunch at the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theatre, the retro themed diner that shows 1950s sci-fi films on televisions suspended above the tables. The food was great and the experience was really quite fun. 

Sloane even had the surprise of running into a friend who she attended preschool with at the park. His family had recently moved from New Mexico to Florida and just happened to be vacationing at the same place. It was cool to see the young children greet each other and immediately begin to play and interact as if nobody else was even around.

When it was time for the late afternoon break, Kathy and I returned to Epcot once again because we wanted to stay late and catch the end of the night fireworks display.