Wednesday was our day at Animal Kingdom, and also our last day of vacation. We hustled to pack everything up and put our bags in hotel storage so that we could make it to the park gates by 7:30. Yep, 7:30 for a 9 am park opening. The reason we were there so early was to have a chance of making it on the Avatar ride Flight of Passage, a virtual reality simulation of riding on the back of a banshee through the world of Pandora. It's the most popular ride at Disney right now, with waits surpassing 4 hours. Four hours of standing in line to experience 4 1/2 minutes of a ride! We were clearly not going to do that, so Steve found a way. We were very close to the front of the gate line, and at 8:30 they let us in to walk to a bridge crossing, at which point we were at the front of the line. They opened the ride early, letting people in around 8:45, and we were in the first cohort. Amazing!
The world of Pandora had been constructed in the area surrounding the ride and was really magical.
Here we are entering into the ride, getting "matched" with an avatar, and awaiting our turn. It was an incredible experience - truly magical, with special effects in the ride and through the VR that really did make you feel like you were flying. It was a little scary and vertigo-inducing, but it was really just wonderful. I have never felt so close to flying and I loved it so much.
We left the world of Pandora and walked by the Tree of Life and into the rest of Animal Kingdom.
We saw some baboons, including a mama and baby, and a pair of brothers.
And then we saw a half hour long musical theatre spectacular of The Lion King. There were floats, there was fabulous singing, there was dancing, circus acrobatics, fire-eating, and acrobatic ballet flying. It was great.
We were all a little hot, tired, and hungry after the show. We thought about going on the safari ride or a rafting ride, but everyone felt mostly done, and happy. Liesl wanted to get her face painted, so we did that and then left the park.
We had another amazing lunch at Sanaa and then departed to the Orlando airport for our long flight home, back to reality after 10 days --
Since returning home, we've watched The Lion King (the original) and Toy Story (the first one), clips of the Seven Dwarfs and Fantasia, and have a list of other Disney movies we'd like to see together. That's been fun!
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