Navi River ride question

[mommy-3]

Animal kingdom opens at 7am on our park day. I have an 8:05am fast pass for FOP. What time should we plan on getting to the park in order to ride Navi with a smallish wait?

 

[tmonninj]

If you don't want to do rope drop at the park and be the first on the ride, I would plan to arrive around 7. It will take a few minutes to get into the park and back to Pandora. You should have a relatively small wait without feeling rushed, and be off in time to enjoy Pandora and in time for your fast pass! - your fast pass is also good for an hour, so if you're running a little behind don't stress!

 

[chris benton]

A thought for you:
We are early risers. I would LOVE a 7am park opening on our trips.
I'd be there at 6:30, and assume I can get on FOP, then do NAVI - maybe even Navi 2x if you wanted to.
Grab a snack, then hit the fastpass.

On a 7am opening, our fam would probably do this if we wanted to do Navi:
Get to park at 6:30 at the VERY LATEST.

FOP
Navi
Bug out to Everest/Dinosaur - probably NO wait and multiple rides
Back to FOP for FP
Then chill touring with FP and shows for the rest of the time. I'd assume we could find another FOP FP.
We'd probably be done with AK (for our purposes) by early afternoon, and then we'd be in the resort pool for the hottest part of the day.

The issue is that the people who plan on getting there for a 7am open encounter life. Life happens. Even 8am magic hours are tough for plenty of people. Ppl wanna sleep on vacation, and not be rushed. We are early risers, and religiously use am emh, or emm, and hoppers. Those am hours are precious for low crowds, and since we are easy early risers, we are ready for hitting the parks with no issues. The downside, of course, is that we are definitely in bed early tho. We are 100% ok with that.

So my thought for you is that, if you only wanna do Navi before your FP, totally fine.
With a 7am open, I'd assume you can do a BUNCH more before that 8:05 fp window.

 

[Scubadaddy32]

If you have a FOP FP that starts at 8:05 you have until 9:15 to enter FOP que. I typically watch wait times the week before I leave on MDE to gauge crowd levels and lag times for rides.
Na'vi River is a short ride and is usually no more than a 60 minute wait time during rope drop hours. Currently at 70 minutes today at close to 1 pm.
Unless you are just an early riser, I'd skip getting up that early to catch Na'vi. You can ride it multiple times during the day and are likely to end up finding a FP available as a plus pick up.

 

[cdurham1]

Animal kingdom opens at 7am on our park day. I have an 8:05am fast pass for FOP. What time should we plan on getting to the park in order to ride Navi with a smallish wait?

I sense you are trying to figure out the latest you can get there and still have time to do Navi before your FOP FP. Probably 7 or 715 would be fine. A lot depends on what date you are going. Your Navi wait time will probably be around 30 minutes I am guessing.

I find dealing with AK parking, getting in, etc. to be a pain in the neck. Not the answer you probably wanted, but I strongly recommend biting the bullet and getting there an hour earlier for rope drop. Last trip, we did 2 AK mornings. One was stress free and we got to do everything we wanted easily - that was the rope drop day. The second day we "took it easy" and pulled up to the parking entrance right at park open. What a nightmare. Too many cars trying to get in at once, tram was crowded, security line was a nightmare, lines were insane. Never doing that again. Either rope drop or really sleep in. The in between option is awful.

 

[YawningDodo]

Interesting point about parking being a mess--I guess the answer also depends on whether you're driving!

I took Disney transportation to AK RD on a Saturday on my 2018 trip. I wanted to be there at 7:00 for the 8:00 RD, as per advice on this board, but because the bus didn't start until rather late I arrived at the gate at 7:30...and it was totally fine. I wasn't right at the front of the pack, but I was still through the line, on the ride, and then done with FOP by 8:15. Considering NRJ is a much less popular RD option, I'd feel quite confident showing up half an hour before opening again, maybe even just fifteen minutes (yeah, I said it!) to ride NRJ with a minimal wait. If you're driving your own car and have to park, maybe go a bit earlier than that, but if you're riding the bus the parking lot traffic jam is not your problem to deal with.

But that's being at the gate at the times mentioned above. So give yourself allowance for travel.

 

[mommy-3]

Got it! We'll be using Disney transportation. It will also be our last park day so I'm not sure if the troops will be so thrilled to be there crazy early!
Thank you all so much for advice as last minute arrivers or rope droppers!!

 

[Raven01]

FWIW: We arrived in December at AK with a FP for FOP, planning to ride Navi. It was down. It reopened right as the park officially opened up, so we rushed on with no wait.

The parents then went on FOP with the FP, and Navi had a 30 minute wait so I skipped riding it again. So if you want to minimize wait time to under 30 minutes, I'd go right when the park opens.

I enjoyed Navi a lot - possibly because my DD2 could ride with us - but I loved the colors and gentleness of the ride. Some people say it's not worth the wait - I enjoyed it just as much as other rides. With that said, I am finding myself more and more in the "not waiting more than 30 minutes for any ride" category.

 

[rg35]

Some people say it's not worth the wait - I enjoyed it just as much as other rides.

Na'vi is a wonderfully creative dark ride. I love it. It's definitely sad that people are disappointed with it. I think a lot of people have forgotten that not every new theme park experience needs to be a "thrill ride."

 

[MomOTwins]

Our resort bus was late (we waited 50 minutes for it, ugggh) on our EMH day at AK. We had planned to get there an hour before EMH began at 8am, but ended up getting there around 7:45. We were in line for Navi river at 7:55, and wait time was about 40 minutes, and the ride itself is very short. Based on that, if your goal is to ride FOP as soon as your window opens (e.g., so you can move up other FPs), I would say get to the park no later than 7:10.

 

[gharter]

Na'vi is a wonderfully creative dark ride. I love it. It's definitely sad that people are disappointed with it. I think a lot of people have forgotten that not every new theme park experience needs to be a "thrill ride."

I like the creativity of the ride. It is beautifully designed.
It is missing a storyline or something to pull it together.

 

[Scubadaddy32]

I like the creativity of the ride. It is beautifully designed.
It is missing a storyline or something to pull it together.

Agree... I'm sure if they had completed the ride as designed it would have had a story-line that would have worked. But alas, budget overages in Pandora cause a few of the show scenes to be left out.

 

[MomOTwins]

I think the music ties it together and it is very well done but too short. Add two minutes and it would be incredible.