Lifelong_Dreamer
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jan 10, 2007
Day 2 - June 8 - Animal Kingdom
I went against the advise of the crowd calendars this day and against my usual touring habits of avoiding extra magic hours. The reason I did this is that due to the last minute nature of the trip I was unable to secure fastpasses for Flight of Passage. This was the only day of the trip where Animal Kingdom had 7am extra magic hours (the other days it was 8am extra magic hours) and I wanted to take advantage of that to get on Flight of Passage at least once but hopefully twice. I figured that since we had fastpasses for Navii River Journey, Kilimanjaro Safari and Everest that we would be able to handle the potentially higher crowds in the park that day since everything else we tend to be interested in is a large capacity show or an animal trail that doesn't really get super busy.
I woke up at the very early hour of 5am (only something I do willingly in Disney) with the goal of being out of the room and on the way to Animal Kingdom by 6am.
For the most part we stuck to that and here is Pop Century at 605am as we were leaving.
We were at the entrance of Animal Kingdom at 626am.
There was already quite the crowd built up as expected but we were still fairly close to the front of the pack when they started to let us in.
Just like last year they let us into the park at 0630 despite extra magic hours not starting until 7am. This is something that people really need to be aware of because if you show up right at the scheduled start of EMH or even slightly after you will be at a huge disadvantage if your goal is to get on Flight of Passage.
As we were scanning our bands Mom had forgotten from all our previous trips that you have to scan your finger so that caused a very small but funny (for me) delay.
Soon though we were hustling towards Pandora. I really emphasized to Mom that this was not the time to saunter along and asked her to please walk as quickly as she could otherwise our front of the pack advantage would be lost as more and more people spilled into the park. I think I almost killed Mom. I am proud of her though, she really pushed herself although she was a little hot and sweaty by the time we got to Pandora.
Once we got into Pandora we could slow down as we were now part of the Flight of Passage line. They started organizing us into a line almost as soon as we were in the land. That being said the line was constantly moving and so we never really stopped moving until we were in the final part of the indoor queue.
I think the initial part of the outdoor queue is my favourite, it is so pretty.
Here we are waiting to be sent into the pre-show chamber at 654am.
Right at 7am they started to send people into the various pre-show rooms. We got sent up some stairs to one of the upper theatres which I had never done in the past. So even though they let everybody into the park at 630am they don't actually let people onto the ride until 7am.
The ride was amazing as always and I was very happy that we made the effort to wake up super early and get to the park for EMH.
We then did something I never thought that I would do. We got back in line to ride again. Even though it was only 0724am the line had now extended all the way to Africa.
Even though that was where the line was when we joined it I had faith that the wait wouldn't be too bad, and by that I mean an hour or less, because once again the line was constantly moving. I think the reason for this initial back up into Africa of the line was because they switched from feeding us into the fastpass queue and switched to the standby queue.
Even though the line was longer than I would normally wait (it ended up being about an hour) it wasn't too bad as we got to check out the standby queue which we had never seen in the past and it was air conditioned which was also great as it was already steaming hot outside.
I loved all the different areas of the queue - the bioluminescent areas, the lab, getting to see the avatars in the link chamber.
We spent our time in line chatting with those around us, checking out the queue and refreshing fastpasses. I was able to get our Navii River Journey fastpass moved from the evening to the morning so I was happy with that. I decided to leave our evening Safari and Everest fastpasses where they were for the moment.
I felt bad for a little girl that was in line near us, she was not feeling well at all and so she and her dad eventually sat down in a corner of the queue hoping that some time resting and in the air-conditioning would help her feel better. He was thinking that the early morning and the heat were the culprit. I really hope she felt better as it is no fun being ill on vacation.
Mom and I got into a bit of an argument as she said that on our next trip we should advise Sarah (Alek's girlfriend) and Jess(Erich's fiancee) that if they don't like drops that they should just close their eyes on the ride as she admitted that is what she does. I was miffed. I told Mom that if you are going to close your eyes on Flight of Passage that you may as well not even ride as the whole thing is dependent on your visual experience. I think it would be selfish to take a seat on the ride if you are just going to close your eyes through it all or most of it. She did not agree with me because "who would want to wait around while others ride". I personally feel there is so much else you could experience while others ride if you feel you can't handle the ride rather than taking a seat from somebody else who would actually love to experience the whole ride.
Anyways, we moved on from our argument and had another enjoyable ride in which Mom claims that she did NOT close her eyes.
By the time we got off the ride and Mom used the washroom it was now 9am and the park was open for the day.
Even though we only got to ride FoP twice in the two hours of EMH I was satisfied with our use of that time because there was no way we would have been able to ride a second time with a shorter wait later in the day and we still had the whole day ahead of us to see the rest of the park.
I went against the advise of the crowd calendars this day and against my usual touring habits of avoiding extra magic hours. The reason I did this is that due to the last minute nature of the trip I was unable to secure fastpasses for Flight of Passage. This was the only day of the trip where Animal Kingdom had 7am extra magic hours (the other days it was 8am extra magic hours) and I wanted to take advantage of that to get on Flight of Passage at least once but hopefully twice. I figured that since we had fastpasses for Navii River Journey, Kilimanjaro Safari and Everest that we would be able to handle the potentially higher crowds in the park that day since everything else we tend to be interested in is a large capacity show or an animal trail that doesn't really get super busy.
I woke up at the very early hour of 5am (only something I do willingly in Disney) with the goal of being out of the room and on the way to Animal Kingdom by 6am.
For the most part we stuck to that and here is Pop Century at 605am as we were leaving.
We were at the entrance of Animal Kingdom at 626am.
There was already quite the crowd built up as expected but we were still fairly close to the front of the pack when they started to let us in.
Just like last year they let us into the park at 0630 despite extra magic hours not starting until 7am. This is something that people really need to be aware of because if you show up right at the scheduled start of EMH or even slightly after you will be at a huge disadvantage if your goal is to get on Flight of Passage.
As we were scanning our bands Mom had forgotten from all our previous trips that you have to scan your finger so that caused a very small but funny (for me) delay.
Soon though we were hustling towards Pandora. I really emphasized to Mom that this was not the time to saunter along and asked her to please walk as quickly as she could otherwise our front of the pack advantage would be lost as more and more people spilled into the park. I think I almost killed Mom. I am proud of her though, she really pushed herself although she was a little hot and sweaty by the time we got to Pandora.
Once we got into Pandora we could slow down as we were now part of the Flight of Passage line. They started organizing us into a line almost as soon as we were in the land. That being said the line was constantly moving and so we never really stopped moving until we were in the final part of the indoor queue.
I think the initial part of the outdoor queue is my favourite, it is so pretty.
Here we are waiting to be sent into the pre-show chamber at 654am.
Right at 7am they started to send people into the various pre-show rooms. We got sent up some stairs to one of the upper theatres which I had never done in the past. So even though they let everybody into the park at 630am they don't actually let people onto the ride until 7am.
The ride was amazing as always and I was very happy that we made the effort to wake up super early and get to the park for EMH.
We then did something I never thought that I would do. We got back in line to ride again. Even though it was only 0724am the line had now extended all the way to Africa.
Even though that was where the line was when we joined it I had faith that the wait wouldn't be too bad, and by that I mean an hour or less, because once again the line was constantly moving. I think the reason for this initial back up into Africa of the line was because they switched from feeding us into the fastpass queue and switched to the standby queue.
Even though the line was longer than I would normally wait (it ended up being about an hour) it wasn't too bad as we got to check out the standby queue which we had never seen in the past and it was air conditioned which was also great as it was already steaming hot outside.
I loved all the different areas of the queue - the bioluminescent areas, the lab, getting to see the avatars in the link chamber.
We spent our time in line chatting with those around us, checking out the queue and refreshing fastpasses. I was able to get our Navii River Journey fastpass moved from the evening to the morning so I was happy with that. I decided to leave our evening Safari and Everest fastpasses where they were for the moment.
I felt bad for a little girl that was in line near us, she was not feeling well at all and so she and her dad eventually sat down in a corner of the queue hoping that some time resting and in the air-conditioning would help her feel better. He was thinking that the early morning and the heat were the culprit. I really hope she felt better as it is no fun being ill on vacation.
Mom and I got into a bit of an argument as she said that on our next trip we should advise Sarah (Alek's girlfriend) and Jess(Erich's fiancee) that if they don't like drops that they should just close their eyes on the ride as she admitted that is what she does. I was miffed. I told Mom that if you are going to close your eyes on Flight of Passage that you may as well not even ride as the whole thing is dependent on your visual experience. I think it would be selfish to take a seat on the ride if you are just going to close your eyes through it all or most of it. She did not agree with me because "who would want to wait around while others ride". I personally feel there is so much else you could experience while others ride if you feel you can't handle the ride rather than taking a seat from somebody else who would actually love to experience the whole ride.
Anyways, we moved on from our argument and had another enjoyable ride in which Mom claims that she did NOT close her eyes.
By the time we got off the ride and Mom used the washroom it was now 9am and the park was open for the day.
Even though we only got to ride FoP twice in the two hours of EMH I was satisfied with our use of that time because there was no way we would have been able to ride a second time with a shorter wait later in the day and we still had the whole day ahead of us to see the rest of the park.
