Five parks in 48 hours: a quick trip report

[Foxen]

Hi there! This is a quick, last-minute trip, with a lot packed in. I'm a long-time DIS-lurker, but haven't been to Disney in a while or really posted much before. We finally made a quick trip to cram in everything we've missed!

The background: My husband and I were in Florida (down from Boston, but I’m from Florida originally) for two weeks in mid-September 2022. We’ve recently bought a house outside Gainesville that my dad is living in, and my mom lives in the greater Orlando area. This was primarily a trip to see both of them and to work on the new house, but I squeezed in a bit of parks time, too.

Here's us:

Our Disney background: I grew up in Florida, and had the requisite early Disney exposure – trips every few years, and the occasional school trip. My husband, Nick, didn’t grow up going to Disney parks, and started out skeptical, but we did a pair of trips with my parents around 2010 and it’s grown on him. We both like the theming and attention to detail – Imagineering, storytelling even in the architectural details – and because of that, Animal Kingdom is our favorite park. Nick hasn’t been back since 2010. I did a trip with my mom (and others) in 2015, but haven’t been back since then. There’s a LOT new since 2015, and none of the planning logistics I knew are relevant anymore, so this was a wild tour to see things we’d missed and figure out the new system all at once. Join us for a whirl-wind trip: five parks in 48 hours! It can be done! Also proof that it’s possible to plan the trip 1 week out and still have everything pretty much work.

Here’s the general overview:

Day 1: Universal Studios & Islands of Adventure – seeing Harry Potter world (and whatever else is at Universal)

Day 1 hotel: Animal Kingdom Lodge – Animals! Pool! Deluxe resort stay!

Day 2: Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, & EPCOT – Breakfast at Boma, Animal Kingdom & Pandora ‘til park hopping hour, Hollywood Studios (Star Wars!), then hopping to EPCOT for food and wine, fireworks, and extended magic hours.

More soon!

 

[Foxen]

(Hm... apparently I am not wise in the ways of posting images to the DIS... edited to add!)

 

[Foxen]

Planning​

The obligatory planning post. Our planning for this trip was minimal enough to make most of the DIS make tsking noises. Most of our focus on this Florida trip was on house renovations, and I kept not getting a chance to sit down and figure out the new Disney systems, but I was (fortunately correctly!) confident we could make it work more-or-less on the fly.

The main focus of the trip was to experience three big things that neither of us had yet seen: Harry Potter areas at Universal, Galaxy’s Edge at Hollywood Studios, and Pandora at Animal Kingdom. We also didn’t want to spend too long at the parks – the purpose of the trip was house renovation, after all – and also hoo boy have things gotten expensive, so cramming it into two days made sense. My parents opted out of joining us, so it was just us (for the first time, just us!) for two intensive days in Orlando parks!

I bought our tickets on September 12 for September 19/20th (yes, you read that right, this really was last minute planning). The plan was: a day at Universal/Islands of Adventure primarily for HP, stay at a Disney resort that night, and then park hop through our Disney todo list the following day. We looked at when Extra Magic Hours were to pick days, and with the current offerings (MK on Wednesdays, Epcot on Mondays) decided on Sunday-Monday on the 19th-20th. Then, when we realized Extra Magic Hours are now Extended Magic Hours and require a stay at a Deluxe… we decided we could swing one night at AKL. (And AKL is amazing, so I was extremely ok with that decision.)

I bought Universal tickets for Sunday, Sept. 19th – with whatever Universal calls park hoppers (can you tell I’m not a Universal person?), to get into US and IOA because they decided to make that mandatory for HP. Booked AKL for the night of the 19th, and one day of park hopper tickets for Disney on the 20th. FWIW, I had no issues with anything being full or unavailable – I had hoped we’d be hitting the parks early in the school year and would miss some of the crowds (but who knows these days), and that seemed to bear out.

Next post: Diagon Alley!

 

[Foxen]

Day 1: Universal & IOA​

I am NOT a Universal person (and will get through the Universal portions of this TR quickly!). I’ve generally always treated Universal with the proper disdain of a Disney parks enthusiast. We went once when I was 6-ish, and what I remember is: being afraid of the queue area for the E.T. ride (), getting yelled at by a cast member for standing in a Feivel fountain, and (very vaguely) the Back to the Future Ride. And I haven’t been back to Universal since. I’ve been to IoA as a teenager – Halloween Horror Nights some time in the early 00’s, and a school trip at some point – but that’s it. But, we’re big Harry Potter fans, and the HP part of the parks sounds like Disney-level theming, so I’ve been wanting to go for a while.

We left my mom’s house at 7 am, and arrived at Universal Studios parking about an hour (and $27 dollars for parking!) later. Park opening was at 8 and we weren’t right there for it, but were in before the worst of the crowds. I’d skipped buying the Universal Express pass – reports on the DIS said wait times weren’t that bad, and Express basically doubles the ticket cost, so we decided to chance it. Our plan was to head straight for Escape from Gringotts, since we expected the wait for that to get unbearable later in the day.

We made our way towards Diagon Alley through the Hollywood and Springfield sections. Springfield got Nick grinning, but we weren’t lingering there yet. When we got around the corner and started recognizing HP landmarks, it was my turn to grin: “Look, it’s number 12 Grimmauld Place!” And – benefits of minimal preparation – the entrance to Diagon Alley got us: we walked back and forth a few times being like “it’s supposed to be about here…” before figuring out to walk into the Underground station. And then you walk around that wall and wham Diagon Alley hits you in the face, and it’s like you’re actually there. Diagon Alley is beautiful. Exactly what it should be.

We hurried up the street and into the queue for Gringotts’. The Gringotts queue area itself is lovely – the outer bank area’s marbled surfaces and then the contrast to the mine-like quality of the vaults. The queue was full starting around the bank security area (some sort of photo option that I assume ties into the ride photo if you’re doing that?) with the goblin’s offices. I snapped a picture of Nick in the queue to prove we were there for my mom (ha), and we ended up stopped right at the end of the hallway right before the entrance to the briefing movie.

(We were masking in enclosed, high-density areas, but almost no one else was.)

The staircase after the briefing movie was also very cool.

My review of the actual ride: kinda meh? They try to pack too much story into it and it feels rushed: you’re in a bank, something is going wrong! Ah, it’s a Troll! Bellatrix is here! And Voldemort! I think if they’d picked one baddie and told a tighter story it would’ve fit better and allowed the ride to focus on the visual and physical effects (which is clearly what it wanted to do, anyway). Also the sound mixing was really muddy and it made it hard to follow what was going on. But the ride mechanics and effects were fun, and the main point for me is the ambiance anyway, so, cool.

After getting out of the ride, and a quick trip to the wizarding bathrooms (during which I apparently missed the dragon going off), we wandered around the wizard shops for a while. The key in these shops, for me at least, isn’t to buy cool merch (although it is really cool merch). The key is to look up and check out all the out-of-reach theming. Borgin and Burke's was particularly good for spotting obscure artifacts. The magical creature shop was great, as was Knockturn Alley. We didn’t do the interactive wand thing, but I was aware it existed, and I actually love it for the additions to ambiance even if you’re not playing: it adds the feel that people are waving wands and doing magic all around you. And we saw a few of the effects without spoiling most of it, if we want to go back and do it in the future. Everything in Diagon Alley was great, and we spent a while just wandering around, sipping Butterbeer, and enjoying it (and I did see the dragon eventually).

We tried to get an early lunch at the Leaky Cauldron, but were not plugged into the Universal app system, and could not be bothered to figure it out just for that. I like the way Disney has used apps for food ordering much better: you CAN use the app (and it might make it easier) but you can also just pay like a normal restaurant. The Leaky Cauldron seemed to be app-only (if it wasn’t, it wasn’t very clear; the CMs were trying, but they had too many people to help and too many unclear “where do I go” situations), and we ended up just deciding to skip it.

The Hogwarts Express was down the entire day we were there, which was a bummer, since it was both something we wanted to do, and our plan was to do all HP stuff, using the Hogwarts Express to get between parks, and then shift to non-HP stuff. Once it became apparent that the Express wasn’t coming back up, we shift to doing all the Universal stuff we wanted before walking over to IoA.

So, what else was there to do in Universal? I had researched this VERY minimally: we had a sense that the Mummy ride was good, the Fast and Furious ride was a little meh… and that’s about it. We decided to jump in the queue for the Transformers ride, which was at about 60 minutes and was one of the longer queues we had for the day.

The Transformers ride was really good! Structurally similar to Escape from Gringotts in the ride mechanics, but this time the IP was really suited to that format. Nick’s commentary: the Transformers franchise works better as a ride than a movie. It’s hectic, throws you around while crazy things are happening around you, and at the end you save the world. It worked and it was a really good ride! At this point I was also getting amused that the CMs clap as you exit every ride wherein you save the world. It’s cute, but I feel kinda bad for the CMs clapping at each batch of tourists all day .

After that, we hopped in the single rider line for the Mummy. It was indeed fun: kinda like Rock-n-Roller Coaster, but actually with more story, and who doesn’t like hanging around in an ancient Egyptian archeology dig?

Then we did the Jimmy Fallon ride, which was ok. Our ride broke in the middle (Jimmy Fallon threw pizza at us and the ride video just cut out ), so we had to wait while they rebooted, rechecked everyone’s seatbelts, and then restarted the ride for us, and we saw the first part twice. Nick pretended to be more afraid of Jimmy Fallon than of mummies. I discovered that the imax-but-the-theater-also-moves format makes me a bit motion sick. Meh.

After that we walked back around the lagoon towards Springfield, with a quick detour for E.T. I think I only remember the E.T. ride because my mom tells the story of me being afraid of it whenever Universal Studios comes up, and I had to see what it was actually like. I actually liked the spooky forest queue area as an adult, though. The bike ride-vehicles are also kinda fun. The ride itself is showing it’s age plenty. Nick thinks they should “Stranger Things-ify” it and play up the retro, which might be a good call. It’s basically a dark ride, which Nick has little patience for, and the parts on E.T.’s planet would be fun if you’d just dropped acid but are pretty weird if you haven’t. I’m glad we rode it, but I’m also surprised it’s still there. Still, fun to check out (I didn’t check to see if the fountain I got yelled at for playing in was still there, though).

On to Springfield! We had to try Duff beer. Nick looked it up while we were waiting, and it’s actually from a local Orlando brewery. We got a Duff, a Duff Octoberfest, and a pretzel to split. Both the Duff beers were really good! We took some silly photos.

After some appreciation of the general Springfield environs, we got in line for the Simpson’s Ride, which was very fun. We were amused that they incorporated a lot of classic Simpsons clips that are making fun of theme parks – but mostly actually Disney. The ride was fun, jokes were good. I ended up seated behind a tall guy, so couldn’t see some of the ride screen terribly well, but overall the Simpsons work well as a ride, and we enjoyed the Ferris wheel or whatever that was.


Next post: IoA

 

[Foxen]

Day 1: Islands of Adventure​

After enjoying the Simpsons, we were headed over to IoA (the long way, since the Hogwarts Express was still down). One walk later, we were entering IoA and appreciating the ambiance of the entrance area. We stopped for a double espresso (for Nick) and an almond croissant (for me) from the Croissant Moon Bakery, both of which were good.

We hurried through Seussland, but then Nick saw dinosaurs and we decided to do Jurassic Park before diving back into HP. The Velocicoaster looked really cool, so we piled into the standby line for that (our other 60 minute queue for the day, the single rider line wasn’t open or we would have done that). The line was long, and large parts of it were not particularly themed so it seemed longer (and my feet were already starting to ache at this point), but the ride itself lived up. There is a mandatory locker system involved, which made me a little nervous but actually worked really well: you use your park ticket, or a card with a barcode that they hand to you, to open a locker, stick your stuff in, and then it’s available in a different location (from the other side? Or they move it? I couldn’t tell the logistics or the geometry, but it worked well) once you get off. The coaster itself was intense. Very fast, very fun, very well designed. Doesn’t jerk you around too much, but is just about as extreme as you can get. When we got to the end Nick told me to look below him – one of his sandals had come off early in the ride, and he spent the whole way (flying over water with the minimal ride vehicle floor) furiously clamping it to the side with his other foot!

Shoes intact and belongings retrieved from the lockers, we then did the other Jurassic Park ride. This one’s also showing its age a bit – I think it was an original IoA ride? Nick remembered it from 90s-era commercials – and the animatronics out in the Florida sun were sometimes looking in need of some love. The T-rex is still impressive, though, and it’s a fun boat ride through dinos with a drop at the end, what more do you want?

From there, we did head back into HP land. We were hungry at this point, and we decided to try the Three Broomsticks. Nick got a Turkey Leg and a beer. I got The Only Vegetarian Option – the mushroom pie, and a pumpkin fizz. The ordering process was a little chaotic but ultimately worked well (and we didn’t have to use an app!). The Three Broomsticks is a seriously cool building. All the bits above your head are fascinating – gives the impression of wouldn’t-work-except-for-magic-architecture and lots of wizarding bits and bobs. Really good old-British-village-meets-wizardry vibe.

I didn't get any great interior shots, but this shows the Hogs Head-adjoined side.

The food was… less good. Nick said he ordered the turkey leg because it was “the most medieval thing on the menu” to go with the ambiance, but the leg itself was overcooked and tough. The mushroom pie was… well, it was actually pretty good theming, I guess? It’s what I’d expect a small-village British pub stuck in the last century to come up with if forced to produce a vegan option? It was really not very good. It wasn’t a pie so much as a gelatinous soup with a pastry lid (the pastry was only on the top). The gelatinous filling was mostly goop with some bits of undefinable veg floating in, and the pastry was rock hard. It also came with the most generic side salad you can imagine. A little annoying for $15, but eh. The drinks were better; the beer was beer (I think he got a Dragon Scale?), and the pumpkin fizz (I wanted something non-alcoholic and I’d already tried butterbeer) was good in a pumpkin spice latte sort of way. If you want to experience the ambiance, I recommend getting a drink at the Hogs Head portion, instead of eating there.

Then a quick visit to the nearby restrooms. It was a little hard to tell over the general noise, but I think they had sounds of Moaning Myrtle piped into the ladies bathrooms? Nice touch.

Then we did the Forbidden Journey ride, the one that is inside Hogwarts castle. It was pretty much a walk-on, and it seemed in such low-demand in comparison to the other HP rides that I went in with low expectations, thinking it must have aged badly or something. That turned out to be very wrong, and this ride was fantastic! Way better, IMO, than the Gringotts ride. First, there’s really no beating walking through Hogwarts. That’s the dream, right? And they’ve done it amazingly. We lingered in various rooms in the queue (letting people pass us) to take in the details. No pictures from us (there are a million out there, though), but it really lives up. It feels like you’re actually in Hogwarts! The ride itself was also excellent, more being in Hogwarts, and didn’t have the same “too much crammed in” feel I got from the Gringotts ride. This was the only ride of the whole trip that Nick wanted to do again immediately.

After some more browsing in the Wizarding World, we decided not to do either the Hagrid’s motorbike coaster or the Flight of the Hippogriff. Standby time for Hagrid’s was at 70 minutes or so, and we weren’t feeling it (if I end up regretting that… reason to go back!). I was also beginning to discover at this point that I’m apparently too old to run around parks and stand in queues in flip-flops for 8+ hours and my feet were seriously hurting.

We started making our way out of the park the long way around the lagoon in order to hit any last things at IoA that caught our eye (and because Nick declared an aversion to walking back through the Dr. Seuss area ). Skull Island: Reign of Kong caught our eye first, and had a tolerable wait (35 minutes? Something like that), so we hopped in line for it. Neither of us really remembered the movie, but the queue was appropriately spookily skull-filled, and the ride itself was fun – another one like Transformers where the IP is well-suited to ride adaptation.

Nick had successfully avoided Dr. Seuss only to land himself in Toon Lagoon, which we didn’t linger in. When we passed the Hulk coaster, though, it had a reasonable wait time, so we jumped in that line for our last ride of the day. The waiting areas were fairly boring, but the coaster itself is another really well designed one, and I kind-of appreciate how the story is just “we turn you into a Hulk, YOU GO FAST”.

After that we made our way out of the park, and set the GPS for Animal Kingdom Lodge!

After we got back I was wondering how much we actually walked, so I started mapping it (courtesy of USATF). Here's our path through Universal and IoA:

4.6 miles! Not bad!

Next: Checking in to Animal Kingdom Lodge!

 

[Foxen]

Day 1 (still): Animal Kingdom Lodge​

Now on to Disney!

I’d booked our one-night stay at AKL with a pool-view room. We parked and headed in to check in around 6pm. The CM at the Jambo House concierge was fantastic. I wasn’t sure how room keys/park passes worked anymore (it was all Magicbands when I was last there in 2015; I’m kinda glad they seem to be phasing those out or at least making them optional – in any event we didn’t have them because we’d booked so late, and I wasn’t sure if we needed them or not), and she got everything sorted out and explained for me. We ended up with two key cards (Goofy and Daisy) that did everything we needed them to: room key, park pass, and Genie+/Lightning Lane tapping device.

Nick had never been to AKL before, so we headed out to check out the animals before it got dark.

(There actually were a lot of animals out that evening, although not, apparently in the only photo I took : I remember giraffes, zebras, wildebeest, some antelope-ish types, and pelicans and a crane.)

Nick took a liking to this mighty pigeon on one of the lobby sculptures.

Then we headed up to the room, which was very convenient to the lobby and did, indeed, overlook the main pool.

(Room photos are actually from the next morning, but you get the idea.)

In spite of being right next to the Jambo House pool, Nick wanted to wander around the property more, and also thought the Kidani pool would be more tranquil, so we put on bathing suits and wandered our way all the way to the far side of the resort and the Kidani pool. This turned out to be a good call – it was considerably less crowded, and we liked the pool itself a lot. The slide at the Kidani pool was particularly impressive for a resort pool slide. We hung out in the pool and also got some poolside drinks at the Maji bar: a beer and a pina colada.

After some water-based relaxing, we took the path back to Jambo and our room for a quick shower and then back out to the Victoria Falls Lounge (we were also cramming in all the resort enjoyment we could! ), for late evening cocktails. I also ended up running to the Mara to bring up a flatbread (cheese, nothing terribly special, but good, and also the only hot vegetarian option at 10:30). After that we headed in, and made it through about half the new House of the Dragon episode before passing out.

Because I’m a dork, I also running mapped our AKL meanderings to add to the day’s milage total:

Dawn of the Second Day: It’s Disney Day!​

Unlike for Universal, I HAD done a decent amount of research on current Disney planning (the pinned DIS posts on Genie+ and park hopping were extremely useful).

For folks interested in planning thoughts, here’s a wall of text:

My initial plan had been to start this day at Hollywood Studios: do rope drop/resort opening hours to Galaxy’s Edge hopefully before the bulk of the crowds, and then park hop to Animal Kingdom in the afternoon. We knew after the previous day, though, that I was likely to be dragging by mid-afternoon, and we were planning on going all the way through to 11pm end of EMH at Epcot, so we figured we needed a slower start at a more relaxing park. I hadn’t been able to get a dinner ADR at any of the AKL restaurants for the night before, but when I was looking there was availability at Boma for breakfast (and Boma has been on my Disney wish list for a while!), so we’d booked the earliest breakfast reservation we could get (7:55 am) and switched our park reservation from HS to AK. (I also thought this would allow me to stack LL reservations for HS in the afternoon by booking them first thing before we really got started, but it turned out they’d changed that process just a few days prior to our trip (here's the article I eventually found that explained), so that didn’t work out all that well. C’est la vie.) Because we wouldn’t be in HS until afternoon, we also bit the bullet and bought Individual Lightning Lane passes for Rise of the Resistance. The time we got was 5:55pm.

Some thoughts on Genie+ and ILL (sigh… I’m a librarian, ILL means interlibrary loan to me): I guess I’m not surprised that Disney has made fastpasses pay-to-play, but obviously I don’t love it. ILLs seem totally infeasible if you have a big party, but I guess it worked pretty well for us? I did also get Genie+ for us for this day – I was on the fence, since reports were that crowds and standby lines were low, but since we were only there one day I figured it was worth it, and it was – but it’d be doable with the crowd levels right now not to if you had a few more days to play with. Both systems worked surprisingly seamlessly for us, given how complicated they are. Under the surface they are basically the same fastpass system, but on an app, which… works . I was determined to spend my time at the parks actually AT the parks rather than glued to the app, so I didn’t always get the optimal return times, but for the most part it worked pretty well. I do wish the app wouldn’t clutter up the selection screens with stuff you’re not interested in, though – THAT they can definitely improve; just let me pin the attractions I’m looking for to the top of the page! And I flubbed figuring out the virtual queue thing (why yet another process?), so we didn’t do Guardians of the Galaxy, but that’s ok.



Ok, everyone back? I did the requisite 7 am app-poking to make our first set of LL reservations sitting on that nice balcony overlooking the (closed, and therefore quiet) pool. Then, breakfast at Boma!

Boma breakfast was a really nice start to the day. The Jambo Juice lived up to all the hype – totally delicious, I think I drank three glasses of it. The breakfast buffet was also good. Things I particularly remember: pap with some sort of tomato-based stew on top, a fruit and avocado salad thingie, and the bread pudding with cream and pecan sauces were all very good, in addition to a lot of standard egg and potato things. Nick ate a Simba waffle and claimed it gave him good luck. We were aiming to eat a lot to fuel us through our long day: Nick had three plates total, and I had two, along with copious Jambo Juice and coffee. And they gave us coffee to go as we left, which was a nice touch.

Checkout was also easy. We’d cleared our room and stashed everything we weren’t bringing to the parks in the car before breakfast. It wouldn’t let me check-out via app, so we went back to the desk and it turned out the issue was we hadn’t paid for parking yet. I’ve apparently never actually parked at a Disney hotel before (usually I’m flying in and taking Magical Express) and didn’t realize it wasn’t included with the room – so… fyi, you also have to pay for parking . But that only took a minute, and then we were waving goodbye to one savannah and on our way to the next! The bus arrived promptly, and we were soon heading off to Animal Kingdom!

Next post I will actually get us into a Disney park, I promise!

 

[Notreallyaustralian]

I think if I ever get ILL, I will have to call it interlibrary loan!

I think it's so cool that you're a librarian. The other day, I was thinking...maybe that's what I should have done with my life.

That's very cool that you were able to map your route. Is that an app?

I'm not a big fan of Universal. Though it's been many years since we went. I'm vegetarian too. I remember being not-impressed with the food.

I love your line:

It’s what I’d expect a small-village British pub stuck in the last century to come up with if forced to produce a vegan option?

My feelings (and this was back in 2014, I think) was that I wish the food (Restaurant and candy) had been more British. For example, the "Chips" tasted more like American steak fries than actual chips from the UK.

I'm intrigued by your partner's interest in the pigeon and his Simba good luck waffles.

I look forward to reading more!

 

[Foxen]

I think if I ever get ILL, I will have to call it interlibrary loan!

I think it's so cool that you're a librarian. The other day, I was thinking...maybe that's what I should have done with my life.

That's very cool that you were able to map your route. Is that an app?

I'm not a big fan of Universal. Though it's been many years since we went. I'm vegetarian too. I remember being not-impressed with the food.

I love your line:


My feelings (and this was back in 2014, I think) was that I wish the food (Restaurant and candy) had been more British. For example, the "Chips" tasted more like American steak fries than actual chips from the UK.

I'm intrigued by your partner's interest in the pigeon and his Simba good luck waffles.

I look forward to reading more!

Haha, yes! Let's rebrand ILL.

The mapping thing I used is this: http://legacy.usatf.org/routes/map/newMap.aspx - but there are probably better apps out there. I just drew it out and took a screenshot - very low tech!

The food in Universal was definitely underwhelming. Makes me appreciate Disney more - comparably expensive, but at least it'll be good at Disney!

Thanks for joining!

 

[Notreallyaustralian]

The food in Universal was definitely underwhelming. Makes me appreciate Disney more - comparably expensive, but at least it'll be good at Disney!

We have said pretty much the exact same thing! Disney food is so expensive. But it's also usually very good! The other great thing about Disney Food is once we return home, food at other restaurants seems so cheap!

 

[Foxen]

Animal Kingdom​

Animal Kingdom! I’d booked a LL for Expedition Everest when LL first became bookable at 7am (mostly to make sure it was working!), with a return window between 8 and 9 am, which was when I figured we’d first be getting to Animal Kingdom. An LL for Everest was completely unnecessary (standby was 15 minutes-ish?), but it was good to get used to using it. So, when we got to AK, we started by heading towards Asia.

We spent a bit of time peering at animals along the way. We poked around the enclosures in the oasis, and then made a check for the lemur enclosure at the front of Discovery Island. We like lemurs. Nick was wearing a lemur shirt this day (we’ll pretend that was intentional, but I think it was just the way the laundry worked out, honestly). No ring-tailed lemurs were out today, though. On this first pass by, there were two collared brown lemurs out, but no lemur catta in evidence. We didn’t have particularly good luck with animals this day.

We continued on to Asia, which is still my favorite part of the park. Such great Imagineering. On our way to Everest we passed a jetski/kite show that was starting (the internet tells me it was Kite Tails), and stopped to watch a few minutes. This was pretty cool: giant sculpted kites of Lion King characters, flown from the back of jetskis. The kites are impressive designs, and it was pretty neat, but a little lacking as a show – you can only see Simba fly in circles for so long before it gets a little boring. We stayed long enough to see a few kites, then moved on.

We got in the LL lane for Everest and had a good ride. The Yeti was out at the end! I’m not sure we’d ever actually seen the animatronic, before…(?).

Everest climbed, we retraced our steps to head towards Pandora (I also grabbed LL returns for Na’vi River Journey for ~11:30). (Also, lemur check: when we passed back by the lemur enclosure, the brown lemurs had gone in, and no one was there.)

I was antsy to get into the Flight of Passage line before wait times built too much. Because of this we rushed our initial impression of Pandora a bit – intending to linger over it later. The standby wait was at about 60 minutes when we entered the FoP queue, which I figured wasn’t that bad, and we settled in to peer at Pandora while waiting. Topics of queue conversation included: Florida being a very good place to intermix native and alien flora; flocking techniques for durable, outdoor fake moss; whether that was real rebar in the wall or sculpted (we thought sculpted). The outdoor parts of the queue were really pleasant (for a queue) – at that time of day it was in the shade and breezy, so relatively comfortable, and you could see other parts of Pandora. Once we got inside it was still good theming, but some areas were a little bland to spend 20 minutes in snaking through the same room. One absolutely brilliant and overdo innovation, though: mid-queue bathrooms! Why isn’t this more common?? Also, (and perhaps why I had so much time to accumulate queue thoughts) the ride went to half-capacity while we were in the queue. They announced it when we were about 40 minutes in, and our total wait ended up being maybe 90 minutes? I’m glad we did it, but I wouldn’t wait that long on a future trip.

The ride itself was good. I think Nick liked it more than I did? The “ride vehicle” set-up was a little disconcerting, but effective (you sit in a bike-like configuration, leaning forward, and restraints come up to meet your back and the back of your legs), and the “flying” experience was fun.

After Flight of Passage, we wanted to check out the Satu’li Canteen. We weren’t planning to eat there this trip, but I’ve been excited about its existence since it opened, and we wanted to get some sort of weird pandora food while there. We ended up getting alien cocktails from Pongu Pongu to drink while we wandered Pandora. We got both a Mo'ara Margarita (electric blue tequila slushie, with “boba”) and a Rum Blossom (alternating green and red apple and pear rum slushie, with “boba”). These were both really good! The “boba” is definitely not tapioca – they’re little… juice… sacs? that pop when you bite them. That sounds unappealing, but was actually really good. Imagineered alien food: 10/10, would recommend. We sipped our drinks and enjoyed wandering around Pandora for a while.

When our LL time for Na’vi River Journey was ready, we went on that. The standby times for this are ridiculous for what this is – I think it was 70 minutes or so at that point. The ride was fine. I’ve mentioned Nick isn’t a huge fan of dark rides, so we absolutely wouldn’t have done this one without Genie+, but I’m glad we did it. It’s basically “Pandora ambiance: the Ride”? Concentrate all the floral weirdness of Pandora into a dark ride, and that’s what this is. Nick called it “the modern version of the end of the E.T. ride” (which we’d been on in Universal the day before), and yeah, that works too. There’s no story? Just a bunch of bioluminescent pretty things you float past? I liked it, but if I’d waited in a 70 minute line for it… not so much. It did make me realize that we’d be missing seeing Pandora at night on this trip, which I’m adding to the future list of Disney to-dos.

After that, we’d accomplished all of our intended “to-dos” in Animal Kingdom, but still had a bit of time before we could park-hop. I used our next Genie+ LL for the Millennium Falcon for mid-afternoon.

We left Pandora via the path to Africa, and headed to the safari. Standby wait was about 20 minutes, and we had a pleasant safari. Paused in one area due to giraffes in the road. Decent view of lions.

After that we walked back over to Asia, in order to do the Maharajah trek: I wanted to visit the bats. I really like the Animal Kingdom bats. Unfortunately it was starting to rain, and most of the bats weren’t around. We saw a few bats at oblique angles up in the corners. On the rest of the trek, the tiger was out and about, and we gave some birds some silly names.

When we left the trek, there was one very playful gibbon out showing off on the gibbon temple playground, and we watched him for a bit. Then it was time for park-hopping, so we headed back to the entrance to catch a bus to Hollywood Studios! (Lemur check: still no lemurs on our way back past.)

Animal Kingdom wandering map: