Soooo I've set a bit of a goal for myself. My photopass pictures expire on July 16, and while I've already downloaded them I use the website's timestamps to remind me where we were and when, which is super helpful for this report. So my goal is to have this report complete (or mostly complete) by the 16th! Seems reasonable, right? With that being said, on to the next update:
Part 7- Animal Kingdom Part 1
I was super excited for our Animal Kingdom day, because we had FPs for Flights of Passage and I was hyped to see Pandora. But all the hype in the world wasn't going to get us to rope drop that day, because we were both exhausted. So we "slept in" and arrived at the park around 10:30.
We bought animal ears to mark the occasion. The photographer noticed and told us to make animal claws. A lot of the pics that we took this day ended up being my favorites!
We headed up to our first FP, the safari. I was a bit nervous because I heard that the number of animals you see can change a lot depending on what time you get on, but I think we got pretty lucky!
We were right up front too, so we could feel the cool air that was blowing on the driver, which was a bonus.
This giraffe stood right in the middle of the road and then walked right next to us. It was so cool to see it up close!
We also saw a family of elephants:
And some zebras:
We saw the lions too but I didn't take a pic of them since they were just sleeping
All in all it was a fun safari ride! We took a moment to sit and do our mobile ordering for Satuli Canteen before it was time to head to Pandora! Our flight of passage FP started at 11:20 and I wanted to be there right away because I wasn't sure what to expect as far as wait times.
Pandora is even more beautiful in person, pictures really don't do it justice. We got in line for Flights of Passage right at 11:20, and we were out at exactly 11:50. The only real wait we had was before the preshow, when the cast member has to count and divide us into groups, and it wasn't that long. We both loved the ride, but for some reason the 3D effect didn't work too well for me at times. It felt like my glasses weren't focused or something. It went away, but it did kind of put a damper on things a little. Still, it was an amazing ride! I think the "Soarin on steroids" description is accurate. You really feel like you're on a banshee, drops and all. I'm so glad we had FPs for it. I think I had the advantage because my FP day was in late March, before Pandora opened and before a lot of the hype. There was a ton of availability, and that's definitely not the case now from what I've read on the DIS.
Side note: When we got on the ride a guy in our room lost their magic band in the ride. He dropped it and it fell underneath the ride vehicle and into the ride itself according to what he said. I felt really bad for him, but my (selfish) first thought was "I hope they don't close the ride or anything while they look for it". There seemed to be a delay as the cast member walked into our room, walked out, closed the door, opened the door again, walked through again, and then left.... But then the ride went on as usual.
After we got off the ride we backtracked over to the floating mountains to get a photopass pic:
.... And we tried to point in the general direction of the banshee, but I think it looks a litttle off
I got the notification that our mobile orders were ready, so we went to go pick those up.
Mobile ordering was sooooo convenient! We skipped the entire line and maybe waited 5 minutes. We managed to get a table inside too. It seemed like they were really trying to crack down on people saving tables while their party was in line, and they had a cast member helping people find tables once they had their food.
I ordered the bowl with beef as my protein, romaine and kale as my base, and creamy herb dressing as my sauce. I kept the vegetable slaw but got it without the boba balls because I think they're disgusting. I don't 100% remember (and neither does she) what my sister had but I think she had the chicken, with the quinoa and vegetable base, and the creamy herb dressing. I'm pretty sure the quinoa & vegetable part is correct because I remember looking at her order after she put it in on my phone and asking "..... Did you really mean to pick that?" because I think quinoa is BEYOND gross.
Anyway, here's what my bowl looked like:
I'm not even exaggerating (ok maybe a tiny bit) when I saw that this was AMAZING. Like, to the point of it being one of the best meals I've ever had in my life. The dressing was SO. GOOD. The greens were fresh, the beef was tender, everything worked so well together and it was amazingly refreshing. And this is coming from someone who's a super picky eater. I basically have the taste pallet of a very picky toddler. I could live on chicken tenders, french fries, and pizza if you let me (and i basically did when i got to college.... The freshmen 15 is REAL people). I was really worried I wouldn't like anything at Satuli but I was soooooo wrong. I'm usually not a big fan of most vegetables but whatever they make the vegetable slaw out of is so good! I loved this meal from beginning to end. Even looking at this pic now is making me hungry. I've legitimately had dreams about this meal, that's now good it was. I can't recommend this place enough.
We took some time to let our food settle before heading out of Pandora to explore the rest of the park. We still had some time to kill before our Expedition Everest FP.
So of course we stopped for photopass pics!
This is probably my favorite picture of the whole trip! I love everything about it. When I sent it to my parents my dad asked if we matched our ears to our hair color on purpose. We totally didn't, but that makes it even better!
Dinosaur had pretty short waits at this point so we decided to go check it and Dino Land USA out before heading to Everest.
Dinosaur was cool! I know it's the same ride system as Indiana Jones in
Disneyland, but I thought this one was rougher and more fun. Here's our ride pic.... I don't even remember at what point the ride took the picture!
We headed over to Dinoland to ride Primeval Whirl, which we both loved. We looooove Wild Mouse coasters. The pain is part of the fun!
We STILL had more time to kill before our Everest FP, so we got frozen lemonades and sat down to cool off. I went through Snapchat's Pandora filters while we waited:
Then we headed over to Everest finally, but of course we stopped for some photo pass pics:
Not sure what the butterfly has to do with Everest, but it's cute!
We didn't have long of a wait in the FP line, and soon enough we were on Everest. I was super excited for this ride, and it definitely lived up to expectations. I just wish the section where you go backwards was longer or steeper, I really thought it would be more intense based on the videos I'd seen. Don't get me wrong, I love that part of the ride though.
Anyway here's the ride pic:
I quickly hopped on the app and got us another FP that started soon after, so we rode it again:
By this point we were sort of out of things to do, as far as rides go. It was too hot to do any of the trails in my opinion, so I got back on the app to see what our next move would be. I considered going to see the Lion King show, which I hear is really good, so I wanted to see if I could get a FP for that. I wasn't seeing any availability that was soon enough for me so I decided to check the other parks too, since we had the Express Transportation pass and I wanted to get my money's worth.
By complete luck, I found us FPs at EPCOT for Soarin! Then, the wheels in my brain started turning. My plan for the next day was for us to rope drop EPCOT and ride Soarin and Test Track, since I used our tier 1 FP on Frozen. Buuutttt if we managed to ride both of those ahead of time, we wouldn't have to rope drop or even show up to EPCOT until at least 12 for our Frozen FP. Since I value sleep more than anything else, I decided that was what we were going to try. So the plan was: express bus over to EPCOT, ride Soarin, hopefully get a FP for Test Track and ride that too, maybe have dinner, then bus it back over to the Animal Kingdom for the evening.
So I booked the FPs and we headed over to the express bus to EPCOT! I'll start the next post with that portion of our day