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| Maybe I should have held up three fingers since it was our third park in three days! |
Disney's Animal Kingdom opened on Earth Day, April 22, 1998. Although it will be celebrating it's 22nd anniversary soon, it's the newest of the four Disney theme parks in Orlando. The Magic Kingdom opened in 1971, EPCOT in 1982 and Hollywood Studios in 1989.
Many years ago I attended a guest services training seminar here at Disney. There are so many things that they do well when it comes to service. The hospitality industry and healthcare industry really aren't that different in many ways. Both are expensive and come with high, sometimes unrealistic expectations.
One thing I remember hearing the Disney trainer state several times was that once you stepped on Disney property they didn't want you to step off. They've built a huge water park (Typhoon Lagoon) and entertainment complex (Disney Springs) to compete with similar non-Disney attractions. While they don't have a theme park that competes directly with Sea World, Hollywood Studios does compete with Universal Studios and Animal Kingdom probably has kept many guest from leaving the property to go to Busch Gardens in Tampa. There's plenty of ways to spend your money on attractions around Orlando and Disney certainly gets their fare share.
Prior to this Disney adventure, Animal Kingdom was the last Disney theme park that we visited. I was attending a conference and we went to the park for one day. As best as we can remember, other than the huge roller coaster that went backwards, we enjoyed that visit many moons ago. We certainly enjoyed our visit yesterday!
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| Expedition Everest is the roller coaster that got the best of us years ago. |
As we have been doing, we were there a few minutes before the park opened. It was fairly busy, but no where near as busy as Hollywood Studios. We were unable to get a Fastpass to Animal Kingdom's most popular attraction, Avatar Flight of Passage. When the ropes dropped and guests were allowed in we simply followed the biggest herd and soon found ourselves standing in line for this attraction. The wait was about an hour, but much of it was outside and there was plenty to enjoy while we waited. So much about Disney defies logic and conventional wisdom. For example, why do so many adults sacrifice their children's prospects of a debt free college education by spending so much on a Disney vacation? Also, why will these same folks who have forked over wads of cash wait in lines for over an hour for rides that last less than five minutes...….sometimes much less! One reason is that Disney does everything so well.
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| At least the scenery is great while waiting for Avatar Flight of Passage |
Avatar Flight of Passage was an amazing ride, although we both realized about 20 seconds into it that it really wasn't for us. We've never been fans of virtual reality rides and that's what Avatar Flight of Passage happens to be. The scenery was great, but it took both of us a couple of hours to fully recover. Part of our recovery time was spent at the Festival of the Lion King and Finding Nemo stage shows, which we agreed were both excellent and more appropriate for us. Given we're both still alive and neither of us puked, I guess we're glad we did it, but we won't do it again!
Animal Kingdom is a really fun park. The safari ride was excellent, as was A Bug's Life and Na'vi River Journey. There's plenty of street performers throughout the park and really nice shade along most of the walking paths. Don't forget to take a few minutes to see how many animals you can spot on the Tree of Life which is located on Discovery Island.
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| The Tree of Life is a sculpture that has over 300 images of animals on its trunk and roots. |
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| On the safari ride. A lot of things at Disney are not real......this guy and the all the animals on the safari ride are the real deal. |
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| Also from the safari ride |
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| Thankfully this guy wasn't real! |
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| Pandora section of the park, near the Na'vi River Journey |
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| Rivers of Light is a nighttime light and laser show. It was really nice until technical issues stopped the show about half way through |
We used the Fastpass a couple of times but were unable to secure it for the two main attractions in Animal Kingdom, Avatar Flight of Passage and Na'vi River Journey. The lines for both of these attractions were over an hour. One of the many beautiful things about being old, retired and both kids being grown was that we had we had plenty of time on our hands.
