Oh! Animal Kingdom. We were looking forward to this one. There is no equivalent in Disneyland. The pictures always look really great as well.
And it was...
Well...
The Expedition Everest roller coaster was a lot of fun. It was like the Matterhorn but with more. We really liked it. And the Pandora world was one of the most fully realized spaces in Disney. Very much like Galaxy's Edge. Just well done. And the Flight of Passage ride was brilliant. We had FastPasses for that one (thank goodness) or the wait would have been close to three hours. Insane. We weren't impressed at all with the safari. We were expecting an actual animal park, like free range animals in a large area. More natural interaction with nature for them. And there was a little bit of that, but it was mostly a drive through zoo. We have a great local zoo so it just wasn't really impressive. I wanted it to be more of a nature preserve and less of a traditional zoo.
We did not ride the other ride in Pandora, the Na'vi River Journey and that was a bummer, but it was the only truly hot and humid day we had and the line had a strong fuel odor. The thought of being in a hot line with that smell for an hour was too much for any of us to think was a good plan. So we looked at some pictures online of what we were missing and bailed.
It's a half day at best park for us. By far our least favorite. To be fair, part of that was the weather, but with only 2-3 decent rides in the place those lines are crazy. But again, because everything is so spread apart and the FastPass system is so wonky you can't really capitalize on that extra time by hopping over to another park real quick.
One of their "magic moments" add ins. I think they are fun.
About the time I realized that there were going to be multiple Ta Das!
It was a random time for a picture so we don't look like we liked it, but we did.
And Dinosaur, a ride so lame I didn't even talk about it up there...
Okay, and then the other park that there isn't a comparable one in California. Epcot.
Brent and I went to Epcot in the late 80s when it was still pretty new. I honestly only remembered the giant golf ball, the Michael Jackson ride (before we knew anything), and the hydroponics exhibit which fascinated me.
There was a ton of construction going on getting ready for their big anniversary celebration so we had kind of an odd experience getting around. It's also not really for us. We don't drink a lot. And we don't eat that much. Epcot is all about drinking and eating. There are people that that is their entire purpose for going to Epcot. To do an around the world pub crawl. We are too cheap for that! And the lines were really off putting. A margarita sounded good, but not good enough to stand 30 people deep to get one... At 10 in the morning...crazy.
The funny thing is even though it wasn't really a park geared toward our tastes we ended up visiting Epcot 3 times. We went Sunday evening because we wanted to make sure we got a chance to see the Arts Festival. Which was not what we expected. It was more like pop up shops from Downtown Disney's art store than anything else. Some really cool things, but not really what we had thought it would be. We had our normally scheduled day, rode the Frozen Ever After ride that everyone loves, walked around and looked at the lands. Did some shopping AND rode the ride with the hydroponics! It was not nearly as cool as I remembered, but it was cool because it was what I remembered so that balanced out. Then we went back Saturday morning and rode Test Track when it reopened to the world. It was fun.
We rode a few other things, one was a trip to Mars for Christopher and a trip around the world for me and Brent. The effects are so strong on the Mars version that they were having trouble with vomit so they had a toned down version. We took the toned down version. Brent would have been fine getting the simulated Gs that Christopher did (he said he could feel it pressing his cheeks back and his face was a little numb for awhile after riding) but I would have been in the vomit group so...
We also had a really lovely breakfast in France on Saturday morning. Breakfast was a tough meal at Disney World. Just not their best. But this was really good. So that was nice.
Epcot was fine, but again, it could have been a part day park for us. It just had to be spread out because of what rides were operating when, and our mistaken thought that the Arts Festival wasn't to be missed. Oh and that Frozen ride? It was fine. There was a part where you went backwards and that's always fun but it was just kind of It's A Small World Norway...with some really disturbing skin masks for the animatronics...
THE big get ride.
The Festival of the Arts wasn't a complete bust, I mean I got this...
And these...
The photographer was very confused by Christopher...we thought it was hilarious.
I cannot even begin to tell you how mad I was when I saw this shot. The ball is perfectly framed in the gate. I ASSUMED the official photographer would line us up to get the Gate, the Ball, and us...*sigh*
TA DA!
The part I remember...
So this one is funny...we saw an "official photographer" everytime we were there taking shots with the Iconic Ball in the background. The lines were long, we were headed someplace else, we were coming back so we would hit it then...until the last bit of time in the park on Saturday and they were NOWHERE to be found. Oh well...we handled it.
So our take on these two parks was they are fine. Part day parks for us. Would need to plan that next time. Factor in a commute time between them and hit them both in one day maybe. But, again, hard to do with the way their FastPass situation is set up. Epcot when it's all done with construction might be worth another crack. And maybe that time we'll decide to stand in that margarita line...
No comments:
Post a Comment