ANIMAL KINGDOM, WORLD OF PANDORA (ORLANDO, FLORIDA)

MY WEEK IN PHOTOS: JANUARY 7–13, 2019! (PART 3)

A day at Walt Disneyworld’s Animal Kingdom. We obsess over Expedition Everest, stalk some tiger brothers, and get way too into the World of Pandora.

Enjoy!

Part 1: HARRY POTTER WORLD
Part 2: HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS AND MAGIC KINGDOM

This is part 3, Saturday of the week of January 7–13, 2019.

We woke up really early to take advantage of an extra hour at the park for hotel guests

Waiting for the first shuttle of the morning to Animal Kingdom

We enter an hour early and head directly towards Avatarland

We heard that the line for Flight of Passage is always over two hours at least, so we got in line and were surprised (but not) that the line was already 60 minutes. (Remember, we are there an hour before park official opening!)

The line may be long, but the details are amazing. I didn’t even like the Avatar movie, but something about the world coming to life with such impressive scale and detail made me me like it more…

Sorry for all the line photos, but truly everything was magical

The last of the outdoor pics before entering a cave.

Into the cave

Into the depths toward the lab

Riding a Banshee! It’s a VR ride where you connect to an avatar and it feels like you are riding a banshee through a Na’vi right of passage.

Rushed through the gift shop to head to the second ride in Avatarland before the park officially opens

Made it into the line for the Na’vi River Journey ride.

This ride takes you in a little boat through Pandora at night, so you see all the creatures and plants glowing. It’s very atmopsheric, not really a storybook ride, but more like you are truly a visitor to Pandora cruising through the world. And it has an insanely cool animatronic shaman-like figure at the end of the ride, you can see at 2:44 of this ridethrough video. Couldn’t stop staring, felt so real. Made the Na’vi design work so much better than in the movie version.

Back to check out the gift shop, truly tempted by these ears even though I did not give a shit about Avatar before coming here ahah.

Entering Africa, passing this cute ass bear sign

Heading to the safari

This “ride” is an actual safari what the heck

Sleeping hippos!!!!

So many gators chilling together

Giraffes

Elephant and sitting four-legged creatures

Pride of lions!

Depressed gorilla

Naked mole rat

Baby

Walking trails with areas to see animals up close.

A HIPPO UNDERWATER. Truly amazing, I stood there just staring at him for a long time.

A little too early to lunch, but noticing there’s a ribs shop over here. *Noted*

ALADAR?!?!? Remember him? I watched that movie a lot as a kid. Zach told me this ride was supposed to be the Disneyworld answer to Indiana Jones, using similar technology

The ride was much campier than Indiana Jones, you are basically sent back to time travel by a scientist and you need to find the Aladar dinosaur to bring him back. I wish we bought the photo, because there’s a moment when the huge scary t-rex-like dino scares you and the camera goes off…I had some true fear on my face hahah.

Kids dinosaur land. This ride looks like Goofy’s Sky School at California Adventure (formerly Mulholland Madness)

Went back to Avatarland land at a more appropriate hour to try some of the drinks! I got the margarita with popping boba, which was truly so fun and delicious. Zach got a green beer.

DELIGHTED by these Dug and Ralph statues

Snuck into the Up! characters bird show

Bald eagle wowo

Hung for ribs, went back to the Harambe Market for lunch.

Lion King live show

Timon and Pumba were there, delightful

Heading to the Asia land

Creeping on this bird

Everest in the distance

Maharajah Jungle Trek, walking trails to see more animals! Touring the “old Royal forest.”

This is my shit

Somebody accidentally dropped a map into the tiger enclosure. There are two brothers here on their own, and they were playing like little kitties trying to each take the map for themselves.

Stood there for a long ass time because we caught wind that a trainer would be giving them some blood popsicles (as an attempt to distract them so somebody could remove the map from the enclosure). It didn’t happen while we were there, but it was still so cool to watch them play.

Birb zone

MONKEYS being CUTE ass performers for everybody watching them, doing tricks and then waiting for applause hah

Our first go on Expedition Everest…wowowoow, best ride I’ve been on in any Disney park. Truly loved it. The line and story and the coaster itself, so fun!

The lore behind the ride is here. But the basic story is that this area is the remove village of Serka Zong in a fictional kingdom of “Anandapur”, located at the foot of the Himalayan mountains. The buildings you go through in the line were once used by the Royal Anandapur Tea Company and now is used for trekking expeditions, arranged by “Himalayan Escapes” tour. But part of the journey is through Forbidden Mountain, known to be haunted by the yeti, fierce protector of the region’s mountains….

We’ll come back later…gotta ride that again.

Back to ride the Dinosaur ride once again…

Tree of life

You are probably sick of Avatarland, but I wanted to see what it looked like at magic hour. Sue me

Lovely

Dawa Bar for some cocktails

Obsessed

Getting ready to watch the evening show

Cutting through Dinoland to refill our popcorn bucket and find the entrance to the stadium seating for the show.

Watched the lovely sunset

Floating colorful lanterns and water plus music

Decided to leave the show a bit early to hop back in line for Expedition Everest. Just had to take a few photos to truly appreciate the Yeti Museum, got to love a design borrowing from museum tropes forcing guests to question authenticity, the creation of story and truth, and confronting what people accept as real lol too deep either way definitely heard children being confused if these were “real” items.

Love the detail of the mural from the tea company as the background for the Yeti Museum display about the lost expedition…

Scat and prints, all checks out (we rode it twice in a row…couldn’t help it)

Tree of life with projections of animals

One more peek at Avatarland to see what it is like at night…and then we head back to the hotel.

Went for Italian food so Zach could carbo-load. Tomorrow is the Disneyworld Marathon! The whole reason we came out here…so we should go to bed soon so Zach can wake up and be ready to go by 3:30 (ahh painful).

Mess

I had the difficult responsibility of taping up the back of Zach’s leg because he’s been having some achilles’ tendon pain. His physical therapist took a video for me to follow along to…very cute. But looks pretty good!

Tomorrow is the marathon…plus we spend the rest of the day at Epcot. Go Zach, go! Keep reading in the final post about Orlando, Florida here.

Thanks for reading! Much love friends!