Animal Kingdom - Disney Castle Dreaming Travel

Favorite Nighttime Entertainment?

Do you have a favorite nighttime show that you MUST SEE every trip? For Frank and I, it was always Wishes. While we enjoy Happily Ever After a lot, I’m not having quite the same emotional response to it that I used to have with Wishes…but I suspect that may come in time…Happily Ever After is SO spectacular and there is SO much going on…I think my brain stays super active, and my heart just doesn’t have time to catch up!

I also have a soft spot for Illuminations: Reflections of Earth, and am sad that I most likely won’t be seeing it before that show is over forever to make way for whatever the next extravaganza will be…

I have seen Rivers of Light at Animal Kingdom several times now, and I really like it. It’s different from the other shows, but really pretty.

And of course, Fantasmic. I’ve always loved that one…but it occurs to me I haven’t made time for it in a few years….Hmmmm….Maybe next trip….

Check out the video below for Disney’s brief summary of the nighttime shows at Walt Disney World currently:

Which show is a MUST NOT MISS? Or would you rather ride attractions during the shows, or get to bed early to be raring to go for the next day? I’d love to hear what your approach is to nighttime entertainment!

Photo provided by Disney Parks Photography.

Happy Dreaming!

Brooke

We’re BACK!

This was a WONDERFUL trip! We had a terrific time, and I learned a few things I hope to incorporate into future trips…

I’ll be doing a detailed day-by-day trip report over the next couple of weeks, but for now, here are some highlights:

Parks: All four parks looked great this trip. We visited Animal Kingdom, Epcot and Magic Kingdom each twice. Hollywood Studios was a blink and you’ll miss it visit this trip—we went in for dinner at the Hollywood Brown Derby (AMAZING!) and caught the nighttime shows after dinner–but that was it.

Weather: We had absolutely glorious weather most days—but we did have a couple days with a LOT of rain. Saturday, our pre-planned Typhoon Lagoon/Disney Springs/Rest Day ended up with torrential downpours that lasted several hours. Fortunately, we still got a few hours in at Typhoon Lagoon before the rain rolled in, and hey, if you’re going to be caught in the rain, somehow it’s better if you’re already in a bathing suit and flip flops with wet hair, right? Our evening at Disney Springs had some sporadic rain showers, but they were fairly light and didn’t bother us hardly at all. Sunday was a little more challenging as it was our last full park day…it rained off and on most of the day. Fortunately, we were prepared with our ponchos, so it didn’t really affect us much…and had the bonus benefit of reducing the crowds a little bit.

The rest of the time, we had lovely blue skies with lots of sunshine. Mid-afternoons to early evenings got pretty HOT and humid. Us northerners don’t do as well in the heat as southerners more used to the heat, and I have to admit, I was a bit of a wilted flower most days around 3pm. But a cold drink, a little A/C, and a little sitting and people watching usually recharged my batteries just fine.

Disney’s Magic Kingdom (Photo: Brooke Hudson)

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Magic at Cinderella Castle! (Photo: Brooke Hudson)

Crowds: Originally, when I booked the trip, crowds were projected in the 3-5 range (out of 10, with 10 being so crowded it’s hard to walk, and parks at or near full capacity) for most days. The closer we got to the trip, the higher the projections went, with crowds projected to be at 6-8’s most of our days. In actuality, I think most days ended up being around 6’s, especially in the afternoons…maybe creeping into seven territory on Monday. Our mornings were especially lovely, and crowds stayed lighter until around 11am most days. Lots of strollers, lots of ECVs, but not unbearable by any stretch. We did not see many big tour groups, either.

Resort: We stayed at Old Key West this trip and really loved it. It’s such a pretty resort, and has the largest studios of all the DVC resorts, with 2 queen sized beds—so it was perfect for us. We had a second floor villa, so thank goodness for the wonderful bell services that helped us with all our stuff! They are in the process of rehabbing this resort, but we saw no signs of construction during our visit. The landscaping here is really lush and pretty; everything looked terrific! We took the ferry to Disney Springs one night, and wow, that was so nice! The ferries come every 20 minutes between 10 am and 11 pm, and it’s a really scenic ride to Disney Springs. Our balcony had a nice golf-course view, and parking for our rental was very close by. The gift shop at Old Key West is a really good one; OKW has some of the best DVC resort specific shirts and related souvenirs of any of the DVCs we’ve stayed at. Cast members were all really nice and very helpful. We had two meals at Olivia’s, the OKW main table service restaurant and they were ok, but not great. The first was a lunch, and we had club sandwiches which were good. The highlight of the meal was sitting out on the patio, though, honestly. The second meal was breakfast on Saturday morning, and it really wasn’t great. The service was very slow, and both of us had issues with our eggs. The biscuits were very good, though. Again, the highlight was our table out on the patio.

Old Key West DVC Resort (Photo: Brooke Hudson)

Old Key West Resort (Photo: Brooke Hudson)

Disney Transportation: We rented a car this trip, so we did not use a lot of Disney transportation; however, what we did use was great, and we never had to wait very long. We used the resort Ferry to Disney Springs, as I mentioned above, and that was a big highlight of the trip for us. We used the Ferry at the Ticket and Transport center to get to and from Magic Kingdom a few times; I love that Ferry! Also did a couple monorail rides—again, not much waiting, and they got us where we needed to go. We rode LOTS of parking lot trams, haha. The only real waiting we had to do there was on Friday when we left the park at the end of the night, along with about 20,000 of our closest friends 😉. We waited about 20 minutes and through 4 tram loads before we got on one, but it wasn’t too bad, considering. We did NOT use Magical Express or any bus transportation this trip.

Merchandise: Mom and I both love to shop, and we shopped our hearts out on this trip. Financial limitations meant we didn’t necessarily BUY a whole lot, but we SHOPPED and SHOPPED, haha. Lots of fun merchandise, as always, for the Flower and Garden Festival, but we were a little disappointed. It’s been a few years since we have been to the Festival, but in the past there was a pretty big variety of Festival merchandise, including, usually, several different pins. This year, there was only one pin available, and we found it sold out in many locations—with three weeks still left to go in the Festival! Perhaps there were more options available earlier on? I’m not sure, but there were no special Passholder pins available for the Festival and only the one pin option. Of course we DID buy the pin they had…but I would have liked to see a couple of different options. One of the things I like about Festival time is that there is usually more variety in the shirts, hats, mugs, etc. at the Festival park than you’ll see everywhere else. And that did hold true this year as well, although there wasn’t as much varied merchandise as I recalled from previous Festivals. Other than Festival or Park specific merchandise, most of the shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, toys etc. were found in most shops across all four parks and Disney Springs. The advantage of this, of course, is that you don’t have to buy something when you first see it, as you’ll likely see it many more times during your trip. This is good for me, since I usually buy all my presents and souvenirs at the end of my trip when I think I’ve seen everything and can make a good decision. But the big disadvantage is that the merchandise doesn’t feel as SPECIAL when you see the same stuff over and over and over. Yes, it’s a big pain if you fall in love with the one shirt that you can only find at that little shop in the corner of Adventureland…but that makes it more FUN and more memorable, even if it means having to go back to that park on the last day to go to that little shop in the corner. I have lots of memories of long ago trips when the last day was all about running around to find that special something we’d seen at the beginning of the trip and looked for in every store we went to after that….

Mom and I DID manage to find a very special and unique souvenir, but I can’t tell you about that one yet, as we got one as a present for someone and I don’t want anyone to see it until that person gets to see it. 😊

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One of the things I love about Animal Kingdom is that it has a lot of merchandise that is truly unique to Animal Kingdom—not just shirts and ears and mugs, but really different merchandise that is in line with the conservation and nature missions that Animal Kingdom promotes. Now, there is one merchandise line that really stood out…in a fairly dreadful way, I must admit. I’m just as excited about the upcoming Meghan Markle/Prince Harry nuptials as any self-respecting Disney Princess loving girl could be….but this? This goes just a little too far, even for me:

Royal Wedding TEA TOWELS???? — Tea Towels???

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Nighttime Entertainment: To be honest with you, neither of us are big night owls, especially after a long, hot day of theme-parking. Our nighttime extravaganzas usually entailed whatever nighttime show was at whatever park we were in, followed by returning to the resort, showering off the day and CRASHING 😉. We really enjoyed the nighttime entertainment in each park though. Our very first night, we got to watch Rivers of Light at Animal Kingdom. We had great seats, and Mom loved it as much as I’d hoped she would.

Friday night we did a quick Hollywood Studios visit for dinner and entertainment–once dinner was over, we were just in time for the Disney Movie Magic projection show on the Mann’s Chinese Theater and surrounding buildings, followed by a special Star Wars themed Galactic Fireworks and projection show in honor of May 4 (“May the fourth be with you”). The Star Wars Spectacular was truly SPECTACULAR! The show incorporated video clips and stills from all Star Wars movies released to date and a few from the upcoming SOLO movie (SOLO merchandise was VERY prevalent in the parks and at Disney Springs this visit). It used lights, lasers, pyrotechnics, music, audio clips and fireworks to really dazzle the audience. There were lasers coming out of the screens (buildings) that looked like blasters were firing and lasers coming from the back that looked like shots fired back…. It was pretty immersive and VERY impressive. It was just a taste of what Disney is cooking up for Star Wars fans with Galaxy’s Edge, but I personally found it VERY exciting and can’t wait to see what the future will bring.

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Sunday night, the last night of our trip, we actually left Magic Kingdom about an hour before the fireworks and hopped a Monorail over to the Contemporary and went up to the Top of the World Lounge at Bay Lake Tower. Available exclusively to DVC Members staying at a DVC Resort, the Top of the World Lounge features a large bar and several indoor seating areas, surrounded by a very large patio area with a spectacular view of Magic Kingdom. We had drinks and appetizers here, and I popped out to take pictures of the show from the unique “Top of the World” perspective, while Mom watched the show from her seat at the bar inside. They pipe in the music, which is great, because the music adds SO much to the show. Of course, you can’t really see all the castle projections that are an integral part of the Happily Ever After show, but the music and the fireworks are pretty fantastic, even without the projections.

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Another highlight: On Saturday evening while we were at Disney Springs, we caught two different groups performing on the main stage there. The first was a group of high school kids from Rome, New York. They danced and sang, and were really terrific. The second was a dance troupe, and each song was danced by a different group of kids–it seemed to be primarily by age groups. They were very fun to watch, especially the littler kids. 😊

Needless to say, I could go on for DAYS (and probably will!! 😉 ) about our trip, but I’m anxious to get this quick summary posted, so I’ll stop here.

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Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival. (Photo: Brooke Hudson)

Bottom line: The trip was WONDERFUL! The parks looked terrific, we had some really wonderful cast member interactions and some AMAZING meals. I’m so glad we went, and I can’t wait to go back!!

Happy Dreaming!

Brooke

Happy Anniversary Animal Kingdom!

Animal Kingdom is celebrating it’s 20th Anniversary this month. Here’s a link to a post I wrote about our Animal Kingdom Bridal Portrait shoot. I hope you enjoy!

Happy Dreaming!

Brooke

New Adventures in Animal Kingdom

I saved Animal Kingdom for Monday, the last full day of our vacation. Although I enjoy Animal Kingdom, it’s been my least favorite park of the four. Don’t get me wrong—it’s still AMAZING, and there’s a LOT to do and see…I just have a stronger affinity for the other three parks. BUT, I’m not sure I can say that anymore! With the addition of Pandora (a new “land” themed around James Cameron’s epic AVATAR movie), and the expansion of Animal Kingdom hours to include the evenings, and the staggering beauty of this park at night—Animal Kingdom moved into the “MUST NOT MISS” category from the “We’ll visit every other trip” category.

Animal Kingdom is an interesting theme park, and unlike any other Disney theme park. It’s part zoo, part theme park, part conservation education experience. Visually, it’s very beautiful, especially if you love the outdoors and plants and trees. There’s green pretty much everywhere.

Animal Kingdom is very large and spread out; you definitely want to wear very comfortable walking shoes for your day at Animal Kingdom. I tend to put Animal Kingdom near the end of my trips when I include it because I don’t want to get too worn out the first couple of days—BUT putting it at the end was a challenge this trip, because we were both pretty tired by the time we got to Animal Kingdom!

Next trip, I will probably plan Animal Kingdom for the middle of our trip, and I’ll try to plan a rest day or a light day for the day after AK. This trip, I had a pretty good plan, I thought, heading into our Animal Kingdom day. The park opened early that day, plus it had extra magic hours that started at 7 am, which is VERY early for most vacationers. In my experience, if you arrive at the park early, you can usually crank through a lot of attractions in that first couple of hours the park is open. We had a fast pass for the most popular new attraction at Animal Kingdom, Flight of Passage, located in Pandora, but it wasn’t until early afternoon. We’d been anticipating the opening of Pandora for years, and I had heard really good things about this attraction, so I planned for us to go to Pandora as soon as we entered the park, and get into line for Flight of Passage.

My theory was that we’d have a short line, ride the attraction, check out Pandora, perhaps ride the other Pandora attraction, Na’vi River Journey, which is a boat ride, and which we were unable to get a Fast Pass for. (Note: When booking FastPass Plus reservations, Disney often groups the most popular rides in a separate “tier” and allows you to only book a FP+ for ONE of those attractions. In the case of AK, Flight of Passage and Na’vi River Journey are in their own tier, and you can only choose one of the two when making your FP+ reservations. You can choose two more FP+ reservations from ALL the other AK attractions when you are booking your initial three, but only one of the three will be able to come from the “Pandora” tier. For more information on FastPass Plus reservations, read here and here) I had gotten up at 5 am on the first day I could book our FastPass reservations for our vacation, but unfortunately, the earliest reservation I could get for Flight of Passage was 1:45 pm. I wasn’t too worried though. Based on my experience, I usually use FastPass+ reservations to book attractions I know we’ll want to ride a second time, and plan to get to the park early and take advantage of lighter crowds in the early hours to ride everything we want to ride and then hit our FastPass attractions later in the day.

In this case, however, my plan did not work as well as I’d hoped. Perhaps it was the combination of Pandora being new and SO popular and the first day of Thanksgiving week, but there were a GAZILLION people there for extra magic hours and EVERYONE headed straight for Flight of Passage. Now, I have to say this: I do not regret our day AT ALL. It didn’t work out like I planned, but we had a great time and LOVED everything we did. Having said that, if I had it to do again, I would make some different decisions—and I will definitely take what I learned into account when planning my next Animal Kingdom visit.

Pandora is BEAUTIFUL. If you’ve seen Avatar, I think you will have a greater appreciation for what they’ve done here, but even if you haven’t, it really is gorgeous, and looks like something not-of-this-world. A lot of people weren’t happy when Disney chose to partner with James Cameron and theme a “land” and attractions around Avatar, even though it was one of the highest grossing movies in history—it wasn’t a Disney property, and while I personally really enjoyed the movie, it had its flaws. Many also questioned how it “fit” with Animal Kingdom. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll know that it has a very strong emphasis on protecting the natural environment and the symbiotic relationship between the natural world and all the species that inhabit it. (Granted the “natural world” in the movie is on a planet VERY far away…but the basic theme is inherently, take care of the planet…or you’ll destroy everything that is good and beautiful.) Since Animal Kingdom has such a strong emphasis on appreciating nature as well as conservation, the decision to put “Avatar” in Animal Kingdom always made sense to me personally, but I know there are many differing opinions on the topic. That said, there are at least two more Avatar movies coming, and if they do well—which I suspect, they will, I think Disney’s decision here will be validated and embraced. Even without the new films, though, it’s hard to deny the popularity of these attractions. I’ve been watching, and the stand-by lines for both the Pandora attractions pretty routinely stay ABOVE 2 hours. Even if you’re not an Avatar fan, I think this area of the park is really something to see. AND, it looks and feels very different at night than it does during the day, so it’s worth a second look if you visit during the day.

To cut to the chase, we were in line at Flight of Passage by 7:10 a.m. We waiting in line for more than two and a half hours. I’m not kidding when I tell you I have NEVER waited that long for an attraction in my life, and I specifically plan our trips around the concept of short lines and avoiding waiting longer than 30 minutes for anything. I’m not a patient person, and I really don’t like to stand in line. That said, it had been three years since our last trip. This is a new, very popular attraction. Also, the first hour, we had NO IDEA how long we’d be waiting, since we were in a line that was WAY outside the attraction. It was about 1 hour before we even reached the attraction entrance. By that time, we’d already invested so much time, we decided to stick it out. We took a lot of pictures, we chatted with the people around us. We had a lot of fun playing with the kids from the family behind us. And once we were inside the “mountain”, Disney’s theming helped keep things interesting, and while it didn’t make the wait seem short, it certainly wasn’t terrible. I’m glad we waited, because if we hadn’t, we would have only ridden once…with our FastPass Plus reservations that afternoon…and I definitely would have regretted that. This is an attraction that AS SOON AS IT WAS OVER, I wanted to ride again. It is, quite honestly, the best attraction I have ever ridden.

The queue for Flight of Passage at Animal Kingdom has some cool scenes (Photo: Brooke Hudson)

To provide some perspective, my favorite attraction is the Haunted Mansion. I am also a HUGE Pirates of the Caribbean fan….I love a good classic dark ride, and I am NOT a fan of motion simulators. I always ride Star Tours at least once with my husband. It’s a very cool attraction, and I love Star Wars, and I love seeing the new scenes every time we ride…BUT I don’t feel very good after that attraction. I tend to leave that ride a little queasy and it takes me a while to shake the feeling. I could NOT ride the old body wars attraction at Epcot—I tried once and it made me miserable. I am a girl who gets carsick if I ride in the back seat of a car. I have to take Dramamine to fly. I really struggle with motion sickness and it is no JOKE. Interestingly, Soarin’ doesn’t bother me at all—and I have heard that some people have issues with that one, but I do not have any issues with Soarin’.

I don’t know what it is about this ride, but it does NOT feel like a motion simulator. It feels more like Soarin’ to me than it does Star Tours. This attraction is trying to make you feel like you are riding your own banshee (a dragon-like flying animal from the Avatar movie), and it works on every level. The attraction “vehicle” looks a bit like a motorcycle to me, and it represents the banshee. Guests must be at least 44” tall to ride Flight of Passage, and I have heard that some guests have had issues fitting into the ride vehicle—I am plus size woman, and I did not have any issues fitting the vehicle. You get on the bike-like seat and scoot forward; then some padded surfaces come up behind you…as long as those can safely get into place, you can ride. I’ll admit to worrying about it while I was waiting in line; I didn’t want my husband to know I was concerned—and I knew if I couldn’t ride it, I was going to make sure he still did…BUT I did worry….Fortunately, in my case, there was nothing to worry about. I rode the ride quite comfortably. I will admit, I was much less stressed the second time, knowing that a) the ride would not make me feel sick and b) I had no issues “fitting” into the ride vehicle. This is really an amazing experience. Again, I compare it to Soarin’—you feel like you are riding a hang glider (well, I’ve never ridden a hang glider in real life, so I don’t know what that actually feels like, but on Soarin’ I feel like I’m flying, which I figure has got to be close, right?). On Flight of Passage, I had a similar feeling, like I was on a hang glider or something, flying, diving, climbing—it was beautiful, visually, and definitely evoked the look of Pandora in the Avatar movie. One word—EXHILARATING!!! I really, really, loved this attraction. And honestly felt it was worth EVERY MINUTE we waited for it. Of course, I was REALLY happy to have Fast Pass Plus reservations to ride it again later, without the wait 😉! Now that I’ve ridden it (twice), I really want to ride it again…but I don’t think I’ll ever wait that long for it again…but for the first ride? Totally worth it.

The only downside to spending the first 3 hours of our day in line for Flight of Passage is that it sort of jumbled our plan for the rest of the day. SO, we basically threw the original plan out the window, and focused on what was most important to us, and worked those things around our dining reservations, and the nighttime show we planned to attend. As a major planner, just “going with the flow” is sometimes difficult for me, but it worked pretty successfully on this day. It might have helped that I was pretty worn out by now, and really just wanted to SIT, haha.

So for this visit to Animal Kingdom, we spent a lot of time in Pandora (we visited again after dinner so we could see it in the dark…and it was GORGEOUS), visiting first thing in the morning, and again in the early afternoon for our FastPass Plus for Flight of Passage. We never were able to ride the other popular Pandora attraction, Na’vi River Journey. It’s a boat ride, and looks pretty great, but the lines stayed at 100+ minutes all day, and we just were NOT up for waiting in another extremely long ride. We also spent a lot of time just wandering around Pandora and LOOKING at it. They did a great job of making you feel like you are someplace ELSE. And of course, Flight of Passage empties into a giant gift shop with LOTS to look at. We also enjoyed the Na’vi Drum Ceremony.

We saw the Festival of the Lion King show (as always….amazing), we saw the Finding Nemo show (one of my favorite shows on Disney property), we had lunch with characters at Tusker House, dinner at Tiffins (new, I’ll be doing a review separately), we rode Everest and saw It’s Tough to be a Bug (one of Frank’s favorites).