[a reblog from last year!]
So we hurried along our merrily little way towards Dinoland, stopping to admire Christmas scenery along the way:
As well as regular every-day scenery.
[This looks like it belongs on Tatooine]
We were a little bit early, so we did some shopping.
I bought the Disney Cat pin collection, as well as one for my cat sitter, who is as crazy of a cat lady as I am, and a new lanyard, that was Christmas themed since I figured it was probably the only time I could get one like it. It was green and it had bells and it was awesome. Now if only I knew where my Alice in Wonderland lanyard from Disneyland went, so I could move over my pins to the new one.
I also needed to finish my cup full of Boba left over from my night blossom and Justin’s Mo’Ara Margarita. Yes, you read that right, I had an entire cup full of Boba.
Then it was back to Dinosaur:
The ride was still good a second time.
As we got off the ride, I got a text on my phone stating our room was ready. We were in the 50s section of Pop Culture, Second Building, Second Floor, Room 37 [or 2237 for short]. I was a little disappointed we didn’t get one of the refurbished rooms, but really, we hardly spent any time in our room during the trip, it was just a bed to crash on, and it was fine.
We were leaving Dinoland, when we got stopped by another research cast member, and I was answering her questions, and she asked to scan my magic band… when… well my magic band was gone!
We backtracked our steps around Dinosaur, but didn’t see anything, I was pretty sure it fell out on the ride, and it probably got crushed, so we headed to guest services to see what could be done because there was no way I was missing my Flight of Passage fast pass.
Guest Services had a huge line. I think it took us forty minutes just to get to a cast member, but at least they had a pretty Christmas tree.
The cast members checked to see if my magic band had been handed in, it hadn’t. But they did say they could give me a card to use as a fast-pass, and my resort would replace the band for free, so we did that.
Walking back towards the park, we saw some birds:
We had maybe an hour or so to kill before our Flight of Passage FP, and all the rides except Kali Rapids had insane waits… And since it was barely 60 degrees and you pretty much get drenched on KR, we didn’t really want to ride that since we had no changes of clothes and weren’t returning to Pop till after dinner, so we skipped that.
Justin noticed Nemo was about to start, so we decided to kill time by watching Finding Nemo: The Musical
The show was very cute. Justin was especially impressed with the actress who played Dory since she basically had to do flips in the air and sing, at the same time. I know I couldn’t do that. I can barely walk on two feet without falling, or walk in a straight line without tripping or walking into something. I’m a klutz.
We still had a little bit of time to kill after Nemo, so we watched the monkeys:
We also saw It’s Tough to be a Bug. That show was interesting, though I don’t think I would take a small child to see it. Sure they warn you that it may be frightening to a young child to see it, but hardly anyone listened to that, and there were a lot of little children crying and screaming throughout the show. It was a good time to kill time regardless.
We STILL had more time to kill and like I said, wait times for rides were ABSOLUTELY FREAKING INSANE, so we decided to wander towards the Tree of Life and explore the area around that.
Justin and I enjoyed exploring the area around The Tree of Life, the carvings were so detailed [and in a way it totally reminded me of the Iifa Tree from Final Fantasy IX], and there was literally nobody there. We even saw Flick walking around the area for photo oppourtunities, but not a single person wanted to even pose with him. I sort of felt bad for him.
n a way, it was sort of like a scavenger hunt, there were so many different carvings of animals, and they were everywhere, some were out in the open and easy to spot, others were more hidden and subdued. The Tree of Life is just so beautiful.
Finally it was time for Flight of Passage, it was just starting to get dark, so Pandora was starting to glow, and I knew it would be dark by time we got off the ride.
Even with a Fast Pass, we still had to wait about twenty minutes or so, though that was way better than waiting three hundred something minutes or whatever the wait was by then. I heard the queue is really cool for the ride, but I really didn’t want to wait three hundred minutes just to take three thousand pictures. Hopefully, when we go back to Disney, in like two years, when Pixar Land and Star Wars Land are open, Pandora won’t be nearly as popular as it is now, and there won’t be a three-hundred minute wait for the ride, so I can see it.
There was a man and a little boy in our FP group. I don’t think the boy was his son, but they obviously knew each other well. While we were getting prepped for our avatar [I won’t say much more because I don’t want to spoil things, don’t worry], the narrator of the ride, tells everyone that they need to move around to be detected so they can be linked to their avatar, and the little boy just really believed in the magic, and really thought that he [and his male companion] needed to move around to get the ride to work, and he kept on urging his companion to move or the ride wouldn’t work, and the companion wasn’t very into it or playing along, but still, I hope when I eventually have a kid and bring them to Disney, they believe in the Disney magic as much as this boy did. It was such a heart-warming moment for my very cold heart.
Anyhow the ride was awesome, though we had to wear these weird visor things for the 3d to work, and the visors were really awkwardly shaped, and I thought it was going to fall off on the ride because it seemed way to big for my head, but it did stay on. The ride was probably one of the best ones I rode during the trip. Even J liked it, though he was far more interested in observing the ride vehicles during the ride instead of riding the ride like a normal person, but alas, that’s what I get for marrying a nerd, who’s also an engineer.
Anyhow, I highly recommend that ride!
After the ride dumped us out in a gift shop because that’s what every big ride at Disney does, Pandora was all lit up.
I didn’t get many pictures because it was so crowded, and I could barely walk around because of the hoards of people, but I tried to get some even though I’m sure everyone here has seen thousands of pictures of Pandora at night already.
I will say this though, it’s a lot cooler in person than it is in any photograph I have ever seen.
[and I apologize for the quality of my pictures, I’m still learning about night and ride photography]
We decided to leave AK after that because we had an ADR to make, and we had to get to a different resort to get to that reservation and we really had no idea, where we were going, so we wanted to give ourselves enough time to get there since it was very likely we’d get lost… spoiler alert: We did
To be continued….
[though here’s a pic of the AK tree all lit up that I took on our way out]