Today we were up with the lark to visit Disney’s Animal Kingdom park, another component of Walt Disney World here in Orlando. It opened to the general public at 8am so we planned our journey of 20 minutes to arrive around 730. Today was overcast and down to about 19C until about 3pm when the sun came out. I went in shorts, a long sleeve t shirt and had my pashmina in my bag. Bob woke up after a good night’s sleep feeling a lot better but we made sure he had warmer clothing on although he was in shorts.
Animal Kingdom is another beautiful park. It’s a cross between a game reserve/a theme park/a live entertainment area and a beautiful tropical exotic garden themed after each of the areas within the park. Along the way there are the sounds of birds and animals, tropical drums, Asian flutes….. it’s tremendously exotic.
We started off in Pandora, an area of the park themed on the land of the Avatar movies. It’s easily the most exotic of the zones with huge rock structures dripping with vines, orchids and other of the weirder plant types. Some are not real – obviously other worldly plants but many are genuine. It’s even better at night in my opinion lit with many other worldly lanterns. There are two main attractions in this part: Avatar: Flight of Passage which is an amazing journey where you literally fly through Pandora on the back of your own banshee. We decided not to do this one today because we will go back to AK on a less crowded day. Instead we opted for the beautiful Na’vi River Journey. You get on a boat and glide through a series of caves and into a bioluminescent rainforest alive with the sights and sounds of exotic plants and creatures on all sides—even overhead. Then you join the legendary Na’vi Shaman of Songs, who demonstrates her deep connection to the life force of Pandora—and sends positive energy out into the forest through the power of her music. It’s a stunning ride both with the visuals and the strange chanting music and sounds. We think Pandora is one of the most stunning parts of any of the parks.
We then walked through the rest of the park visiting a Dinosaur ride back to the Cretacean Age, on through Nepal and the foot of Mount Everest.. The theming in this area always amuses us, they have it right down.. lots of jungly ruins, monkeys, flags, dilapidated buildings, odd posters…. We did one of the jungle walks through the tiger trail. There is a baby tiger in there which we saw with mum. It’s the 4th cub she’s had in the park.
There are two shows in AK which we think are so outstanding. We see them every time. The first is Finding Nemo which is a musical show based on the animated film of the same name. It’s a brilliant, hugely colourful recreation with singers/actors/puppeteers and animated backdrops creating an extraordinary visual spectacle. The puppets are extraordinary and handled so skillfully. It just has to be seen to be believed.
The other show is The Celebration of the Lion King. It’s another musical but this time using live actors, animatronics, circus acrobats, aerial ballet dancers, puppeteers, dancers….. Spectacular performances. We’ve seen both shows so many times but we never tire of them.
We went on the Kilimanjaro safari which is a ride through the safari park in a safari truck much as you find in Kenya. The line for this one was horrible. Billed at one hour, it actually took 100 minutes. Not good. The drive was good. We saw elephants, giraffe, rhino – black and white, hippos, crocs, lots of different bok and kudu, wildebeasts, ostrich, cheetahs…. the lions were hiding. It’s a big, big area and they’ve created the different habitats within that area.
We went inside the enormous Tree of Life and saw a 3D Sensoramic show called It’s A Bug’s Life which was very amusing. We walked through gigantic aviaries filled with exotic birds. We saw street performers and drummers, African harpists….
We did lots of other things too. It was a good day. Yesterday we walked over six miles within the park. Today was the same. We certainly knew we’d done it by the end.