On our recent trip to Disney World, we wanted to check out the new Avatar Land in Disney’s Animal Kingdom. There are only two rides in this land – Na’vi River Journey which is basically a slow boat ride similar to It’s a Small World and Avatar Flight of Passage.
The more popular ride is Avatar Flight of Passage which is kind of similar to Soarin’ but a little more intense. I’m not going to spoil it for you if you haven’t had a chance to experience it yet, but I’ll say it was pretty darn good.
Being so popular, the wait times for Flight of Passage can get really long. For example, today Disney’s Animal Kingdom’s park hours are from 9:00am to 10:00pm. At 9:24am there is a 2 hour wait!
FastPass
I tried to get a FastPass for attraction right at the 60 day mark but they were all taken already 🙁 I kept checking sporadically in the 60 days leading up to our trip with no luck.
Arrive Early
With no FastPass, our plan to ride Flight of Passage was to arrive early so we could be near the front of the line when the park opened.
The particular day we visited, Animal Kingdom had a posted 8:00am opening time for the general public (with NO extra magic hours for Disney resort guests).
Surprisingly everyone was up early and we got on a bus from the Polynesian at exactly 7:01am.
After stopping at the Grand Floridan, our bus made it to Animal Kingdom at 7:23am. I was surprised to see that they were letting people not through just the security checkpoint but also through the main ticket gates.
I thought they might then hold people back from the attractions until opening time like they do at Magic Kingdom where they will allow you on Main Street but not any further.
But there was no hold back at Animal Kingdom, you were free to walk into the park. We followed the crowd that was heading to Avatar land and got in line for the ride at 7:40am.
The line was already out past the main ride entrance but was moving really quickly – so quickly in fact it was hard to snap any photos. While walking through the line, I asked a Cast Member what time the park opened and he replied 8:00am after looking at his watch (but it was only 7:45am!).
After 19 minutes of continuously walking through the line, we were on the ride at 7:59am – 1 minute before official park opening.
The ride had a 10 minute orientation before heading into the actual ride part. After the ride, we were in the ride’s exit gift shop at 8:15am.
At the exit the posted wait time was now 105 minutes!
Need to Knows:
If you aren’t able to get a FastPass reservation, your best bet to ride Flight of Passage is to arrive EARLY! Disney is currently not only allowing guests to enter the park before the official opening but also ride the actual attraction.
How long would you be willing to wait to ride Flight of Passage?
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