Friday 11th August

It’s Friday. Mummy called another rope drop last night, this time Animal Kingdom. Rope drop is earlier due to the stupid lovely animals. We awake at 6am, Nathaniel is told, we are leaving you in the room if you don’t wake up!

We grab the party bus at 06:40 only a few other families are with us, this could be a good sign as everyone is here for one thing. The Avatar ride. We head to Animal Kingdom, no spilling cereal on the way.

We get to Animal Kingdom, it’s a lot less busier than Magic Kingdom. We are near the front, we hear rumbling that 95% of the people are heading to Avatar. The only other ride is the Jungle Safari. They open the gates and the packs of passive Disney sheep are released. Bleating and gently knocking into each other.

We head towards the Avatar land, everyone is heading the same way. The “cast member” takes the entire group and forms a mass queue behind them. We are frog-marched into the complex, this turns out to be the best idea ever. We later hear from others that 2hrs is normal to queue for this ride.

The theming and the area’s surrounding is amazing. They have absolutely nailed the Avatar theming and there is always something to look at. As we rope dropped, we went through a lot of the areas at warp speed compared to how folks normally queue.

We walked the entire way to the front of the queue! Winning! Now comes the tricky part. Both boys do not want to go on the ride. It’s now or never as the thought of a 2hr queue in the Florida sunshine might finish us off. We convince Elliott that it’s just a computer game, you’ll be fine. Nate we are not even going to try and reason with him. The darkness of the queue is enough to scare him.

We are doing a “parent swap” which means Mummy and Elliott go on the ride, Daddy and Nate wait in a special room. Once Mummy and Elliott are finished, Daddy “swaps” with Mummy and doesn’t have to queue up again. Elliott went on the ride! We were so proud of him for giving it a go!

Elliott came off the ride, into the special room in floods of tears. Daddy this is the worst ride ever! After he calmed down, he liked the beginning, but after that it was a bit too much motion and flying.

Daddy got the “parent swap” and was inserted into a make-shift queue (party for 1) that consisted of Daddy and a Chinese women who was using Google Translate to talk to the workers. The queues are moving fast “how many in your party?” “Five” “B6, number 1 through 5” the allocation all done on an iPad in real time. Daddy was geeking out about the technology involved to make that happen.

Little touches like a real time scan of your body in the waiting area, to show it’s not a recorded video but live footage. The ride itself is over in 4.5mins, if you think that queuing for 2hrs for a 5min ride is nuts, you are correct. The lady told us at Christmas the queue can get close to 3hrs long. Once we left Avatar, the park had officially opened and the queue was already 60mins. We decided it was time for some animals!

The boys loved the animals, it makes you appreciate the wonder of the Kenyan safari (maybe in a few more years)

Note – Happy Birthday for yesterday Daa 🎂

There were some impressive birds, fish and bat enclosures to look through.

We found the worlds most enthusiastic and kind ranger, Elliott asked him a million questions and he didn’t let up the enthusiasm once. It’s true the saying “enthusiasm is worth 20 IQ points” this guy made Elliott and Nate really enjoy learning about the wild birds.

We used a secret bathroom to wash off the bird poo and headed back onto the trail. We noticed we were close to the Animation Experience and a show was starting soon. Round 2 begins!

One thing we have learnt is that “family shows” like the Lion King are big winners for the boys. The Bugs Life show was an outliner as the next show was “Finding Nemo” and the boys absolutely loved it!

There are certain things in Disney World that are talked about “you need to do this” and “you must try this” for instance. Dolwhip. It’s nice, but it’s just Mr Whippy with flavouring. However, the Mickeys ice-creams are one that the boys have talked about a lot. We closed our eyes at the price ($6) and let them enjoy it!

We shot back to Dinoland for some mini rides and another Disney ranger badge. It was at this point (around 4pm) that Daddy nearly threw in the towel due to the heat. We pressed on and got the 3rd to last badge for the booklet.

Cooling towels are a god send. We have perfected the art of walking past a busy drinks stand and slyly dunking the towel into the ice water and wrapping it around our necks.

We completed the sticker/badge hunt for the Disney Wilderness challenge. The prize was…underwhelming! Daddy was hoping for an all expenses paid trip back to Disney for a family of four, or VIP tour of Animal Kingdom. Nope, for our running around we were gifted another set of stickers! We got a better gift from the policeman in Jackson Hole on the 4th July day!

It’s now 5pm and everyone is getting tired and cranky. The boys have done amazing, walking all day long. We saw so many kids Elliotts age that spent the whole day in a stroller.

We came back for our standard swim and relax. It’s incredible that even at 7:30pm it’s still absolutely roasting 33c with a warm breeze.

The boys even made a friend to play with, while Mummy talked to a northern lady about the best Disney parks. We also learned that due to her room not opening, she was given lighting lane passes for all the rides! We headed back to the room to try and find some faults to complain about!

Tomorrow we are moving to a new hotel “Art of Animation” and into the Finding Nemo suite. We have a chilled morning and then heading into Disney Springs for some shopping and food.