What’s the best way to minimize wait times on Flight of Passage? Is Na’vi River Journey worth one of your Fastpass+ reservations? How do you handle other rides at Animal Kingdom? What’s good to eat? We answer these questions in more as we discuss advanced tricks and tips for Animal Kingdom in this week’s podcast. Some written tips below and a lot of tips contained in the audio podcast above!
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Unsurprisingly, with the popularity of Pandora, advanced tips for Animal Kingdom mainly revolve around figuring out how to get on Flight of Passage without waiting for five hours. Here are the Disney Deciphered team’s best advanced tips for Animal Kingdom.
The best ways to get a Flight of Passage Fastpass
Ideally you want to get a Flight of Passage Fastpass+ reservation. If you have an on-site hotel reservation, you can book Fastpass+ reservations 60 days in advance. If you’re traveling during a low peak period, you might be able to get Flight of Passage reservations for later in the day. However, during high volume periods 60 days just isn’t good enough.
Luckily, if you have a longer on site hotel reservation, you can do better. That’s because you can book Fastpass+ reservations across your whole reservation when the first day of your trip is 60 days away. That means if you have a 10 day hotel reservation, you can make a Fastpass+ reservation 70 days out.
So we recommend you plan to go to Animal Kingdom later during your trip. That will maximize the chances that you can get a Fastpass+ reservation.
The other thing you can try is the Fastpass refresh technique that we discussed in our advanced Fastpass+ tricks episode. We’ve had success getting same day Fastpass+ reservations for Flight of Passage using this, so be sure to check it out!
How to rope drop Flight of Passage
If you don’t manage to snag a Fastpass+ reservation, all is not lost. Animal Kingdom consistently lets people into the park half an hour before official park opening. In fact, there are reports that Flight of Passage often starts running half an hour before park opening.
Because of this, if you want to minimize wait times, we recommend you get to the security lines at Animal Kingdom an hour before opening time. Animal Kingdom opens up Pandora before the rest of its lands, so you can ostensibly ride Flight of Passage (hopefully twice) and then hit the rest of the park by 9:30 before it gets crowded.
How to handle Na’vi River Journey
Although we enjoy Na’vi River Journey, it most certainly is the b-side (old school musical reference). The question is what should you do about Na’vi River Journey. If you only want to ride Na’vi River Journey, you’ll have virtually no wait at rope drop.
Of course, once people are done with Flight of Passage, the wait times at Na’vi River Journey will increase. But we think that if you get to the park an hour before open like we suggested, you should be able to have a short wait at Na’vi River Journey after you ride Flight of Passage. The real question is whether you’d rather do that or ride Flight of Passage twice. 🙂
Note that the Fastpass refresh technique works really well with Na’vi River Journey, so that’s our other suggestion.
Tips for other rides
Because of the popularity of Pandora, the wait times at other rides are much lower this year. We recommend making a beeline for your favorite ride after you are done at Pandora. If it is early enough in the day, you’ll face lower wait times. You also should have good luck getting Fastpass+ reservations for most rides.
Expedition Everest, the former crown jewel of Animal Kingdom, can be rode via the single rider line to save a lot of time.
Episode Description
We continue our theme park 201 series with Animal Kingdom, including tips on how to get on Flight of Passage, what to do about Na’vi River Journey, where to meet the best characters at Animal Kingdom, and more.
If you like what you hear, please share the podcast with others you think might enjoy it. Also, we’d appreciate if you subscribed on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, TuneIn, PlayerFM, iHeartRadio, or Google Play (please leave a positive review if you’re enjoying the show), liked our Facebook page, or followed us on Twitter!
You can also e-mail us at disneydeciphered AT gmail DOT com. Connect with Leslie @TripswithTykes on social media and Joe @asthejoeflies.
Episode Notes
2:18 – Getting Fastpass+ for Flight of Passage (related: Advanced Fastpass+ techniques). Rope dropping Flight of Passage and other Flight of Passage tips
7:43 – What to do about Na’vi Rive Journey
9:58 – Other ride tips
12:42 – Where to find characters
13:48 – Where to eat
16:20 – Disney Do’s and Don’ts
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