Avatar Flight of Passage reviews, comments and questions

tissandtully

Well-Known Member
Loved FoP so much. It really reminded me of wearing a VR headset, but without the obvious 360 movement. I was able to ride it first in the center level and then next a level up and the experience wasn't changed like you would get on Soarin. The 4D effects really transported you, although I can see maybe people complaining about them down the line and maybe being toned down (I hope not!).
 

RSoxNo1

Well-Known Member
By all accounts, the ride is a home run. However, there is a significant risk of it being an operational nightmare, potentially worse than Frozen Ever After.

I have yet to hear anyone go on record with load/unload times (perhaps @lentesta has that info), but anything over 8 minutes is going to be problematic.

Cycle time capacity
6 minutes: 1920 per hour
7 minutes: 1646 per hour
8 minutes: 1440 per hour
9 minutes: 1280 per hour
10 minutes: 1152 per hour

That's assuming all four theaters are running, and it sounds like that might not be the case.
 

tribbleorlfl

Well-Known Member
By all accounts, the ride is a home run. However, there is a significant risk of it being an operational nightmare, potentially worse than Frozen Ever After.

I have yet to hear anyone go on record with load/unload times (perhaps @lentesta has that info), but anything over 8 minutes is going to be problematic.

Cycle time capacity
6 minutes: 1920 per hour
7 minutes: 1646 per hour
8 minutes: 1440 per hour
9 minutes: 1280 per hour
10 minutes: 1152 per hour

That's assuming all four theaters are running, and it sounds like that might not be the case.
When I went on it Saturday morning, from lining up outside the first grouping room to getting off, it took about half an hour. Part of what took so long for my group anyway, was there were a few people who were having difficulties getting into their seat properly. After multiple attempts at getting them "locked in," they were ultimately pulled and the ride started in earnest.

Presumably the test seats out front should help with this a little, but I expect this will continue. I really think they need to address this issue by reengineering the restraints or modifying a few of the pods to allow more accommodations like Universal did with FJ.
 

RSoxNo1

Well-Known Member
When I went on it Saturday morning, from lining up outside the first grouping room to getting off, it took about half an hour. Part of what took so long for my group anyway, was there were a few people who were having difficulties getting into their seat properly. After multiple attempts at getting them "locked in," they were ultimately pulled and the ride started in earnest.

Presumably the test seats out front should help with this a little, but I expect this will continue. I really think they need to address this issue by reengineering the restraints or modifying a few of the pods to allow more accommodations like Universal did with FJ.
Ride time is 4 1/2 minutes. If they can load/unload everyone in 2 1/2 minutes it will be slightly worse than Soarin' is now.
 
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WDWGuide

Active Member
I enjoyed FoP when I rode it yesterday, but wasn't quite as blown away as a lot of other people. The technology behind the ride is great and the queue (especially standby) is fantastic. The ride "vehicle" is really neat, both in terms of how riders are seated and in terms of the range of motion during the simulation (and the banshee breathing effect is a great little touch). But I didn't care too much about the creature CGI, which seemed a bit too cartoonish to me. I haven't seen Avatar since it came out in the theaters, but I remember being very impressed with the visuals. I don't know if the last 8 years of advances in computer graphics have spoiled me, but FoP's creature CGI did not live up to my vague memories of the movie. The backgrounds were pretty amazing though.
 
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lentesta

Premium Member
By all accounts, the ride is a home run. However, there is a significant risk of it being an operational nightmare, potentially worse than Frozen Ever After.

I have yet to hear anyone go on record with load/unload times (perhaps @lentesta has that info), but anything over 8 minutes is going to be problematic.

Cycle time capacity
6 minutes: 1920 per hour
7 minutes: 1646 per hour
8 minutes: 1440 per hour
9 minutes: 1280 per hour
10 minutes: 1152 per hour

That's assuming all four theaters are running, and it sounds like that might not be the case.

I'm hearing between 8 and 9. I agree there will be issues.
 

Jones14

Well-Known Member
Part of the problem is that people are lingering after the ride ends, taking their time to get up, chat, grab their things, and head out. Our CM was waiting for everyone to clear for a bit, and then changed her mind and guided us through the crowd of previous riders because they were taking so long to leave.

The addition of an another CM to politely encourage guests to keep moving (in the same manner as they do on Everest and other rides with a separate load/unload area) would probably decrease turnaround time by about 30 seconds per cycle. If you don't see a horde of riders coming for your seat (like Dinosaur, Big Thunder, etc.), you tend to move a bit slower on the way out.

It also comes down to guest unfamiliarity with the ride system. If it's not sit down and go, guests are going to struggle with it until the ride is open for a few months. Over at Fallon people are still having trouble, and that's literally a seat belt. As more guests come through who understand how to sit in the vehicle properly, load times will start to decrease.
 

Scuttle

Well-Known Member
Ride time is 4 1/2 minutes. If they can load/unload everyone in 2 1/2 minutes it will be slightly worse than Soarin' is now.
I think it might Take longer than Soarin. The back and feet rests have to pushed on and it seemed to take a good while. Not sure it took longer than the Soarin load but damn close.

Oh and the cast member had to tell us all to lean forward the whole way before he could set the restraints.
 

deeevo

Well-Known Member
Anyone report any motion sickness yet? Comparable to HPFJ or Star Tours? Sorry... the gravitron ruined me for life. I feel sick if I just look
at spinning rides.
 

disneygeek90

Well-Known Member
Anyone report any motion sickness yet? Comparable to HPFJ or Star Tours? Sorry... the gravitron ruined me for life. I feel sick if I just look
at spinning rides.
I would say it's less nausea inducing than both. It's not moving you as much as FJ and it's much smoother than ST. It's really not jerky at all as your gliding through the sky. Though I have seen others say that they've seen people getting sick on it.
 

Scuttle

Well-Known Member
Anyone report any motion sickness yet? Comparable to HPFJ or Star Tours? Sorry... the gravitron ruined me for life. I feel sick if I just look
at spinning rides.
There is no better way of explaining it than Soarin with more movement. I'd be surprised if this causes a lot of motion sickness. Even the girl next to us, who basically had a panic attack before going on, said she was fine afterwards. And she "hates" simulators. For what's it worth...
 

wdwmagic

Administrator
Moderator
Premium Member
Original Poster
Anyone report any motion sickness yet? Comparable to HPFJ or Star Tours? Sorry... the gravitron ruined me for life. I feel sick if I just look
at spinning rides.
It is no Body Wars or Mission Space for protein spills, but there has already been cases. But then that happens in every ride at WDW. The motion is very well synced to the film, and for most people it won't be a problem.
 

Coaster Lover

Well-Known Member
In the Parks
No
Not to pat myself on the back too much, but I'm rather surprised how accurate my prediction was on this one...

Long time lurker, first time poster. My apologies if this has already been discussed, but I was thinking about the E-ticket attraction for Pandora. A lot of posts seem to assume that the attraction will make it seem like you're flying a banshee and the queue will simulate climbing the floating mountains to get to the banshees. Well, what if you weren't flying a banshee... or at least not directly. A lot of people seemed concerned with things looking too industrial while boarding the attraction that you wouldn't feel immersed. What if they were going for an industrial look? In looking at the schematic drawings that we've seen, the earlier portions of the queue look very organic with almost no 90 degree angles, but the part of the queue that appears to be right before you board is all 90 degree turns and parallel pathways. What if the last portion of the queue, you are entering one of the human bases, specifically, an avatar control center? In the diagram of the queue, there even appears to be a big open rectangle where I could easily see them having an Avatar/human cross in suspended animation in the tank like they showed at the beginning of the first Avatar movie. With this train of thought, the whole idea can be that the humans have found a way to link dozens of humans to Avatars all at one time, or possibly a way that dozens of humans can see through the eyes of a single Avatar at a time while one central human controls the Avatar. This could make it perfectly fine for it to be very industrial looking as you load, then, once everyone loads, the lights go pitch black, maybe you hear some sounds, then the next thing you see is the view from eyes just opening. Then, when the ride ends, exactly the same in reverse and it's still fine that it looks industrial as you leave the attraction. Thoughts?
 

Scuttle

Well-Known Member
It is no Body Wars or Mission Space for protein spills, but there has already been cases. But then that happens in every ride at WDW. The motion is very well synced to the film, and for most people it won't be a problem.
Agreed, I honestly think the only parts that will get people susceptible to motion sickness sick are the initial drop simulation and maybe another one near the end.
 

No Name

Well-Known Member
Looks great from the video. And I'm sure it's times better in person.

So when do we start the Flight of Passage 5th theater thread?

I do think that should happen.

It just befuddles me when they build attractions, especially "headliner" attractions, that have low capacity. Why? They have an empty plot of land... the freedom to do and choose anything... and they choose a system that can only handle (with the current ride time) about 1,500 guests an hour? Or even less? I love Joe Rohde and whatever imagineers have been doing a great job quality-wise with Animal Kingdom lately, but man, this just confuses me.

Flight of Passage will prove to be a popular ride, just as TSMM and Soarin' have. Troubling that they did not learn from their past mistakes.
 
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lentesta

Premium Member
8 and 9 during week 2 of partial operations. Is there any actual room for improvement there or are we talking about a situation where they need to start work on theaters 5 and 6?

That's going to be the big question. I'm pretty sure that "around 8" is their target number. They didn't get anywhere close to that during the time I was there. I know of at least 3 significant breakdowns during Saturday's previews, and I heard of more on Sunday.

More than one person I spoke to called the whole ride system "over-engineered."
 

Jones14

Well-Known Member
That's going to be the big question. I'm pretty sure that "around 8" is their target number. They didn't get anywhere close to that during the time I was there. I know of at least 3 significant breakdowns during Saturday's previews, and I heard of more on Sunday.

More than one person I spoke to called the whole ride system "over-engineered."
I don't know that I can level criticism at something being overengineered, though. If Disney or Uni reuses a ride system, they're being lazy, but if they try something new and it has any level of technical difficulty, then they've overengineered it and it's doomed to fail.
 

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