Pandora - The World of Avatar opening day reports

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Jeffxz

Well-Known Member
There wasn't a line to enter pandora at 11:20 but they closed the line for FoP at 11:35. There was a huge group of disgruntled people outside the queue.
 
U

UpAllNight

Well-Known Member
Pandora is astonishing & pictures don't come close to getting across the scale and detail of the land. It's truely remarkable. I can't go into the detail others have as I was up at 5am to get in ahead of the crowds and I'm shot haha.

But FOP is remarkable. The detail in the queue is something else. It is Soarin on steroids, but Soarin is universally popular so that's not a bad thing. The clarity on the screen is insanely good.

River Journey was also great, but short. I like the mix of screens/practical. I really feel like the screens support the practical side and not the other way round.

The kinetic energy in the land with the water is a highlight for me, and something it would have been easy to cut to save money. New Fantasyland lacks this to an extent but they knocked it out the park here. My personal favourite is a very small waterfall at the top of the mountain range which absolutely blows my mind & is in my opinion the best use of forced perspective I've ever seen.
 
roj2323

roj2323

Well-Known Member
Finally I'm home. My phone ran out of battery so I couldn't keep posting. So the final tally was 4 hours and 20 minutes to get to Merge for the banchee ride. After merge it was another 10 minutes roughly before I was on the ride seat. The ride is absolutely incredible. It seriously makes soarin look like an antique. The ride system is interesting. The chair tips left and right. The entire room minus the back wall tilts forward and back and the entire room minus the back wall moves vertically about 6ft, 3ft up and 3ft down from the default position. The combination of the 3 axises of movement combined with the most modern 3d renderings made for a believable immersive ride.

As for the land itself it honestly is so detailed that it really makes the rest of WDW seem lacking in details. It's indescribably beautiful. I kid you not I spent the first 40 minutes just walking into the land from Discovery island to the Banshee cue entrance. There is so much to see that it would really take months to absorb every detail of the land. My hopes for StarWars land have gone way way up now that I've seen Pandora and I'm excited to see the details they put into that project more than ever.

I also stopped into the canteen. The bathrooms are very surprising in their lack of any theming. They are nice with slate grey tiled walls with a blue / green and yellow translucent accent tile band about eye level with a muted blue color for the stall walls. It's nice but surprisingly stale compared to everything else. Even concrete walls with RDA logos would have been more expected. As for the food I tried the curry vegetable steam buns and a kids meal hot dog with bread wrapped around it. (both come with mixed sweet potato and normal potato chips that are freshly made. (they're awesome btw). The steam buns surprised me but had a very well balanced flavor profile and were't overly spicy. ( I got more chips in leu of the coleslaw). The hot dog was also surprising. Instead of the cheap quality hot dogs disney has been serving lately it was a good quality all beef frank and the bread wrap was a good combination of soft and crisp. The only down side to this meal is it isn't really kid friendly. While I really quite enjoyed the hotdog I could very easily see kids having a hard time eating it as the bread is a bit of challenge to chew. The dining room is really quite nice and reminded me of Sanaa over at DAK Lodge. The soda machines are setup like restarantasorus and Be Our Guest so refils are possible! Most surprisingly there's REAL SILVERWARE!!! This was more exciting than I'd thought it would be but I wasn't the only one who pointed it out in the 20 minutes I sat nearby to eat. The plates seem to be the same/similar variety Panera Bread is now using in a different color. They are attractive yet practical which is a nice upgrade from paper plates and plastic silverware.

Overall I much preferred pandora during the day instead of at night but both times of the day are equally impressive in their own way.
 
RSoxNo1

RSoxNo1

Well-Known Member
roj2323 said:
Line cutting is a MAJOR PROBLEM for the banchee ride entire families are leaving lines and then coming back with pizzas and water and demanding to be let through. It's slowing down the line and ****sing everyone off
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I witnessed this quite a bit today. I waited 3 hours 10 minutes on opening day and the line was moving with minimal people trying to push ahead. Next day I waited three hours before bailing to get to our dinner reservation. Fast pass got so backed up, I'm guessing they had more issues today. They also has posted wait times of 120 minutes when they knew it was more than twice that.
 
RSoxNo1

RSoxNo1

Well-Known Member
Coaster Lover said:
Seems lines for both RJ and FOP have been hovering around 120 mins today. Not terrible for second day of full operations. I think the big surprise (for me at least) is the length of the RJ lines compared to the line length for FOP (not terribly different). Would be curious for the rational. Has RJ been running pretty reliably? Is FOP running at better capacity than expected? Is RJ just that popular due to the lack of height limit? Or are people just flocking to RJ because of the longer line at FOP?
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They were dramatically understated for FoP.
 
Minthorne

Minthorne

Well-Known Member
Second night extra magic. Only got on Na'vi river. Beautiful but I was underwhelmed by the river journey. Have fastpass for flight of passage tomorrow. I hope it delivers.
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roj2323

roj2323

Well-Known Member
Minthorne said:
Second night extra magic. Only got on Na'vi river. Beautiful but I was underwhelmed by the river journey. Have fastpass for flight of passage tomorrow. I hope it delivers.
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I liked the river journey but it was basicly a nice boat ride with no story line. On the plus side load and unload of the boats is super fast since there's only 6-8 riders per boat.
 
djkidkaz

djkidkaz

Well-Known Member
roj2323 said:
I liked the river journey but it was basicly a nice boat ride with no story line. On the plus side load and unload of the boats is super fast since there's only 6-8 riders per boat.
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Agree about the bathrooms, it's strange that they are not themed at all.

Also, I know people have been underwhelmed with the NRJ but I think it's a great addition considering there may be many people who don't make it all day in the park and this gives everyone an opportunity to see the bioluminescence.
 
Daveeeeed

Daveeeeed

Well-Known Member
For everyone waiting 2 hours just to enter Pandora... get to Animal Kingdom @ 6:50am and you can pretty much do everything.

Got to ride Flight of Passage in under an hour, eat Breakfast with little to no wait, and explore the land. I did have a NA'VI River Journey Fastpass, so it was an interesting plus, but honestly you can skip this ride as it's nothing special.
 

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