|
|
Day
1 (February 26, 2024) Disneyworld
Before
The first day will be entirely dedicated to Disney World.
Our plan is to visit the areas and attractions that we like the most, so we would start in Animal Kingdom to see Pandora, then go to Hollywood Studios to explore the Star Wars area and finish at Magic Kingdom so we can see the parade and the fireworks show.
The spots marked at the map are:
1- Pandora in Animal Kingdom
2- Star Wars in Hollywood Studios
3- Magic Kingdom
|
After
Jet lag helps us get up early and we go down to have breakfast after 8 AM, but I was already up nearly an hour before to book our first attractions at Animal Kingdom, our first park at Disneyworld. After finding out that the Individual Lightning Lane only opens at 8am for those of us who are not staying at hotels in their resort, we've got the Navi River cruise at 10:50 AM and the Flight of Passage at 12:35 PM
We arrive at Animal Kingdom by Uber a little after 10 AM and
start taking photos of the birds there and the huge tree that is the icon of this park.
Then we arrive at the Pandora area and get into our first attraction at the appointed time: Navi River cruise. We sail along the river through the darkness that allows the luminescent beings to be the protagonists. When we arrive in front of a huge Navi there is more light and, knowing that it is an automaton, the realistic appearance and movements are amazing.
Now we have time until the next attraction and we kill it by drinking a soda, buying a sipper of Timon by $20, looking at shops and even going on a ride without waiting in line, "It's Tough to Be a Bug", which turns out to be a 3D show that we are quite amazed by.
But the star of the day today is the attraction we have at 12:35, Flight of Passage, which we are allowed to enter at 12:30 and which turns out to be the wonder we thought it was: an experience flying around Pandora in one of those enormous birds. It is so
realistic that even the beast's breathing, which you feel in your legs, changes depending on what is happening.
With our goals in this park accomplished we leave to go to the
next one: Hollywood Studios. We follow the signs to the bus station and find out that there is a bus for every possible destination.
We take the one that goes to Holliwood Studios and, on the way, I manage to get a reservation for the Millennium Falcon attraction
at 2:20 PM and I couldn't book for Rise of the Resistance because there was no more Lightning lane available.
We enter the park and our thought is to go directly to the
"Rise of the Resistance" attraction. The Star Wars area is on the
opposite side of the entrance, which forces us to go through the entire park to get there.
When we arrive, the queue is 70 minutes long, which is much
lower than the average for this attraction. We join it and, in the end, the wait lasts a little less than an hour and we have the experience of being characters in a film from the Star Wars saga. The details that caught my attention the most were the marks left by the laser shots on the walls and the light saber that appears on the ceiling when the bad guy chases us to catch us.
When we leave, there are 8 minutes left until 3:20 PM, so we still have 8 minutes to use our reservation, since these are for one-hour
slots. We start wandering around the town looking for the Millennium Falcon and find it 2 minutes past the time, but when I mention it to the people at the entrance, they tell me that there is no problem, that at Disney you can get late, and, indeed, the machine lets us in.
Once inside the ship we see the room with the chessboard before 6 people are put into the cabin and we begin to experience the escape that the attraction is based on.
We still do one more Star Wars attraction, Star tours,
before repeating the previous process of leaving the park, going to the
bus station and taking the one that goes to our destination, which,
in thiscase, is Magic Kingdom.
The entrance gets us into a huge square that leads to a wide avenue with Cinderella's castle in the background. They are cordoning off the street because, as we realize moments later, there is a parade of Disney characters coming.
After the parade another priority has arisen, which is to get our late lunch, and we do it at Pinocchio's house: a focaccia of different meats
for me and a chicken Caesar salad for Eva, that we eat while mobile phones are charging in one of the few sockets in the place.
We set off with the last rays of sunlight and walk around the iconic
castle. There is an hour and a half left until the fireworks show with music, which is at 8 PM, and we spend the time in the darkness of the night going around and doing one last attraction: Pirates of the Caribbean, which is not the classic version as Jack Sparrow appears several times.
We arrive at the avenue where we saw the parade earlier to witness a show that exceedsour expectations because of how it combines songs from Disney movies with fireworks and projections on the buildings and, above all, the castle.
On the way out we manage to book an Uber with the last of my battery left to which gets us back to our room with legs complaining about what we have done to them today.
|
|
|
|
