The reality of queuing for avatar in July

Walt Disney World
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Hi guys

Touring plans has really helped me in the last seven days with an Orlando holiday

We’ve been to universal, sea world, aquatica, Busch gardens, Hollywood studios, magic Kingdom and this morning did avatar flights of passage at animal kingdom without a fast pass

So what can you expect early mornings at animal kingdom right now?

We are staying at the swan Disney. So today hotel guests get an hour early entrance to the ak rides at 8am

We got the shuttle from our hotel at 7.20am and arrived at ak at 7.40am. No fast passes for us until this evening when we are going back into the park for dinner and extra magic hours 10pm to 12pm

We could not believe how many people were already there when we arrived. The car park had loads of cars and the queue to get into the park through the gates were huge. Hotel guests and normal guests

It took about 25 minutes to get into the park and then for hotel guests another large but faster queue to the left towards pandora world. That queue took ten minutes I think to get through at which started we tried to run towards avatar

We got told to stop running and at the same time to,d the queue was already two hours long!

I think it’s 8.15am by now approx

When we arrived at the entrance to the avatar ride sure enough it said 120 mins standby. (This would be 8.20am) but you couldn’t actually enter the queue. Instead there was a queue to enter the queue that I estimate was 500 metres long by 8.30am!

The longest queues we’ve ever seen in Orlando for anything. There were loads of people behind us as well.

The good news was the queue moved quickly. Otherwise we could not have faced it. After about 20 minutes we actually reached the start of the real queue which itself moved quite slowly to begin with. But from nowhere started to move really quickly. Maybe the rides hadn’t started properly when we joined the queue?

But by 9.15am we were in the ride so the 120 mins was wrong ( that was supposed to be the time from the main queu entry of course and not from where we actually started outside of the queue)

The ride itself was truly incredible we are going to try and do it again tonight and will queue to make it happen

About 9.30 we joined another queue to get into the real queue for navi river. The real queue was saying 75 mins. We persevered for 15 mins but the queue was moving so slow we gave up and came back to our hotel to relax ready for a big night of rides etc back at ak tonight.

I asked the lady who was overseeing the avatar queue about the queues

She said its 2 to 3 hrs every morning now regardless of extra magic hours or not

And that tonight we will be queuing for a long time whatever time we join the queue.

I’m thinking we will join at 10pm ish and maybe have another hot at navi river journey queue if it looks better

We’ve got fast passes for Kiki Safari and Everest earlier on in the evening and a meal at tiffins

5 Likes
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Uh oh! My FP day is next Friday. Trying for FOP on day 61 and day 63. RD on an EMH day was my back up.

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Thanks for the report!

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Is FOP a longer queue than Navi? I was planning on going at EMH and head straight for Navi and then do FP for FOP (assuming I could get a FP). I’m not going until end of September but will be at MK on a Saturday. Wondering if I should expect the same experience reported here.

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Went back tonight knowing as hotel guests we had 2 hours extra magic hours 10pm to 12pm

River navi queue was showing 80 mins at 9pm. But looked to be shorter and moving faster than this morning when it showed 75 mins.

So we joined that queue at 9pm and it kept moving well and we were on the ride at 9.30pm (30 mins compared to the 80 mins on the standby sign)

Then we went to FOP. This was 9.40pm. The wait time was showing 140 mins. But compared to this morning it was a much much shorter queue and didn’t start til a good way into the actual queuing area

But once in the queue it was far slower than this morning

We got on the ride itself (having gone through the various stages) after 100 mins of queueing

When we got off and took a look about going again at 11.30pm the queue said 120 mins.

At the same time navi river queue was now advertised as 10 mins wait

We were tired and gave them both a miss

Once you’ve done navi river once you don’t need to do it again. It’s beautiful. I would describe it as modern day it’s a small world or modern day pirates of the Caribbean. Some great effects but cannot compare to FOP.

FOP is the best ride we’ve ever experienced. Beats the Harry Potter rides and sets a new standard.

None of us have seen the film. You don’t need to in order to love this ride.

Having said that it makes you want to watch the film. But im worried it will ruin our idea of Pandora world if we do!

Fastpass FOP if I were you as you will want to repeat at least once if not twice!

4 Likes
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I really want to try FOP but since I get motion sickness and don’t do well on rides that are jerky or have big drops…I believe this ride is a simulation so a friend suggested that I close my eyes if it gets to be too much. Would that work…if I close my eyes? I hope I can enjoy the entire ride because it seems like a really cool thing…but want a backup plan and don’t want to be sick all day at the park either.

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Hi

They actually advise people who get motion sickness to focus on the banshee guide at the front during the ride

Don’t know if that helps or not?

The main advice I can give anyone considering rope drop is that you probably need to arrive 60 mins or 90 mins before opening time to be near the front of getting in and that kind of defeats the object of rope drop saving waiting time!

AK and pandoras world for now at least seem to be the real goto place in Orlando.

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When we went, I had a FPP for FOP so we were only interested in Na’vi during EMH. The time was posted at 25 minutes and we were late (although it was a 7am opening instead of 8am - we ended up arriving at around 7:30). FOP was already 2 hours at that time. The 25 minutes was pretty accurate - the majority were definitely headed to FOP.

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I get bad motion sickness sometimes on Star Tours type ones where the screen is doing different things than body, and I was fine on FOP by closing eyes a bunch, and occasionally looking back and how bike set-ups work (reminding my body where it was and screen just pretend). And I don’t think I even remembered the anti-nausea pills. It was still fun, still worth 45 minutes in line. (I don’t know if I think ANYTHING worth 60 minutes+ in line!)