The Slow March
(I updated the post later to add a red circle to one of the guys in my photos who started next to me in the Tree of Life holding pattern so you can see just how far someone walking on the right side of the horde went in comparison to us suckers in the center.)
I will dedicate this part of the report to our rope drop day at Animal Kingdom on Monday, July 31st - an 8AM open Extra Magic Hour Morning. (Then I might backtrack in the next part a little to some Caribbean Beach Resort stuff.)
On the morning of, we set 11 alarms and hired the guy next door to blow cigarette smoke through the door frame at 6:00AM (Why not? - he was doing it at other times anyway.)
Everyone did well with the wakey wakey, had a cold cereal breakfast in the room and jumped in our truck by 7:00AM on the dot. I used photos we all took to get this timeline as close as possible, since I know with the craziness of Pandora at RD, every minute minute (those are pronounced MY-NUTE MIN-IT) can help.
We drove past the CBR main gate at 7:05 and were at the AK parking lot entrance at 7:11AM. As you can imagine: it was quite quiet.
It was our first time ever at Animal Kingdom, so at the time I didn’t have any feel for where we parked or the paths as we walked them in the early mad rush - it is only now after I’ve looked through the photos I took as we walked that I can name some of the places.
We were shunted by the parking CMs what felt pretty far back in the lot, were out of the car and walking swiftly in a solid drizzle by 7:18AM. Looked like we were in for some rain that day - we had some, but mainly it stayed low key and I think really helped us with the heat.
We got to the security area about 7:20AM and jumped on a line to the right side, as it looked better over there. the area was full of milling people - here’s a shot taken to my left:
Our position in line my DW and DD10 in front of me with hoods on):
DS14 was still shrugging off the rain and keeping his poncho in his backpack. I was pulling mine out to get ready for a commando move if the wet picked up any.
For your reading pleasure - and as promised over on The Chat, I’ve put together a timeline map with notes. I hope it is useful - although from reading many other RD reports now (though there are fewer of them the last couple weeks for some reason) I think that our RD took longer than others. I suspect that we may have been stopped by the CMs one or two times extra, and it seemed that every time the the crowd groaned forward, there was a big slide of people around the left and right sides and we dropped back.
So - while we started out on the right in the security and tapstile lines (which were to our advantage), we somehow ended up in the dead center of the pack on THE MARCH INTO PANDORA and there was no wiggle room, just slogging.
Before the map - here’s a quick succession of photos and captions of the way in…
After tapstiles at 7:43, we followed left and… ANOTHER CM 23 FEET LATER WITH ANOTHER MB SCANNER. Say, What? After some semi-contained mayhem for the CMs, we were back walking with purpose by 7:46.
and then BAM. Stopped at a bird-like pole.about 7:47AM.
The view behind me at this point. (Mr. Orange Shirt not looking too happy. sadface)
Moving again at 7:50AM, then BAM. Stopped at the Tree of Life.
(As our first visit to AK, we were all kinda psyched to just stand there for awhile anyway.)
You can see that we’ve lost more ground now, since the whole crowd spread out further on the wider path.
Tip: Watch the guy with the gray baseball cap just on the edge that I’ve added a red circle to and see how far he gets on the right edge of the crowd. It is an especially impressive difference in distance as these photos are all taken 20 to 30 seconds apart!
We stood there for awhile, I snappy snappy took photos.
We were moving around the left turn past Island Mercantile just before 8:00AM - and quite a few Olympic Sprinters took off on the left path there - running right past an incredulous CM. (Think one of the guys was about to stiff-arm the CM when he stepped aside.)
The actual path into Pandora about 8:00AM was then an on and off stop and go slog.
Once into the main Pandora area with Navi River to the left and Flight of Passage to the rightish, the sign-toting CM led everyone to the right, then a few other CMs set up a rope that doubled the line back around. I started getting worried about the mass of people already in front of us.
We had a whole park to see for the first time - I didn’t want to blow 3 hours on a single ride!
(Note: gray hat guy is gone at this point, somewhere way around the curve leading to Flight of Passage.)
As we filed past the Standby Line we saw it was 90 minutes already at 8:05AM and my brain started to sizzle a little.
But I was in awe of the surroundings.
We had to make a decision - and a helpful woman in line next to us soothed my sizzle and told us the line would keep moving and that 90 minutes standby from there was not at all going to happen. I knew that in the depths of my Liner knowledge, but had started to panic. Just a little.
By 8:18AM we were high up the path heading into the facility… we stepped inside by 8:19.
Inside was a slow walk of switchbacks in the beginning which transitioned into a cool industrial setting. By 8:28AM we were in the magic hallway for the last wait.
We headed in to the first pre-show just after 8:41AM.
Our daughter had a very slight freak out when the video narrator guy gave the typical “Uh oh…” in the video. Our son was assigned spot 1, so he said if anything happens, he’ll die first. Way to keep it real, dude!
Beyond this: Flight of Passage was so excellent. The smell, the feeling, so great, as you can see from our smiles as we stepped outside into the non-blinding cloudy light about 9:02AM.
All told - 6AM wake up, 7AM in car, 7:20AM on security line, off ride at 9AM. Was about 30 minutes more than I expected. We explored Pandora awhile, got some Photopass photos taken and loved it all.
As we walked over to Navi River we saw was posted some time over 60 minutes, we called an audible and moved onto the rest of the park -
Final Note on Timing in My Map Below
Our overall time on that day was longer than normal, but the process still works the same to date from reports I’ve read. Assume if you get to Animal Kingdom 75 or so minutes before scheduled rope drop, you should be stepping off of Flight of Passage by scheduled rope drop. On a typical day you should then be able to walk over to N’avi River Journey and jump on that with a relatively low wait.
In my next post I’ll start somewhere around Kiliminjaro Safari. But first, here’s the timeline map I promised. Enjoy!
