Best ride EVER!

I'm not even joking but today we rode the best theme park ride ever...more about that in a moment...

Today was full on when it was originally going to be quite straightforward. We woke quite late so skipped breakfast and drove straight over to Animal Kingdom. We barely use the car as the Walt Disney World transportation pretty much gets us where we need to be quickly and easily but we needed to do 3 parks today so this was the best option.

We had fastpasses today for the newest ride in the newest land here. The ride is Avatar: Flight Of Passage, obviously based on the movie Avatar and set in a new part of Animal Kingdom called Pandora (again, named after the world in the movie). We got Fastpasses for this months ago as we knew it was going to be popular. And WOW, was it ever.....the standby queue was 180 minutes and by the time we came out of the ride it was a massive 240 minutes queue time. Insane!

The ride itself was absolutely the best theme park ride I (we) have EVER ridden. That is no exaggeration. It is one of those experiences that you cannot adequately describe to someone and do it justice. It's a complete assault on the senses. I've described Soarin' as one of my favourite rides here and it's kinda like that.....on steroids! You ride a Banshee (a winged creature from the movie) and fly across, over and under the world of Pandora. We all came off the ride with massive grins on our faces and you look around at all the other riders and they are all the same. People are just BEAMING when walking out. Breathtaking and i'm sorry I can't explain any further....I just have no words!!! :-)

Best thing is.....as soon as we redeemed our Fastpass for this we made another one for later in the day. We were going to make it our mission to come back later. We HAD to fit that into our plans again somehow today. On the way out we bought Josh and Jack their own Banshee which sits on their shoulder and makes noises, flaps it's wings and roars (you get the picture). Expensive but a really interesting toy. We get those shipped to the room which is great so you don't have to carry them around all day.

We came to Animal Kingdom just to ride that but as we hadn't had breakfast we grabbed a quick snack and then on the way back jumped on Kali River Rapids, a rapids ride which drenched us. No worries at all in this heat, we'd be dry again within 30 minutes. We then made our way back to the car to drive to Blizzard Beach.

Good old Blizzard Beach, Joanne and I have been coming here for 25 years now. Such a great, chilled out place. Both boys are now great swimmers so for the first time in 14 years we were able to spend an hour floating down the lazy river while the boys ran off an rode some slides. Not much more to say really. Water, Sun, Slides.....perfect for the 98 degree Florida heat. We could spend every day here and not get bored but after a few hours we're itching to head back to Pandora and ride on the back of a Banshee again.

And again....mind blowing, amazing, stunning, jaw dropping good fun. Only complaint it that it's not long enough...I could ride it for much longer. We are going to try and get on this again and again this trip. For the walk back to the car we buy 4 Pongu Pongu, a new drink in Pandora which is basically a multi flavoured ice drink with edible balls on top which are filled with flavouring which just pop in your mouth when you bite them. Amazing....(there's that word again)

Next up is EPCOT as it's Extra Magic Hours which means we can stay there an added 2 hours which is a perk of staying at a Disney hotel.

Joanne is wearing her Walt Disney World Birthday badge tonight (yes, we know she lets her birthday run.....and run.....and run) and we first stop off at Club Cool to have a few sips of the world drinks. As we're entering the cast member on the door says "Happy Birthday...have you had a complimentary slushie yet?" HUH? So she goes to the counter and they ask what flavour she would like. "Blueberry" she answers.....they then say "would you all like one? It's not a Birthday party with only 1 person". Hehe, it's things like that which make Walt Disney World so special. We chat with the cast member about the Avatar ride who can't believe we rode it twice today and she also thinks it's impossible to describe the experience. Oh and I forgot to mention, before we entered Club Cool there was a guy at Starbucks giving out free Blueberry Scones. Yes please.....

We head straight to Morocco with our free slushies and have lamb wraps (see picture....much more appetizing in real life) and then over to France for some AMAZING desserts. We sit out there just soaking in the atmosphere but it's getting near to 11pm and closing time so for our final ride of the day we stagger (yes, stagger....we're tired now) over to Test Track.

Quick hop out of the exit into the car and we're in our beds for 11:45 and then SPARKO!

Next morning the kids sleep until 11am. They need it, we've been full on since we got here and tomorrow needs to be a bit more sedate.