peek at pandora

one of the things we were most excited for on this trip

was to visit the new land in animal kingdom - pandora

it is based on the movie avatar

and it has been in the works for several years

it opened back in may so it is a busy place.

because of this,  each night the pandora is open from 11pm-1am

for just resort guests.

this was perfect for us!

when epcot closed we hopped on a bus to animal kingdom

we took some time exploring

but when we saw that one of the rides - 

the navi river journey -

only had a wait time of 10 minutes we headed there!

the wait times for the 2 pandora rides have been somewhere between 60-200 minutes

so 10 minutes seemed dreamy!

we were basically able to walk on

it was a slow boat ride

think it's a small world

with black lights and a lot of cool features that you can easily miss.

that's one thing about pandora that impressed me

was the attention to such little details.

pictures do it absolutely NO justice.

the 'bioluminescence' all over the land is very cool

as it grew later

we decided to hope in line for flight of passage

the other pandora ride.

the posted wait was 60 minutes

but considering that's a third of what it has been during the day

and we really wanted to try it out

we were willing to wait

the premise of the ride is you are riding a banshee

out wait ended up truly being around 50 minutes

but the queue has a lot to look at

so that helped time pass

the ride is 3D and similar to soarin

BUT

100 times better!!

stacey hadn't put his motion sickness patch on yet

and it did not go so well for him 

BUT

alex, ben and i LOVED it!!

i cannot wait to take drew on it!

pandora was awesome

and worth the 24 hour drive by itself

BUT ...

seeing this at 2am and knowing i was steps from my heavenly bed

was a pretty good feeling too ;)