***Official*** Pandora: The World of Avatar Information Thread

[pigletto]

And now that I've said that...
I have August 25th at MK and August 26th at AK. I could switch to August 25th at AK, and take advantage of the morning EMH. Would that at least be a better rope drop experience for FOP? Or should I just not bother and leave it alone and rope drop FOP on the 26th?
If morning EMH will make it significantly easier I will switch it around.

 

[Lesley Wake]

So this morning I was able to check fastpass availability for up to 74 days out (with a separate reservation that lasts for 14 days). Didn't book anything but checked FoP (for 2 people):

Aug 26 (60 days): nothing
Aug 27 (61 days): nothing
Aug 28 (62 days): nothing (when I first checked there was one at 3:45, but that disappeared when I clicked out)
Aug 29 (63 days): earliest 5pm
Aug 30 (64 days): earliest 4:15pm
Aug 31 (65 days): earliest 1:20pm
Sep 1 (66 days): earliest 12:05pm
Sep 2 (67 days): earliest 11:05am
Sep 3 (68 days): earliest 9:10am
Sep 4 (69 days): earliest 9am
Sep 5 (70 days): earliest 9:40am
Sep 6 (71 days): earliest 9:20am
Sep 7 (72 days): earliest 9:35am
Sep 8 (73 days): earliest 9:20am
Sep 9 (74 days): earliest 9:05am

Note: this wasn't right at 7am est so I don't know if things were snatched up earlier. Also this is over the Labor Day weekend, so make of that as you will.

 

[Darcy03231]

And now that I've said that...
I have August 25th at MK and August 26th at AK. I could switch to August 25th at AK, and take advantage of the morning EMH. Would that at least be a better rope drop experience for FOP? Or should I just not bother and leave it alone and rope drop FOP on the 26th?
If morning EMH will make it significantly easier I will switch it around.

I would think the lines would be shorter if you did rope drop EMH. I've been watching the threads about FOP and no fast-passes. If you do rope drop EMH is seems that the line is generally 10-30 minutes. If you do regular rope drop it seems to be 20-45 min (and even up to 60) minutes. Since we're going so DH can see Pandora we plan to do rope drop each day (including EMH) to see how the lines are going. We're staying at AKL so we plan to get there early and not bring any bags, which should hopefully speed things up for us. If we can knock it out of the first day in a reasonable amount of time we won't have to keep going back.

 

[pigletto]

I would think the lines would be shorter if you did rope drop EMH. I've been watching the threads about FOP and no fast-passes. If you do rope drop EMH is seems that the line is generally 10-30 minutes. If you do regular rope drop it seems to be 20-45 min (and even up to 60) minutes. Since we're going so DH can see Pandora we plan to do rope drop each day (including EMH) to see how the lines are going. We're staying at AKL so we plan to get there early and not bring any bags, which should hopefully speed things up for us. If we can knock it out of the first day in a reasonable amount of time we won't have to keep going back.

Thank you. As a general rule we avoid EMH parks as we find them more crowded, but I think this one time it makes the most sense.

I switched our park days around. We'll now be doing AK on our first full day, and MK on our second. Without FOP, I made most of our fastpasses for afternoon. My thinking is rope drop at 8am, take advantage of lower crowds until the park fills up and heat is terrible, and then leave for a mid day break. We'll use our fastpasses in the evening when we come back, and go see ROL.

And thank you for the reminder to bring no bags! We usually have one small one for water/wallets etc. But we'll skip it on AK day. No need to hold ourselves up if we can avoid it.

 

[Music City Mama]

What would you all do in my situation?

One day next week, we are starting the day at AK, hopping, and then ending the day at AK.

We have a FP for FoP at 9:00 a.m.

We plan on getting there around 7:00 (8:00 opening).

My original plan was to ride NRJ, scope out the land, and then ride FoP with our FP.

Now, I'm wondering if we should go to FoP first (from looking at wait times, I think we should be off by 8:30), then ride NRJ (thinking that the wait will be around 45 minutes at that point), then use our FP for FoP to ride again.

I would love to see the queue, and of course, if we love the ride, it would be awesome to be able to ride it twice. Should we stick with the original plan or try to ride FoP when we get there? I'd hate to have a really long line for NRJ when we get off because I want to be able to do that, too, but could handle it if it's no more than 45 minutes.

 

[AngiTN]

Regular opening or EMH?
Best I have been following wait times your plan would work for sure on an EMH morning and may be tighter on a regular morning.
Plus, what day are you looking at?
Crowds may be higher than they've been closer to the 4th so watch that for certain
You can always adjust your plans for Navi if you need to, and catch it later in the day.

 

[cindyfan]

Sorry if this is a repeat...... But too much to get through 382 pages!
Is there a walkway from Pandora to Africa? From the map there appears to be a walkway along the waterway and coming up behind the restrooms next to FotLK, avoiding walking back through Discovery Island.

 

[AngiTN]

Sorry if this is a repeat...... But too much to get through 382 pages!
Is there a walkway from Pandora to Africa? From the map there appears to be a walkway along the waterway and coming up behind the restrooms next to FotLK, avoiding walking back through Discovery Island.

Yep.

 

[allaboard]

Our FP window opened this morning and there were no fast-passes for FOP, so we're going with our back-up plan of getting there for rope drop and heading directly to the ride. We plan to be there about half an hour before park opening and won't have any bags. Hoping for less than a 30 min wait time.

From what I read, folks are saying you have to get there 45 minutes to an hour before rope drop, and then it's a 8-9 minute walk over there to FoP, and then there is usually more than a 30 minute wait... up to an hour by then .... So if you add up all that time .... it's still about a 2 hour wait. I am assuming that in July my family will just walk through Pandora and ooh and ahh ... and never get to ride anything because no one in my family will wait that long! :-( including me

 

[AngiTN]

From what I read, folks are saying you have to get there 45 minutes to an hour before rope drop, and then it's a 8-9 minute walk over there to FoP, and then there is usually more than a 30 minute wait... up to an hour by then .... So if you add up all that time .... it's still about a 2 hour wait. I am assuming that in July my family will just walk through Pandora and ooh and ahh ... and never get to ride anything because no one in my family will wait that long! :-( including me

No, actually, if you can get there 45-60 min before they open you will probably be on and off the ride within about 30 min after opening. It's those who don't get there till opening that have a 2 hour wait. If that makes sense.

 

[PrincessV]

The FP+ FOP availability - or lack thereof, really - is very puzzling to me. I was afraid I'd be shut out for July 4th week, since it's one of the busiest weeks of the year, but I had a ton of availability on from Day 1 of my vacation start at 60 days out, and still had plenty of options to move things around/change days/times for weeks after. What's changed since then? Is it just that word is out now and more people are aware/interested? Do you think a ton of folks are speculatively booking FPs, just in case, that they may or may not use? Could WDW have reduced the allocation of FPs per day?

 

[AngiTN]

The FP+ FOP availability - or lack thereof, really - is very puzzling to me. I was afraid I'd be shut out for July 4th week, since it's one of the busiest weeks of the year, but I had a ton of availability on from Day 1 of my vacation start at 60 days out, and still had plenty of options to move things around/change days/times for weeks after. What's changed since then? Is it just that word is out now and more people are aware/interested? Do you think a ton of folks are speculatively booking FPs, just in case, that they may or may not use? Could WDW have reduced the allocation of FPs per day?

1. Word is out
2. Fewer hours for the parks 60 days from now. Fewer hours = total fewer FP distrubuted even though the same number of FP per hour are distributed

 

[Music City Mama]

Regular opening or EMH?
Best I have been following wait times your plan would work for sure on an EMH morning and may be tighter on a regular morning.
Plus, what day are you looking at?
Crowds may be higher than they've been closer to the 4th so watch that for certain
You can always adjust your plans for Navi if you need to, and catch it later in the day.

It's a regular opening at 8:00.
The day is actually July 4th.

I think it's one of those things that we probably won't decide until that morning. I would just like to wait no more than 30 minutes once at the queue for FoP and no more than 45 for NRJ following FoP. Of course I could make this all a lot easier on myself and go straight to NRJ and then just use my FoP FP, but missing that queue is gnawing at me (and the chance to ride it twice).

 

[AngiTN]

It's a regular opening at 8:00.
The day is actually July 4th.

I think it's one of those things that we probably won't decide until that morning. I would just like to wait no more than 30 minutes once at the queue for FoP and no more than 45 for NRJ following FoP. Of course I could make this all a lot easier on myself and go straight to NRJ and then just use my FoP FP, but missing that queue is gnawing at me (and the chance to ride it twice).

Don't miss the queue for FoP. Don't wait 45 min for RJ.
You will regret missing the queue for Fop and you will regret waiting 45 min for RJ.
I promise both.
We waited 2 hours for FoP and didn't regret a single minute. Only ride I've ever waited more than 30 min for, ever, in my whole life. Still worth it.
It's not just that the queue is interesting. It's that they designed it so you don't realize you are waiting 2 hours. It's long so even when it's a 2 hour wait you never stop moving. It's all in your mind but when you are moving you don't feel like it's a long wait.
There is nothing to the queue for RJ, at all. We only rode it with a FP. It was a lovely ride but I would have never wanted to wait even 15 min for it.

 

[Music City Mama]

Based on everything I've read on here and other places re: recent touring plans and RD, I really think I can pull off getting off of FoP by 8:30 (if not earlier) and perhaps only have to wait 30 minutes for NRJ. I would like to see both, even though like you said, NRJ isn't anything to write home about. I really don't think we'll have the opportunity to ride it later since we're hopping and getting back to AK after the MK fireworks. Which by the way, leads me to an Express transportation question. I'll ask it on that thread -- would love to get your thoughts.

 

[PrincessV]

2. Fewer hours for the parks 60 days from now. Fewer hours = total fewer FP distrubuted even though the same number of FP per hour are distributed

Oh right - I didn't think of that!

 

[iujen94]

Apologies, as I'm sure this has been asked and answered...

I'm debating if my thrill-ride-averse friend will like FOP. She likes/will ride 7DMT, Soarin', and Test Track. She will not ride Splash, Space, BTMRR, ToT or Star Tours.

I know NRJ will be up her alley. Selfishly I'd love to ride FOP too, but I won't ride without her, and I don't want to get her on a ride she'll hate.

Thanks for any thoughts!

 

[heidijanesmith]

Don't miss the queue for FoP. Don't wait 45 min for RJ.
You will regret missing the queue for Fop and you will regret waiting 45 min for RJ.
I promise both.
We waited 2 hours for FoP and didn't regret a single minute. Only ride I've ever waited more than 30 min for, ever, in my whole life. Still worth it.
It's not just that the queue is interesting. It's that they designed it so you don't realize you are waiting 2 hours. It's long so even when it's a 2 hour wait you never stop moving. It's all in your mind but when you are moving you don't feel like it's a long wait.
There is nothing to the queue for RJ, at all. We only rode it with a FP. It was a lovely ride but I would have never wanted to wait even 15 min for it.

Totally agree with this poster. FOP is worth the wait in the regular queue. The regular queue is fantastic, you have so much to see and look at, it makes the time go quicker. We waited 90min, the lowest time we saw and did not think the wait was that awful.

 

[AngiTN]

Apologies, as I'm sure this has been asked and answered...

I'm debating if my thrill-ride-averse friend will like FOP. She likes/will ride 7DMT, Soarin', and Test Track. She will not ride Splash, Space, BTMRR, ToT or Star Tours.

I know NRJ will be up her alley. Selfishly I'd love to ride FOP too, but I won't ride without her, and I don't want to get her on a ride she'll hate.

Thanks for any thoughts!

For a lack of a better way to compare it, think of FoP as 3/4 Soarin' and 1/4 Star Tours (though this is a very basic definition and doesn't come close to being as complex as the ride really is). What is it she doesn't like about Star Tours? Knowing that would help narrow down if she'd tolerate FoP, or hate it

 

[bryanb]

Perhaps so. But the length of time it took a company Disney's size to catch up with Frozen merchandise was embarrassing. It was BAD. My daughter was 8yo at the time so I am ACUTELY AWARE!

The toy manufacturers and Disney did have aggressive sales goals for the product. But internally, even they didn't realize how huge Frozen was going to be. I think it stunned everyone. The amount of merchandise that has actually sold -- you'd have been crazy to ever expect that number and to order that much inventory for a movie that's not based on an already well-known property. Disney is a licensor, and toy manufacturers are on the hook too if they forecast wrong.

Unfortunately, when they realized the forecast was wrong, merchandise doesn't just appear magically. Due to the time it takes to manufacture product, toy companies have to plan out 9+ months in advance. They are building product before they've even seen the movie. So when inventory was out, they were working as fast as they could, paying rush charges, getting factories to set aside other orders during the Christmas rush, and then paying expensive air freight. Definitely not easy. I wouldn't be embarassed, but I get why consumers were disappointed.

Sorry if this is a repeat...... But too much to get through 382 pages!
Is there a walkway from Pandora to Africa? From the map there appears to be a walkway along the waterway and coming up behind the restrooms next to FotLK, avoiding walking back through Discovery Island.

Yep.

It's a beautiful walk! Very interesting how they slowly transitioned from the "real" world to Pandora. I was worried about how jarring it would be to arrive in this land not based on any reality.

Don't miss the queue for FoP. Don't wait 45 min for RJ.
You will regret missing the queue for Fop and you will regret waiting 45 min for RJ.
I promise both.
We waited 2 hours for FoP and didn't regret a single minute. Only ride I've ever waited more than 30 min for, ever, in my whole life. Still worth it.
It's not just that the queue is interesting. It's that they designed it so you don't realize you are waiting 2 hours. It's long so even when it's a 2 hour wait you never stop moving. It's all in your mind but when you are moving you don't feel like it's a long wait.
There is nothing to the queue for RJ, at all. We only rode it with a FP. It was a lovely ride but I would have never wanted to wait even 15 min for it.

This is some of the best advice I've seen on here. I also disliked immensely my 20 minute wait for RJ, and I found the ride to be so boring. I was very happy to wait the posted 160 minutes for FoJ (which turned out to be much less). One of the best queues I've seen.