Now don't get me wrong, everything that I rode or watched in the park was awesome, but I have a list of my favorites
Here are my Top Five:
I'm not a huge fan of the movie series, but this ride was pretty cool. You walk through a building that almost looks like dungeons, sort of, to get to the 'docks.' What I really liked, was that once you got in the little lifeboat style rafts and went into the ride, you forgot you were anywhere but riding along the coast and through the little villages where pirates were pillaging. The way the lighting was, you couldn't tell the ceiling apart from the illusion of the dark stormy skies. Animatronics are a staple of many rides in Disney, and Pirates certainly took advantage of its share. There were villagers and pirates everywhere and Jack Sparrow showed up every so often. Honestly, the effects were so good that it someone told me there were a couple of actors in with the robots, I would have believed them!
My group rode this spin off of the movie Dinosaur three times. Basically, time traveling to the early cretaceous period has become a popular tourist attraction and you're on your way to experience it. You walk into a room to get video-debriefed on the basics by the leader of the program when one of her "scientists" asks for your help to go find an Iguanodon in the late cretaceous (just before the big meteor impact that wipes out most life on Earth hits) instead. So, you get into the time rover and speed through the "time vortex" and into the dark, scary land of the dinosaurs. You ride through the 'bumpy' territory stopping to identify various dinosaurs all while the small meteor showers get more frequent. My favorite part about it was the fact that I had an excuse to scream at the big carnivores that roared and came at you (if you ever ride this, I highly advise the front row). I won't give away the ending, but you do make it back in the nick of time.
What's really cool about Everest is the shops around it advertising oxygen tanks and high quality mountaineering equipment. The rollercoaster cars that look like a rustic train bring you all the way up to the top of Everest where you meet a broken track. The cars stop and suddenly take you backwards all the way up inside the peak where you stop again to just catch a glimpse of the shadow of a Yeti breaking the tracks. You go forward again curving around the mountain and in and out of caves. In the last cave, there's a giant furry Yeti growling at you as you go into the last, big drop (the best, in my opinion, and the only ride I rode where you can really feel the G's).
I love this ride. Waiting in line, you're walking through what I imagine the International Space Station to look like. Windows show blackness with fiber optic stars and everything is very space aged. When you walk into the Control Station, it's only a little longer until you board your rocket. You get in the single seats (three to a car, two cars to a rocket) and blast off into space. All you see is a giant pitch-black room with fiber optic stars everywhere. Shooting stars can be seen in the distance as you fly through space on the rollercoaster. At the end, you fly right into a red swirling wormhole where the cars break and lead you to where you get off.
1. Kilimanjaro Safaris, Africa, Animal Kingdom
By far, the best. As you get in line, you learn you are being taken on a two week safari in the Harambe Wildlife Preserve in Africa. You first board an open-sided safari vehicle (like a bus) and your driver drives you through the many acres of rivers, rocky hills and open savannahs. What I think is just fantastic about this ride is that you're seeing real animals in their natural habitats- for example: reticulated giraffes, hippopotami, lions, rhinoceroses, cheetahs, elephants, antelope, ostriches, zebras, okapis, wildebeests, crocodiles and a bunch of birds like cranes and flamingoes. It's really kind of exhilarating because these animals aren't restrained by anything like a fence or pit. It's the safari vehicle riding through the lands. At the end, your driver is informed of poachers that have taken a baby elephant from his mother and the bus rushes off to help save the infant from harm.
I absolutely LOVED it.
As I said, Disney is one-of-a-kind. If there's anyone out there who hasn't been to the parks, they're definitely a must see!
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