Disney Parks Continued...Animal Kingdom & Epcot

Epcot: Epcot is a wonderful Disney park that has a central globe structure called Spaceship Earth which has lots of rides and interactive activities to do. As with all Disney parks, there are plenty of rides to check out. There is an amazing (I will use that word a lot!) ride called ‘Soarin Around The World’ which is a 4D ride where you hang and float over several incredible sights across the world including the great Wall of China, the Sahara Desert and the Eiffel Tower. Another amazing ride is ‘Mission Space’ which takes you into space on one of two experiences. The green mission takes you on orbit around earth whereas the more intense orange mission blasts you off to Mars! Everyone really enjoyed ‘Test Track’ where you design your racing car in teams before speeding around the track to see how it performs. There are also other, less extreme rides including ‘The Seas with Nemo and Friends’, ‘Frozen Ever After’ and ‘Living with The Land’ if you want a gentler experience.

The rest of the park is divided into 11 countries and is really lovely to walk round. For the kids, they do a passport which you have to get stamped at each country at a special desk where they write a nice message in the countries language. Of course it’s not all about kids at Disney which is one of the big misconceptions. Epcot run a ‘Drinking Around The World’ experience which basically means you have a drink and snack in every country – we didn’t indulge although my husband was very keen to! We did see lots of people doing it though and it did look like really good fun.

Animal Kingdom: Animal Kingdom was my personal favourite place to visit. As the name suggest, it’s all based around animals and they run a fantastic safari adventure where you see a large variety of animals including lions, hippos and giraffes. A really great ride which we all enjoyed. My husband and son then went on the Everest ride, very high, fast and scary (pretty standard for a Disney ride).

There are so many animal experiences to discover which we didn’t even get a chance to do amongst all the other attractions. You can see lions, giraffes, elephants, birds, insects, spiders, the list goes on. There are also some great experiences that are of a more gentle nature to the big rides and we watched a 4D show called ‘A Bugs Life’ which was really good fun.

One of the best and most impressive bits of Animal Kingdom though is Pandora. Even if you haven’t watched Avatar, this place is incredible. We cruised down the Na’vi river which was lovely but were totally blown away by the ‘Flight of Passage’ ride. It is another incredible 3D ride where you are sat on the back of a mountain Banshee and fly around the land of Pandora experiencing some incredible sights. It is so difficult to describe but we were all completely blown away by it and went on the ride several more times… you just have to do it if you go!

We managed to fit in a few more rides, including a fantastic river rapids one, and also watched the end of evening light show why was fabulous. There is also a tree of life that is situated near the entrance which provides a wonderful light and music show at the end of your evening.

So there’s a very brief summary of some of the parks we visited. Of course, don’t hesitate to get in contact with me for more details, there’s lots to talk about and loads I have missed out. Still more to go into with other parks and a guide to eating on your Disney break. And another special blog on a non-Disney experience whilst in Florida which blew us all away…

See you soon!