Reviews:Rants and Raves on Avatar World?

Hopefully I can share my experience with you. We were in Pandora September 3rd and 6th.

Flight of Passage: Well, I was able to ride Flight of Passage 3x in 2 days…. 2 times with Rope Drop and 1 time with a FP. Let me just tell you…. IT IS AWESOME! Words do not describe it! I would do everything in my power to ensure that you are able to ride this amazing ride. No spoilers!!

Navi River Journey: Meh. I was totally underwhelmed. We were able to ride this with no wait. Even though the sign showed a 25 min wait, it was a walk on. Its super short (like shorter than Peter Pan), and its basically Its a Small World meets Pocahontas. Its weird. Not my favorite.

Satuli Canteen: We were able to eat the beef bowl and the chicken bowl, as well as the cheeseburger pods. I have food allergies, so I just tried both of the bowls which were totally YUMMY!! My husband and dad say that the cheeseburger pods tasted just like a fast food cheeseburger and were TOTALLY DELICIOUS! My husband tried the Grog Ale (green beer) and rated it I think only a 2.5 on his Untapped beer app if that tells you anything.

Windtraders: The gift shop was PACKED… beyond packed. Everyone was in this line that stretched thru the store and outside for those remote control banshees. We bought a coffee mug and a fridge magnet in the shop for our collection, but other than that, we didn’t buy anything else.

Pandora as a whole is really pretty, and its hard to put into words what it looks like. I was really impressed with the whole area… such creative minds really did create a new planet! I will say that I was SOOOOOOOO unimpressed with Pandora at night. It was advertised that Pandora would come to life at night and everything lights up, etc etc etc. Well…. yeah it lit up… BARELY. Everything just sort of glowed… and was really dark still I mean, it was ok at night… but nothing spectacular. I was expecting something different just from the photos that they promoted it with. I preferred Pandora during the day for sure.

So basically, Pandora is 2 rides, 1 quick service restaurant, 1 gift shop, and 1 outdoor bar / beverage area. The themeing is really awesome… they did a great job of staying true to the Avatar story. I highly recommend watching the movie the week before you go!! We really did love the AK version of Pandora, and we can’t wait to go back!

@Acamm I am surprised by your review! I thought Pandora at night would be amazing! Bummer! Knowing now how short the river ride is, I will make sure we don’t go when the line is long.

I think I feel pretty similar to @acamm & @jamiedawn27. We really liked Pandora. It’s beautiful during the day, and the details go on for days. If I had nothing better to do, and there weren’t like 80,000 other people in the land when I was there (early August), I could have spent a couple of hours at least just looking around.

Flight of Passage is amazing, and I really liked all of the details in Navi River Journey. My only complaint on the river journey is that it needs to be about 5 minutes longer, and more than one Navi Animatronic would have been cool. Also, don’t expect an in your face story on River Journey. It’s more about taking in the details. Think of it like taking a river cruise anywhere else. You’re there to see the sights.

As far as the nighttime goes, I was maybe a little more impressed than the previous posters were. However, I’m not sure how to really describe my feelings. It’s just cool to see this world that’s so beautiful during the day become a vibrant, bioluminescent forest at night. Honestly, I think to really appreciate it, you’d need to see it first during the day, and then again at night. That way, we can kind of see the two sides of Pandora together. Seeing what it is you’re looking at during the day helps you appreciate the glowing landscape at night.

On the food front, I have limited experience. We ate dinner at Tiffins, so we only had one of the drinks(Night Blossom I think) and the pineapple lumpia from Pongu Pongu, as well as the Blueberry Cheesecake thing from Satuli Canteen. All of them were good, but I the drink was SUPER sweet.

Overall, I really liked it, and was pretty impressed. We’re going back in March of ’18, and are planning on spending a little more time there.

I’m so glad AK extended their hours when we’re there! On ADR day the park hours said AK would close at 7pm which meant we wouldn’t have seen Pandora at night, it would have just been dusk by the time we needed to leave. As of now they’re closing at 9pm which will give us plenty of time to see Pandora at night! I’m excited to see it for the first time!

Okay so I just got back and I think I’m at the opposite end of the spectrum here. Of course with no fastpasses at 60 days out for FoP, we were not willing to wait in a 130 minute line so we didn’t get to do that. We did get Fp’s for Navi river and my party agreed that while it’s pretty to look at, there is absolutely no story telling going on here. You just ride and look at plants until you get to the one amazing animatronic. I tried the blueberry lemon desert at Satu li and it was sooo good and sooo pretty to look at. As far as Pandora itself….I hate to say it but it didn’t live up to the hype for me. I think I was expecting an entire “land” so to speak, but it really was more of a small alcove or cul-de-sac. Both rides are crammed side by side and there really isn’t anything to explore. One small store and one counter service place and you’re outta there. We didn’t stick around to see it at night. The floating mountains were amazing but it seemed to be just an archway of them and that was about it. So for me it was the scale of the land that was a disappointment after all of that fanfare. Don’t go expecting “land” as in Tomorrowland….think more like “section”. I think we decided on this trip that AK was going to be an every other trip park for us because once again, we found ourselves done by mid afternoon. I had fastpasses for Rivers of Light but I just couldn’t occupy myself for 3 more hours to get to it. I love the atmosphere and look of this park but I can’t seem to get a full day out of it to save my life.

Raves:
– Both of the rides are fantastically done (Especially Flight of Passage!!!)! River Journey is a tad short, but it’s beautiful.
– Food isn’t bad for counter service.
– Night time is gorgeous!

Rants:
– It’s too dark at night (But that’s mostly me having awful vision lol)
– Everything feels a wee bit crammed, but it’s understandable.