Memory 301 – Reliving an Avatar Flight of Passage ride, in Walt Disney World’s: Disney’s Animal Kingdom

Here in Kentucky, we are beginning our celebrations around the Derby. The kickoff 2 weeks before is Thunder weekend, where we have one of the top 5 airshows over the river and thousands of people flock to the waterfront to watch, culminating in one of the largest fireworks shows in the US. Really, if you’ve never heard of or seen it, you should definitely check it out. All that flying is a perfect segue for our memory for today, as we finally get to fly on the back of a banshee.

So as we get into today’s memory, you’ll need to imagine it’s a slightly gray and overcast Tuesday morning in December 2021. The clouds will end up burning off, and we’ll get that sun later, but for now, it’s a little gray outside.

We’ll join this memory as we entered the park with early entry access, and sprinted to the back of the line to ride Avatar Flight of Passage. We were already in line, just entering the actual queue area. As you hear the fans blowing, we’re passing the cast members manning the entrance to the ride. At this point in the morning, the line isn’t really stopping, and we’ll wind our way through the foliage of Pandora and up into the caves. Once inside, we’ll admire the cave drawings, but we won’t have much time here because soon we’re transitioning back into the overgrowth as the forest has reclaimed a portion of the queue. But soon we’re in the lab, winding past samples and notes of experiments, culminating with the avatar currently floating in the case. I’ve trimmed out a bunch of the queue, but there is just so much for the ears to enjoy I tried to leave what would be interesting for all of us. Finally, we enter the last scene as we see almost an air-traffic control of all the avatars in flight before we are mixed into the queue, to be separated into our pre-flight areas. Once we are cleansed of all parasites and matched with an avatar, we make our way to the linking stations and take a seat. The majesty of the scenery is amazing, and you really feel like you are flying as the music soars and lifts you higher. At one point, I can’t contain my excitement as we dive down through the floating mountains (this is my favorite part every time). As our ride ends, we gather our things, just giddy with excitement. This is now possibly our new family-favorite attraction. As we exit the building, we consult the Touring Plans app, and it suggests our next attraction, which thankfully isn’t very far.

Again, this is a binaural memory, so you’ll definitely want to get your favorite headphones on for the best experience.