Second day at Pandora...
I posted our experience yesterday here:
https://www.disboards.com/threads/o...rmation-thread.3587311/page-265#post-57656000
I see another 12 pages on the thread from today and I am not going to read them tonight. So, again, forgive me if I am repeating what others have posted today.
One quick note this evening is that we saw George Kalogridis (current President of WDW) walking around Pandora taking things in. This was around 8PM. I recognized him as prior to WDW he was President of DLR and had a good reputation and I remember reading articles about him. I may have heard him speak at a D23 Expo. Can't remember. But I recognized him when I saw him.
Today we arrived at 5PM for an ADR at Rainforest Cafe. We had a FP for FOP at 5:45-6:45 and NRJ 6:55-7:55. Despite our telling the RFC we were in a bit of hurry and placing our entire order right we were seated, they were still slow and we had to rush through our entree. Got into AK at 6:30PM with the FOP FP window closing at 6:45!
There were no lines at the gates to enter AK at 6:30PM. There was a line of people to get into Pandora. We followed the guidance we got yesterday to tell the CMs an the Pandora entrance we had an active FP. They told us that they could not let us in, that we had to wait in the line with everyone else, and not to worry as our FP would be honored even if we were late. They told us the line to get into Pandora was moving steadily. I asked them if they were sure about the active FP thing as we had been let in directly yesterday (see my post at the top). They told us they were not doing that today and they were sure. We thanked them and got in line.
As we were waiting we saw another large group of people coming through a different line and I asked them what line they were in. They said they were being let through because they had active FPs. Ouch! So the CMS were wrong about that. But they were right that the line we were in for normal Pandora entry was moving steadily and by the time the "active FP" line came through we were almost through the line we were in. All in all we waited 10 minutes in this line so not too bad. We made it over to FOP FP right at 6:45 so no need to rely on the late FP being honored.
OK, so by the time we got past the FOP SB and FP merge and got into the first "room of 16", I asked the SB folks how long they had waited. And they said 5 hours. They were all wondering if was worth it and when they understood that we had ridden FOP yesterday, they asked us if would be worth it. We told them it would be. After the rides was over they followed behind us on the way out and all agreed the 5 hour wait was totally worth it.
As far as FOP is concerned, today was our second ride and we were able to take it in better than yesterday. I will have to say it is now my favorite ride at WDW.
However, here is something to note FWIW. When I ride ST I am relieved when it is over because I start to feel a little queasy. When I ride Soarin I am always sad when it is over and wish it could go on for another 5-10 minutes. Zero queasiness. At the end of FOP I found I was relieved more like ST and not like Soarin. I felt a tiny bit of queasiness on FOP - nothing like ST but enough to make me feel "OK, I am ready for this to be over". For that reason FOP is not a slam dunk, way, way better ride for me than my other WDW favorites which are EE and RnR. As others have said, FOP IS intense at times. But it does rise to the level of my new favorite.
It took us about 45 minutes to get on FOP using FP. Yesterday at 12:06PM it was more like 10-15 minutes. Not sure why the FP line was so much longer today.
After FOP we rode NRJ with a FP.
Finally, we saw the 9:15 ROL tonight and then went quickly to ride EE after to get a night ride in. We had planned to try and get back into Pandora to see the night time version after EE. We found at 10PM that they were no longer allowing any guests into Pandora and were forming a line for the 11PM EMH. It was 10PM and the line was at Pizzafari at that point. We decided we did not want to wait an hour until 11PM to get into Pandora again. I took a few minutes to see if I could get lucky and score a second NRJ FP that I thought would allow us to get into Pandora right away. No luck. So we left AK around 10PM.
Finally, finally - while in the FOP FP line I met another DISer who I believe goes by
@disneyfanforever 
. So that was fun.
