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WDW Animal Kingdom: General Discussion

The avatar area has hit capacity by 7.42am this morning! Apparently over 5 hr wait to get into the area. Also hearing reports that the park has now hit capacity as well. Current ride queue times- flight of passage- 4hrs 15 mins and river journey- 2 hrs 30 mins!
 
3 and a half hours for Mako!!! I mean its good but hardly ground breaking.

I guess this is kind of a Florida thing. Their economy revolves so much around tourism everyone feels the need to check out the latest ride. I don't recall anywhere else getting more than 3 hour queue's for a new ride, even California.
 
Disney has apparently announced in a memo to its cast members that Rivers of Light, the nighttime show at Animal Kingdom, has permanently closed, as well as Primeval Whirl in the same park and Stitch’s Great Escape at Magic Kingdom (which I thought had already closed): https://blogmickey.com/2020/07/brea...-and-stitchs-great-escape-permanent-closures/


Rivers of Light shocks me a bit, given that I remember that being built and it seemed fairly popular, but I won’t say I’ll really miss Primeval Whirl; both sides were among my personal least favourite coasters, and I know my entire family had a shared disdain of it. My dad’s comment upon hitting the brake run of “out of the 69 coasters I’ve ridden (not sure if he’d actually ridden 69 coasters or not), I rank that at number 72” kind of says it all for me! That being said, it’s never good when an attraction closes, especially in circumstances like these.


But what do you think to this news?
 
Primeval Whirl and Stitch's Great Escape should have closed years ago, so this is good news.
 
I'd imagine River of Lights is permanently closed to the same extent that the park hours are permanently reduced, which realistically is for the foreseeable future, almost certainly a year or so until tourist levels van return to normal.

When (not if) the numbers work for late opening again I'm sure the show will return.
 
Matt N said:
Stitch’s Great Escape at Magic Kingdom (which I thought had already closed)
Click to expand...

Brad97 said:
Primeval Whirl and Stitch's Great Escape should have closed years ago, so this is good news.
Click to expand...

Stitch had closed but it wasn't "permanent", officially it had just moved to seasonal operation, but it hadn't actually operated in years. I guess this means it has moved from SBNO to closed. There was a rumour of it being replaced with a Wreck it Ralph attraction but that didn't happen. Its a shame because Alien ExtraTERRORestrial was a great attraction, but the Stich overlay meant it was still too scary for kids but too stupid for adults now.
Although I agree it wasn't the best attraction, the net loss of an attraction without a replacement is never good.

Matt N said:
Rivers of Light shocks me a bit, given that I remember that being built and it seemed fairly popular
Click to expand...
Unfortunately I don't think it was that popular and although the autonomous technology of the floating "drones" was clever, they never quite managed to get them all working, then the larger water screen was never great quality. Then when Disney cut costs and eliminated the live actors I think that was the death knell for the show. Hopefully in a few years once they will come up with a new concept.
 
Uncommon opinion time; as much as Primeval Whirl itself was one of my least favourite theme park attractions, I actually kind of liked DinoRama, in an odd sort of way...
 
D6dEd0k.jpg


I'd say it's always a sad day to see a coaster demolished but I'll make an exception for one of the weakest attractions ever placed in a Disney park.

https://wdwnt.com/2021/10/photos-pr...molition-continues-at-disneys-animal-kingdom/
 
I would say that that’s a sad sight, because as @Rick says, any coaster getting demolished is sad. However, my personal experiences of Primeval Whirl lead me to backtrack on that, because as awful as it sounds, I can’t say I’m personally too sad to see the back of Primeval Whirl. I’ll admit I quite liked DinoRama as an area (it was a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine!), but I wasn’t a fan of Primeval Whirl as a stand-alone attraction at all.

My last ride in April 2019 still sits in my head as memorably dreadful even 2.5 years on (it was quite possibly one of my least favourite coaster rides I’ve ever had), and I’d even go as far as to say that Primeval Whirl was my least favourite attraction in Florida, so through that lens, I’m certainly far less sad that the ride is going than I probably should be, especially given that I’d imagine the replacement Disney will conjure up should be far more fun given the quality of the company’s recent stuff!
 
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