Disney must be in love with these types of rides since they always seem to have building one at each of their parks. Well, in a sense I can’t blame them since like Dumbo, it’s a very compact ride and it’s definitely visually appealing, fitting in with the whole, light-hearted dinosaur theme established in the area with the sleek, cartoonish dinosaurs soaring high above the ground filled with smiling kids believing they can actually fly. But just one comment- why didn’t Disney choose a dinosaur that could actually fly instead of the triceratop, a large dinosaur incapable of flight?
These rides will always immensely popular with kids, and this one is certainly no different. Some of these like Dumbo and Astro garner 20-30 minute waits, which simply is an outrage for this type of attraction in my opinion, but thankfully this was only a one cycle wait when I rode it since otherwise I would have never even considered riding these dinos. Still, it does suffer from fairly low capacity, but loading is pretty darn fast, even by Disney’s standards.
Inevitably this will be compared to Dumbo since they both are almost identical with a few differences. However, I slightly like Dumbo better simply because it lacks the nostalgia of Dumbo and it doesn’t look as appealing. Really, the only things this has on Dumbo are that it has a longer cycle and the ability to tilt the dinosaurs. The ability to tilt the dinosaurs really wasn’t all that noticeable, but I thought it was unique (well until I rode Aladdin at Magic Kingdom which had the exact same ability) for this type of ride. Honestly the vertical movement is much more enjoyable. The other point is the cycle. Dumbo is notorious for giving cycles less than a minute long, but this one had a decent cycle that I’d say was probably around a minute and a half long or so.
I would have never rode this with a line and I probably never will have a thought of riding this again since it’s just so dull and unoriginal in my opinion. Sure it tilts back and forth, but as I mentioned the effect really isn’t all that noticeable and the rest of the ride simply is nothing special or noteworthy like the many other great attractions Disney features throughout their parks. For kids at Animal Kingdom this is a must since it’s one of the few tame non-animal attractions they offer. Heck, even if I were to choose between Aladdin, Dumbo, Astro, and this, I’d take the first three before riding this attraction.
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