NA'VI RIVER JOURNEY at Disney's Animal Kingdom (FULL RIDE) | Tiger Tom and Wild Will

The Na’vi River Journey is a 4½-minute boat ride through the Pandora jungle. You begin by boarding one of two small, hewn rafts joined together. Each raft has two rows of seats, and each row comfortably fits three adults.

Off you go into the nighttime jungle, past glowing plants and exotic animals. To create these, Disney has used traditional, three-dimensional sets for the flora, coupled with video screens showing the movement of the fauna. Another bit of technology put to great effect is video projection mapping. Here it’s used to project three-dimensional bugs crawling on tree trunks in one of the ride’s middle scenes.

The ride’s big star, however, is the Shaman of Songs, displayed in the ride’s culminating scene. This shaman is easily Disney’s most life-like animatronic ever created. Its arms move with such grace that the only reason to suspect it’s a robot is because you don’t know any real people who’re that coordinated. Yet another nice touch is that the shaman’s voice is off-pitch; Disney didn’t make it sound like a professional singer.

We were not massively impressed with the dark ride. We were not emotionally invested in the ride characters. This ride is obviously built for the long term with nods to future Avatar movies.