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This was the first time using a travel agent. I don’t know why I haven’t used this service before. Gary Patel was very supportive and made me feel at ease. He allowed me to enjoy my holiday without any worries. Definitely will book through Gary again.
So pleased I booked with yourselves. Very professional, knowledgeable and most important to me, easy to contact and a quick response to queries. Even during my holiday. I will definitely be booking future holidays with you and it definitely takes the pain away from having to scroll through lists of hotels and resorts myself which is exhausting. Thank you DialAFlight, so glad I found you!
All perfect!
Have been using your company for years and have always had first class service.
Excellent service as always. I can’t praise the company highly enough and Jerry who deals with our arrangements is exceptional!
Justin was always there to answer any questions and put our minds at rest before we went. All the fine tuning meant we had a superb holiday.
Can’t recommend DialAFlight enough. From first contact to returning home everything went as planned. Thank you Bobby.
All went like clockwork, no problems
Great service provided by Adam Siu who was very helpful and informative. I did in fact recommend his services to friends and family.
Leo and Craig were super responsive to my queries on extending my stay and Leo was very helpful and quick at getting my trip booked initially.
Tip top as usual
Great service yet again
Everything went perfectly.
From the start to the end of my trip everything went very well.
Everything went smoothly and was excellent. Thank you to Neil Frost who arranged it all for us.
Everything arranged perfectly
Hotel was good. Assistance at Birmingham airport very poor and at Doha. Phuket assistance was good. Will not fly with Qatar again. A stupid women picked the wrong bag up but got my bag back on 15th March. This was not your fault
Absolutely amazing customer service
First class service
Smooth as always.Thankyou Harvey.
Thank you Bruce for all your help, including rearranging my return flights.
Brody once again has provided excellent service and planned our holiday to perfection
Everything worked as clockwork
All staff are amazing and efficient. I can’t thank you enough and Marie who was the main person I deal. Always a pleasure booking with DialAFlight
Have booked holidays through you on a number of occasions and fully expect to use you in the future
Edward Scudder is a star - above and beyond. Quality service
Great customer service as always.
The Rixos in my opinion is a little tired. The staff were very, very good and the cleaning was excellent. Having stayed at the Rixos in Abu Dhabi I was a little disappointed with this one. But we enjoyed our holiday
Annabelle and Harry are very professional and friendly. Except for a mistake by Turkish Airlines, everything went smoothly
No pick up at airport in Seychelles
Some of this flight might be intense, but trust your guide and be brave.' The words of warning came from Dr Jackie Ogden as our group gathered in the Link Chamber of the Pandora Conservation Initiative. We had already been through the Genetic Matching Room and been decontaminated for micro-parasites, and were being given the final sequence of instructions before being let loose on the alien planet.
THE ADVENTURE BEGINS
With the final motivational message of 'Rise to the challenge!' we were swooping off across the otherworldly terrain and lush foliage of Pandora on the back of a Mountain Banshee, the gigantic dragon-like beast from Alpha Centauri that eats people for breakfast.
Fortunately - or unfortunately, depending on your level of bravery - all this excitement was purely man-made. Or, we should say more accurately, Disneymade. Because we were in the Animal Kingdom theme park in the heart of Walt Disney World, Orlando.
A WHOLE NEW WORLD
Pandora: The World Of Avatar is the latest attraction built by the House of Mouse - with the help of film-maker James Cameron - in its vast Florida resort. It has taken seven years to complete.
While some Disney die-hards doubted the wisdom of such an obvious film franchise being successfully shoe-horned into this most naturalistic of parks, the end result is a 12-acre immersive environment that is so packed with features and special effects it would take a small book rather than one article to list them all.
It starts with the Floating Mountains that seemingly hover over the area - gigantic, 156ft-tall rockworks that are complete creatures and waterfalls – and continues through a junglelike panorama of immense complexity, studded with the bioluminescent plants from the 2009 movie that are all recreated in amazingly painstaking detail. They include some examples that react to touch and movement using specially developed sensors.
Cleverly hidden among the alien terrain - which mixes artificial plants with real ones from Hawaii and Africa - are two contrasting rides that take the story of Avatar into the future, 100 years after the war between Earth's Resource Development Administration and the indigenous Na'vi people.
RIDE OF YOUR LIFE
The Na'vi River Journey is a meandering boat ride through the Pandoran jungle, usingwith vegetation, a mix of animatronics and screen projections to create a stunningly realistic series of encounters with the flora, fauna and people. It takes an ecofriendly approach, highlighting conservation principles and real-world issues such as habitat destruction.
After this the action intensifies - Avatar Flight Of Passage kicks things up several notches with the aforementioned simulator ride in the company of Dr Ogden. Sitting astride a kind of stationary bike (and equipped with 3-D glasses), riders seemingly dive, twist and turn in through a long whirl over Pandora, taking in the sights and sounds that made the film such a visual extravaganza.
There also ought to be a special award for the Blueberry Cream Cheese Mousse with its neon blue a there is such a thing as alien looking food, this is it.
Even James Cameron was apparently initially surprised at the huge scale of Disney's plans when they approached him with the idea of Avatar Lane. He said: 'I thought we were going to be talking about creating an attraction. Disney’s vision when they came to me was to create a land.'
ART & ENGINEERING
It has been reported that the area cost up to 500-million dollars to complete. It features music composed by the late James Horner and Simon Franglen, based on the original score from Avatar.
The final word, though, deserves to come from Disney's Zsolt Hormay: 'We had to use a lot of experts to help us with the technology. It needed a lot of different skills. It melds art and engineering. It is like finishing a painting, only in three dimensions - and with a lot of engineering.'
First published in the Mail on Sunday - January 2018
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