Traveling to Walt Disney World
I was able to take a five day trip down to Florida over Fall Break in 2018, with three days in the parks and the other two for traveling and doing other on-site activities [Disney Springs & Video Arcade].
Every Disney trip is going to look different. You will need to figure out what is important for YOUR trip and what you have time for. When I went with my friend, hitting as many rides, and good food spots we could was our goal for the trip. We hardly spent any time in our room. We loved having the park hopper, and used it to our full advantage, along with the fast passes and Disney Park app. It was a fun, but non-stop running from site-to-site kind of trip.
We are already planning another trip to Walt Disney World this November, and are looking forward to visiting the new Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge in Hollywood Studios. We will do a six day park hopper [you can’t keep us away from Magic Kingdom] and take our time doing everything. We would feel more free to go back to the room during the heat of the day, to rest up, take a nap, or to just visit the pool.
DAY 1 | Disney Springs
Woke up on Thursday morning, eager to head down to Walt Disney World. My sister, Gaby, drove me over to my friends house, where her mom was going to drive us to the airport. Had a late breakfast there, before heading out the door. The excitement for the trip was building. We loaded our suitcases into the van, and drove over to the airport listening to Disney music. When we arrived at the airport, we checked our bags in, and walked over to the Chick-Fil-A for lunch. Yeah, we tend to eat a lot. After lunch, we went through TSA, and headed to our gate area to wait for our flight. About 30 minutes before our flight, we grabbed Starbucks. I had an iced Flat White with vanilla. We flew SouthWest, and my friend was in group A, while I was in group B, so she boarded first and saved a seat for me. Good thing too, ‘cause it was a booked flight.
On the flight down we watched, The Incredibles, on her iPad. Drank ginger ale, and ate our airplane snacks. I had the window seat on the way down, so I was watching the scenery pass by, and would try to guess where we were. It is my favorite flying game. As we got closer, my excitement for Disney built. I hadn’t been in about six or seven years, so I was excited to finally be back. I must admit, I definitely let out a little squeal when the airplane’s wheels hit the runway. We grabbed our luggage in baggage claim, and headed over to the Disney Magical Express area to board our bus to the resort. Thankfully, our bus was waiting for the last few people before heading over to the All-Star resorts. We had our magic bands scanned, and we were off. Since we were already pre-checked into our resort, we were able to go directly from the bus to our resort room, since your room key is loaded into your magic band.
We geeked out over the room, settled in for a bit before heading out to Disney Springs for Starbucks and some dinner. We ended up having Blaze Pizza for dinner, after wandering around for awhile trying to locate the place [it is kinda hidden]. Afterwards we did some shopping at Sephora for paper face masks, and we visited the big Disney store so I could pick up my rose gold Mickey ears for the trip. Once we were done shopping, we headed over to Sprinkles to get cupcakes out of their ATM and headed back to our room for the night.
DAY 2 | Magic Kingdom & Hollywood Studios
We woke up early to be at Magic Kingdom for rope drop, and we would have made it for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, but my friend’s park tickets weren’t loaded correctly to her magicband, so she had to get that all sorted out first. While she was getting that sorted, I wandered down Main Street taking in the sites, and took pictures of the castle in the early morning light, before heading back for my friend. At this point, most of the major rides had 30+ minute wait times, so we did It’s A Small World while waiting for the rest of the park to open up, as we really wanted to go ride, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad as our first big ride.
Afterwards we did Mickey’s Philhamagic, Haunted Mansion, Buzz Lightyear, Under the Sea — Journey of The Little Mermaid, Space Mountain, Pirates of the Caribbean, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train [we were able to snag FassPasses at the last minute], and Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room. We also stopped for Mickey Waffles at Sleepy Hollow Refreshments for a morning snack, grabbed Dole Whip Floats for a snack at Aloha Isle, and went to Casey’s Corner for lunch before heading over to Hollywood Studios for the afternoon. Granted it took us over an hour to get there, as a bus didn’t come for over an hour to pick us all up.
Once we finally made it to Hollywood Studios, we were hot and exhausted from waiting for our bus. So we wandered around for a bit trying to locate Toy Story Land. We waited in a too long line for Alien Swirling Saucers, while waiting for our FassPasses to Toy Story Midway Mania. Afterwards, we decided to stop at Starbucks for some cold drinks, before heading back early to our hotel room. The heat was too much to handle, and we had had enough at this point. We just chilled in our room for a bit before heading to the video arcade for about an hour. Afterwards we grabbed dinner and spiked milkshakes at the resort, and brought it back to our room to just relax and watch movies.
DAY 3 | Epcot & Magic Kingdom
We didn’t wake up as early as the day before, as the heat really got to us. Also, I discovered on this trip that I don’t sleep well with people who snore. Random fun fact. Anyhow, we ate some breakfast in our room before heading out to Epcot. First thing we did was Spaceship Earth, which is the ride inside of the big golf ball. Afterwards we headed over to Frozen Ever After, as the ride didn’t have a super long wait time — compared to the wait time was about halfway through the line till the rest of the day. Then we hopped back to do Soarin, before walking the World Showcase and doing the Wine & Food Festival.
Once it was about 1p, we decided to head over to Magic Kingdom as there was too many people at the showcase, and too many adults were already tipsy from the Wine & Food Festival [thanks to it being Fall Break and a Saturday]. Besides, Magic Kingdom quickly became our happy place on that trip. So we hopped on the Monorail [my first time], to head over to Magic Kingdom. We would have taken the Monorail into MK, but the line was down for the moment so we took the Ferryboat over.
Once we knew we were heading over, we snagged a FassPass for Pirates of the Caribbean that was good right away, then grabbed dinner at Pecos Bill Tall Tale Inn and Cafe and a Dole Float to share from Aloha Isle. While we ate dinner and rested, we browsed for our next FassPass we finally snagged one for Jungle Cruise later that night. So since we were hot, I convinced my friend to stand in an hour-and-a-half long line for Splash Mountain to help us cool down. It was definitely the longest line we stood in the whole trip. But you guys, we got to sit in the front of the log so we got drenched — perfect for a really hot day. Also the views from the ride was glorious, since the sun was starting to set. Afterwards, we headed over to Jungle Cruise and had a disappointing ride, as our boat driver didn’t have good delivery for her jokes so it was a kinda boring ride. While we stood in line for Jungle Cruise, we were able to get FassPasses for The Many Adventure of Winnie the Pooh before the start of the Ever After fireworks. After the fireworks, we did The Barnstormer three times within 15/20 minutes before calling it a night.
DAY 4 | Animal Kingdom & Magic Kingdom
We woke up late on Day four of our trip at about 9:30a in the morning. Our first Fasspass for the day was Expedition Everest in Animal Kingdom at 9:30a. Thankfully, the ride was down for over an hour that morning, so we got a refund for our first FassPass of the day, so we didn’t miss out for sleeping in. We still got ready as fast as we could, and headed out to Animal Kingdom so we could make our FassPass for N’avi River Journey.
As we approached the park, I started getting giddy with excitement as I had dreamed of visiting Animal Kingdom since it first opened up back in 1998. So it was fun to finally visit the park. Plus the icing on the cake was that The Bare Necessities from The Jungle Book was playing at the entrance. It definitely made the moment even more magical. I went skipping through the entrance and after walking down the path into the park saw the Tree of Life — I definitely shed a few tears of happiness.
We walked over to the Pandora area to do our first fastpass, N’avi River Journey. Personally, I don’t think the ride is worth waiting in a super long line. The Imagineering of the ride and the area is definitely impressive, but as a whole I’m not a fan of Avatar. Afterwards we walked over to Asia to do our FassPass for Expedition Everest — definitely my favorite rollercoaster in Disney [at least of the ones I have ridden]. We loved it so much that after doing our Kilimanjaro Safaris tour, we came back to do the single rider line twice.
The Kilimanjaro Safaris tour was fun, but slightly ruined by these two college girls where one of them was ranting about an ex-boyfriend the entire time next to us. Then making very self-centered comments about the whole experience. Sadly, that is what I remember most about that experience. Not very fun.
We wandered over to the Festival of the Lion King area, where I got my Mickey Ice-Cream sandwich [I picked the cookies & cream flavor] of the trip. After we finished our snack we got in line for the mini-broadway type show, Festival of the Lion King. It was a glorious show, and the right amount of interaction with the characters! Definitely recommend that you go see it, if you have the chance. Once we were done we grabbed lunch over at Flame Tree Barbecue, before heading over to Magic Kingdom for Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party.
There was a bit of a line to get into Magic Kingdom, as everyone was arriving for the party at about the same time. We got our party wristbands, trick-n-treating bags, and our first handful of candy right at the start. Again, we had a FastPass for Pirates of the Caribbean, so we went on the ride again so we could later compare it with the event changes later in the night. But before we got into doing all of the rides, we grabbed a snack at the Sleepy Hollow Refreshments. Then we went and did Splash Mountain twice in a row, were we got drenched once again as we had front row seats. But this time we put our glasses in the backpack and put on our rain ponchos, as we were better prepared this time around for the ride. Again, the view was glorious as the sun was setting — highly recommend going at dusk for this ride.
We then stood in a long line for Peter Pan’s Flight, before trying Space Mountain for one last time — still not a fan of the ride (even though I loved this ride like eight years ago). Then we tried our hand again at scoring big at Buzz Lightyear, before heading over to Fantasyland to do Mad Tea Cup Party and Winnie the Pooh we grabbed root beer floats at Auntie Gravity’s Galactic Goodies.
Afterwards we headed over to the Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean to see the special additions just for the party — definitely worth it! We also went and picked up the allergy-free trick-n-treat bags, as we both have peanut allergies, and most of the candy we received that night was of the peanut variety. Then we closed out the night with a late dinner at Pecos Bill Tall Tale Inn and Cafe, and also grabbed Mickey Pretzels and did Big Thunder Mountain Railroad twice before heading out. Of course, as we were leaving we grabbed our last Dole Floats at Aloha Isle to finish the trip on a high-note!
Wow! I didn’t realize that we snacked so much till I was writing this all out. As it felt in the moment that we had hardly eaten that day, which is kinda true as we mostly had sugary treats.
DAY 5 | Traveling Back Home
Again, we started off our day late. We wore ourselves out from doing so much, and from walking so much in the heat that we were exhausted at the end of our trip. We quickly packed our bags and headed to the front desk to check-out and find out if we could get on an earlier bus back to the airport.
As we waited for our bus, we took all of our stuff over to the video arcade to play some games. Once we got to the airport, I made a quick visit to the Disney Store to pick up some pins, before checking into our flight. We went through security and grabbed lunch at Chipotle and milkshakes at McDonalds, before finding some seats at an empty gate to chill at while we waited for our flight. The flight back was less exciting, as it meant going back to real life, and the temperatures had also dropped in Indy. Not fun.
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Once we were back home, we definitely dreamed about going back to Disney. We didn’t think we would be going back within 13 months, we thought it would be more like two or so years till we made it back. But we discovered Costco travel, and our looking to book our trip our next trip in November of this year. We can’t wait to see all of the fireworks shows, be super extra and have our own hotel rooms (so I can sleep better this time around), have dole whip every day, and visit Magic Kingdom again. We might even book a sit-down restaurant this time around and just ENJOY the whole Disney experience.
Walt Disney World Food —
Mickey Waffles with Strawberries and Whipped Cream at Sleepy Hollow Refreshments — It was definitely magical eating Mickey Waffles for breakfast while wandering through Fantasyland. I would recommend doing this at least once during your trip to Disney.
Casey’s Corner Chili Hotdog, French Fries with Mac-n-Cheese and Bacon — We ended up splitting this for lunch, and there was enough for the two of us. The hotdog was good. While the french fries with mac-n-cheese and bacon was just the cherry-on-the-cake for that meal. Definitely a fan.
Dole Whip Floats from Aloha Isle — Personally, I loved the vanilla best, with swirl coming in second for my Dole Whip float. Which btw, we had everyday while in the parks.
Mickey Ice-Cream Sandwich — Nothing out of this world, but definitely my favorite of the Mickey shaped snacks.
Baked Mac-n-Cheese with Puled Pork at Flame Tree Barbecue — Super good! This one is a smaller portion, so you might not want to share this dish as it is very tasty! Definitely will get this again.
Sweet and Spicy Chicken Waffle Sandwich at Sleepy Hollow Refreshments — Super spicy, but good. Highly recommend that you have some dairy with this, to help combat the spiciness.
Vanilla Ice Cream Churro Sandwich at Sleepy Hollow Refreshments — This was rather tasty, and pairs well with their Sweet and Spicy Chicken Waffle Sandwich.
Mickey Pretzel with Cheese Sauce — Not a fan of the Mickey pretzel at all. I definitely won’t be repurchasing this the next time I’m at Walt Disney World. Also, the cheese sauce wasn’t too good either. All-n-all I found it all very bland.
Fajita Platter at Pecos Bill Tall Tale Inn and Cafe — We ended up getting this platter twice, as it is that good. You also get plenty of food to share with an other person, plus there is a fixings buffet to help load up your tacos.
Fish & Chips at Yorkshire County Fish Shop — This has been a favorite of mine for a number of years now. It is something I look forward to every trip to Epcot.
Strawberry Tart at Les Halles Boulangerie-Patisserie — So light and airy. Not too sweet, and just perfect for a light snack.
