My Overdue Disney Report

Ben and I went to Disney World last weekend. I had scheduled the trip during the previous month as part of his Valentine’s gift, since he had never been. We had previously tried to plan a trip in 2006, but it fell through.

We had a slightly bumpy flight down to Florida. After getting off the plane, we were greeted with a very long line for Disney’s Magical Express. This is a bus that, like all Disney transportation, is provided gratis for guests staying in Disney resorts. The line moved quickly enough, however, and soon we were on our way to the Pop Century resort.

Check-in went fairly smooth. We were placed in the ’90s building, aka as far away as possible from everything. But, really, the walk wasn’t that bad. After checking out the room, we hopped a bus over to Epcot.

I hadn’t been to Epcot since I was 7, so I’m less familiar with where things are. I downloaded a handy Epcot map application on my iPhone (and today I downloaded an update that had GPS support…that would have come in so handy!). The first thing we did was get a fastpass for Soarin’. They were going quickly and the time on the pass was from 8:20-9:00.

Next we took a stroll through the World Showcase. Ben bought some candy in Japan, and I paused for pictures in France and Italy. We had lunch reservations at Tutto Italia at 3:00, and we arrived with perfect timing in Italy. For lunch, I ordered the lasagna and Ben had the linguine with clams. We also ordered a bottle of Chianti to go with our meal. My lasagna serving was enormous, but I managed to down most of it and some “gelato” (I’m not convinced it was really gelato) for dessert. Ben’s dessert were these creampuff things with vanilla bean gelato in them. They were really good. Both of our desserts had a chocolate “Happy Valentine’s Day” piece in them. After finishing off our bottle of wine, we continued our tour of the world.

We got a Fastpass for Maelstrom in Norway and then made our way back to Future World, where we got in line for Test Track. I then discovered that I had lost my Maelstrom Fastpass. Still don’t know what happened to that. After Test Track, we rode Mission: Space (on the Orange Team). By this point, it was about 6:00, so we took the bus back to the hotel to rest for a bit. At 7:30, we headed back to the park. We rode Soarin’, which was pretty cool, and then found a spot for the fireworks. Being short, I couldn’t see most of what was going on at the water level, but the stuff in the sky was really cool.

We had thought we might go over to Jellyrolls at Boardwalk after this, but we were too tired, so we just went back to the hotel to sleep.

The next morning, Mickey’s wake-up call woke me up bright and early and we headed down to MGM–err, Hollywood–Studios. (I’m sorry. It will always be MGM to me.) We got a Fastpass for the Tower of Terror and rode the Rockin’ Rollercoaster. Ben enjoyed it so much that we got a Fastpass for it as soon as we got off. Then we went on Tower of Terror, which I had never been on, and was really, really fun.

We headed over to the other side of the park to check out Star Tours and Muppet-Vision 3D. Then we ate lunch at Toy Story’s Pizza Planet (love those aliens). And then we went on the Rockin’ Rollercoaster again. All while trying to avoid the High School Musical 3 commotion in the center of the park.

We headed back to the hotel to rest for a bit, and then went over to Magic Kingdom. We rode Pirates of the Caribbean first, which was interesting with all the new Captain Jack Sparrow additions that hadn’t been there before. Then we got a Fastpass for Thunder Mountain, and got in line for Splash Mountain. However, while we were in line, we decided that we’d do Splash Mountain later, as we had plenty of time (it was an Extra Magic Hours night) and the line was long, so we went on Haunted Mansion instead. After that, our Fastpass time was up for Thunder Mountain, so we went on it next.

Then we headed into Fantasyland for Mickey’s Philharmagic and to meet Ariel at her grotto. Meeting Ariel was easily the longest line we stood in the entire weekend, but I got two great photos with her. Then it was to Tomorrowland! We tried to get Fastpasses for Space Mountain, but it was closed for maintenance, so we got them for Buzz Lightyear instead. And then went on Stitch’s Great Escape (let me tell you, it was a great improvement over the super scary Alien Encounter thing that used to be there, although slightly cheesy and probably not worth going on again, heh). Then, I thought the fireworks were to start at 8:00, so we found a spot with a good shot of the castle. And waited. Apparently the parade started at 8. We did not have a good spot to see it. We kept waiting. We missed our Buzz Lightyear Fastpass time. Finally, at 9 the fireworks started. And they were to the left of the castle and completely blocked by a tree. We tried walking around to find a better spot, but it started raining. After the fireworks were over, we were both tired, wet, and cranky, and decided to call it a night. Yes, I was sad that we didn’t get to go on Space Mountain and Splash Mountain, but we were starting to bicker from being so tired so it was a better decision to go back to the hotel.

The next morning, Stitch and Mickey woke me up super early so that we could make our breakfast reservations at Chef Mickey’s over at the Contemporary resort. We ate lots of yummy breakfast foods and got our pictures taken with Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald, and Pluto. Then it was back to the hotel to check out. We were meeting Ernie and Jen, so we played a bit in the arcade while we waited for them.

When they arrived, we drove down to Downtown Disney to browse through the shops. They ate lunch at Wolfgang Puck’s, but I was still stuffed from Saturday (okay, and Sunday and breakfast that morning) so I just nibbled at some bread. But I did get some fudge at the next place we went. We walked around the Lego store and marveled at all the cool stuff (like the wall of Lego people!). We headed over to the World of Disney, and I bought some sparkly Minnie ears and a Stitch doll. Ben bought Mickey’s sorcerer’s hat and some shot glasses. I also purchased my brother Steve’s Christmas present, haha. We browsed through some more shops and Ben and Ernie ate again (how do guys have such bottomless pits for stomachs?). Finally, we left Downtown Disney and went to the airport for our flight home. This flight was less bumpy, and we arrived on time.

Anywho, that’s about it. Overall, it was very, very fun, and very, very exhausting. Which I knew it would be. Only crazy people like us would try to do Disney in three days (really about 2 days total).