The Big Disney Trip
A week ago, we were in Orlando. We took our first trip down to Disney World, and it was awesome. Over the next several days, I’ll walk you through the awesomeness of the trip, but I figured I’d start with some overall impressions and logistics.
First, Disney World is awesome. The kids and adults all had a great time. It’s a level above other theme parks. We also took one day to go to Legoland, which was fun, but not on the same level as Disney World.
Our goal for our room was to be able to get to and from the parks as easily as possible. So, we stayed on Disney World property at the Pop Century Resort and requested a room close to the front desk in order to be close to the bus stop. This meant we had very little walking to do on the resort, which worked out very well.
We chose to go now because the girls had several random days off of school without going over spring break or some other time with huge crowds. However, there were still big crowds due to three groups:
- Mardi Gras escapers - growing up in Louisiana, we know that while most folks partake in the Mardi Gras celebrations, a large contingent takes advantage of the time off to go to Disney World.
- Cheerleaders - The UCA National High School Cheerleading Championship was being held at Disney World while we were there, so there were lots of cheerleaders everywhere.
- There were 1,250 girls from Argentina celebrating their 15th birthday (quinceañera). There may have been other quinceañera groups there as well, I’m really not sure. But wow, were they loud and annoying. They stayed at Pop Century so we got to share the bus with them, but thankfully they were not in the same building at the resort as us.
FastPasses are awesome.
I’m a big fan of the Memory Maker package for PhotoPass pictures. More than half the pictures you’ll see here were taken by Disney photographers instead of me.
Extra Magic Hours are awesome as well (at least the morning ones, as that’s all we used). We planned which park we’d go to based on when they had them, and used them every morning at Disney World. Getting into the park early meant no lines for some things, and getting certain access to things we might never have gotten. We really don’t like waking up early, but it was worth it.
For food, we opted to go big or go small. This meant we used our own groceries for most of our food (delivered to the room by Garden Grocer - very cool). We ate breakfast in the room, and Jen packed sandwiches for lunch and more snacks than we could ever eat into little baggies. Then for dinner we threw in some more exciting options (more on that later). Also, this meant we did not do a Disney dining plan. We’d definitely do it this way again.
We booked our trip through a AAA travel agent we found through a friend, who was very helpful. We’d definitely do that again as well.
And now onto the fun.
I’m glad that you loved Disney World — maybe you have joined the rest of us crazy Disney-lovers?
Unlike the “old days”, there really is no distinct off-season at Disney anymore. Some times are definitely higher crowds, but even the lesser crowded seasons are still very crowded.
And those South American teen tour groups! They have become more the norm than the exception. Your observation of that particular group is on-point with those groups in general.
I look forward to the rest of your trip report.