The Magical World of Disney

One of the perks of my job is people sometimes give us stuff to show their appreciation. In Orlando we got Disney Park Hopper passes! Which meant that we had 1 day to hit 4 parks. This was not including the water parks because the temperatures were in the 40s and 50s while we were there.

Disney Day began at 8:30 AM when we left our Jamaican abode at the Caribbean Beach Resort to board a bus to Animal Kingdom. I had always thought that Animal Kingdom was essentially the Disney Zoo. While there may be some parts that are like that, we didn’t see anything of the sort. We began our day with a ride on Expedition Everest. I had been told that it was the best ride in any of the parks so I was excited to ride it. It was an awesome ride, but I couldn’t help but feeling a little disappointed…I rode the best ride first, and now the rest of the day would be all downhill. Thankfully I was wrong! Animal Kingdom was not very busy, so we decided to hit some more rides on the way out. Our last AK ride was Dinosaurs! It was terrifying!!!! I can’t believe that is a ride for kids!!!! Lifelike dinosaur robots are everywhere and appear to be attacking your car. Everyone on the team agreed the ride was horrific, but the 4 year old boy in front of us seemed to enjoy it.

After about an hour and a half in Animal Kingdom we boarded a tram to Hollywood Studios. As soon as we got there we headed over to Tower of Terror. I’m not a big screamer on rides, I’m more of a laugher. I laughed until my sides hurt and then we rode it again! It was really fun. What I like about big parks like Disney or Universal is that everything is an experience. It’s not just a collection of rides, but even the wait in line is like part of the ride. For the Tower of Terror the wait time is spent in the lobby of the Hollywood Hotel. That makes the waiting more fun too. After Tower of Terror we got FastPasses for the Rock’n’Roller Coaster. To kill time we went in search of something else to do- I rode the Great Movie Ride. I guess it is the “Great Movie” Ride and not a Great “Movie Ride” because the movies depicted were great, but the ride was not. Then I tried to use my FastPass to get back on the Rock’n’Roller Coaster. I made it through the intro movie and into the ride but everything was at a stand-still in there. So, I had to come back later…again. To kill even more time, we went to see the Indiana Jones stunt show. I’m a big Indy fan so it was fun- it was also nice to sit down for awhile instead of running to the next attraction. After that we were finally able to ride Rock’n’Roller Coaster. It was fun, but not as good as I had expected- I think that’s because of all the build up followed by disappointment that I had endured leading up to the ride.

After Hollywood Studios, it was time for Magic Kingdom. I had been told that there were not any spectacular rides in this park, but I was still looking forward to it, because it’s the quintessential Disney experience. We saw Mickey and Minnie and friends dancing outside of Cinderella’s Castle when we first arrived. Then we got our FastPass for Space Mountain- and we found things throughout the park to do until it was time for us to ride. We rode Pirates of the Caribbean, explored the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse, and rode It’s a Small World. We still had more time before we could use our FastPass so we went over to the Monster’s Inc. Laugh Floor. This was by far my favorite part of the day! The Laugh Floor is a comedy club with the animated characters from Monster’s Inc. The audience is watching the characters on a movie screen doing stand-up comedy. Then the monster asks an audience member some questions and then they do jokes based on their responses. The whole thing was hilarious! Then we rode Space Mountain before heading to Epcot.

It was about 7:00 PM before we arrived at our final park. We still hadn’t eaten dinner and Epcot closed at 9:00 that day. I grabbed a quick bite at the food court and took off on my own to see all I could before closing time. I found Nemo on one ride, I saw myself in the future on Spaceship Earth, and flew a spacecraft in Mission: Space. I didn’t get to do any of the international stuff that Epcot had to offer- just didn’t have enough time. I think I would really enjoy that park- it’s pretty nerdy and so am I so we would get along just fine.

One 13 hour day is not enough time to see all Disney has to offer. I could easily spend a day in each one of the parks, but I was grateful for the time that we did have and the generosity of those that made it happen. I have truly never seen anything like the Disney Empire.