Disney Cruise Fans Visit The World- July 2015

[astronautmom]

Hi Friends!

I'm ready to share my Disney World trip report. I learned a lot while writing my Disney Cruise trip report, and it actually turned into a full-fledged blog. The Dis interface has changed since I wrote that report, but thankfully, my WDW report is already completed on the blog, so I'm hoping it won't take me too long to figure out how to get it over here too.

Aha! The photo worked. So far so good. We took our immediate family to WDW last summer. That's my husband in the orange magicband. I'm in the pink with the fitbit. My oldest son is wearing the red. He was ten years old on our vacation. My daughter (blue) was eight, and my youngest son had just turned six. He's wearing the green magicband.

We stayed at the Caribbean Beach Resort for six nights. We spent a day and a half at Epcot, two days at Magic Kingdom, and one day each at Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom.

I don't put pictures of my kids' full faces on the blog, but just for my fellow Dis'ers, here we are:

It's a picture of us on the jetbridge getting ready to board our plane to Orlando. The kids are wearing white hats they designed themselves with iron-ons. We had them autographed by every character we met, except two. That's the first tip, besides visiting the Disboards, that I would give to anyone planning a trip to Disney World- buy some white hats for autographs. It was our favorite ongoing family activity throughout the parks.

 

[astronautmom]

We told our kids on a Sunday that we were leaving for Disney World that Thursday. They had just finished two months of hard work on a community theatre production and we gave them this gift box to open. They were Disney-fied enough to know exactly what these were:

I had booked our trip about 75 days in advance. This post on my blog tells more about how we decided to go to WDW on what I considered such short notice. (It also has an index to the daily recaps I wrote when we got home.)

In 2014, we spent one night at the Dolphin Hotel and were impressed. (My recap of the Dolphin is here.) We didn't have enough Starwood points to stay there again and I really wanted the ease of a Disney-owned hotel and staying in one resort for the entire vacation. We were able to get a 30% off special at the Caribbean Beach Resort, which was perfect for our family of five with the Murphy bed. We requested Jamaica 45 and got it. Our room was the top left corner in this picture. It was perfect.

We had an early morning flight to Orlando and arrived at the airport about 9:30 a.m. We took the Magical Express to CBR and arrived there at 11 a.m. We were inside Epcot by 1 p.m. and stayed until 7:30 p.m. when we hit our wall of exhaustion. It was a great first day, including half of the World Showcase, Fastpasses to Soarin', the Seas with Nemo, Turtle Talk with Crush, and Spaceship Earth. (The only one that really needed FP+ was Soarin'.) We also met Alice, Mary Poppins, and tried the Phineas and Ferb scavenger hunt thing in the U.K. My complete recap with more photos is here.

 

[astronautmom]

Day 2: Magic Kingdom (Recap on Blog)
We had breakfast reservations at Be Our Guest, and got to enter the park 50 minutes before it opened.

Even though the breakfast at BOG is considered quick service on the dining plan, we didn't have the meal plan, and it felt like a sit down meal to us. Because we were paying out of pocket, we ate counter service for every meal on our trip besides that one. We didn't mind because we had more time in the parks and got to meet all the characters we had hoped for, and more.

We visited Fantasyland, met Ariel and Gaston; Storybook Circus; Haunted Mansion and Frontierland. We had advance fastpasses for Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Peter Pan's Flight.

We saw the Festival of Fantasy Parade and the

We took the monorail to the Polynesian for dinner and also took a swim break at our own resort.
We went back to meet Tinkerbell and to watch Wishes and the entire nighttime spectacular.

I logged 11 miles on my fitbit.

Day 3: Animal Kingdom (Recap here)
Spoiler alert:

We started our day with Kilimanjaro Safaris. We had advance fastpasses for Expedition Everest, Dinosaur, and Kali River Rapids. It didn't rain the whole time, but enough to put a crimp in our plans. Our favorite parts were the Safari, Everest, and the Nemo and Lion King shows. Our least favorite part was It's Tough to be a Bug. We probably would have enjoyed Rafiki's Planet Watch a lot more if it hadn't been raining.

I'd like to return to AK when Avatar land opens and the park stays open later with nighttime shows.

Day 4: Hollywood Studios (Recap here)
We really liked Hollywood Studios. It would have been even better if we hadn't needed these:

We were rained out of Jedi training, the Honey I Shrunk the Kids Playground, and meeting the guys from Monsters, Inc. We couldn't fit in all the shows and we had mixed reviews on the ones we did see. Fantasmic! got ten thumbs up. Voyage of the Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast were major disappointments. Frozen Sing-Along and Indiana Jones were lots of fun.

We had advance fastpasses for Toy Story Midway Mania, Frozen Sing-Along, and Fantasmic! We took the Ferry to the Boardwalk for Pizza dinner. After Fantasmic, my oldest son and I walked on to Tower of Terror and the Rock 'N Roller Coaster. Loved them.

Another park I would like to visit again in a few years now that new lands are open, and I would hope for no rain.

Day 5: Return to Epcot (Recap here)

If it weren't for the tiered fastpasses, I would say we could do Epcot in one day. We did miss a few things, some of it was due to rain, and some of it was due to not caring that much.

On our last Epcot day, it was raining before we even left the resort.
Four of us rode Sum of All Thrills. The rest of Innoventions was a huge dud.
Four of us did Mission: SPACE, the orange side, no less.
We used Rider Switch Passes on both of those, because my youngest was too short.
We crisscrossed all over the World Showcase and we spent the most time waiting to meet Jasmine and Aladdin in Morocco.

We enjoyed the Lumberjack show in Canada, the Chinese Acrobats, and we visited Club Cool more than once. We got snacks from Kringla Bakeri in Norway and dinner from Sommerhall in Germany.

Our advance Fastpass for Test Track was converted to an "anytime pass" because of the rain, and we were able to ride it later in the day. We watched Illuminations that night. Epcot was probably my least favorite park of the four, but we all had a good time.

Day 6: Magic Kingdom Again (Daytime recap here, Nighttime recap here)

On our last day at the world, we went straight to Tomorrowland and rode Astro Orbiter, Space Mountain, Tomorrowland Speedway, and Buzz Lightyear Spin. We met Cinderella and Rapunzel by standing in line and Elsa and Anna with a Fastpass. We also had fastpasses for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and Enchanted Tales with Belle. Enchanted Tales and the special care we got there was a trip highlight.

We rode the Peoplemover twice, and took a nighttime Jungle Cruise for the second time. We had several hiccups that day, including a Town Hall Mickey that didn't talk and my daughter vomiting. We recovered and stayed that night until the clock struck midnight.

Thanks for reading my brief report. I provided links throughout to my blog that has many more details and pictures. I hope you will forgive me for not copy & pasting the entire thing here.

We are going to Mexico for an all-inclusive vacation this summer, but we do hope to take another Disney Cruise in a couple of years and take the kids back to Disney World when we are all a bit older.