Graduation trip to Orlando & my first trip to Disney!

[jollygreen]

Hello all! I'm a semi long time lurker and recent-ish member to the DISboards. I went to Disney World for the first time in August of 2014 and had a blast! It was my first visit, but my family likes to claim that I was there before, since they went there when my mom was about 6 months pregnant with me. It doesn't count but they like to argue that it does.

This will be a pretty short report, since this trip happened 6 months ago and my memory is a bit fuzzy...

Anywho, I am a long time lover of all things Disney and had been wanting to go to WDW for years. In 2013 my family considered going but it was just too expensive and we ended up going to Universal instead (which is awesome, I love it).

For this trip, I went with my best friend/college roommate, Meghan. We have known each other since 1st grade and her family is like a second family to me. Now, Meghan had been on several trips to WDW as a child but hadn't been in 8 or 9 years. This trip was originally supposed to be just at Universal (Diagon Alley!!!) since we couldn't afford both that and Disney, but our parents were kind enough to help and it turned into a split Universal/WDW trip.

We started talking about going in Jan/Feb of 2014. It would be an early graduation trip to ourselves (we both graduated from Mizzou this past December, yay!). We booked our hotel for Universal in April and then a couple months later added the 2 extra days at WDW and booked a night at All Star Sports. So it became a 3 day Universal, 2 day Disney trip. I was so excited!!!

I'll end this post with a picture of the both of us, I need to go to class!

I'm the one in the Snoopy shirt, Meghan is obviously the other one. I loved meeting Baloo and King Louie! They were so fun!

 

[jollygreen]

Oooookay! Let's get this started!

We left St. Louis around 7am on Aug. 3rd. It was a pretty uneventful trip, drove for 12 hours and stayed the night in Valdosta, GA. Checked in, showered, and went to bed early so we could get an early start on our day. We ate breakfast at the hotel and then were on the road at about 7/8am. We got to our hotel in Orlando around 11am? Something around there. Our hotel room wasn't ready so we just got a parking pass for the hotel and walked to Universal, the hotel was about a mile away. I didn't really take any pictures that day since our stuff was still packed up in the car.

I did manage to get this one on the way in, it's rather fitting.

Our first day at Universal was a blast! We mainly stuck to Islands of Adventure and rode just about everything! We even hopped on the Hogwarts Express and rode over to Diagon Alley. The details there are amazing! The dragon is fantastic and is such a great focal point!

Anyway, we spent the day there and headed back to the hotel around 7pm, checked in, and got settled. We went to bed early since we had our first full park day the next day!

 

[jollygreen]

So on Tuesday and Wednesday (the 5th and 6th) we headed to Universal again.

I took this on the walk to Universal one morning, beautiful day!

Some highlights from the Wizarding World!

I love Diagon Alley! It's so well done!

The dragon is definitely one of the coolest parts.

Weasley's Wizard Wheezes was great

Saw this sign while waiting (for 3 HOURS, holy crap...) for Escape from Gringotts. We got to ride it twice, so that kinda made up for the insanely long wait.

We even met Stan Shunpike and Ernie, and took a peek inside the Knight Bus!

Since we did Islands of Adventure on Monday, we dedicated Tuesday to Universal Studios, and then on Wednesday we did whatever rides we wanted to ride again. We ended up leaving earlier on Wednesday and decided to head out to Downtown Disney!! My first experience on Disney property!! I'll post more about that in a bit!

 

[jollygreen]

Oh Downtown Disney... We did not get along when we were together... With all the construction and being there during part of the busy season, it was crazy. I did not have the best experience there. We spend about 2-3 hours just wandering around DTD, it was okay at first. But then my feet started to hurt and I was getting hangry. World of Disney is insane. We spent about an hour there looking at stuff and getting gifts for our families, I wanted to get all my souvenir shopping out of the way before our 2 days in the parks.

I have almost no pictures of DTD but I did manage to get the Lego Dwarfs, which are pretty awesome!

And here's World of Disney from the outside. I still can't get over how huge that store is...

You can even see the crap ton of people there. Ahhhh. And we parked so far away too. I was not a happy camper. But I was still really excited because I'd be going to Magic Kingdom the next day!!!

 

[jollygreen]

What a wonderful sight!

It was Thursday, August 7th and our first day at WDW!!! Since we only had two days at Disney, we decided we were going to be crazy and attempt to ride almost everything. I will say that we came pretty darn close and we were both exhausted by the end of the trip.

During the planning stages, we kinda did things a little late. We customized our MagicBands about 2 weeks before the deadline, and I don't think we got our tickets until after we got our bands. Even so, we managed to get the FastPasses we wanted. We got a 9am FP for 7DMT, 11am for Splash Mountain, and a 1pm for Space Mountain.

We got to MK pretty early and had to wait for about 15mins until they started letting people on the ferries and monorail. We decided to take the ferry over. It was so cool seeing the castle come into view! I'm sure I have pics of it somewhere, but it's probably buried deep in my photobucket by now.

I was so excited to see the castle in person! It's such an iconic part of Disney.

When we got into MK it was still pretty empty. We headed over to PoTC and the sign said there was a wait of 5mins so we jumped in line. It ended up being closer to 15mins cuz the ride broke down for a bit. After Pirates, I believe we went over to Winnie the Pooh and the Little Mermaid.

Winnie the Pooh was so cute, such a fun little ride!

After we rode those two, it was about time for our first FP of the day! To 7DMT we went! I'm not gonna lie, I think I would have been disappointed if I had to wait for over an hour for that ride... It was fun, but not worth waiting that long.

Anyway, I think we went to BTMRR next and the Buzz after. I know those two were earlier in the day.

I look so focused and determined in that picture, but I did terribly. I'm not good at those kinds of rides, but they're fun! (I'm also wearing my Slytherin hat that I just got)

Next on our agenda was Splash Mountain, our second FP!

Snapped a picture of these two at some point...

After Splash, Meghan and I were both getting hungry, so we grabbed a Mickey pretzel and took a little break. I'm not sure what we did after... I think we just wandered around for a little bit until our 3rd FP for Space Mountain. After Space Mountain we got a 4th FP for Haunted Mansion. We considered riding it earlier but it was a 45min wait and we didn't have time.

When we got off of Haunted Mansion it was about 3:30pm and we decided to head on over to Hollywood Studios!

 

[jollygreen]

Helloooooo Hollywood!!

I want to say that we got there around 4pm. Shortly after we arrived, it started to rain. And I mean rain. Buckets. So we quickly got under an overhang and pulled out our ponchos and then headed over to our first ride in HS!

I gotta say, the rain was great. HS wasn't that crowded to begin with, but when it started to rain, crowds thinned even more! The wait for ToT was only about 15mins! After that we headed over to RnR, that was a longer wait, the rain was starting to let up too. After RnR we wandered around for a while. We wanted to do TSMM but it had a long wait and we couldn't get a FP for it. We ended up with a FP for Star Tours at 6pm.

AT-AT!!

Since we didn't really feel like doing anything else in HS, we decided to head back to MK!

We stopped by a kiosk to get another FP and got one for Buzz at 9pm. After that we were both hungry and grabbed some dinner at The Friar's Nook, who doesn't love some mac & cheese?

After we ate, we went into some of the shops on Main Street. I saw this guy and really wanted to get him, but I had already spent enough money...

After looking in some stores we wanted to ride Peter Pan, but the wait was just waaaaay too long. We ended up on the Mad Tea Party, which was so fun! We spun ourselves so fast I could barely see!

By the time we got off of that, it was time for our final FP of the day, Buzz!! I lost again...

We headed on over towards Main Street for Wishes and caught the tail end of the parade.

I don't have any good pictures of Wishes. My camera would not focus and I had some tall people in front of me, as well as children on shoulders....

After Wishes we headed on out, took the monorail over to the TTC got in my car and drove back to our hotel. We had to get up early the next morning so we could check out of that hotel, drive over to All Star Sports, and check in there.

 

[jollygreen]

Friday was our last day at Disney

But before we could get started, we had to check out of one hotel, travel to another, and check in there. We couldn't check in at the time, so we just got a parking permit and drove on over to Animal Kingdom!

We got there early and had to wait about half an hour before the park opened. Once it did we headed over to our first ride!

That was a pretty cool ride! After Dinosaur, we went over to Expedtion Everest. We had a FP for 9:30 but the wait was only about 5-10mins, so we ended up riding it twice!

I like trying to make faces for the camera!

After that, we were getting a little hungry since we had to eat breakfast so early, so we took a little break and had a snack. I believe after that, we just wandered around for a little and decided to get in line to meet Baloo and King Louie!

I manged to get this while waiting to meet them!

Our next FP was for Kali River Rapids, so we headed over there. I was a bit bummed that I didn't really get wet. The lady across from me was drenched and only my legs got a little wet. After that, we had some time to kill before our next FP so we took in the sights. Our last FP was for Kilimajaro Safaris at 11:30am.

I love animals and we weren't quite ready to leave AK after the safari, so we wandered through the two trails.

Never seen a bat that big before...

So after we walked through the trails, we decided it was time to leave and head over to Epcot!

 

[jollygreen]

We arrived at Epcot pretty early in the afternoon and went to Test Track. The single rider line wasn't too bad so that's what we did! After TT, we went and did Mission: Space, which is really cool! At some point we got a FP for Spaceship Earth at 5:30pm, so we had some time to kill.

After riding a couple of rides, we started our way through the World Showcase! Our first stop was Mexico, where we ran into the #1 Duck!

We didn't spend all that much time in the World Showcase, we pretty much just walked through it. We did stop in Germany to get something for our friend who wasn't able to come with us and also stopped in France to get an ice cream martini!

After wandering through the Showcase, we went over to Nemo!

We wandered around the aquarium part until it was time for our Spaceship Earth FP.

After Spaceship Earth, we were both tired and decided we would head back to the hotel and check in. We were hoping to be able to grab some food and relax by the pool for a little bit before retiring to our room. That didn't happen.

When we got to All Start Sports around 6:30, there were about 6 other parties ahead of us that needed to check in. It ended up taking over an hour for us to be able to check in. I was really annoyed and not in a good mood. So by the time we finally got checked in we were starving and headed to the food court, which took another 30 minutes to even get any food and sit down... The whole thing was just so frustrating. By the time we finished eating it was almost 9pm. So we didn't get to go to the pool. We went to my car and drove over to our room, showered, and went to bed. Not how I wanted to spend my last night.

 

[jollygreen]

We woke up really early on Saturday because we had a 7am reservation at Chef Mickey's!! We groggily got ready and Meghan drove us over to the Contemporary.

We had a good breakfast and ate tons of food. We even got a cupcake since we were there celebrating our graduation! We didn't want to leave, but we needed to get out on the road, we had a 16 hour drive ahead of us!

That 16 hour drive turned into an 18 hour drive because there was terrible traffic and it was raining heavily from about the middle of Georgia, through Tennessee and Kentucky. It started to let up once we got into Illinois.

Overall, I had an amazing time! We were able to ride almost everything we wanted in Disney, except for Peter Pan, Soarin, and TSMM. It was a rather tiring trip and we didn't get to take our time in the parks, so we've decided to head back to Disney in December of this year! We'll have 5 days in the park and MVMCP to go to! I'm excited and cannot wait to head back and really take it all in!