Thursday, May 26, 2011

Hop on the Monorail!

Fairly soon after we booked our trip, Kyle and I had to figure out where we wanted to make our sit down dining reservations. We very quickly realized that meant we needed to pick out our park days first. Yep, I totally messed with you there. Promised a food post, but that’s the NEXT post. This one is where we’ll be and when. We will park hop some, but we had to plan in what parks we’d mainly be at for the day to plan meals.

The past 3 trips I’ve made to Walt Disney World have been with my sister, brother-in-law, niece, and nephew. I have loved every minute of those trips, but planning an adults only trip is very different. You don’t have to go to ride Dumbo as soon as you get into Magic Kingdom. You can go to any park on your first day, and you both know it actually is Walt Disney World. You don’t have to stop for naps midday (but stopping to go swim is totally ok), and no one is worried about rides being too scary for anyone. That’s a little fib, but I’ll explain that in a later post. It’s different. Not better. Different. I’ll miss the kids. I’ll miss little hands sneaking into mine to walk hand in hand through the parks as we sing “Imagination”. There’s other things I’ll miss too, but this trip will still be amazing.

Moving on.

We set up our park days over instant messenger and were able to move on to meal planning afterwards. I remember at one point Kyle said something to me like, “you know you can have an opinion on this too!” We, thankfully, agreed so much on park and meal plans that it was fairly easy to figure out. I wasn’t agreeing just to be nice… it was just like he was saying exactly what I was thinking. Ha!

The surprising part of our picks for Park days is that we chose to never have a full day at Magic Kingdom, the park most people think is called “Walt Disney World”. We’ve decided it can be our bookends, our travel days. We’ll be there around 1 or 2 the afternoon we arrive, and neither of us fly out until 8 pm-ish, so we’ll go there our last day. That way we can see Wishes (and Main Street Electrical Parade if we decide to stop for it), but we can spend full days at other favorite parks.

*More videos to come in future posts!*

Kyle and I both LOVE Epcot, so we’re spending 2 full days there, and we’re hoping to see Illuminations: Reflections of Earth (the fireworks show) twice. I can’t wait to spend more time in World Showcase!

It just so happens that we’ll be at WDW for the last Star Wars Weekend. Exciting, right?! Ummm….hmmmm….welllllll… actually.... I hadn’t really seen all the Star Wars films (or paid attention to them), so to prep for this I had to watch those. Did you know the Storm Troopers are the bad guys?! I didn’t until I watched! They wear white! What bad guys wear white?! *whistles innocently* Right. So we’ll be spending a day at Disney’s Hollywood Studios for that but only the one day.

Last trip I realized that I’d been missing out by not going to Disney’s Animal Kingdom, so we’ve got a full day planned there as well. I can’t wait to explore a bit more and see the shows! Oh and the meerkats (pronounced “merkats” by yours truly)! Can’t wait to see those!

So here’s what we have planned (which can always change):
Friday: arrive, Magic Kingdom (see Wishes)
Saturday: Star Wars Weekend at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, dinner in Downtown Disney, & see Yehaa Bob perform at POR
Sunday: Epcot (see Illuminations)
Monday: Disney’s Animal Kingdom, enjoy Downtown Disney (shopping!!)
Tuesday: Rope Drop at Magic Kingdom (I’ll explain on the next post), Epcot (see Illuminations)
Wednesday: Magic Kingdom, depart

*Since I wrote this post, park hours have been extended, so we'll most likely be park hopping even more than we'd originally planned.*

So if this were you, how would you change what we have planned? Are we committing an unforgivable sin by not spending a full day at Magic Kingdom?

Next Post [May 30th]: I’ll actually chat about our dining reservations (and include some of the best links yet)! They’re going to be yummy! Taking bets now: do you think we made any character meal reservations?

6 comments:

  1. I think y'alls plan is about perfect! Seeing as I could spend an entire day at Magic Kingdom and have I think y'all will be fine. Also with the extended hours you have a major PLUS that means shorter lines at night on the good rides like Pirates and Haunted Mansion and a lot better (aka cooler) weather. I think you will love exploring AK. I think it's an awesome place and have always enjoyed it since my first visit. Oh and Expedition Everest just LOVE IT! Even though I've only ridden it once.

    I can genuinely say I am so jealous of your trip! I hope you have a blast! Also I can say going with adults to WDW is an awesome experience y'all can be kids and not worry about kids. Haha! But also since I've never been with small children I don't really know too much but I've loved going grown up with friends or family.

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  2. Rebecca - I *love* that you found I'd written a new blog post before I posted it on Twitter or FB! :D Thanks for checking out my blog. :) This morning we realized some stuff is going to have to change on our Hollywood Studios day, so we can make it to the Hyperspace Hoopla. Haha!

    I'm really looking forward to the later EMH with shorter lines. Thanks for the well wishes! I feel certain that this trip will be epic! :D

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  3. I think there is a boat you can take to downtown disney from your report. You can avoid the Downtown Disney bus stop of boredom; I hate waiting there.

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  4. Keeper - That's one of the perks of POR that I'm really excited about. I agree, the bus stop at DTD totally stinks. I've always envied the people riding the boats. :)

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  5. Not to mention how far out of DTD you have to walk just to get to the crappy bus stop. Ugh.

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  6. txmommy34 - Definitely! That walk back to the busses always seems SO far. I know, obviously, where the water is, but I'm not sure where the dock is where you catch the boat to POR. I think I saw some docks near where we saw the Nerds pj's the first time...

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