Trip to Walt Disney World – Part 1

If you haven’t been following my Twitter feed you might be wondering why I haven’t updated the blog lately. This is because I have been on vacation at Walk Disney World for the past week. The trip was sort of a graduation present and last vacation before I start work in July. This was a family trip and I was fortunate to have my entire immediate family come along (there was some doubt that my brother would be able to make it).

Day 1: Traveling Down and Relatives

Day one (June 14) was a travel day. Our flight was in the afternoon which was nice since I didn’t want to arrive at the airport at 3 AM for some early flight.  We arrived in Orlando around 4:30 in the afternoon and encountered one of the first Disney tricks before we even left the airport. It is called Disney’s Magical Express. This is a free service for all staying at a Walt Disney World Resort hotel that provides a bus to your hotel at Disney World and complete baggage handling. All you have to do is put special tags on your luggage before you check your bags and Disney takes it from there. You board the bus to your hotel without even going to the baggage claim area. Disney takes your bags from the airport and delivers them to your room in a few hours. That way you can check in and immediately start exploring the resort. It was nice not having to deal with baggage claim and the bus ride is quicker than finding a taxi or other transportation.

When we got to our hotel, the Caribbean Beach Resort, we were greeted by my aunt and uncle that live down in Florida. They have a time share at Disney World and decided to meet us for a couple of days. By the time we checked in and put our bags in our rooms, it was getting late and we were all hungry. We decided to go to Downtown Disney for some dinner. For those of you who haven’t been to Disney World, Downtown Disney is an area with shops and restaurants, and night clubs. It is a popular place to do at night after a day at the parks. We at at Fulton’s Crab house and it was delicious. After dinner we walked around Downtown Disney and browsed the shops and got some ice cream.

Day 2: Epcot

Our original plan for our first full day at Disney World was to go to the Magic Kingdom but we decided against it because we figured it would be very crowded because it was the weekend. Instead we decided to go to Epcot. I really like Epcot because it has a bunch of pretty good thrill rides and the world showcase has some good food. We started by going to the Land pavilion to get a fastpass for the Soarin’ ride. Then we went to the Living Seas to see the new Finding Nemo attractions they had added. The Turtle Talk attraction where you talk to Crush the turtle was quite funny. After that we went over to the other side of future world to Mission: Space and Test Track. I love Mission: Space and did the original intense version, not the wimpy watered down version that they added a couple of years ago. After Test Track we met my cousin who decided to drive to meet us. He lives about an hour away and comes to Disney World a lot so it wasn’t hard for him.  He waited as we used our fastpass for Soarin’. This ride has been in California for a while but is relatively new at Disney World. I thought the ride was amazing. You really feel like you are flying over the California countryside. We ended up doing Soarin’ twice that day.

By the time we were done with Soarin’ it was time for lunch. After lunch we started going around the world in the World Showcase section of the park. The weather started to get bad while we were in world showcase and ducked into many gift shops to avoid the rain. We eventually got around the world showcase and by that time my cousin, aunt, and uncle decided to head home. We said our good bye’s and started to look for a place to eat dinner. We settled on the restaurant in the Japan pavilion. The food was quite good; better than I thought it was going to be. The best part was our seats in the restaurant. We had window seats overlooking the world showcase lagoon where the fireworks show is every night. We had prime seats for the fireworks and didn’t even know it. When 9 PM rolled around the lights dimmed and they pumped the music into the restaurant. The fireworks were amazing and our view was quite possibly the best in the park. After the fireworks, we left the restaurant and headed out of the park and back to our hotel.

Part 2: Coming Soon

In my next post, I go to the Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, and hang out at the pool. Hopefully I will have the post up in the next couple of days.