I booked (and paid for!) a Disney vacation for Anna for her birthday, back in May. Why? Because she's never been, and that issue needed to be addressed. 🙂 Today, we made the trip to Orlando. The day started too early for my taste (7am), but we really packed it in.
Before I get too far, photos are available here.
We flew Southwest, which was awesome; we'll definitely do that again. The staff was super-friendly, and, since we got there so early, WE GOT TO SIT IN THE EXIT ROW. Since I'm (apparently) quite tall, most airline seats are not (how do you say it) "comfortable," but these rocked.
The entire experience of geting from the airport to the hotel was smooth; we went downstairs in the terminal to a desk, where we were directed to a bus, which drove us to our hotel. We made special reservations for our bags, so we didn't even have to pick those up–they just showed up in our hotel room later!
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Once we got to our hotel, we turned around pretty quickly and took a Disney bus to MGM Studios, which I was interested in, since I'd never seen that park before. Amazingly, there were very few people there–we had no waits on most rides, or, at the very worst, short waits of five minutes or less. I spoke with a park worker who said that the reason is just that kids are back in school; the parks have been that lightly crowded all week! Given that, it sounds like we should have awesome experiences throughout our trip, but I think we'll probably play it safe for the next few days just to be sure.
Those of you who know me realize that I'm not much of a "heights" person, so it will likely come as no surprise to you that I didn't get on the "Tower of Terror". I waited outside while Anna went on it, but that was only for a few minutes since the lines were so short! She, like everyone else, claims that it's "not that bad" and that I should "totally do it," but I don't think that will probably happen. Maybe later in the week. 🙂
Later, we took a boat to the Beach Club resort where we had a fantastic seafood buffet at the Cape May restaurant.
We decided to walk to Epcot, and go through it to get to a bus, which would take us back to our hotel, the Pop Century. We rode Spaceship Earth (cool!) and a new ride called "Soarin'" (cool also!) before braving the crowds and catching the buses back to the hotel. This, of course, was the only long line we waited in all day (and, actually, it only took us about twenty minutes to get through it).
More fun tomorrow!
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