A Disneyland girl in a Disney World! (Trip Report, February 24th – March 4th, 2018)

LizzyS

DIS Veteran
Joined
Sep 16, 2011
Let me preface this by saying that this trip was taken by my husband and myself, ages 41 and 34, respectively, and we had both *technically* been to Disney World before, but I was 2 and don’t remember anything from that trip and my husband had only been to Epcot as a teenager over 20 years ago. So, in reality, it was pretty much a first-time visit, not to mention that the World has changed considerably in the last 20 years!

We arrived on Saturday, the 24th, and took Magical Express from MCO to Port Orleans Riverside. We really loved staying at POR and, as I had requested, we were assigned a room in Alligator Bayou, Lodge 37. We had a garden view and the room was very quiet. I liked being close to the North Depot bus stop as it’s the 2nd stop of the 4 at POR. On our entire trip, the longest we waited for a bus was about 20 minutes in the morning for Hollywood Studios on Friday, the 2nd, so we were pretty pleased with Disney transportation in general. The food court at POR is pretty darn good and we ate at almost every place at the food court during our trip and were never disappointed.

On this trip, we did all 4 theme parks, one day for each park. We went in the order of Epcot, Magic Kingdom (that was on Sunday and Monday), then two days off (went to Disney Springs one day and rented a car from the CCC and drove to Cocoa Beach the other, which we loved), then on Thursday and Friday, we did Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios. We are used to the crowds at Disneyland and I thought the only park that really rivaled that during our stay was at Magic Kingdom. I always go into Disney knowing it’s going to be crowded because it’s popular. Anyway, we loved all of the parks, but my husband has declared Animal Kingdom his favorite. I kind of hate to say this, but I thought World Showcase at Epcot would have a little more to it, tbh. I thought there would be more educational stuff about each country, I guess, rather than mostly shops and dining, though I did enjoy those. I think I liked Future World better. We really liked The Land! I’m also a big fan of manatees, so seeing Lil Joe and Lou at The Seas was a real treat for me and Lil Joe was twirling all over the tank when we were there, showboating.

Animal Kingdom was amazing and we loved Kilimanjaro Safaris the best, I think. They really have some amazing animals in the park. I couldn’t get my husband to ride Expedition Everest more than once, though, haha. That part where you’re banging around in the dark backwards was kind of rough on us. I thought AK was probably the most wonderfully-themed park out of the four.

Magic Kingdom was hard not to compare to Disneyland for obvious reasons. I really headed to Space Mountain in the corner of Tomorrowland, where it is at DLR, lol, where it’s really more to the side at MK. On our MK day, we did the Tomorrowland Terrace dessert party (the sit-down one) as it was our 9th wedding anniversary and this was actually the first Disney fireworks show that we’d ever been able to catch and we loved it. Tinkerbell flew right over our heads where we were seated and the desserts were really good, imo. This is one of our favorite things we did on the trip.

The park that surprised us was Hollywood Studios as I went into it thinking that it was many’s least favorite park, so expectations were low. We really liked it! We loved the IJ stunt show, the general theming of the park, and the Star Wars stuff (the stage shows and having stormtroopers march up and down the main thoroughfare were pretty cool and I just started watching and liking Star Wars THIS year)- we even took a couple of spells watching the kids doing their Jedi training and that was super cute.

On dining, we had reservations for lunch at Coral Reef and Sci-Fi diner and had great late lunches at both. On our AK day, we went to Sanaa after we left the park at AKL and that was a wonderful dinner. I was worried my husband wouldn’t like the food, but he ended up loving it, too! Get the Naan bread appetizer every time, just do it! AKL is worth the trip over as it’s amazing, also.

The cast members we encountered were all friendly and chit chatting with us here and there, which was nice.

The CCC and the shuttle to and from were great; we rented a car twice during our trip for the day and it all went smoothly- shuttle driver was on time or a few minutes early and we didn’t even have to wait at all upon returning the car to be driven back to our resort by the shuttle.

I bought SO many souvenirs, it’s almost all that was in my carry-on bag returning home, haha.

All in all, it was a great vacation and we will be back to the World at some undetermined date in the future!
 

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