What can I say? WOW! Although I been to Walt Disney World 9 times, it’s still Magical. But seeing it through the eyes of a 6 and 4 year old…Amazing!
The minute we landed in Orlando all I heard is, "When are we going to the Roller coasters, when can we go see Mickey?" We landed at 9pm!
Where did we stay? We rented a home through Holiday House here in Canada. The rental company in Florida was Contempo. Since there were 7 of us, we booked a 4 bedroom house. The house was perfect for our family. I can’t imagine having 3 separate hotel rooms, trying to coordinate daily where to meet, breakfast, etc. We had our own heated pool and could go swimming any time of the day. Midnight swimming was definitely a hit with the kids!
Before leaving we prepaid our Disney and Universal tickets in Canadian dollars. For Disney I decided on a 10 day Park hopper pass with Waterpark and more feature. For Universal we went with the 2 day, 2 park Unlimited admission for 7 days pass. I didn’t think we would actually go to Disney for 10 days but wasn’t sure how it would go. Since it was only a couple dollars more for 10 days vs. the 7 day pass, we did it. For Universal we thought we’d go to Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure at least once each. Well, in complete honesty, we wasted a lot of money. With two small kids, going park hopping wasn’t really an option unless we stayed at a Disney hotel. Once we got to a park, parked the car, etc, then we just wanted to stay there. So the park hopper feature was a waste. I’m sure it would be ok with older children but not with little ones. We did use the Waterpark feature and hit Typhoon Lagoon for a couple hours and we also went to Disney Quest. My son loved that place. Video Game heaven!
Universal studios turned out to be a complete disaster. We walked into the theme park and I really liked the atmosphere and music and all the characters around. But the minute we wanted to go on a ride, it was a minimum 2 hour wait for each. I’m not crazy and won't wait that long! We noticed that we could purchase front of the line tickets but when they told us it was an additional $50 US per person per day, we decided against that and walked around for about an hour to see if we could get on at least one ride. No such luck. I then noticed the amount of people around us and knew it wouldn’t get better. I took one look at the rest of my group and we all unanimously said, let’s get out of here! We left the park, headed out for a quick bite and went back to Disney ‘s Magic Kingdom. Had a great evening there! We then had to decide if we were going to try Universal again and spend the $50 per person to get the front of the line passes or just take the loss. We didn’t go back.
I love shopping! And the outlet malls did not disappoint. Actually had to buy more luggage to bring all my goodies home! We hit the Prime Outlet mall at the end of International Drive the first shopping day and found the best bargains there and a fabulous Disney outlet store. Definitely "THE" Tacky Tourist hangout, and we fit right in. We also went to the Orlando Premium outlet mall. Almost the same as Prime but I found prices to be a bit higher, maybe because it’s closer to Walt Disney World? Also went to Wal-mart a couple times – they have great prices on Disney souvenirs too!
Would I do it again? I don’t know, maybe when the kids are teenagers. The thrill is gone for me. Give me a 5 star Sandals vacation any day but I guess age does that to you, ha ha! But if we do return to Florida, we will stay at a Disney hotel and take advantage of the Disney Dining plan, and go in low season for sure. The weather in April was all over the map and we all returned home with a cold. I would consider a Disney cruise in the next couple of years though. Much more relaxing for the adults!
If you are considering a Disney vacation, I’d love to help. Just let me know!
