First-Time DisneyWorld Trip by Disneyland Annual Passholders

We took a redeye flight late Thursday night on the West Coast, arriving Friday morning in Florida, and jumped right into day one. Husband is such a trooper, because I run on Disney magic and don’t need a lot of rest on a Disney trip but my husband just had to go through it with little sleep. We took the Magical Express from the airport to our resort, Disney’s Port Orleans Resort – Riverside (it’s beautiful). We checked in, left luggage with the bell hop, and waited for the bus to Magic Kingdom. We had park hopper tickets, hooked up to our magic bands, and I wanted to experience every minute in the parks that I could.

I really wanted to see this park even though it is similar to Disneyland in California, so we focused on seeing the attractions that were not at Disneyland. We took the bus from the Port Orleans Resort to Magic Kingdom’s parking lot (we actually got on the bus to Epcot first because we didn’t realize there’s a separate bus to each resort haha), then the boat from the parking lot to the park entrance. It was a great experience, and I’m glad we took the boat instead of the potentially-faster monorail. I had particularly looked up differences between Disneyland and Magic Kingdom, so I wanted to start with the Sorcerers card game (which was just discontinued, sadly. I would have loved to collect all the cards and play if we were local!) We of course stopped to pose for a castle picture, peeked inside the Crystal Palace, and then headed into Liberty Square. We had a waffle at Sleepy Hollow (yes, I had also looked up the best food to get at each park), and got to see some Muppets performing over Liberty Square. I had fond memories of the Country Bear Jamboree when it was at Disneyland (now replaced by the Winnie the Pooh ride) and was excited to see it. I had no idea it had so many adult jokes, and was as if it was a fresh show to me as an adult. We grabbed some citrus swirl on our way into Fantasyland, where we stopped to watch the Philharmagic show (which is now in California Adventure! I was so happy when it joined us on the West Coast because I loved it). We had secured fastpasses for the Monsters Inc Laugh Floor (I was never able to get some for the Mine Train, despite checking many many times), then watched the Festival of Fantasy parade, rode the People Mover, looked around Cinderellas castle, and stopped at Gaston’s Tavern. We decided to stand in the standby line for the mine train, but it broke down and while we were waiting (we hadn’t even gotten far into line) it began to become dinner time. I was worried about getting a good spot for the fireworks and would rather miss the mining train than fireworks so we left line, grabbed some dinner, and camped out in front of the castle. They played different movie scenes on it, the fireworks were amazing, and they played another song and movie scenes after. We were tired so we headed out of the park and while waiting for the monorail to the bus stops got see part of the electrical water pageant out on the lagoon which was magical.

I had planned out completely full days for us, so despite the time change, we were up early on day two, starting with a wakeup call from Mickey! Dear Husband was a trooper, because he’s not a Disney fanatic so the only thing pulling him was me (versus I run on Disney magic so I didn’t feel tired during this trip). We grabbed some breakfast at our resort (it was like a giant dining hall, very fun – and it had a penny pressing machine!) before heading to the bus stop, and headed to start our day at Animal Kingdom. We got a Photopass photo in front of the Tree of Life, and got a free wilderness explorer guide (Disney adult here – I want all the magic!). We started in Dino Land and rode Dinosaur. We had scored a last-minute reservation for breakfast with characters at Tusker House and thoroughly enjoyed it – we got pictures with each of the characters as they came by, as well as good breakfast buffet food. Then we rushed over to our fastpass reservations at the Festival of Lion King, which was incredible – the singing, costumes, and it was fun to have guests on all four sides. We also saw the Finding Nemo musical across the park, which I didn’t like as much but comparing it to Lion King Isn’t fair at all. I had gotten us fastpasses for Expedition Everest afterwards. The safari wait times stayed at about an hour throughout the morning so we decided that it wasn’t worth it to us, and went to Hollywood Studios for the remainder of the afternoon and night (Pandora sadly wasn’t open yet).

We ate breakfast at our resort again, and headed to Epcot for the day. We got there before it opened on purpose, hoping to get on Test Track since I hadn’t been able to get any fastpasses for it. We took an iconic picture in front of Epcot ball, and headed straight for Test Track. I had a lot of fun designing our car, and the ride itself was fun too. Next, we did spaceship earth (which took much longer than we planned, as it broke down but we chose to stay in line), then headed to the World Showcase. We wanted to eat and drink around the world, but weren’t able to finish. We started with lunch and drinks in Mexico and got the fun little passports that kids can get stamped (again – Disney adult here). We rode the Gran Fiesta Tour, which is super cute and reminded me of Small World. We had shots in Norway where we chose to not wait in the Frozen line, saw Chinese acrobats in the Chinese pavilion (more drinks), drank and explored the other lands, ate dinner in morocco (more drinks), didn’t finish drinking past Morocco but made it around all the lands, watched the Illuminations night show, and were super tired by the time we got back to our resort.

We had left this day open for anything we felt we wanted to see more of, especially because we did not spend a lot of time in Hollywood Studios on Day 2. However, we both felt we had gotten to do all we wanted to there, and that we’d like to enjoy more of Magic Kingdom. First we packed our room and left the bags with the bell hop, then headed out to Magic Kingdom. We had some mickey waffles for breakfast on Main Street and then went to the Tiki Room. It is different from the one here at Disneyland, especially the waiting queue, and I’m glad we went. We walked around Adventureland and decided to have lunch at Liberty Tree Tavern. We got the bride and groom ears, and a Photopass photographer took moer pictures of us on Main Street. Then we had to catch the Magical Express back at the resort. The buses had been running regularly and we didn’t have to wait for them long during our trip so we didn’t budget much extra time but this time the bus took a long time to pick us up and return us to our resort, so we barely caught the Magical Express back to the airport, but we did make it.