We're back! We had so much fun at Disney World! I didn't want to come home. I think Jeff was ready to be done with the crowds and sore feet though. To be honest we almost felt we had one day too many (4 full days). They say you can't do everything at Disney World but we really saw and did almost everything. We walked fast and only waited in lines longer than 20 minutes twice. The crowds really weren't that bad, but there were some Pop Warner cheerleading and football competitions going on so there were lots of groups in every park but they didn't bother us too much. We used our last day to tie up loose ends and see everything we hadn't seen yet, which meant going to three parks. And even at the end of that day, we could have finished early if I hadn't insisted we stay for the fireworks. I wanted this blog post to mostly be photos since I feel the photos are pretty self explanatory and that's what people want to see anyway! So let's get started...
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| Waiting to enter Hollywood Studios |
I don't have as many photos from Hollywood Studios but we hit everything we wanted to hit there for the day (we'd be back later) but couldn't keep ourselves away from the Magic Kingdom any longer so...
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| One of two photos of both of us on this trip and the other one turned out pretty bad so this is as good as it gets! |
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| This is definitely one of Jeff's favorites and we ride it shamelessly |
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| This camel spits as people walk by and one time I wasn't paying attention and he got me in the face. What are the odds? |
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| Note the "snow" on Main Street... after catching a few flakes we realized it was soap! |
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| Back to Hollywood Studios to see the lights. No photos could possibly capture how amazing this is or just how BIG it is. Everything dances to music. |
On Day 2 we spent most of our time in the Magic Kingdom and then finished the day in Epcot to get a head start on the third day.
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| We were staying at the Animal Kingdom Lodge which has animals just roaming in the "savannahs" outside the hotel rooms. This was an added bonus because every day when we woke up and when we came home from the parks we could relax and watch some really neat animals that we've never seen before roam around and do their thing. |
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| This photo shows how close the animals were to the hotel rooms. |
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| This was the lobby of our hotel. I just thought it was really pretty in there and so well done. Most of the ornaments on the tree were the size of my head or larger. |
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| Back to the Magic Kingdom! |
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| The Hall of Presidents. A really neat attraction that doesn't get talked about much but has audio animatronics of all 44 presidents. So neat to see them all on a stage together. |
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| The back of the castle. |
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| Completely edible carousel! |
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| Ingredients |
We decided since Epcot was open later than Magic Kingdom that night to head over there and get a head start on the next day. It's a good thing we did because even with a full day at Epcot we still didn't quite get to everything. That park is huge!
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| I'm really glad I snapped this picture because not only did my phone manage to capture those beautiful colors pretty well but the next night my phone died before I could get any night time photos! |
We hit a few rides that night and then went home. Then it was Day 3! All day at Epcot. We went in with grand plans to "eat and drink through the World" as we'd read about online but of course it didn't really work out that way. The idea is to get drinks (and food) in several of the countries in the World Showcase and spend the whole day enjoying food and drink from other cultures. We spent the morning riding a couple rides in Future World then headed back to the World Showcase (the countries) for the afternoon. We had lunch in Mexico, and Jeff got a blood-orange chili powder margarita (It was pretty strong! They don't charge $10 a drink for nothin'!). I didn't end up getting a drink until CANADA (Mexico is the first country, Canada is the last, and there are 9 countries in between them). We had a fancy schmancy dinner in Canada (which was incredible), and then we both wanted to go back to Norway which was right after Mexico for dessert and a beer. When we were in line for the dessert and beer, Jeff realized he didn't have his debit card. That involved going all the way back to Canada to check the restaurant and see if we left it there (we did)(rookie mistake). The countries surround a lake and the walking perimeter of that lake is 1.2 miles. Jeff and I split up and I'm not even sure how to best explain why this happened but I walked that entire perimeter by myself. It had taken us 5 hours to do it together and I rushed through it in about 20 minutes. It was both a mixture of looking for a good place to watch the fireworks and trying to meet up with Jeff in the middle. By the time I found him we were almost exactly where we started in Norway and I was so exhausted from the whole day that we decided to just bag it and go home early. We'd already seen the fireworks show the night before anyway. They say you average about 13 miles a day at Disney World. If that's true then I'm pretty sure I walked closer to 20 that particular day. All the back and forth left me exhausted (did I mention we left a Brita water bottle on a ride and had to go back and get it? And that it had already been taken to Guest Services which was way on the other side of the park?).
Anyway. All that being said, it was still an incredible day. Here's the photos:
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| Who knew an iPhone could actually take decent photos? |
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| Our view for lunch in Mexico. In the photo from left to right are the lands of Japan, Morocco, France, United Kingdom, and Canada. |
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| La Cava del Taquila |
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| All of the margarita options |
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| The Mexico Pavilion |
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| Taking a short break outside Norway. The duck loved Jeff |
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| The OTHER photo of us. Neither of us is a fan of this one but I had to add it since we have so few. |
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| China |
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| There are A LOT of photos with the back of Jeff's head in them. Oops. Most of the countries were laid out like this with little shops and restaurants and a few heritage museum-type setups inside. |
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| This is the German pavilion. There's Jeff again :) |
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| Italy |
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| Looks about right, except the statue has too many clothes on to be authentic haha |
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| The American pavilion wasn't anything exciting. The show called the American Adventure was a pretty neat summation of our nation's history, and outside the theater was a bunch of history-related museum-like stuff which was neat, but we were running out of time before dinner so we didn't really look at it. We decided to spend our time in the other countries rather than look at a bunch of our own history which we already knew all about. Just behind where I'm taking this photo was a huge stage and seating area where Disney invites celebrities to come read the Biblical story of Christmas (while we were there it was Neil Patrick Harris and Sigourney Weaver). The coolest thing about this is that even though it's a hard ticket event, you can still hear the story in this general area because it's being read outdoors. So there someone is, every day for 6 weeks, reading the story of Christ to the masses. Amazing! From DISNEY! |
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| A singing group called the Voices of Liberty. They were singing Christmas songs and it was beautiful. Some of the most beautiful voices I've ever heard! It was almost moving. Fun fact: Jeff is on the far left side of this photo, standing in the back. |
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| Japan |
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| Entering the Moroccan pavilion. I think Morocco was my favorite country, although to be fair we didn't get to see the United Kingdom (see below for why). The theming in Morocco was so well done and because the walls were so high, it really felt like you were wandering the streets and alleys somewhere in Morocco. |
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| This is a terrible photo but it's a shot of the France pavilion from head on. That stick in the air behind the buildings? A small Eiffel Tower. It's super blown out but just believe it's there. |
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| This is the United Kingdom. You can walk back in there to the left and there's more buildings. This was about all we saw of the United Kingdom because we had a dinner reservation to get to. Thankfully this was the only country we ran out of time to do. |
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| Outside our restaurant, Le Cellier, in Canada. |
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| Back in Norway for the dessert (for me) and beer (for Jeff). I got the school bread which is above those cone shaped desserts. It was highly praised online and I thought it was just okay. I don't regret trying it though! |
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| I lied! I found another fantastic photo of us! After dinner we went back and rode Test Track again and at the end of the ride you can take a photo with the car you designed. Yes, we designed that. Pretty sure we should be getting a call from Chevrolet any day for permission to build this car... |
So that was the end of our Epcot day. The next day we started out at the Animal Kingdom. We took things slow and were still done by the middle of the day. We could have probably stretched it out a little longer as Jeff wanted to go see some tigers and I wanted to see the Lion King stage show, but we decided to head over to Hollywood Studios instead to do the one ride we hadn't already done there. We were in Hollywood Studios probably less than 2 hours. We had to wait in line about an hour while we were there but that was the longest line we had all week. Like I said earlier, we mostly waited less than 20 minutes. The lines simply weren't that long and we also dominated the Fast Pass system. Maybe we were lucky, but maybe people are crazy for voluntarily waiting in 60+ minute lines when there are less popular attractions across the aisle with no wait time (Hall of Presidents!). Anyway after Hollywood Studios we caught a bus and a boat over to the Magic Kingdom and finished out our vacation there. I think this last day was my favorite day of the whole vacation. Even though we were tired and starting to wear down, we still accomplished a lot and had a lot of fun. It's hard to beat that feeling of your last night of vacation too, where you just want to let all the memories you just made sink in and enjoy yourself.
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| Can you see the person here? Her name is DiVine and she's on stilts and covered in vines (of course). She moves really slowly and sometimes you can walk by and not even know she's there! Glad we saw her. |
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| Expedition Everest. Rode it twice back to back with no wait! Super fun. |
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| From the top of this ride (Yes I had my phone out while on a rollercoaster. I might be nuts. I had a wrist strap though) you can see Epcot! Loved that. |
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| The ride comes to a stop right here and then goes backwards! |
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| This monkey was so active! He swung back and forth from every rope. If I didn't know better I'd say he was putting on a show for everyone watching. |
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| We went on the safari ride and saw tons of African animals. I wish I could share all the pictures but I tried to keep it to a minimum and show only the best ones... |
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| This tree is man made and is the center icon for the park (like the castle for Magic Kingdom). The trunk has animals carved all over it and all the leaves were attached by hand. There are over 100,000 of them. |
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| The best thing about this picture is it was a total fluke. I wasn't even sure if I was taking a photo because the sun was glaring on my phone. I looked at it later and I happened to catch the guy waving and smiling. Crazy! |
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| There isn't anything super special about this photo except that it just reminds me of the late afternoon on our last day. When I look at this picture I remember exactly what it felt like to be standing in that spot on that day. |
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| Partners |
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| Taking a ride on the People Mover |
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| No photo can do it justice |
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| Instead of boring everyone with a bunch of photos of the Electrical Parade, I thought I'd just include this one of the best float. The last one, declaring the purpose of the parade. |
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| Finishing off the night right. |
So that was our trip! I'm sharing somewhere around 100 photos here. I took about 600 and it was so hard to choose ones that represented our days the best. We feel very blessed to have been able to take this trip and sort of called it an anniversary trip/graduation celebration/Christmas gift to ourselves. And it really felt like we were celebrating all three of those things! I don't know how to put it into words other than to just say it was one of the best trips we've had together and I'm so glad we went. I'll leave it at that for now.
Hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas! And if I'm not blogging again before January then Happy New Year!
