We finally did it! After years of our daughters begging we gave in and took the plunge! It took months of planning (that’s just the way I am), more planning, and more planning. There are so many choices to make! Are you staying on the Disney resorts or driving in? Which parks are you going to? What rides/attractions are you going to do/see? These things take time to figure out. It’s really overwhelming and I have to say we learned a lot! If we ever take another trip we know exactly what to do! You even need a class on the transportation at Disney to make the most of it as they have buses, trams, monorails, and boats to get you places! I’m going to feature each of the parks (not the water ones) on my blog in the next week. Our first stop was the Magic Kingdom and I do mean magic!! Our daughters were so thrilled to get to go and entering the park was a happy, magical experience!
Magic Kingdom!
I’m not sure where to start! We stayed in Kissimmee, Fl and rented a house with a pool. We like to get up and not be rushed for breakfast and the drive was only 15 minutes. The first day we drove to Downtown Disney and took a bus to the park. Since we were there in the off season (still crowded, can’t imagine going in the summer!) it would have been better to drive, but live and learn! The bus took us to the Port of Orleans resort where we had to switch buses to finally make it to Magic Kingdom. Once we arrived, got our map and locker (you can rent them to store extra shoes, camera gear, snacks, etc) we hit the ground running, literally! Our favorites of Magic Kingdom were Space Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Jungle Cruise, and the Haunted Mansion. We rode Space Mountain a couple of times. Some advice that we did not take advantage of until our second day: get the Fast Pass! It doesn’t cost anything extra but time! You insert your park pass into the ride you want to go on and you get a ticket for the ride with your ride time (a one hour opening). It will save you some time standing in lines!!
I really loved the castle! It’s so stunning and reminds me of our time in Germany.
And even though we were tired to the bone, we stayed for the electric parade and fireworks. It was well worth it as the parade was so cool with all the lights and our favorite characters marching down the road to the castle!
They also had this awesome light show at the castle which made the castle look different every minute or so!
So there you have it in a nutshell! There’s really too much to cover and you could easily spend a couple of days at Magic Kingdom!
Oh, a little side note: I took my Canon 7D but decided to use my Canon Powershot S95 point and shoot for the whole time we were in the parks. It was so easy to carry but you could easily take a bigger camera in the parks and I saw literally hundreds of people sporting dslrs there. The lockers would come in handy to store extra gear such as tripods.
