Spacecow
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Mar 26, 2017
Hello and welcome to my trip report! This is my first report, which is fitting, since I just took my "first" trip to Walt Disney World (more on that later...)! My sister and I stayed at Port Orleans Riverside from 5/29-6/4. I wanted to get this TR started while everything was still fresh in my mind! We hit all 4 parks, including spending some time in Pandora, and took a trip to Blizzard Beach. And yes, we did take over 300 PhotoPass pictures along the way- and thanks to Memory Maker I have them all, ready to share! So if you're ready for a ton of PhotoPass pictures and a 5 day non-stop (well, mostly non-stop) WDW adventure, read on!
Let's get some introductions and background info out of the way, shall we?
This is my sister and I on our last Disney trip- Disneyland in 2014 to celebrate my high school graduation. I'm on the left, she's on the right. We grew up in Phoenix so we're Disneyland veterans. Our favorite ride at Disneyland is Pirates of the Caribbean, and our Disney characters are Winnie the Pooh and Eeyore. Our favorite part of any Disney trip is getting tons of character pictures!
Our trip was a joint graduation celebration. A few weeks ago, this happened:
I graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder (go buffs!) with a degree in Strategic Communication- which is just a buzzword way of saying Advertising. I graduated a year early, which was really exciting. I have an internship lined up with an ad agency out here in Phoenix that'll hopefully turn into a full time job. I'm kinda sad to be leaving Boulder but I'm glad to not have to deal with snow anymore- I'm a desert child through and through.
And then two weeks after I graduated, this happened:
My sister graduated from high school! She's headed to ASU in the fall (go sun devils!) which is only about 45 minutes from our house. My parents are glad to have her close to home. She's going to be majoring in marketing, and she hopes to run her own bakery some day.
So with both of us graduating so close together we decided to have a joint graduation trip as opposed to two separate trips. This was meant to be a big, once in a lifetime "last hurrah" kind of trip, mostly because it's the last Disney trip my parents will ever pay for . But also because we're both crossing major milestones after this, with me entering the "real world" and her taking on college life.
Like I mentioned earlier we decided on staying at POR in one of the royal rooms. Well, I should say that I decided that we would be staying there.... My sister really isn't a planner she's really a "go with the flow" kind of person who didn't really have strong ideas about what we should do and where we should do it- she was just happy to be along for the ride. Which ended up working out well because I love to plan. So I chose the hotel, picked the dates, chose our ADRs, picked our fastpasses, and planned basically everything- while still trying to account for a bit of flexibility. Which is a very difficult thing to do! It's not exactly easy to plan for spontaneity. But it all worked out, as you'll soon see.
Here's an overview of what the plan was:
5/29- Land at MCO at 5, arrive at POR, spend the evening at Disney Springs
5/30- Magic Kingdom! Rope drop to close. Lunch at Crystal Palace, dinner at Cinderella's Royal Table. Fastpasses for Big Thunder Mountain, 7 Dwarves Mine Train, and Space Mountain.
5/31- Hollywood Studios in the morning, Magic Kingdom in the evening. Lunch at Sci Fi, dinner at Be Our Guest. Fastpasses for Rock n Rollercoaster, Star Tours, and Voyage of the Little Mermaid. (the tiers at HS really do suuucckk....)
6/1- Animal Kingdom. Tentative plans to eat at Satu'li Canteen depending on the crowds. Fastpasses for Kilimanjaro Safari, Expedition Everest, and Flights of Passage (woo!).
6/2- Epcot. Dinner at Via Napoli. Fastpasses for Frozen Ever After, The Character Spot, and Spaceship Earth. Planned on rope dropping Test Track (again, I hate tiers.....)
6/3- Blizzard Beach and ending the trip with the Magic Kingdom. Fastpasses for Pirates of the Caribbean, Big Thunder Mountain, and Space Mountain.
6/4- Spend the day exploring the resort before the Magical Express came to get us at 3
Things didn't exactly play out that way, but then again, when do they ever?
Oh, and about the whole "first" trip thing.... Welllll technically that's a lie. When I was 3 and my sister was a baby our parents took us to the Magic Kingdom for a few days, while we were still living in Georgia. The only thing I remember from that trip is riding the monorail and meeting Mickey in Toontown. Since my sister was a baby she of course doesn't remember anything. Soooooo considering that neither of us had been to WDW since 2000, and we hadn't ever been to 3/4 of the parks, I felt ok calling this our first trip..... and getting a first visit button. My mom says getting the buttons was dishonest but since they don't have "first visit since 17 years ago when we were an infant and a toddler" button I had to make do with the first visit one. Is it against the rules? Maybe. But the rules are more like guidelines anyway
Ok I think that's enough for a first post. Thanks for reading this far and I'm excited to share my trip with y'all!
Let's get some introductions and background info out of the way, shall we?
This is my sister and I on our last Disney trip- Disneyland in 2014 to celebrate my high school graduation. I'm on the left, she's on the right. We grew up in Phoenix so we're Disneyland veterans. Our favorite ride at Disneyland is Pirates of the Caribbean, and our Disney characters are Winnie the Pooh and Eeyore. Our favorite part of any Disney trip is getting tons of character pictures!
Our trip was a joint graduation celebration. A few weeks ago, this happened:
I graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder (go buffs!) with a degree in Strategic Communication- which is just a buzzword way of saying Advertising. I graduated a year early, which was really exciting. I have an internship lined up with an ad agency out here in Phoenix that'll hopefully turn into a full time job. I'm kinda sad to be leaving Boulder but I'm glad to not have to deal with snow anymore- I'm a desert child through and through.
And then two weeks after I graduated, this happened:
My sister graduated from high school! She's headed to ASU in the fall (go sun devils!) which is only about 45 minutes from our house. My parents are glad to have her close to home. She's going to be majoring in marketing, and she hopes to run her own bakery some day.
So with both of us graduating so close together we decided to have a joint graduation trip as opposed to two separate trips. This was meant to be a big, once in a lifetime "last hurrah" kind of trip, mostly because it's the last Disney trip my parents will ever pay for . But also because we're both crossing major milestones after this, with me entering the "real world" and her taking on college life.
Like I mentioned earlier we decided on staying at POR in one of the royal rooms. Well, I should say that I decided that we would be staying there.... My sister really isn't a planner she's really a "go with the flow" kind of person who didn't really have strong ideas about what we should do and where we should do it- she was just happy to be along for the ride. Which ended up working out well because I love to plan. So I chose the hotel, picked the dates, chose our ADRs, picked our fastpasses, and planned basically everything- while still trying to account for a bit of flexibility. Which is a very difficult thing to do! It's not exactly easy to plan for spontaneity. But it all worked out, as you'll soon see.
Here's an overview of what the plan was:
5/29- Land at MCO at 5, arrive at POR, spend the evening at Disney Springs
5/30- Magic Kingdom! Rope drop to close. Lunch at Crystal Palace, dinner at Cinderella's Royal Table. Fastpasses for Big Thunder Mountain, 7 Dwarves Mine Train, and Space Mountain.
5/31- Hollywood Studios in the morning, Magic Kingdom in the evening. Lunch at Sci Fi, dinner at Be Our Guest. Fastpasses for Rock n Rollercoaster, Star Tours, and Voyage of the Little Mermaid. (the tiers at HS really do suuucckk....)
6/1- Animal Kingdom. Tentative plans to eat at Satu'li Canteen depending on the crowds. Fastpasses for Kilimanjaro Safari, Expedition Everest, and Flights of Passage (woo!).
6/2- Epcot. Dinner at Via Napoli. Fastpasses for Frozen Ever After, The Character Spot, and Spaceship Earth. Planned on rope dropping Test Track (again, I hate tiers.....)
6/3- Blizzard Beach and ending the trip with the Magic Kingdom. Fastpasses for Pirates of the Caribbean, Big Thunder Mountain, and Space Mountain.
6/4- Spend the day exploring the resort before the Magical Express came to get us at 3
Things didn't exactly play out that way, but then again, when do they ever?
Oh, and about the whole "first" trip thing.... Welllll technically that's a lie. When I was 3 and my sister was a baby our parents took us to the Magic Kingdom for a few days, while we were still living in Georgia. The only thing I remember from that trip is riding the monorail and meeting Mickey in Toontown. Since my sister was a baby she of course doesn't remember anything. Soooooo considering that neither of us had been to WDW since 2000, and we hadn't ever been to 3/4 of the parks, I felt ok calling this our first trip..... and getting a first visit button. My mom says getting the buttons was dishonest but since they don't have "first visit since 17 years ago when we were an infant and a toddler" button I had to make do with the first visit one. Is it against the rules? Maybe. But the rules are more like guidelines anyway
Ok I think that's enough for a first post. Thanks for reading this far and I'm excited to share my trip with y'all!