Doing Disney: How To Spend a Week at Walt Disney World by Scott Beallis

Author:Scott Beallis [Beallis, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: disney world, disneyland, travel guide, tomorrowland, adventureland
Publisher: Theme Park Press
Published: 2016-12-05T08:00:00+00:00

chapter eleven

Fun Stuff: The Parks Day by Day

Day 1

Now we finally get to something even more fun: the parks themselves. I will start this part off by stating that we have yet to go to a water park on Disney property. We have not used their golf courses, either miniature or real. We have, up until now, been “park commandos”—we spend every day of our Disney vacation at a theme park. Even when we haven’t been in Disney parks, we’ve been in Universal parks.

So how do we structure our park time? In the past, we have usually spent our first night at Epcot. It probably makes more sense to skip the parks on this first night, because by the time we get to our hotel, into our room, and pick up our car, it is fairly late. Whether you get there at 5pm or at 9am, it counts for one day. We usually can’t get there till dinner time, but that’s why we went to Epcot. Eating is part of our vacation experience, and Epcot has always been the best place in Disney to eat.

On our most recent trip, we broke with this tradition. Instead, we spent our first night at the Magic Kingdom. There were several reasons for this. First, we were staying at Bay Lake Tower, which is a short walk to the Magic Kingdom. We didn’t need a car or any sort of transportation to get us to our destination. Second, we had three guaranteed FP+’s. Usually when we would get to our destination park by that time of the day, most of the FastPasses would be gone. We might get one for something like Test Track or Mission: SPACE, but with the new system, things are different.

The third reason we chose the Magic Kingdom was because they were open till midnight, while Epcot closed at 9pm. And the fourth reason was because there were attractions at Magic Kingdom that we had never experienced; namely, the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and Under the Sea: Ariel’s Underwater Adventure. Two of our three FP+’s were for these rides. I suspect that, in the future, our schedule will be different (from our usual Epcot visit) because we can now pre-reserve attractions and dining experiences, and also because the dining choices at other parks have improved.

Now our itinerary will likely be similar to what we did on this trip. We arrived, collected our rental car, and had dinner at our resort, specifically, at The Wave. We were there at 5:05p.m., the first seating of the night. Dinner took us roughly an hour and a half, so by 6:30pm, we were hoofing it to the Magic Kingdom.

The first thing we did after making our way through security and entering the park by pressing our MagicBands to the sensors by the turnstiles (and placing our index finger on the scanner—Disney uses biometrics upon entering the park) was find a Disney PhotoPass photographer. And right in front of the park, with a good view of floral Mickey Mouse and the train station, was the first of these.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.