Two Disney vacations in a week. Whew. And it was so hot. But I didn't get sunburned, which I thank the gods for.
It was a blast. I hadn't been to Disney for a few years, and going back both times I really did feel the wonder of being at the parks, just walking around them. Especially when I walked down Main Street at Magic Kingdom, and I saw Cinderella's castle. The magic of it all still exists.
The first trip was with my parents and my sister to experience the Food & Wine Festival at Epcot. My mom and my sister had gone the year before and discovered it was better to space out the food and (especially) the wine, and do a few rides in between. So after having a chocolate pudding with a delicious vanilla syrup on top in Ireland and escargot with pesto stuffed into a croissant in France, we forced my dad to wait 50 minutes on the Frozen ride in Norway. He was not happy about that, and it was fun to try to hype him up for a ride he'd never seen the movie for. The wait would've been fine, except for the worst behaved kids I have ever seen in a line for a ride, and the parents did nothing to stop them. They were running around, climbing and banging on the barrels along the line, and screaming constantly. The ride was fun though. After that, we ate a few more foods, and then one of my cousins who currently works at Disney was able to join us for Soarin' and eat with us for the rest the day. Then at around six-thirty my parents called it a day, and another cousin who works at Disney was able to join us for the last night of Illuminations, which of all the years my family has been going to Epcot, we had never seen their light show, and then only half of us ended up seeing it.
The next day, we went to Hollywood Studios. The ride that I was super hyped to do this whole trip was Tower of Terror. I started watching a lot of the original Twilight Zone episodes this summer and I was ready to be inside of an episode. And honestly, Jordan Peele's reboot should adapt the ride into an episode because I will get CBS All Access to watch it repeatedly. Also, my favorite kind of ride is the drop ride, because there is no feeling like being dropped and coming off of your seat. This was also the first time we got to see Galaxy's Edge since it had just recently opened, and every time my family goes to these movie themed lands at theme parks, we always marvel at the attention to detail and this was no exception. And the same goes for Toy Story Land, which we had also never been to since it opened.
The second trip was because my aunt was coming down to visit her daughter, my cousin, who works at Disney and me and my mom were there to spend a day at the park with them and hang out.
We started out our day at Animal Kingdom and we got there for the park opening to hopefully beat the line for the Avatar ride Flight of Passage. We did not. We waited an hour and a half for that ride, and the whole time I was thinking that it wouldn't be worth the wait, because the way people described it to me was that it was like Soarin', and I had just done Soarin' two days ago. It was Soarin' on another level. And that is the best way to describe it. It was exhilarating. Because in Soarin', you're all seated in the same bench, but on Flight of Passage you get your own individual bike-like seat, and it really does feel like you're flying on the back of the banshee. After that we decided to book it to the total opposite end of the park to ride Expedition Everest, which is the closest I will get to that mountain. It had been, not exaggerating, a decade since I had been on that ride, and I was just as fun as I remembered it. You go backwards!
We decided that there was nothing else we wanted to do at Animal Kingdom, so we drove to Magic Kingdom. Normally, when my family goes we don't drive to each park and we usually rely on the transportation system. But if we had done that this time, we would have spent more time on buses than at the park. We got there at about noon and wanted to have lunch at Belle's castle, but apparently they weren't taking walk-ins that day, so we went to Pinocchio's. And after that we did a few rides (Buzz, Laugh Floor, Thunder Mountain, and Space Mountain) and decide to beat the crowd exiting the park because it was closing early that day for the Not So Scary Halloween Party, and continue our day at Hollywood Studios and see Fantasmic, the best light show at Disney World.
Since we got there earlier than we initially planned, we decided to get food, and then ride Tower of Terror. My aunt and cousin were not as psyched as I was, because apparently it's scary. I don't see it. You can see in the photo of our trip to the Twilight Zone that while my aunt and cousin were hiding their faces, I was all smiles with my hands up.
Fantasmic was still awesome, and it ended at 8:30 so we still had until 10:00 when the park closed to do a couple of rides. We all but ran to Galaxy's Edge to ride Smuggler's Run. I got to be the pilot that sends you into light speed this time. The power you feel when you do that is so cool, I felt like Rey. Then we booked it again to get to Toy Story Mania, where I actually got a higher score than my mom, the family champ at that ride. We got out of that ride a little after 10, and when we were coming out of Tower of Terror, I noticed that they had a Tower of Terror themed Clue game, so while we were waiting for Fantasmic, I shared that information with the family group chat, and the first text was from my dad saying that he'll pay for it (translation: I like it so get it). So since, the rides stay open until the last person who joined the line before the park officially closed, my mom and I all but ran to Tower of Terror to hopefully be able to buy it, and we did. (Next family game night is gonna be so cool.)
That may have been the longest day I have ever spent at Disney World. It's definitely the most amount of parks in one day. Fourteen hours. No sunburn, no overheating and hitting a wall. Wearing my Minnie Mouse fanny pack from when I was a kid, and my new Mickey Mouse baseball cap, with ears attached, feeling sporty and fashionable. That day is probably up there with the most fun I've ever had at Disney World, and it definitely felt like the happiest place on Earth.
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