I finally went to Disney World

Going to Disney World has been on my list for way too long. I’ve been to Disney Land in California more times than I can even count, but my family just never made it down to Disney World (ironic, considering it’s much closer to us than California). I didn’t find out that I had a long weekend for my birthday until about a month ago, so Garrett and I booked this trip pretty spontaneously. We were just in Orlando about a month prior, so it was funny to find ourselves back here so quickly.

G could only get a Friday (which was my birthday) off of work, so we flew to Orlando at 6 am on Friday and came back on Sunday morning. (P.S. this was at the beginning of March before things got really crazy with the pandemic!)

Our 48 hours in the happiest place on Earth was a whirlwind, but it was one of my favorite birthday trips we have taken yet. I figured I would share a bit about our trip, so that if you are planning a trip, you can learn from our mistakes (and wins!), to make it a great trip!

Editing this to add: I wrote the majority of this post right after our trip (March 6th-8th) before there was a shelter in place. Obviously Disney Parks are currently closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic currently, but hopefully once the curve goes down and parks open back up, someone will find this post helpful 🙂

Random Tips

• Download the Disney Parks app. It’s amazing! It has maps of all the parks, wait times for all of the rides, you can order food on it, and you can request fast passes from the app. We were able to plan out of days so much easier because we would wait until the wait times for certain rides were down.
• Get a fanny pack! I’m used to parks like Carowinds (here in Charlotte) where you generally don’t want to take any kind of bags because they make you store it in a locker (that they make you pay for). But there aren’t any rides at Disney that forbid you from having a small bag. Most rides you can either keep it on, or you can store it under your feet. This is the one I have (it’s under $30!) and I love it!
• If you’re going for a special occasion (like a birthday), let them know at your hotel, and if it’s a Disney hotel, they should give you a button to wear. I wore mine around the park and had so many cast members wish me happy birthday and then they randomly gave me a free pretzel which was super sweet! 🙂
• We didn’t make any reservations for food or “character meals”, but it is something I wish we did. And if it’s something you want to do, make reservations in advance, because most of the sit-down restaurants will fill up.
• Like I said, we flew into Orlando pretty early in the morning and if we had stayed at a Disney hotel, we would have had a free shuttle come pick us up. But our hotel was super accommodating and held our luggage securely (and for free!), so we would go to the park because we got there before check-in/our room being ready.
• Stay for the fireworks! We almost didn’t because we didn’t think it would be worth fighting the crowds on the shuttles to get back to our hotel, but it was SO worth it. They really put on an amazing show!

Hotel

First off, HOLY MOLY, I didn’t realize how expensive Disney was! For going in March, for two people, two day passes (non-park hopper), with hotel (not even a Disney Resort hotel), we paid just under $900. We stayed at Best Western Lake Buena Vista, which is in Disney Springs. It’s a Disney “hotel” in the sense that you get special perks like:

• being able to reserve your fast-passes more in advance
• “extra-magical hours” meaning that you get to enter some parks earlier than everyone else
• complimentary shuttles to the parks

Did we get a good deal on this hotel versus a Disney themed hotel that is actually in the park– heck yeah. Would we stay there again? Eh.

Our room was very nice, but it was about a 20+ minute shuttle ride to the parks which where sometimes a VERY packed shuttle, and they have to drop off people to about 4 other hotels (so you end up being on the bus for like 45 minutes). But it’s free, which is definitely nice! I think if we do this again, we would probably bit the bullet and pay the money to stay in a Disney themed hotel. There seems to be more transportation options to get to the parks (whether its monorail, gondola, ferry, or a shuttle), and it’s closer. Plus, we figure that we won’t be going again for a while and the next time will likely be with kiddos– and staying at the Disney themed hotel just sounds like a lot more fun.

The Parks

Since we were in Orlando for only 48 hours, we got two day passes, non-park hopper and just decided that we would go to the Magic Kingdom on Friday and Hollywood Studios on Saturday. There was enough for us to do in each park that we didn’t feel like the park hopper was necessary.

Magic Kingdom Tips

This place is packed with kids. Strollers everywhere. And I think that’s what made it feel significantly more crowded than Hollywood Studios. Get there early to get a picture in front of the castle without lots of people in the background.

Only food recommendation I have is to get the Dole Whip. Currently trying to figure out how I can possibly recreate it. There’s a LOT of opportunities for dining with various characters in Magic Kingdom, so if that’s something you’re interested in, take advantage.

Hollywood Studios Tips

Get to the park before opening (we were in the park 30 minutes prior to opening) and try and get yourself into the virtual line for the Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance ride. You’ll want to download the Disney Parks app to do that. I’m not even a big Star Wars fan, but it is 110% worth it, and probably my favorite ride at Disney World.

Food tips: Try the blue milk in The Star Wars area! You can get it spiked if you’re 21+. There’s a cool bar in the Star Wars area that basically requires a reservation. We wish we had made a reservation to go!

Fast Passes

Again, the Disney Parks app is amazing and you can request your fast passes there. I used this SUPER helpful guide from Dad’s Guide to WDW when picking out our Fast Passes. Make sure you try and get your fast passes ASAP, because the time slots will fill up fast! By the time I picked ours out, we managed to get fast passes for The Haunted Mansion, Seven Dwarves Mine Train, and Space Mountain. Haunted Mansion ended up closing down for the day though, so Disney comped us with a fast pass for pretty much any ride in the park. That ended up working out perfectly, because we got to go on Splash Mountain with our fast pass which had a 100+ minute wait basically the whole day.

For Hollywood Studios, I only managed to get us Fast Passes for the Rock ‘n Roller coaster and the Tower of Terror. If you can manage to get it for the Millennium Falcon ride or the Mickey and Minnie Runaway Railway, do it! Those were the longest lines by far and two of our favorites! The Tower of Terror lines move really fast (we ended up riding it twice), so you don’t need to waste one of your fast-passes on that one.

We really had such a great time at Disney, and are so glad we finally had the opportunity to go (and do it together!). What Disney tips do you have? Share them in the comments!! 🙂