Disney Details

Okay, here's the day-by-day recap of our vacation, with a few pics. I'll post more on Facebook.

Day 1
We had an early flight out, so we arrived in Orlando by 4pm. We then took the "Magical Express" Disney bus to our hotel, the Coronado Springs Resort, which was the first one on the route.

After a quick and easy check-in, we took a few minutes to rest in the room then headed out to the Magic Kingdom. For anyone who doesn't know, Disney provides buses to and from the hotels and the parks, which makes it really easy to get around. The line at the entrance to the Magic Kingdom was surprisingly long, but after a few minutes, we were in the park. We made a bee line for the Aloha Isle snack stand in Adventureland to get our first snack (included in our dining plan). I had a Dole Whip Float, which is on every best snacks at Disney list I looked at. Mark had a Coke Float since he's not a fan of pineapple. After that, we headed on over to the Hall of Presidents to see that animatronics show. Since we had dinner reservations at another hotel on property, we then made our way over to the monorail station to get us to dinner. This was our fanciest meal of the trip, at a signature dining restaurant (which takes two regular dining credits). We ate at Narcoossee's at the Grand Floridian, which is a beautiful (expensive) resort.

One of the reasons we wanted to eat there was because it has a view of the Magic Kingdom fireworks show, so we timed our reservation accordingly. The food was fantastic--by far the best of our whole trip, from appetizer to dessert.

While we ate, we also saw a light show on the lake (which we weren't expecting).

After our main course, our waiter invited us to go out on the restaurant balcony to watch the fireworks. It was an incredible view!

Then we came back in for dessert, including some cheesecake (bottom) that was to die for.

What a way to kick off our celebration!

Day 2
We got up early for breakfast at the Maya Grill restaurant at our hotel and made it to Disney Hollywood Studios as the park was opening.

We walked straight onto the tower of terror ride, then went around to other rides at the park. Unfortunately, the Aerosmith roller coaster (the best ride in the park and our favorite roller coaster) was closed for refurbishment. But, we were able to enjoy some other rides we liked last time (like the Great Movie Ride) and some we hadn't done (like the Studio Backlot Tour). We also made sure to catch the shows, including Beauty and the Beast, which we didn't have time to see on our last trip. It was fantastic--one of my favorites.

We also saw the first half of Indiana Jones, but the rest was canceled due to weather. Since we had seen that one before, we weren't overly upset. We had our lunch there at the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater restaurant, where you are seated in little cars and eat while watching sci-fi clips on a big screen.

The onion rings were great.

We had dinner at the Toy Story Pizza Planet, which was pretty fun, too. By that time, though, we were exhausted. (We didn't sleep well, plus it's a 3 hour time difference). Despite that, we stayed for the Fantasmic show, which combines fireworks, lights, video, and stage performers.

We got there over an hour early to get a seat and hope that the weather would clear up so they could do the show. Thankfully, the weather got better, but a few minutes before show time, they announced a technical problem. It was fixed in less than 5 minutes, though! So, we got to see a really great show, then make our way back to the hotel.

Day 3
This day we got up early (again) to catch the extra magic hours at the Animal Kingdom. This park is kind of like a super-beautiful zoo, with rides.

Here, we went straight to the Expedition Everest roller coaster and rode it twice in a row with out a wait. Then we went on the safari ride, where we saw tons of animals. Perhaps the most exciting moments were seeing some young giraffes running across a plain, driving within a few feet of a big giraffe, and coming close enough to touch (although we didn't) a giant ostrich (he wasn't very happy about us being there!). We hadn't eaten yet, though, so after all that, we were feeling a bit out of it. We stopped at a bakery for a light breakfast and a little break and then we felt better. We went on to the Lion King show, which was excellent.

Then we had lunch at the Yak and Yeti restaurant, on the second floor, with a cool view.

The food was great, too, especially the fried green beans appetizer and the fried won tons with fruit and ice cream dessert.

By then, we were exhausted, so we went back to the hotel to rest. A couple hours later, we went to Epcot for our early dinner reservation at the Coral Reef. On our way to the restaurant, we stopped and rode Spaceship Earth, the ride in the big ball at the entrance (there was no wait!).

They had made some cool updates to the ride since our last trip. The food at the restaurant was only so-so, but the atmosphere was pretty awesome. The dining room looks out to a giant aquarium, and we were seated right up close to the glass. It was really fun (and a bit ironic) to watch the fish swimming around while we ate (fish, of course).

After dinner, we went on the Nemo ride right next door to the restaurant, then took the monorail over to the Magic Kingdom. By the time we got there, it was a little less crowded, and since we stayed till around 1am (thanks to extra magic hours), we were able to do all but two of the rides on our list (Space Mountain and Peter Pan's Flight). We used a fast pass for the Jungle Cruise, but hardly had to deal with any lines on the other rides (nothing longer than 20 minutes).

We also checked out a few things we hadn't done last time, including the Carousel of Progress, which is one of my new favorites. (It's an anamatronics show that takes place in a rotating theater). We also caught the Wishes fireworks show again, entirely by chance, as we walked out of the Philharmagic 3D movie (another one of our favorite attractions).

From there, we were basically in the middle of the fireworks action, with them going up on all sides of us. (There's no zoom on this picture!)

It was pretty cool.

Day 4
We spent this whole day at Epcot, which might be my favorite park. Before getting to the park, though, we went to the Kona Cafe at the Polynesian resort for a fantastic breakfast.

Mark had banana stuffed French toast and I had pineapple macadamia nut pancakes.

Wow. Then we took the monorail over to Epcot and went on the Journey to Imagination with Figment ride (one of my favorite kid rides). We made our way over to the world showcase, which was just opening, and waited in a short line for the Maelstrom in Norway. Then we walked right on to the little boat ride in Mexico. A little later, we went to Germany for lunch at Biergarten, a buffet-style restaurant with a live music show.

Although we probably won't go back on our next trip, it was certainly worth going once for the experience (and the tasty pretzel rolls). By this point, we were exhausted again, so we went back to the hotel for another nap. After that, we went back to Epcot and spent some more time walking around the world showcase until dinner. We ate at the Tokyo Dining restaurant in Japan, which was probably my second favorite meal. We both had the shrimp and scallops tempura, which was incredible.

The dessert (green tea pudding) was a bit strange, but the tempura is definitely worth going back for. After that, we walked around a bit more, saw the super cool 360 video in Canada, and found a place to watch the fireworks show. During the day, we took lots of pictures of the character topiaries (and other flowers) that were still around after the flower and garden festival.

Day 5
We left this day wide-open in our planning, expecting that there might be parks we wanted to go back to, and this turned out to be a really good choice. We started in the Animal Kingdom, specifically to see the Finding Nemo show we hadn't had time for previously. It was really great.

 Then we went back to Epcot to see Ellen's Energy Adventure (which turned out to be more ride-like than we expected, and it had dinosaurs!). We also spent more time in the world showcase and had a nice lunch in Mexico. We originally thought we wouldn't be interested in eating Mexican food there, but by this time we were really craving some tortilla chips!

We made our way back to the hotel late in the afternoon, and decided to take it easy that evening, explore the hotel a bit, and rest up for our last day. Our hotel had tons of buildings all around a big lake in the middle.

On the far side of the lake was the "Dig Site" which included an impressive pool and a little playground.

We had dinner in the Pepper Market food court in the hotel's main building, then spent some time getting packed and ready to go for the last morning. We also went to bed a little earlier.

Day 6
On our last morning, we got up pretty early again to give us time to finish packing, get checked in for our flight, and leave our baggage at the hotel before heading out to the Magic Kingdom one more time. We also grabbed a quick breakfast on our way out. We arrived just after the park opened for extra magic hours, and went straight to Space Mountain. This 30 minute wait was probably the longest line we waited in during the whole trip (except for buses back to the hotel after fireworks). After that, we went to Peter Pan's Flight, which seems to have a long line all the time. But, it's pretty fun. By then, the park had opened to everyone, but it still wasn't too crowded. We walked right on to the Haunted Mansion ride on our way to Thunder Mountain Railroad, which we rode in the dark before, but wanted to do in the daytime also.

We were able to go on a lot of rides for the second time. We also had quite a few snacks left on our dining plan, so we stopped for funnel cakes and floats mid-morning. We explored Tom Sawyer's island for a bit, went back to the Hall of Presidents, and saw Philharmagic for the 3rd time (we really like it!). After lunch, we made our way back to Main Street and bought a few souvenirs on our way out of the park. We stayed until about 3pm before heading back to our hotel to pick up our luggage and catch the bus back to the airport. We had time to do a little more shopping at the hotel, too (although we didn't buy much). That's the end of the exciting part of the day. After that, we spent a lot of time waiting around in airports because both of our flights were delayed an hour. So, we got home pretty late, but it was certainly worth it to have almost a full day in the park before coming home. (And, since we didn't have anywhere to be right after getting home, we had time to recover). We really did have a great time. Except the flights home, everything went really smoothly. The parks seemed less crowded, and we seemed to have a plan that worked well. We'll definitely be going back someday!