Orlando Area Attractions - Places to See!!

Hi All,

We are thinking of going to disney world sometime in spring. I hear multiple viewpoints about how best to enjoy Disneyworld. For those ilites who have already visited disneyworld before, can you share with us your experiences. Specifically,

- How many days were you there?
- What did you do each day - which parks, activities, rides etc?
- The absolute must do's while in disneyworld?
- What would you do differently if you go again (learnings)?
- Any prepartory tips for future disneyworld visitors?
- How to make the trip more affordable?
- Your viewpoint on combining with universal studios/seaworld?

I promise to provide a detailed trip report as soon as I visit there for the benefit of other ilites. Thanks.

Bharthi

We visited Disneyworld in Orlando between October 7^th and 15^th. I live with my husband and 2 daughter’s in Memphis, TN. Here is my experience.

Before the trip

Transportation
We considered flying, but then we decided to go by our mini-van from Memphis to Orlando. Because we wanted to visit Atlanta on the way and wanted to show my parents the expanse of US, we decided to drive instead.

Stay
My brother has already called Disney and booked a resort inside. It looks like there are lots of hotels (what Disney calls resorts) inside the Disney complex. Since we are a group of 6 people and looked for good value-for-money options, my brother booked us into the “All-Star-Music” resort. He didn’t extensively explore the option of staying outside the Disney complex as he felt the prices were almost comparable and many hotels didn’t offer rooms that can accommodate 6 people.

Tickets
Disney tickets go by number of days. My brother got us Disney tickets for 3-days. There is something called a “park-hopper” option (for $7) that allows you to go to more than one theme-park in a day, but that is complete waste of money. Most of us will plan to spend one day in one theme park. I wouldn’t add this option to your ticket unless you are pretty sure you will be moving between parks within one-day.

Our Schedule
8^th – 9^th - Drive to Orlando with a stopover in Atlanta
10^th – 12^th – Disney
13^th – Universal Studios
14^th – Drive back to Memphis

Our plan

Within Disneyworld, there are four major theme parks and 2 water parks.

• Magic Kingdom
• Animal Kingdom
• MGM
• Epcot
• Blizzard Beach (water park)
• Typhoon Lagoon (water park)

Since we had only 3-days, we decided to go to Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom and MGM. The way we thought about it is “Magic Kingdom” is a must-see. After that we wanted to select 2 of the remaining. We decided to miss the water-parks because that is not something that is Disney-unique. Of the remaining three, we choose Animal Kingdom and MGM, deciding to skip Epcot. After seeing MGM we thought maybe Epcot would have been better. But, we don’t know for sure.

Resources
Visit http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/ to know more about all the attractions that are available in each of the resorts.

During the trip

8^th
Myself, my 2 daughters, my brother and my parents started on the journey from Memphis to Orlando by min-van. We decided to visit Atlanta on the way. By the time we reached Atlanta, it was already dusk. We checked into a hotel, refreshed ourselves and headed out for dinner. We went to this Indian place called Saravana Bhavan. It is not the Chennai saravana bhavan, but the food was pretty good.

9^th
In the morning, we visited world-of-Coca Cola and the CNN center. After that, we had lunch on the way and proceeded to Orlando. It was almost 11pm when we arrived there.

10^th - Magic Kingdom
My kids enjoyed almost everything here. They particularly liked the Mickey show that happens right in front of the Cindrella Castle, “Disney’s Dream Come True parade”, “It’s a small world” and “Many adventures of Winnie, the pooh”. My elder one liked the “Pirates of the Carribean” very much. We missed the night-time fireworks show, but heard that it is awesome.


11^th - Animal Kingdom
We loved the “Kilimanjaro Safari”. “It’s tough to be a bug” is the best 3D I have seen. It provides the 3D effects at the right time and the theme of the story was just great. We missed the “Expedition Everest”, but saw the other day on TV that it is the must-see attraction in the whole of Disney world.


11^th night - Downtown Disney
It’s a place outside the theme-parks and it is kind of a rich down-town area. There are lots of restaurants and shops. It is definitely worth visiting at least once for dinner and a good stroll – before and after dinner. The Disney store here has almost all the soft-toys that you find through the theme parks, so we did our shopping here.


12^th - MGM Studios
This is one of theme parks that had a couple of good options for adults. My parents greatly enjoyed the “Indiana Jones” and “Lights, Motors, Action” attractions. My Dad went to Muppet Vision 3D and he said it was good. If you want a touch of inspiration, you can spend 15 minutes at “Walt-Disney: One Man’s Dream”. If you want a little education on how disney’s characters come to life, you can go to “The Magic of Disney Animation”. We say the “Incredibles” characters after this attraction which made it worthwhile.


Other Tips

• Timing: Go as early as possible. You will always be running out of time.
• Fastpass: Use fastpass as much as possible as it will save enormous amount of time. In fastpass, you go to an “attraction” and feed in your tickets to the fastpass machine. The machine will spit out fastpass coupons with a time on when to return. You return on the time indicated and you get to enter the attraction without waiting in line.
• Buying Toys: Each attraction leads you out through a store that sells all the toys related to that attraction. You kids will be perennially tempted to buy things in these stores and hence it would be a great idea to agree something with them as to how much they are allowed to spend during this vacation etc. That way, you don’t have to keep weaning them off at every store!
• Food within Disneyland: I was quite disappointed by the lack of variety in Disneyland. In Disneyland, you will be always racing for time and hence you definitely don’t have time for a full sit-down lunch, but I would have appreciated some fast-food vegetarian options.
• Autographs from Characters: Disney sells the autograph book and the autograph pen close to the entrance of every theme park. Kids love getting an autograph and getting photographed with the characters. I feel that this is the most important thing that will go into their collage. While I would recommend that you spend as much time as possible on this, please select that characters carefully. We spent close to an hour on some characters than my kids haven’t even heard of.

Two questions regarding Disneyworld are up for eternal debate. They are

• At what age should I take my kids to Disneyworld?
• How many days should we spend in Disneyworld to enjoy it completely?

Here are my thoughts on both. My kids are both 8 and 10 years old. Disneyworld offers attractions that cover the breadth of ages. However, I felt that maybe I should have taken them a little early. We spent three days at Disney, which was driven more our schedule than our accurate assessment of what’s there to see in Disney. I felt that staying there one more day to see Epcot would have been better.

Hope this helps!

Hello Uma,
Thanks for sharing such a useful information.

~Punitha