Disney --- Done!!!

 What a sense of relief I feel. 

I finally took Beanie to Walt Disney World as an early 10th birthday celebration.

I have been wanting to take her for years. Initially, I thought 5 years old would be perfect. Right around her 5th birthday, my Dad was diagnosed, so a Disney trip was the last thing on my mind. Then 2019 was spent in a daze of grief. I thought maybe 2020...but then came COVID.

In Decemeber, I was trying to figure out where to go for a holiday and decided to bite the bullet and do WDW.  I have always been quite freaked out about going there since it seemed like a lot of work to "plan" the holiday. I have friends who started "planning" 6 months beforehand. I dont have that kind of patience. 

I decided to keep it simple. 

Just book a hotel, but airline tickets, buy WDW tickets to the park and enjoy the rides. 

Even so the process is insane - you buy the ticket, then make a reservation, then you need something called a Magic Mobile pass (or a watch that cost $60 each - I did not get those). Then there is a Genie + which is supposed to be $15 each but was $32 each this week for whatever reason then you have Ligtening Lanes which I was told you can only book two, but later find out you can do many but only after you finsh one activity! 

Beanie is too old for Princess breakfasts and all the meet-and-greets so we skipped all those things. She saw Frozen at 5yrs old and loves Anna and Elsa, but only started seeing Disney movies a couple of years ago. We binge watched a bunch over Christmas when Disney had a marathon of its movies. She never seemed intereted in Mickey or Minnie watched any of the old cartoons with Goofy or Donald Duck (my favs). 

We stayed at a hotel on Disney property, but not a resort. The resorts were crazy expensive and even the more economical Disney hotels had a 7 (!) day cancellation policy which is ridiculous for people with kids (they could fall sick etc).  We decided to fly since it would be too long a drive, and we decided to only do the two parks that Beanie was interested in - the Magic Kingdon and the Animal Kingdom.

My Mom came with us too.

Beanie had a wonderful time, but to be honest I hated it! 

It was horribly crowded for one and noisy. I pulled Beanie out of school hoping the crowds would be less during the week, but apparantly Texas and FL had Spring Break. So, it was a sea of humanity.

Magic Kingdonw was very disorganized. There was no visble signage other than at the entrance to a
land". There were so many streets/paths, but no clue where to go to get in/out of a "land" No worker people to be seen. Those we saw and asked were super nice, but just not enough emplyees and not in the correct spots.

Food was a mess!! They have an app where you can "pre order" food and select a time for "pick up". Sounds cool, right?   However, as  I foud out, if you placed and order and selected a PICK UP time like I did for 1:10pm to 1:40pm, it does not mean your food is ready for pick up.   It meant that is when you tell then you have arrived and they can begin preparing your food.  Then why are you calling it "pick up time" - geez!.  The food place we went to in Tomrrowland was totally overwhelned. The manager even admitted to me saying they got a lot of orders - more than expected. All they were serving was burgers and fries and chicken strips and it took an hour + to get our food. Finally, its only when I went back after an hour of waiting, they gave it to me. Had I not asked I would still be waiting. We lost almost 2:30 hrs of our day in the whole food debacle.... 

One would think that having been doing this for 50 years they would be pros at anticipating crowds, especially when you require a reservation to get into the park. They knew the traffic volume for that date based on ticket sales. They should also know the popularity of the restaurants in the park based on Sales volumes and everyone knows that dining times (eg 12-2pm) is always busy!!! So why were they so confused and overwhelmed, I have no idea.

The staff opereting the rides, the other hand, were very efficiant and the lines though long moved along. The rides were fun. Beanie loved them all. And despite the hours wasted waitig for food, we were able to do all the ones we wanted to, including seeing the parade and doing the Tom Sawyer boat which we happened to pass and had no lines.

Rides we did were: Haunted House, Carousel, Peter Pan, Its a Small World, Ariel's Grotto ride, Aladdin's Magic carpet ride, the riverboat, Swiss Family treehouse, parade,the enchanted Tiki room. We were unable to do Pirates since they shut it down in the middle of the day.

We were there from about 10 am to 8pm, but lost almost 3 hrs for lunch since we could not leave, not knowing when the food would be ready. We took a shuttle bus to the hotel and it was close to 9pm when we got bach. We ate dinner in the cantina by the pool which was really nice and relaxing.

We did the Animal Kindom the following day.  It was insanely crowded as well.  But it was SO much better organized.

They had signs at every fork in the path which was super helpful to navigate. They even had signs pointing to popular rides, like the Safari etc . We barely used the paper map. I was glad I did Genie+ again as there was a 2+ hour wait for the Safari. I used my Genie+ and we sailed in which was awesome. The masses of people were all lined up for the Everest ride but we were not interested in it. 

We saw all the amimals we wanted to see in the safari. We saw two amazing bird shows, the Nemo stage show and we did the Gorilla Falls (saw a cute baby gorilla) and we did the Maharajah trek.  Beanie dislikes the Lion King so we did not see that show, nor the Bugs Life one. We had a slightly better time with lunch. I booked 12:55 tp 1:10am when we had to arrive at the restaurant. I got there at 1am and opened my app, but they had moved my time to 1:30pm ! Luckliy we got a table, so I sat and waited with my eyes glued to the app, at exacty 1:25pm the button to "Confirm I am Here" came up so I hit it before it disppeared. The Pizafari restaurant was much better organized and the food was ready in 10 min.

We finshed that day at about 4pm and Uber'd back to the hotel so Beanie could play in the pool which had a water slide. We later went out to eat at a Mexican place which was nice.

We returned home yesterday.

I am glad Disney is done. I no longer have too feel bad that Beanie was practically the only kid who had not been there. 

For me, I am done with Disney. I would not go back even if you paid me to! When Beanie gets older she can go with friends and do the scarier rides and have a good time.