Trip Of A Lifetime

The one vacation that every kid should get to do at least once in their lifetime is taking a trip to a Disney amusement park. Some people are lucky enough to live right there in town, and can buy an annual pass and frequent the park as often as they like. Most people, however, only get one or two chances in their childhood.

That's when it's important, during childhood. Disneyland and Disneyworld are mostly aimed at kids, and kids definitely get the most out of it. You have to do it while they're still young enough to still believe in the magic somewhat, when something like a ride spinning in tea cups is something to be sought after instead scorned with a bored, "whatever."

My son just recently turned ten, so we're running out of time. All my other kids have had the chance already, but he still hasn't had that trip of a lifetime yet.

My wife checks every now and then for deals that would make such a trip affordable enough for riffraff like us, and just after Christmas time she found it. I rushed to get my vacation in at work, she did the same, and before we knew it, we were on a plane to Orlando for a week of adventure...and sore feet.

There's four parks at Disneyworld, and we had three-day passes, so we would be able to visit three of them. Day one was in the Magic Kingdom.

It was a pretty typical Disney experience. We rode all the most famous rides, like the teacups and the small world ride.

We struggled with crowds, wasted way too much money on food (how do they live with themselves charging that much?), and waited in lines forever and ever, amen.

When we started the day, my son was a little leery of roller coasters. He wasn't too keen to get onto the Space Mountain train, but he had a fairly good time. Then later we went on Big Thunder Mountain, and he had an even better time. Then, we took advantage of the fact that everybody went to watch the fireworks to skip the line and even get two consecutive rides on the Snow White Mine Train, and he was loving it.

When we went back to Space Mountain for one last ride before leaving, he was leading the way and excited to get on that rocket to outer space.

The Magic Kingdom was fun, but we only got one day there, and Disneyworld had so much more to offer.

The next day was at the Animal Kingdom. It's a much less storied park, and it has much fewer attractions than at the Magic Kingdom. It's more or less a zoo crossed with a theme park.

It's iconic centerpiece is the Tree of Life in the center of the park.

It's really impressive. It's a tree that's the size of a skyscraper or something. When I first came in, I confused it with the Hometree from the Avatar movie.

That was because the other big draw from this park aside from the animals is the Avatar stuff. There's tons of it, and it looks absolutely amazing.

 I liked the Na'vi River ride, but wasn't much of a fan of the Flight of Passage ride. The ninety minute wait in line probably had a lot to do with that, though. The ride itself was fine, it just wasn't worth the interminable wait. Also, I'm just not much of a fan of the 3D motion simulator rides.

There were, of course, lots of animals here. From monkeys to giraffes to tigers.

You saw most of them by trekking through the various walking trails they had, or taking the safari bus ride, and we did both of those.

Their biggest ride, the Everest Experience was closed for repairs, so we didn't get to see what that one was like. The Tree of Life does some kind of performance every day at 6:30, but we missed that too because we were trapped in the endless line for the Flight of Passage. It looked like it was probably pretty cool though, judging from what the tree looked like when we finally did get out.

The last park we were able to experience during our three day trial was Hollywood Studios. I really liked this park. As a former film student, old Hollywood has a very enticing allure to me, and there were lots of old Hollywood building recreated here.

This was also the Star Wars park. Both Star Tours and Galaxy's Edge are located inside Hollywood Studios. We hit Star Tours first, because it was on the way to Galaxy's Edge. I loved the not-quite-life-size AT-AT outside the ride.

 And the Ewok village too...though it wasn't as impressive.

And Threepio talking to Artoo while we walked through the line.

Sadly, it started raining as we were in line for Star Tours, and continued to do so the whole day we were at this park. This was especially annoying, because we had Galaxy's Edge is located. We went there, but didn't get to enjoy it as much as we would have if we weren't getting soaked and feeling miserable the whole time.

 I found the cart where they sell the special soda bottles designed to look like they belong in the Star Wars universe, and decided to get them as my souvenirs.

 I drank the soda, though.

We went on both the rides in Galaxy's Edge. The Millennium Falcon one was alright, but nothing special (another 3D motion simulator. That was cool when Star Tours came out in the 80s, but that was a long time ago).

The Rise of the Resistance ride was much more impressive. It was interactive, and led you through several different scenarios.

Sadly, the ride broke down when we were one turn away from being finished. This was our view for about fifteen minutes as we waited for it to be repaired.

Then, they turned the lights on, and the sound went away, but still we sat.

 At last, they gave up trying to fix the ride, and someone came around with a key to let us out of our carts, and we finished that last turn on foot. And that was the end of our last night at a Disney park

We also did Universal Studios while we were there, but I'm going to do that in a separate post, so I'll see you soon to talk about that one. Thanks for reading Big Anklevich.