Disney Draft 9.19.16

Growing up in a lower middle class family, I’ve never had the opportunity to go to a theme park like Disney World or Universal Studios. That’s why I was so excited when I had the opportunity to go to Disney World last year with a few friends. My friend, Ariel, works in the park and a few friends and I made plans to go visit her for a few days. I had never even been to Florida, let alone any of the many theme parks that are there. As a huge fan of Disney movies, I was thrilled to say the least. Disney World was always a place I had dreamed of visiting
throughout my childhood and knowing that I would finally, after 19 years of life, be going to visit
made me very happy. I was excited to meet the characters I had grown up loving, ride the rides I had heard about but never seen, eat the food that always looked so tasty, and most
importantly spend time with my friends. We stayed for three days and those three days could be
classified as the best few days of my life.

We left at ten o’clock at night, after flight delays, on Thursday October 6th and arrived at the Orlando airport at around twelve thirty in the morning on Friday October 7th. From there our friend picked us up from the airport and we went searching for a place to get a quick
snack, seeing how late it was. We settled on a few sandwiches and bags of potato chips from
Wawa and we made our way to Disney World. When we arrived at the hotel, we checked in and went straight to our room because none of the parks were open. We watched The Little Mermaid whilst planning out the day ahead of us and then fell asleep. According to the plans we had made, the first park we would go to was The Magic Kingdom. Morning came and we got ready and made our way to the park. Once we got into the park, the first thing we did is went to take a few pictures in front of the castle.

After we took pictures we had some time before our first reserved ride, so we went to go ride The Haunted Mansion. I really enjoyed the ride, it is possibly my favorite out of
the whole park. When the ride had ended we walked around the park, going on a few rides here and there, until it was time for our first reserved ride. After the ride we went to go meet Goofy. I
was so excited to meet him because he is my favorite out of all of the Disney characters. After
we saw Goofy we got some lunch from a place in the park that only sells mac and cheese. It
was the best mac and cheese I have ever eaten in my life. After lunch we went on more rides until we got to our last reserved ride of the night, Splash Mountain. Splash Mountain is a 50 foot
drop and drops on rides turn my stomach so needless to say, I was not a fan of the ride. After the ride was over we went back to the castle to get a good seat for the night time fireworks and
projection show. We got a spot right in front of the castle and had a fantastic view of the show.
Out of all of the rides and characters I met throughout the day, the night time show was my favorite.

The second day we decided to tackle two parks in one. We started the day off by going to the Animal Kingdom Park to spend the morning and early afternoon there. It was fun to
see all of the animals and go on the safari and other various rides they have. We saw a live
performance of the movie The Lion King which was beautifully done and extremely entertaining.
After a quick stop for a drink and some ice cream we switched to the Hollywood Studios Park.
This park appealed to me because I am more interested in the behind the scenes of how Walt Disney’s vision came to life and this park has more of an in depth look at that than the other parks. It had only a few rides, none of which really interested me so whilst my friends went off to
ride the rides and see the live performances, I learned about Walt Disney in his early days and
how he built the parks. When it came time to go see the night time show for this park, I met up
with my friends and we got seats together. This show was in an outdoor stadium type venue. Instead of just some fireworks, it was a show with a story. All of the villains banded together to
take over Disney World and it was up to Mickey Mouse to stop them. He ended up saving the
day with a little encouragement from the audience and all was well in Disney World again. This
show was easily my favorite because it kept me entertained and I was very interested in the story and how Mickey was going to save the day.

On the third day we went to Epcot, which is the park that my friend works at, so she knew how to best spend our time there. We started by getting a quick breakfast of a donut
at the coffee stand and then went to walk through the different countries. We started at Canada and stopped to watch each performance and stop in various shops. Each country was fun to
explore and shop in. When we made it to the end of the countries, we went on the rides. Test Track broke down whilst we were in the queue for it but a few hours later it was up and running again so we were able to go on it. Soarin’ was my favorite ride of them all. It is a ride where you
sit in a seat and are suspended over a movie screen that is playing a video showing an aerial view over different places in California, so you feel like you’re flying. The seats are motion controlled and move around with the video to really add to the experience. After that we went on
the ride that is inside the huge globe that represents Epcot and I was shocked because I didn’t
even know that there was a ride inside of it. On the way out of the park we stopped in a gift shop
and I bought my mom a beautiful statue of Mickey and Minnie sharing a milkshake.

Overall my trip to Disney can be summed up as nothing less than magical. I can’t wait to go again and try all of the things I didn’t get to experience this time around and even the new things that will be added between my first visit and my next visit.