Disney World!!!

As I mentioned in the last post, over the weekend Sayre and I went to Disney World and oh what a bast we had! We drove down to Orlando on Friday night after another one of Sayre's ship's Hail & Farewell parties, got a good night's sleep, & then woke up bright and early to begin our adventures in the Magic Kingdom. The park didn't open until 9am, but we got there at 8am to be the first ones in line. Somehow or another (I won't reveal our secrets here ;) ) we managed to actually get into the park before it opened to the general public, so we got some great pictures of the castle & various places without anyone else in them! The rides themselves didn't open up until 9, but that was perfectly fine because we were still the very first ones on Splash Mountain... and when I say "the very first ones," I do indeed mean the very first ones. That's both a blessing and a curse because... well... you see... we got soaked. Lesson learned: even if they tell you to ride in the first row, ask them if you can sit in the back! Regardless, it was still awesomely fun and we eventually dried off.

Unbeknown to us, we picked the perfect weekend to go to Disney World. The crowds were almost non-existent. In all my past Disney experiences, it was just expected that for most rides you'd have to wait at least 30 minutes or so in line to ride a ride (and even that was pretty short!); however, this weekend, we were able to literally hop off and hop right back on to most rides. I was dumbfounded. Case-in-point: we rode Thunder Mountain four times in a row. It took us longer to wind through the path up to the ride than it actually did to get on the ride. Now, granted, as it got later in the day the crowds did pick up a little bit and Fantasy Land in the Magic Kingdom was probably the most crowded area (that's the best place for mammas & daddies to take the little ones), but it still wasn't bad at all! We had sooo much fun!! Usually, because you spend most of your day just standing around in lines, you're able to stay in the park late into the evening without being too tired... well, since we spent all day hopping on & off rides time & time again, by around 4pm we were utterly exhausted! Although we would have liked to have seen the fireworks that night, we decided to conserve our energy for the next day, so we left around 5 and headed over to the Rainforest Cafe in Downtown Disney for dinner. Yum!

On Sunday we decided to go to Epcot before heading back to Jacksonville in the afternoon. Once again, we arrived at the park at 8am even though it didn't open until 9am hoping that we could get in early like we had done in the Magic Kingdom the day before. Unfortunately, that didn't work out so well for us, but we were still happy to be there bright & early & first in line to get in! Once again, there weren't any waits for the rides... I felt like I was living in the twighlight zone! It was fantastic! We rode the Test Track 3 times in a row before deciding that we should probably move on to other things since we were planning to leave the park around 2. When talking with some of the Disney workers during the day, they told us why they thought the parks were so empty this particular weekend: it was the weekend right after the Epcot Food & Wine Festival ended and it was also the weekend right before the crazy Thanksgiving crowds were going to show up. Bingo! That made a lot of sense to us! Anyway, Epcot proved to be tons of fun as well! We were sad to leave, but we're hoping to go one more weekend before Christmas (and after Thanksgiving) before our nice little military discounted tickets expire. We were told that they're not going to renew the offer next year, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it isn't true. We'll just have to see!

Click here to see more of our pictures & videos from the weekend.