Let’s start with the greatest ride ever, A Small World
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The boys loved Tomorrowland Speedway
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And Av and I had one ride at Magic Kingdom we wanted to do with everyone more than any others: Space Mountain, which we did SO many times!
(Have to say, we are still disappointed our beloved Mr Toad’s Wild Ride has been closed for years. haha!)
We did every ride other than the toddler ones between these two trips. Space Mountain and Haunted Mansion are still terrific. If you’re going to Hollywood Studios and will do Toy Story Mania, it’s a million times more fun than Buzz Lightyear at MK. Both of the newer roller coasters at MK, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and Big Thunder Mountain, are fun but not scary. And Splash Mountain is such a great, long, fun ride. Between Space Mountain and Splash Mountain, we could just do those two over and over while at MK and be completely happy.
At Epcot, Soarin’ was open last year but not this year. We thought Soarin’ was good, but were SO glad we had a FastPass for it as the standby wait was over a couple of hours last year. I still like the ride at The Land:
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We did every ride at Epcot again this year, and the boys’ favorite was the Chevrolet Test Track, where they got to design their own car, then see how it performed during the ride.
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Shugie’s second favorite is Spaceship Earth, which is the slow ride inside the geosphere.
Another nice thing is that both years, our trip as been during the Epcot Flower and Garden Festival. There are *so* many more pictures I could have taken, but on this trip I made a decision to take fewer pictures and just experience everything more. Remember it, just like I wanted the boys to. Not everything had to be documented.
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Each night, we watched the closing ceremony from at least one of the parks. This is from Epcot last year:
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At Hollywood Studios, we are in love with Toy Story Mania. Shug found his cousin’s (kinda distant, and only by marriage) handprints outside the theatre:
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One of the best shows we saw was the Fantasmic show at HS. We did the Fantasmic dinner package which cost extra, but we got good seats (our waiter told us the best place to sit in the reserved section — toward the top rather than the bottom, and close to the middle).
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HS is a somewhat low on rides, and will be until the Star Wars areas open more.
The BEST THING EVER happened at HS last year, though. We were in the second row of seats in the Great Movie Ride, behind the driver. In the part of the ride where our kind guide gets out of the car and Mugsy kidnaps all of us, Shug *forgot* for a second that it was all make-believe, and before we got moving again, he STOOD UP and told Mugsy that he couldn’t treat our driver like that and he shouldn’t be taking off with all of us! Ohmygosh, people were clapping for Shug and he was our hero! I think ‘Mugsy’ got a real kick out of it too. I reminded Shug that this was all planned and it wasn’t real, but it upset him that our driver was treated so shabbily. So proud of him.
At Animal Kingdom, Shugie wasn’t so sure about getting on Kali River Rapids, but decided he liked it even after he got soaked
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We rode the Expedition Everest coaster half a dozen times in a row last year because there was very little of a line the hour before the park closed. Av started to turn green, which made everybody else that much more fervent about riding it again! haha! It’s the boys’ favorite coaster, though Shug thinks Wild Eagle at Dollywood and Fury 325 at Carowinds are pretty close.
It was really exciting to see the rhinos up close on the Kilimanjaro Safari
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I didn’t bring my phone to the water parks (we didn’t bring anything and didn’t wish to rent a locker) but we visited both Disney water parks, Blizzard Beach and Typhoon Lagoon, this year. Blizzard Beach was fun with several slides and had a very long lazy river going around the whole park. We thought Typhoon Lagoon was tons more fun because it had slides plus a saltwater shark reef that Av and Shug swam through (Shugie was insistent that we get in the lazy river there immediately as that’s his favorite thing). And best of all was TL’s wave pool (the largest in the country), which was different than any other we’ve been to: instead of a constant mix of waves, every couple of minutes there would be a ‘boom’ followed by a six-foot surf wave. Once it comes, you face the beach and it carries you along as you swim. Can’t even say how fun that was!!
Tomorrow: Disney food!