Florida Diaries #2 - What to do in Disney?

The Walt Disney World is split into 4 main parks and 2 water parks, and I was lucky enough to visit all 4 of the main parks and 1 of the water parks. The parks which I visited were the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Studios and Typhoon Lagoon.

Magic Kingdom The Magic Kingdom is an amazing park, with rides which are certainly worth the trip. But I found the whole experience very underwhelming, this is somewhere which I had been dreaming about for as long as I can remember and I found myself sweltering in the mid day heat and constantly looking for a water fountain or the smallest piece of shade. This got worse while queuing for rides, for example the worse I found was the queue for Big Thunder Mountain possibly the worse I encountered, as we queued for it around 3 o'clock so the sun was out in full force, as the queue time said 30 minutes, we thought that was fine but it seemed like everybody else also had this thought, as around 5 minutes into the queue to jumped up to 50 minutes, but at this point we were already snaked in too far just to leave and we wanted to go on the ride. The queue then got difficult as there was very limited shade, so we were constantly being pushed forward into the person in front of you's sticky sweaty back. I can safely say that it was not a fun experience. But it was our first time at Disney we were going to make mistakes like we had fast passes but we didn't know where things were going to be so, didn't really book anything as what if things were over the other side of the park and we were late? We had so many things to worry about just because it was new. The second time we went things ran much smoother and the rest of the Disney parks were fine. The rides at the Magic Kingdom brilliant, my favourite was probably Splash Mountain or Peter Pan's flight which was just my childhood and the queue's for these were fine, we queued for around an hour for Peter Pan's flight but the queue for this was worth it. The queue was all themed like the children's bedroom in Peter Pan it magical! like me and my sister were in awe.

Epcot Epcot was probably my favourite out of the all the Disney Parks, this might be because it represents so many different countries in the world and by the nature of this blog I like to travel, but it was just ever changing and each different country was just so memorizing. There was nowhere near as many rides at Epcot as that is not the main function of Epcot but one of the rides which we went on was the Mission: SPACE, with this ride you get to decide your intensity orange being the more intense and green being less intense. We decided to go for the orange version in my own words at the time 'we're not scared' the inner Midlander came out and boy it was intense, when we came out of the ride me, my sister and my dad all had to sit down for around 20 minutes after as we left like we were going to be sick, and we like rides it just gives you so much vertigo and I cannot deal with that. We were all given roles and mine was the pilot ( a big responsibility I know), which meant we all had the stuff to do which may have been one of the reasons why it was so intense. Another ride which we loved was the ride in Mexico (I cannot remember it's actual name), it wasn't a fast ride or an interesting ride, it was just so cool inside like we were sweltering outside before the ride and when inside it was so cool and dark and just different to the outside world.

Hollywood Studios The Hollywood Studios was probably my least favourite out of all of the Disney Parks, but also had one of my favourite rides, makes no sense I know. But I found the layout of this park the most confusing and constantly found myself getting lost and one of the main selling points of the park I thought was all of the Star Wars stuff and I hadn't seen ANY of the Star Wars films at this point (I know I'm terrible). I feel like we missed a lot the Hollywood Studios as the weather was crap and it limited what we could do but I did go to a sing along Frozen screening which was magical. But my favourite ride here was certainly the Aerosmith Rocking Rollercoaster, which I had been waiting to ride since I was around nine when we went to Disney Land Paris but sadly I was not tall enough, although I haven't grown much since then, I've grown enough and I am so glad I waited as I do not think that 9 years old me could deal with the speed of the ride.

Animal Kingdom Probably my favourite park, much like Epcot the focus wasn't so much on the rides but the experience again and of course the Wildlife which is a huge selling point!! but from a photographers point of view, I wasn't a huge fan of the Kilimanjaro safari as it felt like we never stopped long enough to get decent photographs, like an I got some decent photographs but it felt like we were only ever stopping for a few minutes if that. One of my favourite rides was at the Animal Kingdom and this was the expedition Everest ride which was amazing! Me and my sister were front row and behind us was our dad and this little girl who we thought would be terrified as she looked about 6, but she told us that this was her third time on the ride and that we would find it really scary, and even told my dad to close his eyes at one point as it was the scary part. Like look how into she was (the girl in the purple Supergirl top)

Typhoon Lagoon We sadly only got to spend half a day at Typhoon Lagoon as we simply just didn't have enough time, as although we spent two weeks in Florida, there just simply isn't enough time to do everything, sometimes you have to cut corners but it gives you plenty of stuff to do when you return as I know full well I will return to Florida as soon as I have the money. And I didn't do anything other than venture into the wave pool at Typhoon Lagoon as I had a little too much sun the day before and didn't feel that well. But oh boy even the wave pool was amazing. I swam out quite far with my dad as the shallows were crowded and I'm only little so kept being thrown into everyone but the force of the wave out in the depths basically pulled me back into the shallows they were so strong and trying to keep yourself a float is also so tiring and I'm quite a strong swimmer but I'm also only 5ft1 so I was nowhere near the bottom of the pool. I would recommend it to any strong swimmer going out into the depths as it was so much better there just make sure you're a strong swimmer as I struggled.

Overall the whole Disney experience was amazing and I can see why people go year on year, as it is such a magical place, I would just say always carry a drink on you and enjoy it. Don't worry there is no need to!

Next time I'll be writing about Sea World and Discovery Cove

Ashleigh x

#Florida #America #USA

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