Walt Disney World!

If it seems as though I’ve been neglecting my blog, I have, mostly because I’ve been obsessed with the Olympics and traveled to Walt Disney World with Jason and his family last week.  We had a great time despite the exhausting schedule.  Here’s a brief rundown of each day.

Day 1: Arrived in Orlando and ate at Raglan Road, a nice Irish meal to kick off the week.

Day 2:

We headed out nice and early to visit Disney’s Animal Kingdom park.  My personal favorite is Expedition Everest at this particular park, although it might even come in second behind Space Mountain amongst all the Disney parks.  It’s way up there as one of my favorites.  Sadly, we were unable to watch Nemo: The Musical, Jason’s favorite masterpiece, (wink wink), due to its insane popularity.  We later ate a delicious dinner at Jiko at the Animal Kingdom Lodge and proceeded to play a round of miniature golf at Winter Summerland, fortunately finishing before a deluge of rain.

Day 3:

We took a break from Disney for a day and instead explored Universal’s Islands of Adventure.

I was skeptical but we really enjoyed this park.  It was a nice balance of creativity and thrill rides like The Hulk and Dueling Dragons, both of which are pretty hard-core and are not the type of ride one would find at any Disney Park.  It was raining like crazy for the first half of the day, and being die-hards, we were forced to make our way around the park like giant Saran-wrapped hot dogs wearing ponchos.  Fortunately, they came in handy on the drenching water rides.

That night we ate at Artist Point at Fort Wilderness Lodge.  It proved to be a carnivore highlight for Jason, as he consumed both deer and buffalo.

Day 4:

The beginning of our two super-duper jam packed days, we explored both Disney Studios and Epcot.

Jason attempted to ‘drink around the world’ in the World Pavillion in Epcot, but he only reached drink #6 in Italy before the park closed and his valiant attempt was foiled.  Here he and Tom commemorate #3 in China.

Day 5:

Since Epcot is enormous we spent the entire following day there as well, finishing off the countries and checking out all the innoventions stuff.

That night we watched Cirque du Soliel’s La Nouba at Downtown Disney.  As usual, it was both strange and fascinating.  After these two days, I think we all pretty much wanted to cut our feet off.

Day 6:

On our last full day we finally visited the Magic Kingdom for a half day.  At this point we were exhausted, plus the fact that it was sweltering and beyond crowded.  We were there long enough to check it out, observe differences, and get the heck out of there.  It’s a beautiful park, but we were over it at that point.

To wrap up our week of indulgent and sumptuous eating experiences, we dined at California Grill on top of the Contemporary Hotel.  The food was great, but being able to watch the fireworks from the roof was even better.

Day 7:

Adios Orlando.  We left just as Tropical Storm Fay arrived.  Lucky us.  Home safe and sound, it’s time to get back to work.

This entry was posted on August 22, 2008 at 12:35 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.