Yesterday was a good day!
This has been a particularly busy year for us, with my fiancée up to her ears in nursing school, so we haven’t really been over to Disney World nearly as much as we have in years past. Between unbelievable amounts of stress from school, wedding planning, and everything in between, yesterday ended up being a really good time for us to take a break and enjoy some much-needed relaxation…
The plan was simple – show up “early” (well, for me, anyways!), run around like crazy all day long, and leave happy at the end of the day. We had decided to try our luck on the Find-a-Pin scavenger hunt that Disney has been running this year after picking up April’s pin during our last visit earlier this spring, which meant that we basically had to pay a visit to each of the four parks in hopes that we could still catch some of the older pins that came out in months past. And even though after doing the whole four parks in one day deal last summer for my birthday with less than preferred results, it seemed ok for another go around this time with just Sara and I in the traveling party and pins being the main item on the day’s agenda.
Taking a hint from our last experience, we opted to only set our sights on a few select attractions for the entire day – Sara really wanted to ride Toy Story Mania again at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, while I wanted to have lunch at the new Yak & Yeti restaurant in Disney’s Animal Kingdom again. Of course, we also wanted to hit up some of our favorites like Rockin’ Rollercoaster, Expedition Everest, Soarin’ and Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin, but we decided to leave that up to chance – if the lines were tolerable when we got to that point, we’d ride, otherwise we’d move on…
Ultimately it was probably a good thing that we kept our expectations as we did because while we did manage to hit our whopping two must-sees, the trip reminded us once again that four parks in one day just doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room, especially if you’re pre-occupied with a pin hunt! Here’s how we ended up faring:
Disney’s Hollywood Studios
- Toy Story Mania
- zero pins from the list (didn’t realize until later in the day that we went to the wrong location)
Disney’s Animal Kingdom
- Expedition Everest
- lunch at Yak & Yeti
- one pin from the list
Magic Kingdom
- Pirates of the Caribbean
- Hall of Presidents (see an air conditioning theme here?!)
- Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin
- another pin from the list
Epcot
- Spaceship Earth
- Gran Fiesta Tour starring The Three Caballeros (Mexico Pavilion)
- one more pin from the list
Downtown Disney
- one final pin from the list, among others
- dessert at Ghirardelli Soda Fountain
- some more sweets to take home from Goofy’s Candy Company
Believe it or not, we ended up walking through the gates at the Studios right around 10:00am, which is crazy for me because usually that’s pushing it even when we’re staying on-site! One of things we hadn’t considered, though, was just how unbelievably hot it gets during the summer – we did go right around this time last year, but I swear it wasn’t nearly as hot! Hence all of the indoor attractions come afternoon, mind you. Also, in being a Tuesday, we really didn’t expect crowds to be as busy as they were – we passed on both Rockin’ Rollercoaster and Soarin’ at different times of the day because they both boasted 100-minute wait times when we went by, and even at 10:30am when we did Toy Story Mania, the fast pass return time was already at the 5:00 – 6:00pm range! I’m still not entirely sure if that was an error or just crazy crowd levels, but overall we sort of assumed that at least part of the crowds was due to being the week before Labor Day and families getting in that last-minute trip before school starts.
Needless to say, I think four parks in one day is officially out of our system for a while now – we might be inclined to do two parks in one day when we go over for our honeymoon in October, but even then, that’ll most likely be broken up by a visit to Stormalong Bay back at the resort! We still had a good time, though … didn’t get to see fireworks because we retreated to Downtown Disney for dessert when it started to look like rain, although rumor has it that the globe for IllumiNations was being refurbished anyways and we weren’t sure how the show would be without it.
At the end of the day, we came home extremely tired, a little sunburned, and definitely hopped up on more sugar than either of us ingest in about a week, but we got our relaxation in and that was the whole point of the trip.
Well, relaxation, and also these…
[...] or a resort pin showing where we stayed if we spend the night. Last week, in fact, we even had a very special trip where we pretty much spent the entire day hunting for pins, a la the Find-a-Pin scavenger hunt of [...]