We had 3 days planned for the amusement parks, and we had already bought 2 days passes for Universal. For the other day we decided we needed to see the iconic traditional Disney World! And with the chance of rain increasing for the weekend, we decided to split our two days at Universal with a visit to Disney while it was still sunny.

We took an Uber down towards Kissimmee to Disney World! And the first thing to do…. get in line! We had to buy our day pass and then decide if we wanted to board a train or a boat to get to the park!

We chose, BOAT!

We’re going to DISNEY! How is this even real!?

We even got buttons to wear to celebrate that it was our first visit!

The park was busy! And beautiful!

We decided to hit the park counter-clockwise and start off in the future.

I was going to make the most of this day! So I grabbed some fruity, energy, ginger juice extravaganza to kick it off right!

All the rides we looked at were over an hour wait. I don’t know if I was going to have the ability to drum up all the necessary enthusiasm to wait in line again all day….

We walked past a bunch of rides and found a cute one where you ride a clamshell in the Little Mermaid-themed ride, and the line was short enough so that was a fun quick one. And then we ended up at the Haunted Mansion ride and decided to give that one a try too. It was a long wait – had to be more than an hour. Thank goodness some of it was under covering because the sun was cooking!

That long wait (for a short ride) brought us into the lunch hour and we couldn’t find a restaurant to feed us! Most were too full to take reservations or use a list. When did all these other people book their lunch reservations? And how much busier is this place in the summer?

We were starting to get pretty hangry. Finally I found that the hot dog place, Casey’s Corner, that would let me order online and schedule a pick-up time, so we did that.

These foot-long chilli cheese dogs repeated on us throughout the entire rest of the day! Not the best meal of the trip, that’s for sure! But it fed us, and let us press on!

The park is just so lush and beautiful. Flowers and plants and water, with white ibis birds walking around, looking for scraps of food.

By the way, as we appreciate all the plants and the effort that goes into keeping this place beautiful, did you know that over 77,000 people are employed at this park? The entire population of the Yukon is only about 45,000!

Also, can we appreciate all the advances in strollers since I rode in one back in the 70’s? Disney has huge areas for dedicated stroller parking everywhere, outside every ride and store and restaurant.

There is even a paddle wheeler in the park, and you can ride on it!

Instead of that boat though, we found a train that lets you ride around the entire park. It was lovely! And the wait wasn’t that long.

After the train ride, we ran into a parade! Liz remembered hearing a mother say her child was in a marching band that was going to be in the parade. It was really cool!

We soon ended up back near the main part of the park, near the castle. It was getting really warm in the sun, and there just weren’t the vendors available everywhere like Universal for water and refreshments. While the guys got ice cream, I headed back to a spring roll cart where I knew there’d be some water for sale and then met Liz on a bench to people watch.

Are parents really enjoying Disney? Because they all look pretty frazzled. And I don’t know what the kids even were going to enjoy? It was nearly the end of our day and we hadn’t seen one Disney character. I eventually saw only Mickey, from a far away distance, in part of the hourly show at the castle. There were few rides for children, and the lines were crazy long. Most of the Mickey Mouses were on shirts that I think people must have had delivered in advance when they planned their trips? There were many themed and customized family shirts. Jeff immediately ruled out the possibility of the 4 of us wearing matching attire.

I kept comparing these amusement park visits to Canada’s Wonderland, because that’s the park I grew up with. Canada’s Wonderland felt larger with more things to do, with more characters found throughout the park, all day. But maybe that is just how I chose to remember it?

We had only been on a couple of rides because the lines were huge, we we went back to the Future themed area and rode a couple of the little train rides with short lines.

After hitting all the souvenir shops, we were outta there! This time we chose the train!

I am really glad I got to experience this park. We went to DISNEY! Yet at the same time, I was seriously underwhelmed. Where is the Disney in Disney? I really expected more of the classic old Disney characters. If they weren’t going to be there in suited up characters, I expected to see park elements themed after them? But there really wasn’t. Maybe that Hanna-Barbera-land influence of Canada’s Wonderland back in my childhood, with the Smurfs and the Flintstones and Yogi Bear, set my expectations too high? But this is DISNEY! I just thought there’d be more classic Disney?

And we all expected all the Star Wars stuff to be here! Apparently, that is another theme park entirely! ☹️

That night we walked to a nearby Miller’s Ale House and ate in their covered patio. The food was great, and look at the portions! Here’s Tim with his nachos!

That night Liz let us know that they were going to upgrade their last day at Universal to the express pass tickets, the ones that let you get in the short line, the ones that cost – I’m not even going to choose to document the price because it is insane. Like this is going to postponed our retirement expensive. But that planted the seed for me too.

If you’re in the park, where you’re likely only going to be once in your life, you want to experience it all! The day at Disney really sealed that decision. We didn’t get to ride any of the rides we wanted to because the lines were each over an hour. So we paid a ton of money to get in, but not enough to thoroughly enjoy it. That sucked. And with just one more day at an amusement park, we wanted to do it all!

So before falling asleep, I was researching roller coasters. Why did I have those two terrible experiences? Am I too old? Did that brain pain happen because of all the concussions I’ve had in my life? Or was I just too dehydrated? There is one other coaster at Universal that we’d been really pumped to ride – The VelociCoaster. It is newer and the more I read, I learned it was really smooth. Crazy terrifying because there is no shoulder restraint and you (purposely) feel like you’re going to fly out. But it is decided to pull you away from the seat rather than smash your head and body into. I was sold! Let’s do it all tomorrow Jeff, express pass, and VelociCoaster!! Let’s do it all!

More on our last day at Universal in my next post… ☔️