A Trip to Disney

Most of you already know that I took a trip to Florida last week. After all, the majority of my readers are also my Facebook friends. What I haven't done though, is talk about the details of my trip. There are a lot of stories for me to tell. I haven't started before now because as soon as I got back from vacation, I went back to work, and have been once again putting in a lot of hours. I certainly won't complain about that... after all, I have a vacation to pay for.

We spent our time in Orlando, known, of course, for Disney. We stayed at the Hilton right outside of Downtown Disney, and we hit Magic Kingdom and Epcot. With this trip, I can now say that I have been to both Disneyland and Disney World. The first time I went to Disneyland was in the early 1990's, and then I went again around four years ago. I was impressed with Disneyland on my first trip (despite the fact that Snow White refused to have her picture taken with me), and the second trip was even better. They did a great job of expanding and improving the park. With that said though, Disney World blows Disneyland out of the water. I'd often heard this, but reserved judgment until I experienced things for myself.

There are a few reasons that I like Disney World better. For starters, I really like that Downtown Disney is a completely separate entity from the theme parks. This affords people the opportunity to focus on shopping while at Downtown Disney, and concentrate on the rides and attractions at the theme parks. This was a stroke of genius. With that said though, if you're short on time, or aren't wild about commuting to a completely different location for shopping, Magic Kingdom and Epcot both had plenty of opportunities for shopping. My point is that Disney ironed out some of Disneyland's kinks when they built Disney World.

My favorite feature of Disney World, however, was the tickets we purchased. Certain hotels have some sort of partnership with Disney that allows the hotel guests to buy discounted tickets to the theme parks. In our case, the discount basically worked like this... you buy the discount ticket, which allows you to enter the park late in the day, but you get to remain in the park after it closes to the other ticket holders. This was a quintuple win for us. 1) The kids got to sleep in. 2) Many early birds had already departed by the time we arrived, so the lines were shorter. 3) Lines were significantly shorter after the park closed, because there are very few hotels that offer this deal. 4) We were NOT at the parks during the hottest part of the day. 5) We got a DISCOUNT for the four aforementioned perks!

With this all said though, the hotels that offer these perks are a select few, and they're not budget hotels. However, I would ABSOLUTELY do the same thing again if I were to hit Disney World. I'll talk a bit more about the parks themselves, and other aspects of the trip in later posts.