New 8/22! NO. SLEEP. IN. DISNEY. My 24-Hour Birthday Shortest/Longest Trip 5/22-5/26

budafam

DIS Veteran
Joined
Feb 23, 2009
May 23rd, 2014 would be my 31st birthday. It was ALSO scheduled to be Disney's 24 Hour "Rock Your Disney Side" event. I HAD to go to this. How amazing to spend 24 hours awake in Magic Kingdom ON my birthday?!? Hubby gave me the okay and I booked myself. After thinking it over, I didn't want to do it alone. I ended up booking my 7 year old son as well but I kept it a secret from him until we arrived at the airport.

The trip was amazing. It was our shortest trip yet but it felt like the longest because we hardly slept all weekend long. We did so much in the little time we were there. I can't wait to start this report!!!

Table of Contents

Day 1 (Arrival Day)
D-Day is HERE!

Day 2 (24 Hours at MK & My Birthday)
24 Hours on 2 Hours of Sleep!
Best Present Ever!
Hades Hair
Festival of Fantasy Part 1
Festival of Fantasy Part 2
Talking Mickey
Birthday Dinner
The Going Got Rough
First & Last Ride
24 Hours at Magic Kingdom on my Birthday VIDEO

Day 3 (Epcot)
Yum Yum! Rum & Ice Cream for Breakfast!
Show & a Doofenslurper
Test Track
Pirate Cruise

Day 4 (Star Wars Weekend)
Jedi Time
The Motorcade
The Motorcade Part 2
The Motorcade Part 3
1st Time on Rocknrollercoaster
Bring Your Friend to Work Day
Rain Rain Go Away
Dessert Party
 
I want to read. I took my grand daughter who also was not told until we got to the airport. But I also traveled with dil. Along with a. 1 year old and an 85 year old.

The heat of the weekend did me in
 
I want to read. I took my grand daughter who also was not told until we got to the airport. But I also traveled with dil. Along with a. 1 year old and an 85 year old.

The heat of the weekend did me in

Cheryl, is that you?
 
Happy Belated Birthday! What a fun trip to celebrate your day :goodvibes I can't wait to hear all about it! I'm going thru Disney withdrawals myself right now, so it's good to read someone else's fun times at my "Happy Place".
 


I had taken the day off from my job so that I could finish up any last minute packing. DS and DD went off to school. DD was in half day classes so she wouldn't need to be taken out for the trip to the airport but DS had a full day. I told him we couldn't find anyone to babysit so I had to take him out at 11am so he could come with us to the airport to send me off.

It was DS's "birthday" at school that day. Since he has a summer birthday they stick them in at the end of the year. I was so excited that morning and had to bring cupcakes in that we forgot his backpack.. lol. Great start!

I got everyone picked up from school and we headed off to the airport. The 90 minute drive seemed to take forever. We parked and everyone came in with me up until the security checkpoint. It was then that I let DS in on my little secret.

I hugged DD goodbye and hugged DS then I pulled a magic band out of my pocket and gave it to DS. I had decorated it with Star Wars vinyl decals. He looked at it and smiled but he still had no idea... I asked him what that was and he said "magic band"... then I asked "What does a magic band do?" THEN it clicked! I could see tears in his eyes... I think it took awhile for it to sink in. Luckily DD had known about this (and actually kept it a secret!)

***Don't worry! I did take video of the whole surprise and it will be posted eventually***

Our flight was 3:35pm and landing at 7:15pm in Orlando. The flight went great.. I sat next to a lovely, very talkative lady that made the time pass quickly. I fit everything into our carryon's so that we wouldn't have to wait for our luggage at the resort. We needed as much time to sleep as we could possibly get.



We boarded Magical Express almost immediately (we always seem to time that right!)



We arrived at Pop Century and I entered the "online check in" line. It took 40 minutes to get to the desk. I could not believe it. There were 5 families in front of us and only 2 people at the front desk (1 actually disappeared for quite some time).





Finally, we finished there and headed straight to the food court. We were starving! We quickly ate & purchased our mug.



I had the beef stroganoff... it wasn't very good... DS could only find the French bread pepperoni pizza to be appetizing so he got that and I ate about half myself. The total for this meal (including the mug) was around $40. I miss the dining plan!



We headed to our room. I had originally booked 3 nights through Orbitz (even though I'm a TA, this was a GREAT deal). I added on this Thursday night last minute because I didn't want to miss any of the 24 hour event so this was our ONE night reservation through Disney. Our room was not in a bad location at all... we were near the big wheel.



We basically got to the room and went straight to bed. I think I finally fell asleep around 11pm and then I woke up at 1am and that was it. No more sleep for me. It was officially my birthday AND I was in Disney World AND we were going to spend the next 24 hours+ AWAKE.
 
That is awesome that you got to celebrate at Disney for your birthday! My 13 year old has been talking about how much he would love to go to Disney during the Star Wars weekend. I told him that I can not take off from work for a vacation then, but now that I think about it MAYBE I could take off for a long weekend! And surprise him.:banana: Thanks for giving me the inspiration to try to plan it. Can't wait to read all about your trip!
 
joining along...

It is great you got to spend your birthday at Disney and at the Rock you Disney Side event with your son. How cool!
 


Thanks everyone! It really was the best time ever!

I've had a big of a set back with my photo site going down... I will fix this asap and get back to it.

I also wanted to report back that our October trip will actually be put on the backburner as I have just booked ANOTHER trip for September! My travel agency is putting on an exclusive breakfast with the one and only Anna & Elsa. I just HAD to be there so this will be my daughter's trip... I plan to surprise her but not sure how yet. I've booked the Perfectly Princess Tea Party and I'm really hoping to be able to do MNSSHP. Food & Wine plus Hanson is on the list for sure!!!
 
Thanks everyone! It really was the best time ever!

I've had a big of a set back with my photo site going down... I will fix this asap and get back to it.

I also wanted to report back that our October trip will actually be put on the backburner as I have just booked ANOTHER trip for September! My travel agency is putting on an exclusive breakfast with the one and only Anna & Elsa. I just HAD to be there so this will be my daughter's trip... I plan to surprise her but not sure how yet. I've booked the Perfectly Princess Tea Party and I'm really hoping to be able to do MNSSHP. Food & Wine plus Hanson is on the list for sure!!!

AWESOME!!!! :cool1:
I will be at Epcot when Hanson is playing!
 
Just finished reading your December TR, and am signing on to read this one! Some day I will go to the 24-hour Disney Event! It will happen. I'm excited that I get to attend the Villains event this year though! Can't wait to hear all about your trip!

Courtney princess:
 
Just finished reading your December TR, and am signing on to read this one! Some day I will go to the 24-hour Disney Event! It will happen. I'm excited that I get to attend the Villains event this year though! Can't wait to hear all about your trip!

Courtney princess:

Thanks for reading along again :) I'm jealous of the villains event! That looks like so much fun!
 
I should have known better than to try to sleep. I fell asleep around 11pm and woke up at 1am on the 23rd. I did not fall back asleep after that. I was about to attempt the 24 hour event on 2 hours of sleep. I let DS sleep until 3:15am. Since we had two separate reservations, I thought we would need to check out and take our luggage to be held onto while we were at the park... we packed everything up and got ourselves ready for the big day. At 3:45am we headed out of our room towards the lobby with all of our luggage. We took a few pictures along the way. The resort was dead.





There were SOOO many bunnies hopping around... it was eerie! We counted at least 20 in the little time it took us to walk from our room to the lobby.





I'm glad we were doing this event on our very first day there... we had energy! Adrenaline was going to carry us through a good portion of this thing.







The lady at the front desk said that we would be able to leave our stuff in our room! So we took EVERYTHING back... lol... and went back to the lobby to wait and meet up with someone from the Dis to share a cab with. DS enjoyed himself with the free video games in the kid's waiting area.





We spotted them and introduced ourselves. This was WDWGoofyDaddy from the Dis and his wife. We got a cab to take us to Bay Lake where we thought it would be best to walk over to MK from. The guards at the gate were not very friendly nor did they want us to be walking over to MK from there. They told us that we would need to go into the lobby and wait until someone told us we could go over... yeah right! We got dropped off and we started making our way along the walkway avoiding the security guards completely. We got to the road but there was a guard standing there preventing anyone from crossing. We were probably 10 people back in the line at this point. We waited and waited and waited. The line grew and grew. We started pleading with the guards (another one showed up eventually). It was 5am and we were starting to get anxious. We took pictures..



The crowd started singing “Let us go, let us go” lol.. It was now 5:15am and the ferry boat was headed for Magic Kingdom.. it was FULL of people!!! Everyone started screaming at the guards.. lol, it kind of reminded me of Black Friday. One of the guards finally spoke up and said that she would be leading us over there. No one was to run ahead of her. And off we went! We walked and walked finally stopping again at a closer point.

At this point, I needed to call DS's school to excuse his absence for the day. This was originally a snow day for him but with our awful winter, it needed to be made up on this Friday. I made the call and left the message that he would not be in school because we were in Disney World!!! lol, everyone standing around me got a kick out of it. We were then allowed to go ahead and make our way to the turnstiles. Luckily, they held the ferry boat until then so we were actually the first ones to get up there.

Bag check went quickly and we were first at one of the turnstiles.



Our original plan was to take selfies every hour on the hour... well, here's our first and our last... lol. We completely forgot to do this!



There was an older lady who was stationed at our scanner. She was given an Ipad of sorts to check everyone in with. She said she had never done this before (great!) lol... luckily we had no problems and we were in immediately. Time to wait for the show.





As we were waiting for the show to begin, we saw the ever famous Kenny the Pirate. DS asked him for a pin but he didn't carry any with him because he would be attempting 100 attractions within 24 hours... awesome! We also got to see some pretty well known characters... they were still in their jammies too!





The show finally started and the villains/heroes arrived!



As soon as the fireworks went off, DS was pulling me towards the tunnel.



The 24 hours had begun! Happy Birthday to me!
 
Hi joining in i just finished your christmas trip report and so enjoyed it. I loved hearing about your dads first trip. I cant wait to hear about this trip.
 
We made our way through the tunnel and the CM's were walking everyone to the back of the park. We snaked our way through the crowd and somehow ended up in the very front by the time we got up to the castle.



Everyone was on high alert knowing there was a chance the mine train would be open for this event... as we exited through the castle, the CM's took us around the carousel to either enter the coveted Anna & Elsa line or go on... there was a man standing outside of the Mine Train entrance and yes, IT WAS OPEN! I could not believe my eyes. Everyone instantly started screaming and jumping up and down. One man was so excited, the CM in front of the entrance had to tell him to "calm down sir" lol... we entered the line and started playing with the fun stuff.



DS started getting nervous and insisted he felt like he was going to be sick. DS is not a fan of rollercoasters or any type of mild thrill ride. I calmed him down and then noticed the two people in front of us were Joe & Ashley from the "See Ya Reel Soon" videos on Youtube. We watch those ALL the time and I had planned to go to their meet later on that day. Joe told DS that the ride is not bad at all and that he will love it!



We got on instantly... it was literally a walk on. We were right behind Joe & Ashley so I'm hoping we'll make one of their videos :)

The ride was over quickly. The dwarfs is definitely the best part of it all... DS LOVED it and proclaimed it was his new favorite ride. What a great start to my birthday! Everyone cheered when the train pulled back into the station. I was so very thankful to have had this opportunity. We exited and took a pic of the cottage.



I immediately tried to post on Facebook but MK's wifi was being wonky and not working for me. I called DH (not realizing it's only just after 5am there.. haha) and told him to post for me telling my Disney friends that I had gotten on the mine train!

Fantasyland was dead.



DS insisted we hit up Haunted Mansion next. This is his ultimate favorite... we walked right in with no wait of course.



Then we made our way over to the Little Mermaid ride... walk on.



We were thirsty by this point so we went over to Storybook Circus to grab a quick slushie.. that works for breakfast, right?



At this point, we saw the line for the Mine Train and it was loooong.





DS wanted to ride the teacups and I cannot handle that type of spinning so I sent him on by himself.



Of course we had to give the sword a try.



We decided to make our way over to Big Thunder Mountain... it's been 3 years since DS has gone on this. He was scared his very first time but he was only 4 at the time so I was hoping he would love it this time.





He absolutely loved it and said THIS was now his favorite ride... haha.

It was just after 8am by this point so we headed back over towards Main Street. DS took a pic of me on the way.


Time for some Starbucks!






By the time we got done it was 9am... so far so good and we had 21 hours to go!
 
We took time out to call back home and tried to use the wifi again... not much success. We took pics in front of the castle...





It was time for Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin.









Luckily we were doing a Memory Maker share and were able to get all these great pics...



We took this pic quite a few hours later as well... you'll have to "stay tuned" for that :)

We took a walk over to Small World and decided to ride it "for my daughter". This is her favorite ride. DS enjoys it as you can tell...



We had a FP+ to use on Big Thunder so we rode that again.



We rode the Magic Carpets and then went to look at the Jungle Cruise but the line was at 45 minutes and our FP+ was not good for another hour. We tried to get a penny from this machine but no such luck:



We went over to ride Pirates of the Caribbean



and then started making our way back to the hub... we stopped along the way for a few snacks (popcorn and shaved ice).

DS kept getting compliments on his "Hades hair" so I took a good pic of it before the humidity took it over.

 
So cool Seven Dwarfs Mine Train was open, great birthday present.

Sounds like you had a great start to the "Rock Your Disney Side"! That is great your son is now a fan of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad ride. :cool1:
 

GET A DISNEY VACATION QUOTE

Dreams Unlimited Travel is committed to providing you with the very best vacation planning experience possible. Our Vacation Planners are experts and will share their honest advice to help you have a magical vacation.

Let us help you with your next Disney Vacation!










Top