PoohBelle
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Nov 21, 2015
My Dream Coming True
Hello. My name is Amanda. I am a 27 year old expat teaching English in China. I am huge fan of many things, but especially Disney!
For as long as I can remember I have been a disney fan. I cannot remember a time in my life before Disney movies and books and most of my huge stuffed animal collection was made up of mostly Disney characters.
My first Disney park experience took place at Disneyland when I was just two years old. I don't remember any of it, but I have a tiny Winnie-the-Pooh hat and lots of pictures to prove that I was there (and so my parents can prove they took me!). I grew up in the central valley of California, so my family and I made several more trips to the happiest place on earth several more times during my childhood. I loved it and would dream about going back in between trips.
From the time I can remember knowing about Disney World I have wanted to go. I think I figured my family would go eventually, but as a child I had no concept of how expensive this sort of experience would be. As a teenager, I started to plot to try to save up money to pay for myself to go someday.
In March 2013, I moved to China to teach English. My younger brother had recently moved from California to Georgia and my parents became empty nesters. That Christmas my parents sent me a package for my birthday and Christmas. There were many nice surprises, but one specifically stood out. It was a book about the Magic at the Magic Kingdom. I was skipping with my parents and my mother had a huge smile on her face as I picked it up. "That's just a part of your gift," she said. "Next time your home, we want to take you to Disney World!" Wait...what?!?...Seriously!?! To say I was excited would be an understatement.
Life continued to get in the way a bit, however. Just a few months later my cousin T.J. was diagnosed with a brain tumor for the second time in his life. We were basically the same age (he was 9 days older than me) and we were really close, so I decided I need to come home to get to see him before He passed. I am really glad that I did, but we postponed our Disney plans so that we could spend as much time with him before he passed.
A year and a half later, my Disney dream is finally within sight! My parents have made our room reservation, I've done tons of planning, and I am well into counting down the days. I am still fairly new to the Dis and this will be my first trip report. I have enjoyed reading others' and I am looking forward to sharing my experiences. I am still figuring out how to imbed photos and links so please be patient with me
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I love planning and it gave me an excuse to spend time dreaming of Disney! We need to figure out where we were going to stay, where we wanted to eat, what Fastpass reservations we wanted to get...WOW! 
! Even though before this I had told myself that the view didn't really matter since we usually only use our hotel rooms for sleeping, I was surprised how ridiculously excited I was about this news. We haven't even arrived yet and we've already received a magical surprise! 
