One Day at WDW Trip Report

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What can you do at Disney in one day?

Well hopefully this will give you some ideas if you only have one day to spend at Disney : )

My sister and I (early 30’s) and our parents planned to go on a Disney cruise for over a year. Well actually first my sister and I planned to go after we had such a great time on the Magic last January and our parents decided to go along with us on the Fantasy.

My mom surprised us by buying 4 one-day park hoppers at a charity auction. Along with the tickets was a junior suite at the Hilton at Downtown Disney. We added a second room though since we are 4 adults and even a junior suite would be too close for comfort for us : )

So we had one day at Disney before our Disney Cruise which embarked on Saturday May 19.

Side note - I do prefer staying on property. But the price was right on this one. And since this was a bonus day at Disney before our cruise I didn’t mind so much.

Also to set the stage for this report – we go to Disney a lot. We are from Florida so my parents have been going since the park opened and my sister and I have been going since we were babies.

So there was no need to cram everything in on this one day at Disney but rather to hit our highlights while seeing new things. That is my one goal for each trip – to see and experience something new (at least to me) each time I go to Disney and I always do!

So on with the trip report….enjoy!

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I absolutely love this park. The theming is amazing and attention to detail is fantastic.



We like to get to parks at rope drop so it was an early morning for us since we were staying the night before at a Hampton Inn in Davenport FL and the home of the McDonald's my parents would go to when they were students at Florida Southern College. So we can't help but tease them about "their" McDonald's.

We left the Hampton Inn by 7:00 and arrived at the Hilton Downtown Disney Hotel by 7:30 AM. Luckily my dad watched the local news and was able to avoid I-4 since it was closed because of a major accident. He earned MVP for that one! We checked in to the Hilton and they actually had one of our rooms available so we put all 15 pieces of luggage in the room and headed to Animal Kingdom.

They predicted rain so we packed our rain jackets in our day pack which meant that it didn't rain until the evening when we were already back at our hotel.

Anyway, we arrived at Animal Kingdom by 8:00AM and parked in the lot. Hilton has a shuttle but it only runs every 30 minutes and we decided to drive and park instead. My sister asked if we each had our tickets and then handed us our hold Florida Passes from 1992! She had been organizing closets and came across them. My dad's picture with his mustache looked like it should have read " don't let this man in" : )

We were first at the turnstiles and waited till they opened at 8:45. There was no opening celebration which I really missed. When we were through the turnstiles we followed the cast members left toward Africa where we waited at the rope drop. The cast members tried to entertain us with "if you are happy and you know it..." My dad responded by singing "if you want to make us happy - let us in"

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At 9:00 the rope dropped and we were off to Kilimanjaro Safari. The driver was one of the best we have had. Very knowledgeable, but I didn’t catch his name. They are changing the ending poaching story line and will soon create a zebra habitat. Right now they just talk about what their plans are for the area but there is nothing to see yet.





Two Headed Giraffe?






Morning Rush Hour and Traffic Jam

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We walked through Panjani Trail which has to be one of the best gorilla habitats. It was breakfast time for them




Excellent Posture

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9:30 and my mom wanted to see Festival of the Lion King so we split up just before the show. My Dad, Sister and I went to Expedition Everest for fastpasses while my mom went to the show to wait for us. We got fastpasses but then noticed the standby was only 5 minutes. We had just enough time to ride it standby. This was my first time through the standby line and I really enjoyed the displays! Everest was as much fun as ever – though I miss the moving Yeti.

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We had just a few minutes to get to the Festival of the Lion King and made it just in time. It wasn’t crowded so my mom had no problem saving seats for us. I know you are not supposed to but the theatre was less than half full so it really wasn’t an issue. This show is really fun and I am so glad my mom wanted to go because we all really enjoyed it.