lindseyanne
The Witch of Walpurgis
- Joined
- May 15, 2014
Hellooooooooooooo ladies and gentlemen, bats and ghouls, cool cats and kittens, etc. Welcome to my first trip report. I’m Lindsey, and I’m probably the Disboards’ finest lurker (especially during these months of quarantine). Yup, even though I live in Orlando, have an annual pass, and used to (past tense, #thankscoronavirus) go to the parks about at least once a week, I still can’t get enough Walt Disney World and read just about every trip report posted here. I’ve never written one, though, because to be honest, my typical trip to a park would probably not be very interesting! Picture it: “Sicily, 1922. June 13. I went to Epcot, rode Living with the Land three times in a row, then I got hot and went home.” So boring!
A look at me in my in my natural habitat, color-coordinating with Wendell
But that’s all changed since mid-March, and it looks like the new normal for the time being is going to be vastly different when it comes to my time at WDW. With attendance caps, the park pass system, social distancing, etc., basically everything has changed, and it’s inevitably going to change the way we all experience the parks we love. I figured that this was as good a time as any to start my own year-long “trip” report (“trip” meaning my 20 minute drive to WDW property, though if you have ever spent any time on Florida roads with Florida drivers, you’ll understand that that 20 minute ride is often harrowing!). Hopefully, this TR will document the good (low crowds!), the sad (no character meet and greets! [I won’t say “bad” because I understand the safety issue, but character meets are one of my favorite things to do at WDW, so I’m truly sad these have to go away for the time being]), and the ugly (my mask after wearing it for 10 hours a day in 95 degree heat and 100% humidity).
So, allow myself to introduce...myself. I'm very longwinded and also very, very bored after four months of quarantine, so perhaps pull up some music while you read on. I recommend this track of Epcot entrance music from 1982.
Me circa 1988
I’m in my thirties, working in higher education, and probably one of the only people you’ll ever meet who was actually born in Florida. I was born in St. Pete, which is where most of my family still is, but we moved to Orlando when I was little because my dad was working as a contractor for Disney, shipping stuff out for a little project you may have heard of calledEuro Disney Disneyland Paris! Being in Orlando was originally going to be a temporary thing, but then my mom began working in WDW’s corporate offices, and we ended up staying. As a result, I literally grew up at Walt Disney World. As most Orlando kids do, I ended up working as a cast member during college, first at what was then One Man’s Dream at DHS (to really date myself, the park was still MGM then), then at Pirates of the Caribbean (my absolute favorite role), and finally at Splash Mountain.
See, they aren't all pictures of me and various Country Bears!
My companion for most of my Disney-ing is my equally as Disney-loving boyfriend, who I’ll refer to as Boyfriend but who’s face you won’t see in this report. Boyfriend is a cast member, so I’m not crazy about posting personally identifying details about him online. I guess I should go ahead and say that anything and everything I say are just my opinions (and his opinions, if I include them), and not those of the Walt Disney Company. Although cast members are blacked out from the parks as of the day I'm typing this, Boyfriend also has a platinum annual pass, like me, so luckily he's still able to go.
I actually accidentally caught a bit of Boyfriend in the doorway of this picture from my Instagram stories the last day Communicore/Innoventions was opened, so squint and you can see a hint of him!
Since this is the Disboards, here are a few of my favorite things:
Park: My childhood favorite park was Epcot (remember, this was the Epcot of the original Journey Into Imagination, Horizons, World of Motion, etc.), but poor Epcot is kind of a hot mess right now, so my current favorite park goes back and forth between Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom.
Magic Kingdom Ride: Haunted Mansion
Epcot Ride: Living with the Land. (I like to imagine that this ride is actually named Livin’ with the Land, to match the dropped g from Soarin’, and I will only refer to it by this name from now on.)
DHS Ride: Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run only because, and brace yourselves here...I have not had the chance to do Rise of the Resistance yet. I knoooooooow, I hate myself, too! Boyfriend and I are two of the biggest Star Wars fans you'll ever meet, but we are NOT fans of waking up super early on the weekend (our typical Disney days). We hated the idea of waking up at 4 am to get to DHS, wait to get in the park, *maybe* get a boarding group, and potentially have to wait until the evening to even ride. Pre-COVID 19, Disney had also said that they would be having cast member “post-views” (instead of previews) for ROTR, and that CMs would be able to bring a guest, so we were content to wait for that so our experience wouldn’t be tainted by being giant grumpygusses due to waking up before dawn. Obviously, that isn’t happening now, so fingers crossed we’ll be able to ride ROTR on our first day back at DHS, which is in August (I already have a park pass for it). (Another tangent: Boyfriend and I looped Smuggler’s Run as many times as possible during the CM preview of Galaxy’s Edge, and for our last ride the CMs surprised us with a cockpit entirely to ourselves. We were like “well, this is wonderful and will never happen again” and we have bragged to friends and family so much about our PRIVATE and VERY VIP ride on the Millenium Falcon. But now with social distancing in place, we’ve both heard rumors that the cockpits will all have just one party in them, so maybe we’ll all be VIPs now!)
DAK Ride: Flight of Passage
Non-Ride Experiences: Country Bear Jamboree, Carousel of Progress, Impressions de France. I swear, if anything happens to any of these, I will riot.
Park Show: Festival of the Lion King. I am IN AWE of the performers in this show.
Restaurants: Sanaa, Jiko, Biergarten, Yachtsman Steakhouse, Homecomin’, Rose and Crown
Dearly Departed Attractions: Horizons, World of Motion, Delta Dreamflight, the Skybuckets, the Great Movie Ride...can you tell you I really love old attractions? I’m lucky that I got to experience these a lot during my childhood (Boyfriend never got to ride Horizons and it KILLS HIM), and thanks to ride throughs on YouTube, they live on forever!
Classic Princess: Cinderella
Classic Movies: Cinderella, The Aristocats, Alice in Wonderland, Lady & the Tramp
Disney Renaissance Princess: Ariel
Disney Renaissance Movies: The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Mulan, Oliver & Company (okay, I’m stretching the term “Disney Renaissance” with that one, but it’s such a great movie and has an awesome soundtrack. Just try not to cry when Jenny sings “Good Company” to Oliver--you can’t! I’m tearing up even typing this!)
Modern Princess: Tiana
Modern Movies: The Princess and the Frog, Tangled, Zootopia, Wreck-It Ralph, Wall-E
Outside of Disney, my main passion is college football; in a normal year, you rarely will find me in the parks on a Saturday because I’m either at a UCF game or parked on my couch from College GameDay’s 9 AM start time to early Sunday morning when the west coast games end. Who knows what this season holds for us, though! I’m also a second generation Tampa Bay Bucs fan, and as an aside, wow is it weird to see Tom Brady in Bucs gear. For something completely different, while I may appear as your average thirtysomething, I am actually still a Broadway-obsessed, frustrated theatre kid at heart. I am constantly either singing Broadway tunes (usually to my cats, my long-suffering audience) or referencing Broadway tunes.
Here I am with my favorite Citizen of Main Street, rocking her black and gold, on what was one of the most fabulous days of my life: UCF's Peach Bowl victory parade at the Magic Kingdom. My two great loves combined!
A note on the pictures appearing in this report: I’m planning on using pictures from both my DSLR and my iPhone, as well as PhotoPass pics (my pass includes MemoryMaker). Boyfriend is an amazing photographer, and his passion for it got me into photography; my camera is an older DSLR that he no longer uses. I was too intimidated to go off auto mode for a long time, but I’ve been using my quarantine time to get more comfortable shooting manually, so I’m actually really excited to play around at the parks again with what I’ve learned. I also post a lot on my Instagram stories when I’m at WDW, so if you want to, feel free to follow me at @lindsey_organa.
Taken on my DSLR, probably my favorite picture I've ever taken at WDW, and I'm not even a Frozen fan.
This introduction has gotten insanely long (tangents: I hope you like them, because I go off on them a lot), so I’ll end here. Stay tuned for my first experience back at the parks, the Magic Kingdom AP preview on Friday, July 10th!
A look at me in my in my natural habitat, color-coordinating with Wendell
But that’s all changed since mid-March, and it looks like the new normal for the time being is going to be vastly different when it comes to my time at WDW. With attendance caps, the park pass system, social distancing, etc., basically everything has changed, and it’s inevitably going to change the way we all experience the parks we love. I figured that this was as good a time as any to start my own year-long “trip” report (“trip” meaning my 20 minute drive to WDW property, though if you have ever spent any time on Florida roads with Florida drivers, you’ll understand that that 20 minute ride is often harrowing!). Hopefully, this TR will document the good (low crowds!), the sad (no character meet and greets! [I won’t say “bad” because I understand the safety issue, but character meets are one of my favorite things to do at WDW, so I’m truly sad these have to go away for the time being]), and the ugly (my mask after wearing it for 10 hours a day in 95 degree heat and 100% humidity).
So, allow myself to introduce...myself. I'm very longwinded and also very, very bored after four months of quarantine, so perhaps pull up some music while you read on. I recommend this track of Epcot entrance music from 1982.
Me circa 1988
I’m in my thirties, working in higher education, and probably one of the only people you’ll ever meet who was actually born in Florida. I was born in St. Pete, which is where most of my family still is, but we moved to Orlando when I was little because my dad was working as a contractor for Disney, shipping stuff out for a little project you may have heard of called
See, they aren't all pictures of me and various Country Bears!
My companion for most of my Disney-ing is my equally as Disney-loving boyfriend, who I’ll refer to as Boyfriend but who’s face you won’t see in this report. Boyfriend is a cast member, so I’m not crazy about posting personally identifying details about him online. I guess I should go ahead and say that anything and everything I say are just my opinions (and his opinions, if I include them), and not those of the Walt Disney Company. Although cast members are blacked out from the parks as of the day I'm typing this, Boyfriend also has a platinum annual pass, like me, so luckily he's still able to go.
I actually accidentally caught a bit of Boyfriend in the doorway of this picture from my Instagram stories the last day Communicore/Innoventions was opened, so squint and you can see a hint of him!
Since this is the Disboards, here are a few of my favorite things:
Park: My childhood favorite park was Epcot (remember, this was the Epcot of the original Journey Into Imagination, Horizons, World of Motion, etc.), but poor Epcot is kind of a hot mess right now, so my current favorite park goes back and forth between Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom.
Magic Kingdom Ride: Haunted Mansion
Epcot Ride: Living with the Land. (I like to imagine that this ride is actually named Livin’ with the Land, to match the dropped g from Soarin’, and I will only refer to it by this name from now on.)
DHS Ride: Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run only because, and brace yourselves here...I have not had the chance to do Rise of the Resistance yet. I knoooooooow, I hate myself, too! Boyfriend and I are two of the biggest Star Wars fans you'll ever meet, but we are NOT fans of waking up super early on the weekend (our typical Disney days). We hated the idea of waking up at 4 am to get to DHS, wait to get in the park, *maybe* get a boarding group, and potentially have to wait until the evening to even ride. Pre-COVID 19, Disney had also said that they would be having cast member “post-views” (instead of previews) for ROTR, and that CMs would be able to bring a guest, so we were content to wait for that so our experience wouldn’t be tainted by being giant grumpygusses due to waking up before dawn. Obviously, that isn’t happening now, so fingers crossed we’ll be able to ride ROTR on our first day back at DHS, which is in August (I already have a park pass for it). (Another tangent: Boyfriend and I looped Smuggler’s Run as many times as possible during the CM preview of Galaxy’s Edge, and for our last ride the CMs surprised us with a cockpit entirely to ourselves. We were like “well, this is wonderful and will never happen again” and we have bragged to friends and family so much about our PRIVATE and VERY VIP ride on the Millenium Falcon. But now with social distancing in place, we’ve both heard rumors that the cockpits will all have just one party in them, so maybe we’ll all be VIPs now!)
DAK Ride: Flight of Passage
Non-Ride Experiences: Country Bear Jamboree, Carousel of Progress, Impressions de France. I swear, if anything happens to any of these, I will riot.
Park Show: Festival of the Lion King. I am IN AWE of the performers in this show.
Restaurants: Sanaa, Jiko, Biergarten, Yachtsman Steakhouse, Homecomin’, Rose and Crown
Dearly Departed Attractions: Horizons, World of Motion, Delta Dreamflight, the Skybuckets, the Great Movie Ride...can you tell you I really love old attractions? I’m lucky that I got to experience these a lot during my childhood (Boyfriend never got to ride Horizons and it KILLS HIM), and thanks to ride throughs on YouTube, they live on forever!
Classic Princess: Cinderella
Classic Movies: Cinderella, The Aristocats, Alice in Wonderland, Lady & the Tramp
Disney Renaissance Princess: Ariel
Disney Renaissance Movies: The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Mulan, Oliver & Company (okay, I’m stretching the term “Disney Renaissance” with that one, but it’s such a great movie and has an awesome soundtrack. Just try not to cry when Jenny sings “Good Company” to Oliver--you can’t! I’m tearing up even typing this!)
Modern Princess: Tiana
Modern Movies: The Princess and the Frog, Tangled, Zootopia, Wreck-It Ralph, Wall-E
Outside of Disney, my main passion is college football; in a normal year, you rarely will find me in the parks on a Saturday because I’m either at a UCF game or parked on my couch from College GameDay’s 9 AM start time to early Sunday morning when the west coast games end. Who knows what this season holds for us, though! I’m also a second generation Tampa Bay Bucs fan, and as an aside, wow is it weird to see Tom Brady in Bucs gear. For something completely different, while I may appear as your average thirtysomething, I am actually still a Broadway-obsessed, frustrated theatre kid at heart. I am constantly either singing Broadway tunes (usually to my cats, my long-suffering audience) or referencing Broadway tunes.
Here I am with my favorite Citizen of Main Street, rocking her black and gold, on what was one of the most fabulous days of my life: UCF's Peach Bowl victory parade at the Magic Kingdom. My two great loves combined!
A note on the pictures appearing in this report: I’m planning on using pictures from both my DSLR and my iPhone, as well as PhotoPass pics (my pass includes MemoryMaker). Boyfriend is an amazing photographer, and his passion for it got me into photography; my camera is an older DSLR that he no longer uses. I was too intimidated to go off auto mode for a long time, but I’ve been using my quarantine time to get more comfortable shooting manually, so I’m actually really excited to play around at the parks again with what I’ve learned. I also post a lot on my Instagram stories when I’m at WDW, so if you want to, feel free to follow me at @lindsey_organa.
Taken on my DSLR, probably my favorite picture I've ever taken at WDW, and I'm not even a Frozen fan.
This introduction has gotten insanely long (tangents: I hope you like them, because I go off on them a lot), so I’ll end here. Stay tuned for my first experience back at the parks, the Magic Kingdom AP preview on Friday, July 10th!
