Back for a week now and time to jot down some highlights....

[BoingBoingBaggie]

Well, we have been back for a week now and after getting over the jet-lag and getting back into the routine of out lives after a three week holiday experience of a lifetime, it is time to write down a few highlights that we found on our first trip to Orlando.

First of all, we were all amazed by the friendliness of people in USA, whether it was at the airport (the immigration officer laughed and joked with our DD) or at any of the parks/resorts what every job role they had.

Meeting the characters and playing around with them - I got Woody to put his hands up in defence when I pulled an imaginary gun on him (too many to list actually). The way the Princesses reacted to our DD will stay with us forever.

The rides at all the parks were spectacular - Manta at Seaworld terrified me (although we still went on it 5 times)

The wait times at the park were what we had hoped for and very small. Most of the rides were walk on's (Toy Story Mania was the exception obviously but we rode that twice using the Queue/Get fastpass technique).

Weather was very hot and humid, but we had very little rain. You could most likely count the ammount of had in minutes rather than hours, and we only suffered one park closure when we were at Busch Gardens for around 30 mins due to a near-by thunderstorms.

We all felt the magic from the first day, in fact, just the rope-drop ceremony made us cry. Tears from DW followed often all holiday whether it by at fireworks displays, meeting Princessess or feeding a dolphin for the first time.

The look of the face of DD (whose 8th birthday we celebrated many days whilst we were there) was priceless and worth every penny and hour spent on planning the holiday. And I suppose mine was a picture as well when I got chosen to be in the Indy Stunt Show and then got the chance to die infront of an arena full of people. Too many highlights to list, as I am sure all of you good people have from visits to the magic.

We have taken over 1750 photgraphs of our own - 10+hours of video and we are in the process of editing our Photopass photo's. We started that with 450+ photos and after only 2 days of editing we have almost 900 and we have barely touched the surfaced. We have the book to sort out when that is done.

And then the planning for the next journey will commence....

It really is the Happiest Place on Earth and all our dreams did come true for 3 amazing weeks. We cannot wait to be able to go back again....

I will leave you with one of my fav photo's that was taken for us by a passer-by....

 

[howlongtillsummer?]

Sounds like you had a great time! My daughter will be 8 next trip and I hope she has half the fun yours seemed to. Thanks for sharing!

 

[wayneg]

What a great post to read.

Immigration, although some are hard going majority are very friendly people if you talk to them and not just throw your passports at them. They do a very boring job, usually I get them into a conversation and a smile out of them.

We take 1000's of pics every visit, about 30,000 on my photo harddrive now.
Just ordered our photopass on Thursday(due to expire Fri) had about 350 pics taken added border after border for past month, ended up with 3,025.

Thank you for posting, happy planning for the next trip.

 

[T16GEM]

We have found that the immigration people are really nice when you chat to them, especially if you have got little ones with you. Last time we went through at Newark they were training a new member of staff on the queue that we were in and it took a little longer than usual so they were chatting to DD and asking here where she was going - she took great delight in telling them she was getting on another plane to Disney"

Glad that you had a great trip and that you made so many lasting memories - start planning the next trip now!

 

[DISWolves]

Your report brings back memories of our first visit.
Glad you all had a trip to remember
The famous Disney Blues will kick in soon (if they haven't already).
The best remedy is to start planning the next one !!!

 

[Cochise]

sounds a great hols, we got chatting in june 08 at sanford, the officer asked us what part of the uk we were from then told us his grandmother had a hotel in preston during the 2nd world war and had many us soldiers stay there on leave. Great bloke

 

[natalielongstaff]

Your post brought back some lovely memories of our 1st trip glad you had a great time x

 

[UKDEB]

Whilst I can't imagine ever tiring of trips to Orlando, it's wonderful to re-live it through a first-timer's perspective. The immigration officers we've dealt with have never been less than charming, but they did have a bit of a reputation at one point. So much so that there were reports that Disney had been consulted to help with customer service training.