It’s a Wrap! Celebrating the Holidays with Adventure

[Keladry84]

1. Introductions:
After just returning from a holiday trip to WDW and Universal Studios, I decided to document the fun here on Disboards for my 2nd trip report. The first one documented my first ever trip to WDW over Spring Break earlier this year!

This report will primarily cover a holiday trip at Universal from December 26th-January 1st, with 1 day at Disney. This was my final trip of the year for my 1 year of Universal Annual Pass (with 5 total!), and the Disney day was a comp ticket from a travel disaster last Spring Break. Those interested in reading about that trip can find the trip report HERE.

Since I didn’t do individual Universal trip reports for the rest of my 2024 travel, I plan on “time traveling” a couple of times during this report to share some of the highlights.

Who I am:
My name here on Dis is Keladry – it’s not my real name, but a handle I often use online. It comes from a character from a Tamora Pierce book, who is my favorite author. I turned 40 last September and teach high school German in the Midwest. My 40th birthday was part of the decision to buy an annual pass for a theme park half way across the country! It was definitely an adventure and a year of discovery: I spent both the 1st and last day of the year in the parks, and each trip offered something new and unique to experience.



This is me on my first Universal trip of the year in January 2024!

I am also autistic, and part of my motivation for writing the trip reports is to share what it is like to navigate the parks with autism. All of my trips were solo, so my apologies for a lot of the use of “I”. It is also difficult to get good pictures when solo, which is part of the reason for doing one “mega” report for my year rather than individual ones for each trip.

Trip Details:
The main focus for this is report is my most recent holiday trip from 12/26-1/1/2024. I stayed at Universal Orlando Dockside, and Uebered over to Disney for my 1 day. I originally was supposed to fly home on the 31st, but then was like uhhhh…why??? At first it seemed impossible to stay due to cost, but then with persistence lucked out in finding a good flight on points on the 1st, and a 1 night AP rate at Dockside for the 31st! YAY!

So the initial plan for this trip was:

12/26 – 12/28: Universal Orlando
12/29: WDW (AK, MK, and Epcot)
12/30-12/31:Universal Orlando
1/1: Citywalk/UO resorts (AP was expired:/)

I also had 4 other UO trips throughout the year:

Trip 1: Jan 1-4
Trip 2: 5ish days last week of May
Trip 3: short trip mid July
Trip 4: Labor day weekend/HHN

I think I spent about 20 days total in Universal Orlando over the year with my pass, and then 5 days at Disney. If you count a couple days in local theme parks, I spent about 1 month touring theme parks during 2024! YIKES! It was awesome

 

[Keladry84]

2. Trip Planning:
This was an interesting trip to plan because I knew with it being the week after Christmas the parks would be PACKED. I went in with very realistic expectations knowing that I might not be able to do much, but also with a lot of anticipation to get to experience both WDW and UO during the holidays! I was ok if it turned out I couldn’t do a lot as I had already experienced both parks and done my absolute musts before this trip.

For Universal Orlando, there wasn’t much planning to do.

The decision to stay at Dockside was mainly cost. Dockside is far from my favorite universal hotel mostly due to its size and noise, but I’ve been able to make it work and ended up there most trips due to it being cheapest. I do like the buses as they are very quick and efficient and with the exception of once, I’ve always pretty much walked right onto a waiting bus. The other hotels I’ve stayed at (Surfside, Cabana, and Aventura – my favorite!), have had decent transport but there was usually a 10-15 minute wait.



I also made a list of things that I wanted to do/experience during my trip, with a focus on the holidays and/or those still on my bucket list. Some of those were:

- breakfast in HP, Nutcracker hunt, Macy’s Parade, Grinch meet and greet
- do all the spells in the wizarding world
- get another golden ticket in the Wonka coin pusher at the arcades
- finally be brave enough to ride Velocicoaster!


Somehow despite liking coasters this one has me terrified……

And then the small things that I do every trip. What astonishes me is that there were still so many new things for me to experience despite the multiple trips earlier in the year!

Planning for Disney was quite a bit different. I knew it would be difficult because I had only one day, I was less familiar with the parks, there was much more that I wanted to do, and…..I was staying off site.

That last item might not seem like a big one for many people, but for me it is because it makes one of the most essential things for me very difficult to do: a midday break/rest.

To handle the parks, I always do a couple of hours in the morning, go back to the hotel and completely crash out (like solid, heavy sleep), and return for a couple of hours in the evening. I wasn’t going to be able to do that at Disney, and would be spending a full day in the parks. Uh oh.

This was going to take a lot of planning!

I decided on the 29th fairly early on. This should avoid missing the day due to flight delays/cancellations - A very really fear! It happened last March and was how I got my comp ticket in the first place! And I didn’t want to go later to try to avoid the crush from New Year’s celebrations.

Next: the mid-day break problem. The DAS CM suggested Beach Club Villas. I also asked here on Disboards and was suggested 2nd floor of the Contemporary. Finally in-park I thought of Tom Sawyer’s Island. I figured the Contemporary might be best with TSI as backup.

Then the hardest part of planning – which parks to visit and in what order? With only 1 day over the holidays, that is a difficult decision. Animal Kingdom was a must, the MK holiday parade was very tempting, and so was the Epcot Living with the Land overlay. I ultimately decided to start in Animal Kingdom, head to MK for the noon parade, break at Contemporary, back to MK and end at Epcot only for Living with the Land. A very ambitious plan!

And it left out Slinky. My 1 must do from March that didn't happen due to it being down my Hollywood Studios day. But with it being the only thing on my list from HS it was just too much to attempt for 1 day.


Oh Slinky, will I ever actually get to ride you?????

Finally was the decision I wrestled with the most: Photopass. I really really wanted to get it again. In March, it was my favorite aspect of the trip, and I loved the photos, magic shots, and just had fun with each of the photographers. But, for one person, it’s steep. Very steep. For only 1 day. And I already paid a very steep price for it back in March.


From my trip in March. It was so fun seeing the photos appear with random characters and other affects throughout the trip! I mean, just look at these critters? Aren't they so cute???

I ended up passing on it :/ But decided instead on LLMP. It was about half the cost, gave me ride photos, I could get LL in addition, and still ask Photopass photographers to take pictures with my own phone. Just no magic shots.

LLMP was not a given for me. Without the photos, I’d have passed as I wasn’t sure how well fishing for LLs would work for my circumstances/needs. When I bought it for Animal Kingdom, this is what I had:

8:10 It’s tough to be a bug
10:30 Kali
5:10 Everest

None of these were usable or had value. The first one was a throw away to unlock options for other parks, the 10:30 Kali one was a no (nope, not getting soaked in December), and Everest was not usable as I’d be in MK at that time. So ya.

I bought it for the photos, and for the hope of being able to pick something up on the day of through modifying.

And then I was done with planning. Or so I thought. About a week or so before my trip, the weather report showed rain on only one day of the week I was there. The 29th. My Disney Day.

So….keep the Disney day with rain, or switch it?

I went back and forth with this. As the day got closer, more and more rain was showing up. It looked like a washout with rain forecast the entire day.

I decided to keep it. My experience with Orlando rain is that it will heavy deluge for part of the day, but clear up the rest, and I was hoping the forecast would keep the crowds down.

At the very least I’ll have an adventurous Disney day!