The Dutchies first time to Orlando! *UPDATE 7/27 on pg 11; The end (with surprise!)*

I really like reading your tripreport. How do you get the Typhoon Lagoon pictures on your Photopass?

Marjol,

hoe is de service van American Estates? Ik ben aan het kijken of ik voor volgend jaar een vakantie van twee weken naar Orlando kan plannen en wat dat allemaal bij elkaar gaat kosten.

Groetjes,
Anke

I bought my tickets on the same site I booked my hotel & rental car. It's a Dutch site, www.americanestates.nl

At the time we booked, there was a promotion; buy 5 day tickets and recieve 2 days extra. We're only planning for 6 days in the parks, but this way we can also fit in an extra evening if we want to :)
 
I really like reading your tripreport. How do you get the Typhoon Lagoon pictures on your Photopass?

Marjol,

hoe is de service van American Estates? Ik ben aan het kijken of ik voor volgend jaar een vakantie van twee weken naar Orlando kan plannen en wat dat allemaal bij elkaar gaat kosten.

Groetjes,
Anke

They give you a special waterparks photopass which you can put around your wrist there. I have it somewhere... maybe I can take a picture :)

And in Dutch:

De service bij American Estates is prima. We hebben daar de tickets, hotel en auto geboekt. De vliegtickets hebben we los geboekt bij D Reizen omdat American Estates ze niet voor die prijs kon bieden. Dat was allemaal prima. We hebben een keer telefonisch contact gehad en een paar keer via de mail, elke keer snel gereageerd. Papieren kregen we een maand voor vertrek in huis.
We zouden zeker weer bij ze boeken als we volgend jaar weer gaan en als ze de goedkoopste prijs bieden.
Kijk ook eens bij Americanvac.nl en usafunvacations.nl, daar kun je ook offertes laten maken.
Wij hebben voor de reis (vliegreis, parktickets voor daar, hotel en autohuur) voor bijna twee weken 2500 euro betaald. Aldaar hebben we nog zo'n 1150 euro uitgegeven. Ik hoop dat je daar wat mee kan :)
Je kunt me altijd mailen voor meer informatie!
 
Typhoon Lagoon looks like so much fun! I'm glad to see that they have Photopass there as I want to have pictures of the park but I'm unwilling to bring my digital to a water park.

I love the Olive Garden as well! I wish they had it up here in Canada, but no such luck!

I agree with you on taking the digital to the waterparks i'm excited this year i'll finally get some pictures!:yay: :yay:
 
Just started reading your report and loving it! Thanks for the pics of Typhoon Lagoon! We've never done any of the water parks and I've always been curious about them!
 

They give you a special waterparks photopass which you can put around your wrist there. I have it somewhere... maybe I can take a picture :)

And in Dutch:

De service bij American Estates is prima. We hebben daar de tickets, hotel en auto geboekt. De vliegtickets hebben we los geboekt bij D Reizen omdat American Estates ze niet voor die prijs kon bieden. Dat was allemaal prima. We hebben een keer telefonisch contact gehad en een paar keer via de mail, elke keer snel gereageerd. Papieren kregen we een maand voor vertrek in huis.
We zouden zeker weer bij ze boeken als we volgend jaar weer gaan en als ze de goedkoopste prijs bieden.
Kijk ook eens bij Americanvac.nl en usafunvacations.nl, daar kun je ook offertes laten maken.
Wij hebben voor de reis (vliegreis, parktickets voor daar, hotel en autohuur) voor bijna twee weken 2500 euro betaald. Aldaar hebben we nog zo'n 1150 euro uitgegeven. Ik hoop dat je daar wat mee kan :)
Je kunt me altijd mailen voor meer informatie!

In Dutch:
Bedankt voor je antwoord. Ik ben voor een aantal bestemmingen bezig om een reisschema met bijbehorende budgetten te maken. Mijn zusje zal daaruit dan een bestemming kiezen. Wanneer we voor Orlando gaan, dan zal ik je waarschijnlijk per pm nog wel een aantal vragen stellen.
 
crossfamily: I did bring my own camera to Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach, but did't take many pictures with it, because it was in the safe almost the whole time ;)

tinkgirl: Thanks for reading my TR! You should really visit the water parks, they're both really great with pretty cool slides!

Anke: Oké, dan hoor ik het wel. Ik ben benieuwd wat je zusje gaat kiezen... wat zijn de andere mogelijkheden? Wij zijn er alweer over na aan het denken of we volgend jaar misschien weer gaan.. iets waar ik echt geen rekening mee had gehouden, maar 't is gewoon verslavend! :rolleyes1
 
Day 6, May 10: Animal Kingdom

After the usual getting up, taking a shower and eating a sandwich in our room, we got in our car around 8.30. Today was Animal Kingdom day! :cheer2:
Although I'm not really a big fan of animals in captivity (I don't like zoos, for instance), I was looking forward to this visit! From what I had seen, Animal Kingdom was a very nice themed park, which is something I do like.

We arrived at Animal Kingdom before nine and parked our car very close to the entrance. When we entered the park, we were just in time for the official park opening.
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When the ropes dropped, we walked straight to Expedition Everest. I had heard so much about it and was dying to try it. When we got there (AK needs to update the sign posts, Expedition Everest isn't on them!) there were just a few people in front of us and we got in line. We picked up a fastpass on our way.
We were in the ride withing 5 minutes and really, really liked it! What a great themed ride :woohoo: Fun and thrill in one ride!
We decided to go a second time because it was still a walk on when we got out. We took some pictures of the things you see when you go in the standby line, really cool!
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After riding EE twice, we decided to try something else and to come back later for our fastpass time.
We went to Kali River Rapids. The sign said the waiting time was 60 minutes, but a friendly castmember told us that wasn't true, they had just opened the attraction.
And it turned out to be a walk on too. Not just that, we were also the only two people in our raft! That was pretty funny.
Gerbert got really wet, but we liked it so much that we wanted to ride again. There was still no line when we got back, so we got to stay in our seats. We were joined by two women, who were in ponchos, but still got really wet. :rotfl:
We decided we were wet enough now, and walked back to Expedition Everest to use our fastpasses. We walked by some monkeys on the way. I love monkeys, so we stopped to look for a while and then walked to EE. The fastpass line is a lot shorter, but there still wasn't a big line, so they weren't really usefull. But the third time was still pretty great! :yay:
We got some pictures of Expedition Everest when we got out.
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We left the beautiful themed Asia and walked to the terrible looking Dinoland USA. It looked like a fair and we didn't really like it. We tried the Primeval Whirl, but didn't like it at all. It's too shaky! We skipped the other kiddie attractions and went to Dinosaur.
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That was a big surprise for us. We really liked this one! It was so cool! :woohoo:
After riding Dinosaur, we saw it was 11.00 and we decided to get in line for the Nemo musical, which I really wanted to see. The line was growing pretty fast. This was one popular musical! :eek:
We got great seats in the middle of the back section. And wow, I really enjoyed this musical. It was excellent! The puppets, music, actors...everything! I immediately decided I would see this one again when we got back to AK next week! :cloud9:

Still impressed with the Nemo musical, we got a bite to eat at the Restaurantosaurus, which was a McDonalds in Disney style.
I love the McDonalds nuggets, so I got a nuggets menu, which was exactly as expected :) I liked the special Disney design fries-cups.
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After eating, we walked to the 3D show It's tough to be a bug. We saw a Disney character meeting point on our way there and got our pictures taken with Pooh, Tigger and my favourite, Eeyore! :love:
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We saw It's tough to be a bug and loved it. It was quite scary for kids though, we heard a lot of screaming and crying. We especially liked the part where they let the bugs leave the theater first! :lmao:

After this, we headed to Africa, to ride Kilimanjaro Safari. We got in what later turned out to be the longest wait during our whole stay, and waited for 40 minutes. But it was worth it, we really liked the safari! We saw a lot of animals, like these elephants.
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After the safari, we took the train to Rafiki's planet watch, but we did't really find anything we liked there, so we took a train back and walked over to Camp Minnie and Mickey to see the Lion King show.
On our way there, we walked past Lilo and Stitch, and I had my picture taken with them.
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After the picture, we got to the Lion King show. There weren't many people there, maybe because we were there during the parade?
The show was great, but we liked the Nemo show better. I liked all the acrobatics, but missed the Lion King story, like the musical in Paris, who tells the story.
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It was around 5.15 when the show finished and because the park was closing at 6, we decided to walk to the exit. We had seen everything we wanted and we would definately come back to do some things again! :cheer2:
As a surprise, there were a lot of Disney characters at the exit, so we got our pictures taken with Minnie, Donald and king Louie from Jungle Book!
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We drove to Downtown Disney. We felt like seeing a movie and went to the AMC to see what was playing. We decided to buy tickets for the 3D version of "Meet the Robinsons", which was playing in an hour or so.
We crossed the street and ate a great pizza at Wolfgang Puck Express.
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We had some time before the movie and visited the Virgin Megastore. I saw some great Grey's Anatomy (my favourite tv show!) shirts, but they were too small.. :confused3

The movie was very entertaining and it was nice to see it in 3D. It was really quiet in the movie theater.
After this movie, we went back to the hotel and went to bed instantly, because it had been a long, but very nice day. Animal Kingdom is great! :cloud9:

Up next: Struggling with school groups in Seaworld
 
Glad to see you had a good time at Animal Kingdom. I am really looking forward to this park as the last time I was at Disney in 1997 it did not exist. Those pizzas at Wolfgang's sure look yummy! I might have to grab dinner there some night. Can't wait until the next update!
 
I am so excited to go see the Nemo show in August. I'm so glad you liked it.. I love Animal Kingdom. Its my favorite park there.. Your picture with Eeyore is great... I'm glad you had a great time..
 
Thanks to my few faithful readers! :rotfl:

Day 7, May 11; Seaworld!

This morning, we got up around 7.30 and decided to have a different breakfast from the sandwich on our room; we went to Sizzler to try the breakfast buffet.
And for $4,99, it was an excellent buffet! Lots of really good fresh fruit!
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We left the building around 8.45 and got on our way to Seaworld. We got there really fast, the park had just opened when we scanned our tickets and went through the turnstiles.
We grabbed a parkmap and because the first show of the day wasn't untill 10.00, we decided to do some other things first. We saw some dolphins at the nursery, rolled through the penguin encounter and tried the park's rollercoaster, Kraken. There was absolutely no wait at this time of the day, so we got in really fast. But although it was nice, it wasn't really everything we expected. We did take a picture of the rollercoaster though.
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We also wanted to try Journey to Atlantis, but it was closed due to technical difficulties. Well, it was almost time to go to our first show now, so we walked over to the Clyde and Seamore sea lion and otter show. On our way there, a group of flamingo's crossed our path, which was pretty funny!
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The Clyde and Seamore show was really funny! Especially the pre-show entertainment! :rotfl: But it was getting quite hot and at this point we first noticed there were lots of kids around!
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The Dolphin show was timed perfectly after this one, and we walked to this show instantly, following the large crowds of 5th graders who had the same idea! :rolleyes1
We really liked the dolphin show. They're really beautiful animals and they can do wonderful tricks. We got some nice pictures here :)
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After this show, the real struggling with the crowds began. We first tried some pushing and shoving around the ray's lagoon. Gerbert tried to pet one, I didn't because I got bitten by a ray ten years ago! I don't like rays! They're evil! Ask Steve Irwin (oh, wait, that's not possible ;) ).
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Then, we tried to get a bite to eat, but there were 5th graders everywhere! :eek: I'm serious, everywhere we went, there was a HUGE line in front of us. It was getting really hot too at this moment and we were getting cranky because we couldn't get a bite to eat without standing in line for 45 minutes. There were even huge crowds at the small stands!
We decided to go to the Shamu stadium to see if we could get anything to eat around there. We were there one hour (!) before the Shamu show, and this is what the waiting line looked like! :sad2:
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But, the good news was that the line for hotdogs and chips wasn't too long, so we grabbed some of those, followed the crowds and got in line for the Shamu show.
We got great seats, in the middle of the stadium. We decided to sit in the shade (because man! It was hot!) and we sat outside the splash zone too, which was a plus ;)
We enjoyed the show, especially when Shamu splashed around with its tail and got half of the audience wet :rotfl2: We thought this woman standing on Shamu's face was pretty impressive too!
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After Believe, we decided to go to Wild Arctic, a simulator. They experienced some technical difficulties while we were in line (where did we hear that before....?) so we were in line for about 35 instead of the posted 15 minuted, with lots of kids again. Believe me, I like kids (I'm a teacher!), but on this day I realised I don't like large groops of them in theme parks :rotfl:
When we finally got to Wild Arctic, we liked it, but also thought it was pretty rough! We weren't surprised by the fact that expectant mothers couldn't ride!

It started raining for a while and we decided to go inside to see some dolphins. They were really cute!
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We also ate some ice cream and then it stopped raining again. We walked to the Dolphin Cove because I really wanted to pet a dolphin. But the dolphins weren't up for it and after waiting 15 minutes, we decided to skip it.

It was only 3.30, but because of the heat and the school groups, we were feeling like leaving the park. And so we did. We snapped one last picture at the entrance/exit and got in our car before 4.
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We went back to our hotel and relaxed for a while. The airconditioning was really great at this point! :cloud9:
Around 6.30, we decided it was time for some food and we drove to TGI Friday's. It was quite busy there (maybe because it actually was a friday??), but we got seated instantly.
We got chicken tenders as an appetizer, which were great!
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My main course was a nice steak with mashed potatoes. Gerbert had some kind of wraps, but I don't have a picture of those, so you will have to be satisfied with one of my food ;)
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When we finished our dinner, we drove to Downtown Disney again, this time to the shopping area. I had heard so many stories about this huge World of Disney store, I had to see it for myself :woohoo:
And it was huge indeed. I really spent quite some time there. We even bought our first Disney stuff here, including a cute shirt for me.

After visiting the store (and some other small ones), it was getting really dark outside and we decided to head back to our hotel, for a good night's sleep!

Up next: Visiting the Magic Kingdom!
 
I went to Seaworld for the first time last year and loved it. I was fortunate to go on a slow day. We say just about every show and had such a wonderful time.. I don't blame you about the kids. There is a difference between kids being there with their families and being there with their schools..

I so love DTD.. That is a must for us when we go. :thumbsup2
 
Just wanted to say GREAT TR again! I love your pictures. The one where Gerbert is petting the ray is very cute - he looks so excited.

Keep 'em coming!! :banana: :banana: :banana:
 
Great report. i visited the one in San Diego and loved it. Cannot wait to read about MK.
 
Marjol....I just got caught up. I haven't been on this thread in a while. I never saw people get so much done on a trip. You really must be an organized person.

We were in WDW in April and the Nemo Show was closed out when we got there. We go back a week from tomorrow and that is one of my missions to see NEMO. We will get there earlier this time. Isn't Everest the Best? I can't believe you went on it twice in a row.

Seeing the Typhoon Laggon Pictures has me excited for next week. You have a great trip report going. Thanks for sharing!:goodvibes
 
crossfamily: I'm a teacher, so I understand school groups, but I just don't like them on my vacation :rotfl: And you're right, DTD is great! I loved the world of Disney!

CriminyCraftt:Thanks! Gerbert really liked petting that ray :lmao:

scottny:Thanks for still reading my TR! MK will be up soon!

nsalz: I had been planning for this trip for over five months, so it was really well thought out :goodvibes We're getting more done, so be aware :laughing:
 
Day 8; May 12: Magic Kingdom

Today was the day! We were finally going to the Magic Kingdom! :woohoo:
We waited so long because we really wanted to see Spectromagic, and it was only showing on monday and saturday. And because I was told monday's are usually very busy in the MK, we decided to go on a saturday, which was now! :thumbsup2
I was very curious about this park. I'd been to Disneyland Paris 9 times and this park had a lot of similar rides, so I couldn't wait to compare these parks!
We ate a sandwich on our room and got in our car just before 8.30. Because this park doesn't have a parking lot, we parked our car at the ticket & transportation center and took the monorail to the Magic Kingdom. We arrived
there exactly at 9.00 and the park was just opening. Excellent timing!

The first thing we did, was taking a picture of Cinderella castle, with Walt, Mickey and Marjol in front of it :laughing:
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We walked over to Tomorrowland, where it seemed very quiet at this time of the day. We started off with Space Mountain, which actually was a huge dissapointment. What a soft ride! It's nothing compared to Space Mountain in Paris. When we walked to the exit, laughing about how soft this was, Gerbert noticed his sunglasses, which were in his pocket, were missing! :eek:
We walked back to the ride and asked the castmember if they found anything, but they didn't. They said we should talk to the castmember at the exit, maybe he could help us. This friendly castmember made some calls and gave us the good news that they found the sunglasses! :cheer2: We walked back to the ride again and got them back. Which was great, because they were really expensive and losing them would have been a really bad start of the day!

We went to Buzz Lightyear, which was nice (but again, not as nice as in Paris!), the Laugh Floor Comedy Club (funny! :)), Stitch's Great Escape (OK) and Indy Speedway (which was nice, but not very fast ;)). I took this picture of Gerbert here (he :love: racing!)
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We'd done almost everything in Tomorrowland by now and decided to walk over to Fantasyland, where it was very crowded! This picture says more than words:
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We went to the Winnie the Pooh ride, which they don't have in Paris. I love the Pooh characters, so I loved this ride too! They really should build it in Paris! We also took the boat that took us to all the countries of the world in "It's a Small World", which seemed longer then the one in Paris. I've always liked this ride, it's so cheerfull! :flower3:
Ofcourse, we had to take a picture of our country! :) And no, this is NOT what everyone in the Netherlands looks like :upsidedow
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We walked to Peter Pan's Flight, but the waiting time was already 40 minutes there, so we decided to grab a fastpass. Mickey's Philharmagic was next, and wow! What a great 3D show! I absolutely loved it. :love:

We left Fantasyland and walked to Frontierland to try the other two mountains of the "triple mountain whammy!" (Yes, we'd seen the seven must sees in Disneyworld many times by then...). But unfortunately, there were also very long lines here. 50 minutes for both rides! :eek:
We decided to have lunch to kill some time before we could grab another fastpass and we had these fries and chicken tenders somewhere (I really don't remember where!)
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We also took the oppurtunity to get our picture taken with one of my favorite characters, the Genie!
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After this picture, we could grab another fastpass and we walked to Splash Mountain to get one. While we were there, we saw this guy wearing a shirt with Gerberts name on it! :eek: Gerbert turns out to be some kind of 80's tv show of a puppet! :laughing:
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We went back to Fantasyland to use our Peter Pan fastpasses. There were some technical difficulties, so we still had to wait about 15 minutes, but it still is a nice ride, much more smooth then in Paris! :)
It was 3.00 when we got out of the ride and we decided to see the parade. There were some great floats. We took lots of pictures! It did get quite hot though, standing in the sun! This was definately one of the warmer days since we got in Orlando.
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We went back to Frontierland, but we still had some time to kill before we could use our fastpass for Splash Mountain. We came across a shop where they sold these wonderful Pineapple Floats. Jummy! :thumbsup2
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We sat there for a while and watched a lot of people go by. And we still had some time left, so we decided to see the Country Bear Jamboree. But oh boy, did we feel sorry for ourselves after that (and during!). What a terrible show. Bad sound and really, REALLY outdated! It's on number 2 of our worst attractions EVER! :lmao:
Luckily, Splash Mountain turned out to be great! We were really surprised by the length of this ride (10 minutes!) and it was great fun. We were definately coming back to this!
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We got ourselves a fastpass for Big Thunder Mountain. The return time was really close, but we had time to ride Pirates in between! Although the drop wasn't as high as in Paris, this is still a great ride. And the adding of Jack Sparrow is great!
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It was time to ride Big Thunder Mountain, which was great, but not as good as the Paris version (It's my favorite ride in the park there!).
We grabbed another fastpass for Splash Mountain and walked over to Tomorrowland to grab a bite to eat at Cosmic Ray's. We liked the "design your own burger" here!
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After eating, we walked to Mickey's Toontown, where we looked around in Minnie's and Mickey's house and bought a cute pictureframe. There were lots of characters there, but the waiting lines were very long (45 minutes for the princesses! :eek: ), so we got in the train to Frontierland again!
We wanted to use our fastpasses for Splash, but they were having technical difficulties, so instead of waiting we decided to try some more rides.
We saw the Enchanted Tiki Birds (which we found a bit boring!) and Jungle Cruise, which was very nice! Our tour guide was great! :woohoo:
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Splash Mountain turned out to be fixed after that, so we used our fastpasses.
It was 8.30 when we got out and we decided to get a watching spot for Spectromagic. It was extremely crowded, but we managed to squeeze ourselves into a good seating point! We weren't sitting very comfortable, but the 30 minutes went by pretty fast.
Spectromagic was definately worth the wait. So much more beautiful than the one in Paris! :love:

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And the evening got even better! After Spectromagic, we walked to the front of the castle to secure a great place to see Wishes.
And wow! Wishes! :cloud9:
What a great show! I :love: fireworks, and this was just perfect! :cloud9: I definately wanted to see this again! :cheer2:

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It was time to leave the park now, and we walked to the monorail. These people were waiving us goodbye! :rotfl:
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Although it was really crowded, we were in the monorail in less than 5 minutes. My compliments for Disney! :wizard:

We were at our car about 15 minutes after that and back in our hotel around 11.15.
Although we liked the other Disney parks better (because they were new and surprising!), we had a blast in the MK and there were definately some rides that we wanted to do again!

Up next: Day 9; May 13: Universal Studios
 
Hey-an update! Yay! :) I loved reading your comparisons from WDW to the Paris park because I've never been to the Paris one!!
 












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