At the last minute we decided to go to Disney World since John was attending a conference. This was John’s first time to Florida/Disney World. The plan was to avoid the weekend crowd and visit 4 theme parks in 2 days. We went the last week in October and it was still very warm. There are a lot of opinions on the best time of year to go to Disney World, however early May seems to continue to be a theme among avid Floridians. It’s before school gets out and the weekend of Mothers Day/Graduations seem to have fewer crowds.
A little help from Mickey Travels
Since it was last minute and it’s been quite a while since I have been to Disney World I decided to use help from my friend Kellie with Mickey Travels. She helped purchase and plan both days, make all our meal and fast pass reservations and was able to provide a lot of tips and tricks to help navigate the parks. I HIGHLY recommend if you are planning a trip to use a travel expert. Connect with her via Facebook.
Our Hotel
We stayed at Disney Coronado Springs Resort. We arrived at around 11am and as luck would have it our room was ready upon arrival. The rooms have been completely renovated and were very nice and super quiet the entire stay.
Disney Springs
Disney Springs was our first stop after getting checked in to our room. The bus ride was an adventure with screaming kids, oh the screaming kids… Lots of fun to be had with all the Disney swag. Lunch at Frontera Cocina was really good. The mango guacamole was super delish! We ended the night with drinks at Dahlia and a fabulous tapas dinner at Toledo on the 16th floor of the tower at Coronado Springs. Highly recommend.
Magic Kingdom and Epcot
The alarm went off at 5:15am and within 30 minutes we were headed to Magic Kingdom. As we pulled up fireworks were going off at 6:15am. CRAZY! We walked fast to the new seven dwarfs ride and then hit up splash mountain and walked right onto the ride. Unreal! Stood in line way too long to get a photo of Pooh and Tiger but it’s all good. You gotta get a Dole Whip when there and the Pineapple/Vanilla swirl was PERFECT! Epcot was our next stop and we enjoyed the food and wine festival. Lots of great things to taste. The Soarin’ ride was worth the wait and dinner was at Spice Road Table in Morocco. Two thumbs up for the Lamb sliders.
Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom
Our alarm went off at 4:30am and we just couldn’t do it, 6:30am we finally got up and headed to Hollywood Studios. The rain isn’t stop us from having fun, thank goodness for our ponchos. We used them ALL day. We rode Slinky Dog Dash twice and it was worth the wait. Mid-day we headed to Animal Kingdom and stood in line for an hour and 45 minutes to ride Flight of passage and yes it was pretty cool. Dinner at Tiffins was the best meal of the trip. The short ribs were so tender.
A Day to Relax
Our last day we chilled, I thought my legs were going to fall off so I needed a break. We had a late breakfast and enjoyed the pool for a couple hours. There was a big rain storm rolling through and we contemplated about avoiding the rain and just staying in. As we sat at the bus stop the torrential rain came down and by the time we stepped off the bus at Disney Springs it was beautiful weather. We headed to the Coca-Cola rooftop bar to enjoy the view and a coke float.
Dinner at Chef Art Smith’s Homecomin’ came highly recommended. The service was awesome and our server recommended the hush puppies, cut them in half make a small sandwich with the pimento cheese and red jalapeรฑo jelly. Simply amazing. I wanted to taste the Shine Cake so our server pulled some strings and gave us a pice for free. We finished the with the best pecan pie I have ever had, no seriously it was.
