Disney Trip 2016 - Traveling and 45th Anniversary of the Magic Kingdom

 It's been nearly a week since Emily and I returned from our girl's only Disney World trip. It was very interesting, in part because of Hurricane Matthew. I'll take you through each day of our trip through this trip report!

Though this first post is going to to include two days. Because I have never made the drive down to Disney without Todd, I opted to take two days to make the trip. I'm not a great driver and being in the car makes me sleepy. Plus we left on Friday, September 30th, and I wanted to make sure Emily was in school for the majority of that day.

I packed up the car in the morning, and then worked for a few hours. I picked Emily up from school a half hour early, mostly so I wouldn't have to deal with the car rider line of doom.

I had made reservations at a Ramada Inn in GA that was about 6 hours into the trip for that night. By the time we got there, I was pooped. The guy at the front desk was nice, but he kept telling me that there were other

hotels close by that were better. It was odd because he kept putting down his place of work which is a huge no-no usually.

I opted to stay there because I was pooped. The room was a bit musty but it was fine. Emily passed out right away and I got a decent amount of sleep. We were only there about 8 hours, just to sleep, because I had wanted to get on the road early.

Emily woke up around 6 am and her waking up woke me up. We were on the road again before 7 am. The reminder of the drive was easy and I was happy that we didn't run into a ton of traffic once we got to Orlando.

Like last trip, we stayed at the new Art of Animation resort. Since it was just me and Emily this time, we stayed in the Little Mermaid section which is the only part of the resort that has regular rooms instead of suites. We checked in and even though it was before noon, our room was ready! I'm really glad it was - that way we unloaded

the car before we headed to the park.

We had a great room. It was on the top floor of the Ursula building and we had a pool view! The room was nice. Not huge, but plenty of room because it was just the two of us. It made for a nice home for the week.

Emily had requested that we ride the monorail this trip so I decided that we would spend a little time at the Magic Kingdom before we used the monorail to go to dinner. 

It was also the exact date of Magic Kingdom's 45th anniversary. It seemed fitting that we go there. We got a free button for the 45th anniversary which was a cool souvenir. Since we weren't there for the park opening we didn't see anything else that was specific for the anniversary.

We used a fastpass to do Enchanted Tales with Belle. This was one of Emily's favorite things from last trip. It's not really a ride or a character meet - it's an experience. You are transported to the day that Belle and Beast fell in love. We meet up with Belle before she has dinner with the Beast and people are picked to act out Belle's story (to that point). After that, the actors get their picture with Belle, but no autographs.

Emily got picked to be Belle's father, Maurice. She was thrilled to have a part more than a dish. I didn't have a part but I just sat in the back taking pictures. There was a family there who got really

upset with the cast member who was working the show when they were told that Belle doesn't sign autographs here. They actually stormed out in the middle of it with their small kid in tow.

After that, we found a spot to see the new Festival of Fantasy Parade which was amazing! We had to leave after that, though we got stuck on Main Street by the parade before we could exit the park and use the monorail to head to the Polynesian Resort.

We had dinner at Ohana, which is my favorite table service restaurant in Disney World. We had a castle view, and I'm pretty sure we were seated pretty close to where Todd and I were 9 years ago on our honeymoon.

The food was delicious as always, and the bread pudding for dessert was so excellent I may have stuffed myself too much. We waddled our way back to Magic Kingdom where we rode

"It's A Small World.".

Our original plan was to stay in the Magic Kingdom to see the Main Street Electrical Parade, but after we got done with Small World the sky opened up and it started pouring! I had forgotten to put my umbrella in my bag so we got soaked. We made our way up Main Street, to our Fastpass with Talking Mickey.

Meeting Mickey and talking with him was magical but it was still pouring when we got done so we opted to head back to the resort for the night. I have no idea if the parade went on that night but I was soaked and I just wanted to take a hot shower. Plus we had an early day the next day.

Up next - Epcot!