I’ve enjoyed reading trip reports over the years and living vicariously through the people writing them. Now that I’m finally getting to go back to Disney world after a 3 year drought, I’ve decided to try my hand at writing one myself. This trip report might be a little different than other trip reports, though. I’m 17 so it will be coming from the eyes of a teenager (I know it’s a bit odd a 17 year old is spending her time doing this, but what can I say. I’m just obsessed with Disney lol).
I’ll be going on this trip with my mom and my dad. Since my parents are not huge fans of Disney world (well maybe they’re just not fans of hearing me spout off an immense number of facts every time we go through the gates lol), the real reason we’re going on this trip is because my dad is going on a 4 night cruise out of Port Canaveral so he’ll only be there half the time. We’re avid cruisers also and we only need a couple more nights before we hit the diamond level, so I convinced my parents to let us spend time at Disney since he’ll be in the Orlando area anyways.
We’ll be arriving August 30th and leaving September 8th. My parents have never been to Universal so we’re starting the trip there and moving to Disney on September 3rd. Although Universal lacks some of the same Disney magic, I’m a huge fan of Harry Potter and even Disney fans can admit the theming in Harry Potter world is comparable to Disney’s theming throughout, so I’m super excited for universal also. I know this is a Disney blog, but I’ll also be including the universal leg of this trip, so if reading it makes you feel like you’re cheating on Disney, feel free to skip it
While in Universal we’ll be staying at the Loews Portofino Bay Hotel since we were able to get a great price on it through Costco travel. It was a no brainer to book Portofino Bay because for only a couple hundred more, we all get express passes since Portofino Bay is one of Universal’s deluxe resorts. The rooms are also much much nicer than the next cheapest hotel which is just an added bonus for us.
In Disney we’re staying at the Disney Dolphin. I know it’s not technically a Disney resort, but we’re loyal Marriott members and this was the most cost effective resort on Disney property since we could use points (I know it’s normally the cheapest anyways, but still our Marriott loyalty points made it impossible not to choose to stay there). We’ve never stayed on property at Disney, so it will be awesome getting to be within walking distance of Hollywood Studios and Epcot, getting use of the extra magic hours, and being able to book fastpasses 60 days in advance.
Sadly we didn’t get to utilize the advantage of being able to book the fastpasses 60 days in advance because our reservation took almost five days to show up on our mydisneyexperience account. According to Disney, since we booked it through Marriott, it would take up to a week to show up on our account since Marriott doesn’t put it directly into Disney computers. I guess that taught us our lesson of not booking everything last minute.
It ended up not being much of an issue considering the only fastpass we wanted and couldn’t get at a reasonable time was seven dwarves mine train, which is easy enough to rope drop (that is if my parents will get up with me lol). We also originally were only able to get a flight of passage fastpass for 3:00 which was far from optimal, but because of technical difficulties causing all of our fastpass reservations to be dropped, Disney was kind of enough to give us a FOP fastpass that can be used at any time of day. Because they did this I was able to get a Na’vi River Journey fastpass also. Two tier one fastpasses in the same park? Score!! My parents might’ve even been more excited than me when I told them we would have no reason to rope drop animal kingdom anymore haha.
We’re planning on leaving tomorrow and driving 3/4 of the way so we can get an early start at Universal Friday morning. That’s only if the weather cooperates, though. Hurricane Dorian is supposed to hit Orlando as a category 3 on Sunday making the Universal portion of the trip a complete washout. There’s still a chance it could slide north of Florida, so fingers crossed for now! We’ll reassess the weather tomorrow and figure out if we’re actually leaving or not.
In the spirt of being optimistic lol, I still need to finish up some packing before we leave tomorrow so I’ll end it with that. I can barely contain my excitement!!
Next stop: Orlando!!
I’ll be going on this trip with my mom and my dad. Since my parents are not huge fans of Disney world (well maybe they’re just not fans of hearing me spout off an immense number of facts every time we go through the gates lol), the real reason we’re going on this trip is because my dad is going on a 4 night cruise out of Port Canaveral so he’ll only be there half the time. We’re avid cruisers also and we only need a couple more nights before we hit the diamond level, so I convinced my parents to let us spend time at Disney since he’ll be in the Orlando area anyways.
We’ll be arriving August 30th and leaving September 8th. My parents have never been to Universal so we’re starting the trip there and moving to Disney on September 3rd. Although Universal lacks some of the same Disney magic, I’m a huge fan of Harry Potter and even Disney fans can admit the theming in Harry Potter world is comparable to Disney’s theming throughout, so I’m super excited for universal also. I know this is a Disney blog, but I’ll also be including the universal leg of this trip, so if reading it makes you feel like you’re cheating on Disney, feel free to skip it
While in Universal we’ll be staying at the Loews Portofino Bay Hotel since we were able to get a great price on it through Costco travel. It was a no brainer to book Portofino Bay because for only a couple hundred more, we all get express passes since Portofino Bay is one of Universal’s deluxe resorts. The rooms are also much much nicer than the next cheapest hotel which is just an added bonus for us.
In Disney we’re staying at the Disney Dolphin. I know it’s not technically a Disney resort, but we’re loyal Marriott members and this was the most cost effective resort on Disney property since we could use points (I know it’s normally the cheapest anyways, but still our Marriott loyalty points made it impossible not to choose to stay there). We’ve never stayed on property at Disney, so it will be awesome getting to be within walking distance of Hollywood Studios and Epcot, getting use of the extra magic hours, and being able to book fastpasses 60 days in advance.
Sadly we didn’t get to utilize the advantage of being able to book the fastpasses 60 days in advance because our reservation took almost five days to show up on our mydisneyexperience account. According to Disney, since we booked it through Marriott, it would take up to a week to show up on our account since Marriott doesn’t put it directly into Disney computers. I guess that taught us our lesson of not booking everything last minute.
It ended up not being much of an issue considering the only fastpass we wanted and couldn’t get at a reasonable time was seven dwarves mine train, which is easy enough to rope drop (that is if my parents will get up with me lol). We also originally were only able to get a flight of passage fastpass for 3:00 which was far from optimal, but because of technical difficulties causing all of our fastpass reservations to be dropped, Disney was kind of enough to give us a FOP fastpass that can be used at any time of day. Because they did this I was able to get a Na’vi River Journey fastpass also. Two tier one fastpasses in the same park? Score!! My parents might’ve even been more excited than me when I told them we would have no reason to rope drop animal kingdom anymore haha.
We’re planning on leaving tomorrow and driving 3/4 of the way so we can get an early start at Universal Friday morning. That’s only if the weather cooperates, though. Hurricane Dorian is supposed to hit Orlando as a category 3 on Sunday making the Universal portion of the trip a complete washout. There’s still a chance it could slide north of Florida, so fingers crossed for now! We’ll reassess the weather tomorrow and figure out if we’re actually leaving or not.
In the spirt of being optimistic lol, I still need to finish up some packing before we leave tomorrow so I’ll end it with that. I can barely contain my excitement!!
Next stop: Orlando!!
