Pre-Trip:
I’ve been a longtime lurker on these forums and have always enjoyed living through other’s trip reports. About 5 years ago, I tried my own hand at a trip report, but high school got in the way and I never ended up finishing the report. Now that I’m about to have a whole summer off and don’t have to worry about school getting in the way, I’m determined to do another trip report and actually finish it this time! This report will be semi-live, but more likely than not, I’ll be too busy in the parks and will have to finish it up when I return home from the parks.
A little bit about me: I’m a 22 year old who just finished undergrad and will be attending law school in the fall. I’m giving myself the whole summer off to mentally prepare for law school, so I’m excited to have no responsibilities for a couple of months. I’m a huge theme park/roller coaster nerd, which has made me a huge Disney park fan considering they’re some of the best theme parks in the world! It’s been five years since my last Disney trip, so I’m excited to make my way back to the parks and see all that has changed! This will also be my first ever Disney trip without my parents, and even though I love them dearly, it will be fun to experience the parks with someone new! Here’s a picture of me from my last Disney trip in 2019:
My companion for this trip is my best friend from college who is also 22 and graduating this year. She will be referred to as L for the rest of this report. To protect her privacy, I’ll most likely refrain from posting any pictures of her in this report, but I promise to include lots of other pictures!
Throughout college, I’ve been attempting to talk L into going to Disney for our graduation trip. She had always vehemently told me no, claiming that there was no way an expensive, hot, and crowded theme park could be near as magical as I claimed. However, last year, she studied abroad in Japan and had the opportunity to visit Tokyo Disney Sea and finally understood what I meant by the Disney magic (well really theme park magic in general). At the beginning of this school year, she asked me if I would still be up to visit an Orlando theme park for our senior trip. Of course I said yes!! I’m so excited to share these wonderful theme parks with her and see the joy on her face of experiencing Disney World for the first time!
We briefly debated if we wanted to go to Universal or Disney, but considering I’ve been to Universal more recently than Disney, she is not a huge fan of coasters due to bad motion sickness, and the opening of Epic Universe already has me planning a Universal trip for next year, Disney was the clear choice. Even though we decided we wanted to do this trip months ago, there was uncertainty on if it would actually work out because there was a chance she would have to start working in May. Luckily, she got her first choice job (that was good and bad news though considering her first choice job means she’ll be moving to Japan in August and I will miss her dearly), so we were able to finalize our trip plans a couple weeks ago!
We’ll be arriving in Orlando on Sunday, June 16 and departing Friday, June 21 and staying at the Walt Disney World Dolphin hotel. We debated staying in a resort actually owned by Disney, but the cost was just too much to stay in a deluxe Disney resort (we wanted to stay in deluxe because the extra evening hours were super important to us since we’ll only have one day in each park). We ended up booking through Costco Travel which was cheaper than booking through Marriott and it came with a free room view upgrade (I’m praying we get this view that I got when I stayed at the Dolphin with my parents 5 years ago!)
As part of our Costco Travel package, we got the 4 day magic ticket allowing us to spend one day at each park. In total, it was $2,200 ($1,100 a person), but we thought that was reasonable for a Disney trip at peak time staying in a pseudo deluxe resort that’s so close to Hollywood Studios, Epcot, and the Disney Boardwalk!
We both are originally from Georgia so we’ll be going home right after graduation at the end of May and driving down to Orlando together. I’ll be doing the driving, so L is just going to meet me in Atlanta. It’s about a 3 hour drive for her to get to Atlanta and even though we want to get to Orlando as early as possible, it would be unfair to ask her parents to drive her to Atlanta starting much earlier than 6:30, so we’re planning to leave from Atlanta at 9:30 and get to Orlando around 4ish. We have already agreed on only playing Disney music while in the car
We know we want to hit up Disney springs our first day so she can get a magic band, so as of now, we’re planning to go straight to Disney Springs, but our plans for when we get there are pretty flexible. Because of the extended evening hours we get to take advantage of as resort guests, we’re definitely going to Epcot on Monday, June 17, and Magic Kingdom on Wednesday, June 19. We’re planning on doing Animal Kingdom on Tuesday, June 18 since it closes earlier than Hollywood studios and we need as much rest as we can get after going to Epcot from 8:30 AM-11 PM and before going to Magic Kingdom the next day from 8:30 AM-12 AM. That leaves Hollywood Studios for Thursday, June 20.
The last time I went to Disney was the day after Dorian hit so the parks were empty (so empty that we managed to ride every single ride at Magic Kingdom). I’m worried what it will be like to attend in June, especially after getting to experience the parks being so empty the last time I went, but with our schedules, that was the only date that worked, so we’re going to push through! To help deal with some of the crowds, we’re planning on buying Genie+ for each park and potentially an ILL for some of the big ticket rides. My friend really wants to try to do and see as much as humanly possible in each park since it will be her last chance to go for the next few years, so we also thought Genie+ would be helpful to accomplish that. Although we’ve both read a ton about Genie+, I haven’t been to Disney since they introduced the program, so if anyone has any tips, please comment them below!
As of now, we’re planning to only do QS restaurants to save time and money, so I didn’t have any ADR’s to worry about. We’re still debating trying to grab a last minute ADR for Be Our Guest since we’ll have so much time in MK, but we’ll see.
I think that’s all the planning we’ve done for now! Now it’s just time to wait until June 16!! I’ll post more updates as we get closer, but I wanted to go ahead and do the initial post since we’re about a month out! Thanks for reading!
I’ve been a longtime lurker on these forums and have always enjoyed living through other’s trip reports. About 5 years ago, I tried my own hand at a trip report, but high school got in the way and I never ended up finishing the report. Now that I’m about to have a whole summer off and don’t have to worry about school getting in the way, I’m determined to do another trip report and actually finish it this time! This report will be semi-live, but more likely than not, I’ll be too busy in the parks and will have to finish it up when I return home from the parks.
A little bit about me: I’m a 22 year old who just finished undergrad and will be attending law school in the fall. I’m giving myself the whole summer off to mentally prepare for law school, so I’m excited to have no responsibilities for a couple of months. I’m a huge theme park/roller coaster nerd, which has made me a huge Disney park fan considering they’re some of the best theme parks in the world! It’s been five years since my last Disney trip, so I’m excited to make my way back to the parks and see all that has changed! This will also be my first ever Disney trip without my parents, and even though I love them dearly, it will be fun to experience the parks with someone new! Here’s a picture of me from my last Disney trip in 2019:
My companion for this trip is my best friend from college who is also 22 and graduating this year. She will be referred to as L for the rest of this report. To protect her privacy, I’ll most likely refrain from posting any pictures of her in this report, but I promise to include lots of other pictures!
Throughout college, I’ve been attempting to talk L into going to Disney for our graduation trip. She had always vehemently told me no, claiming that there was no way an expensive, hot, and crowded theme park could be near as magical as I claimed. However, last year, she studied abroad in Japan and had the opportunity to visit Tokyo Disney Sea and finally understood what I meant by the Disney magic (well really theme park magic in general). At the beginning of this school year, she asked me if I would still be up to visit an Orlando theme park for our senior trip. Of course I said yes!! I’m so excited to share these wonderful theme parks with her and see the joy on her face of experiencing Disney World for the first time!
We briefly debated if we wanted to go to Universal or Disney, but considering I’ve been to Universal more recently than Disney, she is not a huge fan of coasters due to bad motion sickness, and the opening of Epic Universe already has me planning a Universal trip for next year, Disney was the clear choice. Even though we decided we wanted to do this trip months ago, there was uncertainty on if it would actually work out because there was a chance she would have to start working in May. Luckily, she got her first choice job (that was good and bad news though considering her first choice job means she’ll be moving to Japan in August and I will miss her dearly), so we were able to finalize our trip plans a couple weeks ago!
We’ll be arriving in Orlando on Sunday, June 16 and departing Friday, June 21 and staying at the Walt Disney World Dolphin hotel. We debated staying in a resort actually owned by Disney, but the cost was just too much to stay in a deluxe Disney resort (we wanted to stay in deluxe because the extra evening hours were super important to us since we’ll only have one day in each park). We ended up booking through Costco Travel which was cheaper than booking through Marriott and it came with a free room view upgrade (I’m praying we get this view that I got when I stayed at the Dolphin with my parents 5 years ago!)
As part of our Costco Travel package, we got the 4 day magic ticket allowing us to spend one day at each park. In total, it was $2,200 ($1,100 a person), but we thought that was reasonable for a Disney trip at peak time staying in a pseudo deluxe resort that’s so close to Hollywood Studios, Epcot, and the Disney Boardwalk!
We both are originally from Georgia so we’ll be going home right after graduation at the end of May and driving down to Orlando together. I’ll be doing the driving, so L is just going to meet me in Atlanta. It’s about a 3 hour drive for her to get to Atlanta and even though we want to get to Orlando as early as possible, it would be unfair to ask her parents to drive her to Atlanta starting much earlier than 6:30, so we’re planning to leave from Atlanta at 9:30 and get to Orlando around 4ish. We have already agreed on only playing Disney music while in the car
We know we want to hit up Disney springs our first day so she can get a magic band, so as of now, we’re planning to go straight to Disney Springs, but our plans for when we get there are pretty flexible. Because of the extended evening hours we get to take advantage of as resort guests, we’re definitely going to Epcot on Monday, June 17, and Magic Kingdom on Wednesday, June 19. We’re planning on doing Animal Kingdom on Tuesday, June 18 since it closes earlier than Hollywood studios and we need as much rest as we can get after going to Epcot from 8:30 AM-11 PM and before going to Magic Kingdom the next day from 8:30 AM-12 AM. That leaves Hollywood Studios for Thursday, June 20.
The last time I went to Disney was the day after Dorian hit so the parks were empty (so empty that we managed to ride every single ride at Magic Kingdom). I’m worried what it will be like to attend in June, especially after getting to experience the parks being so empty the last time I went, but with our schedules, that was the only date that worked, so we’re going to push through! To help deal with some of the crowds, we’re planning on buying Genie+ for each park and potentially an ILL for some of the big ticket rides. My friend really wants to try to do and see as much as humanly possible in each park since it will be her last chance to go for the next few years, so we also thought Genie+ would be helpful to accomplish that. Although we’ve both read a ton about Genie+, I haven’t been to Disney since they introduced the program, so if anyone has any tips, please comment them below!
As of now, we’re planning to only do QS restaurants to save time and money, so I didn’t have any ADR’s to worry about. We’re still debating trying to grab a last minute ADR for Be Our Guest since we’ll have so much time in MK, but we’ll see.
I think that’s all the planning we’ve done for now! Now it’s just time to wait until June 16!! I’ll post more updates as we get closer, but I wanted to go ahead and do the initial post since we’re about a month out! Thanks for reading!
At least it gives me an excuse to find another fun Disney quote! Here are the quotes I’ve sent so far:
), but other than that, we’ve only made one dining reservation at Rainforest Cafe in Disney Springs the night we get there. We originally made the reservation for 5:30, but changed it to 6:45 after Disney released the official times for the Dreams that Soar drone show. The plan for our first night is to explore Disney springs for a bit, head to dinner, and then catch the show at 9:00 before heading to the hotel.
