Newbie to the forums here, so please pardon me if I have put this in the wrong place… or if I ramble. I am a full-on Disney convert, and thought it would be fun to share my “conversion” story and for other Disney converts to post theirs as well.
A little over 2 years ago, while I was away on a business trip in July '11 (for the whole month, yuck!), my DW, Katrina, was sweet enough to plan a Walt Disney World vacation for us that September.
I was... less than pleased, to say the least.
I was a complete grump about it (and not the fun, dwarf kind). I thought it would just be kiddie stuff, and that I'd be about bored with WDW about as quickly as I am with Six Flags (which is within a few hours). 
I had visited WDW when I was fairly young (I was 12 or 13 at the time) and couldn’t really remember much from the trip, except for my then-paralyzing fear of heights causing me to dislike most of the rides. I dreaded our trip for the whole month of August, and my DW could tell. She tried to get me involved in the planning, but I chose to be a complete non-participant.
Once we woke up to head to the airport, I decided I was going to try and cool it with the grumpiness, just so she could enjoy the trip. We fly out, and arrive to the Disney part of MCO, and somehow, still I managed to not enjoy myself, even when we get on the DME. I remember her pointing out the classic cartoons and I was like ‘Yeah… neat.’ We check-in at the resort and then head to Downtown Disney and eat at the Planet Hollywood and check out some of the cool memorabilia there. We get to the best stuff (in my opinion), including the Star Wars stuff, Indiana Jones, etc, and some punk kids were running around unsupervised playing tag, bumping into us, knocking chairs over, getting in front of what we were trying to look at. I think ‘Great, this is what the whole trip will be like…’. Yeah, I was a real bucket-o-fun, eh?
So then we head to Epcot. I’m immediately amazed at how big Epcot is, and how cool the architecture is. We check out the countries in World Showcase and again, I’m impressed. Everything is so authentic, especially the cast members. We didn't have a lot of time for rides, but I'm pretty sure we rode at least Test Track (we didn't discover Soarin' til later in the trip). But in my head I’m thinking ‘Okay, this IS fun, maybe there’s something to DisneyWorld after all…’ However, my "manly" pride wouldn't let me admit that I was wrong about Disney. We enjoyed Epcot until it was time to go watch Illuminations. I remember thinking ‘It’s just fireworks, what’s the big deal? Let’s go ride more rides…’ And boy was I wrong. What a cool show! (even though to me, now, Illuminations is the least impressive of all the park fireworks shows) I was having a great time. But I still didn't want to admit it yet.
That is, until we hit the Magic Kingdom the next day. We had so much fun so quickly there, that about an hour into our day, I stopped Katrina in front of Cinderella Castle and apologized for being such a stick-in-the-mud the whole time leading up to the trip and admitted I was having an absolute BLAST and had fallen in love with the place. It really didn't take very long at all. This immediately made everything better, and we had a great time for the rest of the trip. I quickly became a huge fan of Space Mountain (which terrified me as a kid), Splash Mountain, BTMRR, PoTC, Philharmagic, and especially Liberty Tree Tavern… so much so that we cancelled another reservation later in the trip we had so we could enjoy LTT again. In the following days, I also fell in love with ToT (even though I was a bit nervous before the first ride... heights n' all...), TSMM, Star Tours (DW was revealed as the rebel spy!), RnR, KRR, KS, EE, TT, Maelstrom, and especially Soarin' & Via Napoli. By the time we left, I did NOT want to go home.
But now, my wonderful, extremely patient, very sweet DW
and I will be returning to our Happy Place in 2 days, and I. Can’t. Wait! We're staying 8 days/7 nights this time and I was even the coordinator this go-round, and I think I'm even more excited about the trip than she is. I apologize to her about last time about every 2-3 weeks or so... and we talk about how much better this trip will be because we're both Disney fiends now. Anybody else have a similar experience?
Sorry if this was long-winded... just didn't want to leave anything out, plus I had to vent my excitement for our trip somehow...
A little over 2 years ago, while I was away on a business trip in July '11 (for the whole month, yuck!), my DW, Katrina, was sweet enough to plan a Walt Disney World vacation for us that September.
I was... less than pleased, to say the least.
I was a complete grump about it (and not the fun, dwarf kind). I thought it would just be kiddie stuff, and that I'd be about bored with WDW about as quickly as I am with Six Flags (which is within a few hours). I had visited WDW when I was fairly young (I was 12 or 13 at the time) and couldn’t really remember much from the trip, except for my then-paralyzing fear of heights causing me to dislike most of the rides. I dreaded our trip for the whole month of August, and my DW could tell. She tried to get me involved in the planning, but I chose to be a complete non-participant. Once we woke up to head to the airport, I decided I was going to try and cool it with the grumpiness, just so she could enjoy the trip. We fly out, and arrive to the Disney part of MCO, and somehow, still I managed to not enjoy myself, even when we get on the DME. I remember her pointing out the classic cartoons and I was like ‘Yeah… neat.’ We check-in at the resort and then head to Downtown Disney and eat at the Planet Hollywood and check out some of the cool memorabilia there. We get to the best stuff (in my opinion), including the Star Wars stuff, Indiana Jones, etc, and some punk kids were running around unsupervised playing tag, bumping into us, knocking chairs over, getting in front of what we were trying to look at. I think ‘Great, this is what the whole trip will be like…’. Yeah, I was a real bucket-o-fun, eh?
So then we head to Epcot. I’m immediately amazed at how big Epcot is, and how cool the architecture is. We check out the countries in World Showcase and again, I’m impressed. Everything is so authentic, especially the cast members. We didn't have a lot of time for rides, but I'm pretty sure we rode at least Test Track (we didn't discover Soarin' til later in the trip). But in my head I’m thinking ‘Okay, this IS fun, maybe there’s something to DisneyWorld after all…’ However, my "manly" pride wouldn't let me admit that I was wrong about Disney. We enjoyed Epcot until it was time to go watch Illuminations. I remember thinking ‘It’s just fireworks, what’s the big deal? Let’s go ride more rides…’ And boy was I wrong. What a cool show! (even though to me, now, Illuminations is the least impressive of all the park fireworks shows) I was having a great time. But I still didn't want to admit it yet.
That is, until we hit the Magic Kingdom the next day. We had so much fun so quickly there, that about an hour into our day, I stopped Katrina in front of Cinderella Castle and apologized for being such a stick-in-the-mud the whole time leading up to the trip and admitted I was having an absolute BLAST and had fallen in love with the place. It really didn't take very long at all. This immediately made everything better, and we had a great time for the rest of the trip. I quickly became a huge fan of Space Mountain (which terrified me as a kid), Splash Mountain, BTMRR, PoTC, Philharmagic, and especially Liberty Tree Tavern… so much so that we cancelled another reservation later in the trip we had so we could enjoy LTT again. In the following days, I also fell in love with ToT (even though I was a bit nervous before the first ride... heights n' all...), TSMM, Star Tours (DW was revealed as the rebel spy!), RnR, KRR, KS, EE, TT, Maelstrom, and especially Soarin' & Via Napoli. By the time we left, I did NOT want to go home.
But now, my wonderful, extremely patient, very sweet DW
and I will be returning to our Happy Place in 2 days, and I. Can’t. Wait! We're staying 8 days/7 nights this time and I was even the coordinator this go-round, and I think I'm even more excited about the trip than she is. I apologize to her about last time about every 2-3 weeks or so... and we talk about how much better this trip will be because we're both Disney fiends now. Anybody else have a similar experience?Sorry if this was long-winded... just didn't want to leave anything out, plus I had to vent my excitement for our trip somehow...
