How NOT to do Walt Disney World in one day.
Thank you so much to Walt Disney World for sponsoring this family trip! All opinions are my own.
The original title of this post was supposed to be : How To Do Disney World In One Day.
Honestly, I had ALL THE PLANS. But life happens!
Like you discover that your child has left his tennis shoes at home and only has a flimsy pair of flip flops to walk miles around Disney in. So instead of leaving breakfast at Ohana ( which was AWESOME by the way) and taking the tram directly to the park to be there when they opened…..
We had to go back to the hotel to get the car and find a Target to get a pair of shoes.
After dealing with a whining 7 ager about what pair of shoes he didn’t want, we finally took the bus from our hotel…..
And FINALLY reached the Magic Kingdom at around 10:30 AM.
By which time we missed the first two fast passes I had set up.
But we managed to make it to the last one of the morning,
We proceeded to walk around soaking up the Disney atmosphere and riding a few minor rides that didn’t have a long ( read 80 minutes) wait.
It seemed to work out because we finally managed to walk off that humongous breakfast and decided to head to the Animal Kingdom to eat at Flame Tree Barbecue for lunch. ( Thank God for a park hopper!)
Now my original plan was to soldier on at this point to various attractions ( read Avatar) in the Animal Kingdom before heading to Hollywood Studios for some Star Wars fun.
But Pookah declared:
I’m ready to go to the hotel. Let’s go to the pool mama.
I had a moment when I wanted to stomp my foot in the middle of Disney and scream:
NO !!!!!! WE’RE SUPPOSED TO BE EXPERIENCING THE MAGIC AT DISNEY NOT THE HOTEL! WE’RE SUPPOSED TO BE FOLLOWING THE PLAN!!
But my child wanted to go to the pool. This “vacation” was all about him, not my need to get all the things done so I could write about it on this blog. He saw my distress and patted my arm: we can come back later.
And just like that, I reminded myself to go with the flow.
We spent a lovely afternoon at the pool at the Swan and Dolphin Resort…
Relaxed, and with more fast passes secured, we returned to Disney for dinner at the Crystal Palace and then proceeded to enjoy more magic and fun well rested and happy.
We didn’t “do” all of Walt Disney World in one day. Not even close.
But…
We laughed.
We yelled out at the top our lungs.
We ate great food.
We enjoyed each other.
We had fun as a family, and I got to see that beautiful smile bloom all day long.
And isn’t that what matters?
All photos in this post are taken with my iPhone 7 Plus.
I love it!! You guys look like you had a blast. This is definitely a lesson for me. I want to be more of a “go with the flow and enjoy” and less of a “stomp my feet what about my plans” mom! I’m working on it.
girl it’s hard! LOL But I’m learning that sometimes I just have to let my little family go at their own pace. LOL
I absolutely adore this. Every parent should read this, read it again, and the read it one more time. We have to go with the flow. Our vacation ideas may revolve around a schedule, but our children (who deserve the magic of childhood) think MUCH differently than we do.
I learned a long time ago that going with the flow is the only way for the entire family to have a good vacation. That’s one of the first lessons you learn when you have five kids. LOL
I know some want to do it all, and try to jam everything into each day. For us this just tires us out, we have decided that when we visit we just go with the flow, and we enjoy it that much more!
What an awesome post! This goes to show that no matter how much you want a vacation to be perfect, no matter how much you plan it, the best type of vacations are the ones where you just sit back and let the magic happen. At Disney theme parks that is so easy to do. I’ve been to Disneyland dozens of times, but never Disney World, someday hopefully!
We are most definitely a Disney Family. Looks like you guys had a blast.
Great post that we all can relate to. Disney is sometimes tough to get things done fast. I still want to go back and my 12 year old wants to go back now.
I live in SoCal, so I grew up with Disneyland- I think it’s a bit smaller then Disney World but I’d still be hard pressed to do it in one day!
It’s great that you were able to have a wonderful time even though things didn’t go as planned. Having fun with the family is the most important.
You can’t plan it all when it comes to fun. 🙂 Looing forward to visiting with my family one day.
This is such great advice for any travel with kids. It never goes to plan and you need to just live in the moment!
Awesome post and great pics!!!!