Thanks for coming to read our Disney World Adult Only Trip Report! If you’ve read any of my other blogs, you know that my husband and I love to go on trips – with and without the kiddos. I recently had signed up for Travel Agent Resort Tours at Disney, so we decided to make a weekend of it and put our annual passes to good use!
Here we are excited to be headed to one of our favorite places!
Our first night was spent at All Star Movies. Our flight got in late (around 9pm) so we wanted to save a little money and stay at a value resort since we would just be sleeping at the resort the first night. Although let me clarify – we have no problem staying and have stayed our entire trip at value resorts before! This trip we planned to spend some time enjoying the resort though, not just sleeping there, so we splurged for Animal Kingdom Lodge for the rest of our trip.
We arrived at MCO and headed for the Magical Express area and were greeted by this sign:
Check-in was quick as always (make sure you take your magic bands) and it wasn’t but a few minutes until we were boarding a bus. Surprisingly, this late at night – our bus was FULL! We also, of course, were the last stop, lol.
We checked in and then headed to our room for the night. Since this was our first time at All Star Movies, we stopped to get pics…..
We got to our room, and I was reminded why Pop Century is my favorite value resort – Queen Beds! Double beds are the standard at all of the values except for Pop and in the Art of Animation Family Suites (Little Mermaid rooms have double beds). We have a king bed at home, and this double feels soooo small to us! We each took one bed for the night, lol. I guess we like plenty of space.
The next morning we were up early. My resort tours started at 12:00pm, but we wanted to hit a park first thing. So bright and early we were up, packed up our luggage and took it to bell services for the transfer over to Animal Kingdom Lodge.
On the way to the food court to get breakfast we stopped for more pics:
After breakfast we hopped in line for a bus to Hollywood Studios!
We were some of the first to arrive and were close to the front for opening.
They start letting people in, but then still have the main streets blocked off. Once we were through, we headed straight for Toy Story Mania. I had booked fastpasses for Rock ‘n Rollercoaster and Tower of Terror. We got on Toy Story Mania pretty quickly (even with one of their lanes shut down for construction of Toy Story Land). We always have fun on this ride. I was winning at first, but hubby ended up beating me. 🙁 We did have the same score in accuracy though.
He beat me – this time!
We left Toy Story Mania and still had about 20 minutes before our Rock ‘n Rollercoaster fastpass. So we stopped for some pics in front of Tower of Terror.
Then stopped at the next photographer as well….
We got in line right at our FP time and were through there pretty quick as well! LOVE this ride!!!
Our fastpass for Tower of Terror was still over an hour away (since you can not make more than one fastpass in an hour). I looked on the My Disney Experience app and saw that the wait was only 20 minutes, so we decided to go get in line. IF we were in line 20 minutes, it went fast. I honestly don’t know which of these rides I love best!
So there you have it….by 10:00am we had hit our 3 favorite rides in Hollywood Studios (if not all the parks). I always recommend to my clients getting at each park every day at park opening. Yes, it is early wake ups – but it is so worth it!! We still had some time to kill, so we went to Starbucks to grab a drink and try the Carrot Cake Cookie we’ve heard so much about. But first, we stopped by our first photographer and asked him if he did the Mickey magic shot – and he did! He also surprised me with a Minnie shot as well!
So we were off to get our cookie….this thing is HUGE…and SWEET!!! Lots of cream cheese icing in the middle. We basically just wanted a taste since we were going to be eating an early lunch before my resort tours. The carrot cake part was delicious, and the icing too….just maybe not so much icing. Check out how big this cookie is!
Yum!
We took a few bites and then threw it in the trash before we were picked up by the bus to Disney Springs. Normally I love the transportation at Disney and in my many visits over the years have very little to complain about. But we waited 45 minutes for this bus! Thankfully we had some time to spare. The buses actually weren’t going straight to Disney Springs until 4pm that afternoon, but I knew that Saratoga Springs had a walking path to Disney Springs, so that’s the bus we were waiting on. It FINALLY came and we were off. Saratoga is a huge resort, so we did have to ask the bus driver which stop we needed to get off at to take the walking path to Disney Springs. I believe it was the 3rd stop, but I honestly can’t remember for sure. Thankfully it wasn’t raining – yet. This week in Florida had been terrible weather due to a tropical system that had dumped tons of rain. The temperature was quite nice, so we didn’t mind the clouds. We got to Disney Springs and headed straight for our favorite quick service in all of Disney – Blaze Pizza!! We just love this place. I realize it is a chain and they have several restaurants, but we don’t have one close to us at home, so we always eat here at least once a trip – sometimes more! Our pizzas:
I love this man!
I was texting with a couple others from my agency who were also at Disney, one who was also going on the resort tours, so we were deciding where to meet up. The other agent who wasn’t joining the resort tours had just done the Star Wars Virtual Reality experience at Disney Springs and told us how amazing it was. I was glad to hear that because I had signed hubby up to give him something to do while I was on the resort tours and it wasn’t quite time to check in at Animal Kingdom Lodge yet.
So he headed off to do that:
I was off to my resort tours:
Hubby absolutely loved the Star Wars Virtual Experience! He can’t wait to take the boys next time we go.
I toured the following resorts: Port Orleans French Quarter, Pop Century, Art of Animation and Yacht Club. I was hoping for some resorts that I haven’t already stayed at (I’ve stayed at all of these), but I did get to visit the Little Mermaid rooms at Art of Animation and a Finding Nemo Family Suite. I was in a Cars Suite when I stayed there. You can see my pics from that stay here. I will be doing some new blog posts on all the resorts that I visited, so keep checking my blog under Disney Resorts!
The tours were supposed to last until 5:00pm, but we finished up early around 4:00pm. I took the bus from Yacht Club to Animal Kingdom, then got on a bus there to Animal Kingdom Lodge. Eddie had texted me and told me he had just checked in, so I couldn’t wait to check out our room. Although I have several resorts that I love, Animal Kingdom Lodge is my favorite so far. One thing I don’t love is how dark it is in the lobby areas…..a little depressing (lots of dark wood). But everything else makes up for that. The rooms are gorgeous, the pools are great and they have great restaurants. We planned to spend a lot of time at the resort relaxing by the pool – although the weather forecast was making those plans challenging.
Here’s just a couple pics from Animal Kingdom Lodge, I’ll s ave most of the pics for my Animal Kingdom Lodge post. My favorite part – our savanna view from our balcony!
After we got settled into the room, we got changed for dinner. We had reservations at Sanaa. We absolutely loved Sanaa, I will be writing a separate post on our experience there. Perfect place for date night! Sanaa is in the Kidani Village part of Animal Kingdom Lodge, and there are internal buses that will take you there, but it was a nice nice and a short walk, so we just walked there and back (less than 10 minutes). Read our review of Sanaa here.
After dinner we came back to the room and watched some TV before shutting out the lights. This vacation was starting off right! Day 1 was a success!
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