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Published: April 22nd 2023
Dear All
Greetings on this travel blog entry that will relate my time in Orlando, Florida’s holiday capital! While hitting the tourist scene isn’t usually my thing when I travel, preferring to see more everyday and local places where you learn about the country, culture and history, it is also something that just has to be done. And I have to be honest, I have had a small dream about visiting Disney World for quite some time now. It was tricky to narrow my time down in Orlando to just two nights and one full day, as I would have preferred three nights and two full days, to be able to take in two theme parks rather than just one. However, with a California trip already booked for next year, I thought I’d do Disney World in Florida this time, and Universal Studios in California next time. What I didn’t initially realise was that Disney World actually has four theme parks in total (Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom). While I’m a huge fan of big, white-knuckle thrill rides, I felt I just had to go for the tamer Magic Kingdom, as this is just everyone’s idea of
Fireworks!
Disney World Magic Kingdom, OrlandoDisney World anyway, particularly with its central attraction of Cinderella’s castle. Unfortunately you can’t book tickets directly through the Disney World website in the UK, nor can you book any form of fast-track passes or anything, so I had to go through a third-party website to book my ticket, and join all the ordinary queues on the day itself. This was no biggie, and I had gotten over the hefty price tag for visiting (£140!!!!!!) a few weeks earlier, so I could simply enjoy myself on the day itself. I did notice a fair number of people wearing t-shirts saying “Most Expensive Day Ever”, which I couldn’t agree with more, but it was certainly worth it for having visited Disney World – yay!
Getting to Orlando from Tampa was a bit of an adventure on Greyhound buses. I had previously been warned on numerous occasions that only loons ride Greyhound in America, and this particular journey brought back such memories from my trip to New England last year – it had its fair share of loons. There were two homeless-looking female crackheads, one with a huge bulldog, chatting, laughing and moving around the bus. One time one of them
Meeting Mickey Mouse!
Disney World Magic Kingdom, Orlando sat next to an attractive young man and said “oh yeah, can I sit here?”, before the bus driver told her to sit back in her place again (I must admit I was just a tiny bit miffed to be honest that she didn’t say this about me, lol….!). Then an attractive young lady sat next to one of the loony guys, before everyone else then congratulated him with a few whistles saying “well done!” There was also a rather large lady or a gentleman (I’m not really sure) with ten centimetre long red false nails on the left hand, but not the right hand, and pink hair, who spent half the journey on his/her phone telling whoever it was that they’d missed their appointment in Tampa and had to have it rescheduled to Thursday morning. Behind me sat an ageing vet who also spent half the journey telling the person sat next to him (so glad it wasn’t me!) about the time he lost his temper when someone called his Ma a “backed-up beeeeep” – I’m glad he didn’t mention what he did to them. I was sat in the middle of it all with a similarly sane guy
from New Jersey on a business trip sat next to me, but couldn’t move seats as the driver was very strict about people sitting in their designated seats. He constantly told off these loons for not remaining in their seats. The driver made a number of microphone announcements such as “it is unlawful to carry weapons on Greyhound buses – if you do, and no matter where we are on the journey, you will be removed from the vehicle by state police and will not be allowed to travel with us again”. After each time he made such an announcement, one of the loony ladies would shout out “yeah baby daddy”, followed by raucous laughter from all around. Fortunately all the loonies got off at Lakeland an hour later, and all us sane passengers breathed a sigh of relief! That was some journey – I’m not sure I could do an overnighter as some people do in the country!
From the Greyhound terminal in Orlando, I took two buses to my hotel, breezing through Orlando’s city centre and unfortunately not having any time to explore there which seemed a shame at the time, but I guess not the real
reason why I was stopping in Orlando. I checked into a lovely hotel/motel room, with an awesome view over Orlando’s suburbs and both the setting and the rising sun.
I had a bit of time that evening to explore, so took a bus only a couple of miles to nearby (nearby for Orlando terms I mean, it is a huge sprawling mega-city with its theme parks spread out all over the place) Universal Studios for the evening. As mentioned, I wasn’t originally thinking about buying a ticket to Universal, but whilst there something came over me and I joined a queue to see how much it would be to buy a ticket at 6pm, hoping it would be discounted at such a late hour, with the theme park closing at 9pm. It was still fully priced, at £130!!! With queue times the ticket seller told me I’d probably have gotten to go on three massive rides, which didn’t really seem that worth it at just over £40 per ride. But I was sorely tempted, and had a continual Gollum-type conversation in my mind for my time there – “go on, do it, you’re only here once” versus “that’s too
expensive, it’s not worth it, you can go to Universal in California”. In the end, the latter voice won, and I was happy with just exploring the parts outside the park called Universal CityWalk, including the fantastically photogenic Universal rotating globe, while being content to have saved myself £130. While in the ticket queue, I got talking to the guy in front of me who was from Mississippi – he had a tattoo of Tottenham Hotspur on his arm which started our conversation, and while I was amazed at having met a Spurs fan from Mississippi in Orlando, he was equally amazed at having met an English guy who knew about Spurs also in Orlando. He really wanted to see both the Harry Potter theme park as well as Universal, and actually did fork out the £230 total ticket price to see them both within three hours – hats off to the dude, and I hope he had a good time!
The next day was my full day in Orlando, and this was what I had come for! I had a most amazing and magical day, and thoroughly enjoyed every moment of my time in Disney World’s Magic Kingdom
(well, perhaps not the eternal queue times though!). The tour desk in my motel recommended I took a taxi there and back, costing £40 each way, and he didn’t actually know about any alternative public transport methods. By now I had become quite a pro at figuring out public transport routes using Google Maps’ amazing public transport option, and worked out a way of getting there and back using three different bus routes, around 1 hour and 20 minutes each way, with an all-day bus pass costing just £4. This was definitely worth it, and as I think I’ve mentioned before, I just love taking public transport when I go somewhere – it’s a great way to survey places just gazing out of the window listening to cool music on my MP3 player, and also a great way of just observing everyday life in these places. Most buses around there seemed to be taken by local workers going about their work for the day – hotel cleaners and theme park workers it seemed. I found both the journey there and back very interesting.
I could not contain my excitement arriving in the Magic Kingdom though, and after the short
boat ride over the Seven Seas Lagoon, I headed straight for the Cinderella Castle to have some photos taken. From there, my recently downloaded Disney World app was able to tell me the queue times for all of the attractions I was hoping to visit that day. In my nine hours there, from 9am to 6pm, I managed to go on all of the ones I wanted, with a few more added on. While they weren’t the big exciting rides I love, they were pure magic and beauty. Most of my time was spent queuing, as it was peak season there with much of the United States being on their "Spring Break" holiday, and many American families enjoying their time there, but fortunately the weather was not so hot on that day, so spending so much time outdoors was manageable. Disney does a great thing of making the queuing interesting though, with lots of little models and features relating to the attraction you are queuing for to interact with on the way. I went on 10 rides and attractions in total, with 30 to 75 minutes queuing for each one. In order, I did the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, Peter
Pan’s Flight, It’s a Small World, the Haunted Mansion, the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Pirates of the Caribbean, Meet with Mickey Mouse, Space Mountain, Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, and Under the Sea – Journey of the Little Mermaid! All were just brilliant, filled with cute and whimsical childhood memories, though my favourites would have to be Space Mountain and It’s a Small World. The former as it was the most exciting ride, and I got to skip half the queue as a single rider, and the latter as I’ve seen it referred to and parodied so many times in American cultural media (in Aladdin and the Simpsons for example) that it was just something else to see it in real life. It was also very cute and had a great feel-good factor about it. It is indeed a small world, after all!
In between I managed to catch some daytime fireworks at the Cinderella’s castle, and a number of marching bands which America does so well, going down Main Street USA. I also bought a couple of souvenirs: a plush toy each of Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh. It was a grand day indeed, and I
didn’t feel at all odd being a single, middle-aged guy enjoying my time there – as well as plenty of families and children, I also noticed there were a number of other single visitors like myself, so all felt good. And anyway, at the end of the day, who cares – it was an amazing day which brought back so many wonderful childhood memories – I loved it!
By around 6pm though I was just about done for the day, and took my three buses back to my hotel/motel again. I enjoyed a takeaway Taco Bell in my room and drifted off into lovely, Disney-filled dreams for the night.
The next day I had an early start, as I was meeting my friends, fellow Travel Bloggers and TCC Members, Merry Jo and Dave in the reception of my hotel/motel, to begin the next stage of this amazing Floridian adventure. More on that in my next one.
So until then, thanks for reading, and all the best for now!
Alex
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
The Joys of Disney
Once one gets past the price tag you can enjoy yourself. Disney really does know how to bring the inner child back to life. You managed to do a lot in your short time. I can't believe it took an hour and twenty minutes on the bus. That is sinful. Oh well. It sounds like you enjoyed your day. Hopefully, you will come back for a longer stay.