Disney Part 2

Okay, here's a quick follow-up with some factual junk about our Disney trip... it will not be funny, so get ready to not laugh. The next post will make up for it, I swear.

I think that 6 or 7 is the ideal age to visit Disney. I was 5 and remember almost nothing except eating a hotdog in a funny paper wrapper and falling off a moon-bounce thing and skinning my knee. If you wait till 8 or 9 I think a lot of the magic is gone, as well as some of the innocent belief. At this age, Disney is still sorta real... the princesses might just be real princesses, and the characters are not yet sweaty teenagers making $6.50 an hour to get heat stroke. Also, below that age you may run into height restrictions... Lucy is tall enough that it wasn't an issue. There is certainly fun stuff for younger kids, but with few lasting memories for them, a $65 day ticket for a 3 year old is pretty steep for me and my rock and roll paycheck to paycheck lifestyle.

We did Animal Kingdom on day 1 and Magic Kingdom on day 2. AK is a pretty reasonable one day, while MK is a long one day or maybe a day and a half... but by halfway through MK day, I was straight up exhausted. After a rest, a nap, a beer, and a dinner, I was ready for a few more hours, but we all slept in from midnight till about 10AM the next day.

On the third day, we planned on doing Seaworld but got the impression that it was a couple of cool shows (dolphins, sea lions, and Shamu) mixed with a bunch of coasters. We don't do coasters... hell, I nearly hurl after 3 seconds on a swingset... so we decided to skip SeaWorld and have a mellow day. Instead we went to GatorLand, "Orlando's Best Half day Attraction", and we were really psyched to find that it was an awesome spot. I feared that it would be a big concrete swimming pool with a bunch of sickly gators and Cletus poking them with a stick, but it was in fact a great place to spend a few hours. There were a few shows with snakes, tarantulas, and creepy critters, a brief gator wrestling event, and a jumping for chickens show, but the best part was the huge breeding marsh with boardwalk and observation tower. You could get within feet of hundreds of gators, and the swamp birds like cattle egrets were nesting a few feet away as well. The shows were fun and goofy enough for a kid to enjoy, but still cool for adults, and the boardwalk was really neat too.... and at under $20 for an adult, or 1/4 the price of a Disney/SeaWorld/Universal, I think it is a must see location.

In my mind, Epcot is too educational for young kids. I went a few years ago and found much of it, um, kinda boring. I think Disney Hollywood Park, Seaworld, and Universal are also not well suited for young kids. We also skipped the waterparks due to the 50 degree weather and, again, the motion sickness issue above.

So, for us, I think a three day visit was pretty much perfect...
Day 1: get in late afternoon, get settled, and souvenier shop at an outlety (preemptive strike... we skipped 98% of the 432,789 gift shops in the parks by buying a few things right away.... saved us roughly 6 days and $56,089 dollars.)
Day 2: Animal Kingdom for an easier day, get used to the process and the ways to beat the system (FAST PASS!)
Day 3: Long day at Magic Kingdom, break Midday, and stay late.
Day 4: sleep in, hit GatorLand on the way to the airport (or catch early flight the next day).

That's a pretty good long weekend, hit the best and skip the rest! Tis oif course assumes kids... if you are without kids, this advice is really crappy and you should totally ignore it.