One of our friends from Seattle just happened to be in Florida this week for her brother’s graduation, and he happens to work at Disney. As luck would have it, he was awesome enough to get us into everything for free with Fast Passes allowing us to never wait in line for anything. With all that time and money saved we went to all three major kingdoms that I hadn’t been to before: Animal Kingdom, Magic Kingdom, and MGM Studios which for some crazy reason is now Hollywood studios.
We started off at Animal Kingdom and spent more than half the day there. It immediately became apparent how awesome going with someone who works for Disney (big thanks to our host again) is when we got in for free saving us around $100 per person. It just got better when we found out we no longer had to wait in any lines like the rest of the schmucks. I hate lines, but I do love rides so this was pretty durn ideal. We went on a lot of rides including roller coasters, safaris and musical shows (not really a ride, but cool nonetheless). We saw some cool animals up close including a white rhino that was a few feet from my seat in the vehicle. Plus going along with a Disney employee he knew a bunch of interesting facts and trivia like where there’s hidden Mickeys, how the Magic Kingdom would fit inside just the safari ride at Animal Kingdom (it’s big), and where the best drinking fountains are, which helps to save buying bottled water for $2 a bottle.
After lunch we went to Magic Kingdom, which is a lot like the Disneyland in California that I’d been too, but still bigger. We did the classics like Space Mountain, Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean. We didn’t spend a ton of time there, but it was fun to see the “classic” Disney park. We then went to MGM Studios for my favorite ride of the day: Tower of Terror. It’s basically one of those elevator style rides where you’re in a seat that raise then drops when you least expect it, but it’s in the dark most of the time. I already love those rides, but almost all those thrill rides are more thrilling in the dark. For example, I bet Space Mountain would seem like a really lame kiddy coaster if it were done with the lights on. By this time we had ridden more than a dozen things and seen all sorts of stuff, so we were exhausted. It’s hard work being VIP at Disney :-)