Last fall, I cooked up the plan to skip the birthday party, and instead throw a birthday trip for each child when they turn 10. (I've seen friends do this and loved the idea!) John was game, and we let Lily pick where in the United States that she wanted to go, though we did have to limit her to warmer areas, because NYC in January sounds like zero fun. Once she realized that Disney World was on the table as an option, she picked it, and I got to work planning a 3 day, two night itinerary in the Happiest Place on Earth.
Swimming was a very important component of the trip for Lily, so we picked the resort based on which had the "best" pool, and we ended up at the Beach Club. The pool really was incredible, and when we arrived on Sunday, it was just warm enough to swim.
It was a beautiful property, and the pool really was fantastic. There's a huge area with sand that felt like a mini-beach, and I got to watch this portion of the fun from the hot tub. Win win win.
Because we went to Disney in February, and because I was looking to save a *little* money, we decided to only do one park day. And then, I asked Lily if she would want to try to visit all four parks in one day, and she was game. I mapped out a strategy that had us starting at Animal Kingdom one hour before the park opened so that we could be first in line to Flight of Passage (the current most popular ride in Disney World, to those who don't frequent Disney)
John thought this was mildly crazy but humored me, and we were sixth in line in a hoard of people, and we were in the first group of people to ride. This freed us up to head to other rides that also had no wait, and we were finished with Animal Kingdom by 9:15 a.m., including a coffee/breakfast/colossal cinnamon roll break.
From Animal Kingdom, we took a bus to Hollywood Studios to check out the new Toy Story Land. Lily did NOT want to ride Slinky Dog Dash (the coaster), so I got a Fast Pass for the other new ride there. Toy Story Land is so fun. I love when details are executed at every level, and this was some of the best theming I've ever seen.
We did one other thing at Hollywood Studios, but it was our quickest park of the day, and we headed to Magic Kingdom next. I was able to secure more Fast Passes for rides we weren't able to do in February, and we also ate a LOT of snacks.
The Magic Kingdom will always and forever have my heart, and it was delightful to have time to take it in. Lily's feet did start to hurt a bit late in the afternoon, but she barely complained a bit. And she felt better as soon as she had some Mickey Ice Cream. After we had hit the highlights that we could squeeze in, we headed to Epcot and immediately went for Churros, duh.
We were there later in the day, and it was not very crowded. Amazingly, we were able to get onto a lot of great rides with virtually no waiting, which is definitely my favorite way to theme park. Lily was terrified on Test Track, but liked the experience a tiny bit better in retrospect.
We ended the day with Illuminations before walking back to our resort through the International Gateway. By the time we ended the night, we had walked over 13.5 miles in the day.
John and I were floored at how fun and relatively easy this trip was. It was better than we expected on so many fronts. I would NEVER have attempted four parks in one day with all four of our kids, but we knew that Lily could hang. She was thrilled at almost every turn, and seeing her delight in everything was such a joy.
I plan on going into more details about how sweet doing a trip with one child was in another post, but to sum it up, it was PRECIOUS time. It's so easy to lose track of our children when they are seen as a four pack, so peeling one off for time was really special for us all.
And I love Disney World more than the average person (understatement), so doing all of this was super fun for me. But, what put it over the top was seeing how much fun Lily had. We did what she wanted to do and made it a point to cater to her. Normally, that is not how our family functions, and it was a great opportunity to indulge things that we normally would not be able to for a host of reasons.
We came back relatively refreshed, which was completely unexpected. Lily is a GREAT travel buddy, and being able to just have fun with her was amazing! And now we can say we did four parks in one day. 👊🏻
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