Disney vacation, cruise, through the eyes of a 6th grader

By Zeke George

My family and I recently went on a one-week family vacation at Disney World in Florida. The trip was three days at an Orlando hotel, and four days on a Disney cruise.  I will give you some of my impressions in this blog. Just so you know, I’m in 6th grade and this was really my first Disney World vacation.  We went there for a day when I was a toddler, but I really don’t remember too much about that.

Day 1

Today I’m going to write a lot, as this was my first impression of the Disney vacation experience. Once we got off of the plane I learned the meaning of waiting in a line to get in another line. My dad waited in line at the Disney Magical Express to hand a man our documents. Then we got in another line and waited half an hour to actually get on the bus. The bus took us to our resort while we watched a video on how to check into the hotel. The nice thing was we didn’t have to carry our luggage — they just dropped our luggage off after we got there.

Our hotel was Disney’s Caribbean Beach Resort. It was technically a motel because you walked in from the outside into your room. This did not stop it from being nice, though. It had two nice, soft beds, a bath/shower, a large bathroom, and a TV.

One thing that was really cool was they had six pools. One was the main pool, which had a wading pool for little ones and a slide. There were also beaches! Like its name states, this resort has a lake surrounded by beach, though no swimming in the lake.  My dad just sat there in a hammock and read a book one afternoon. Another nice thing you can do is rent a small motorboat and go through their lagoon or rent a four-man bike trolley.

A good deal is the Disney meal plan. This is great for kids!  You can order anything you want from the menu. With the basic, which is what we had, you had one snack, one fast-food meal, and one sit-down meal. With the deluxe plan I believe you can get two fast-food meals and one sit-down meal.
Tonight we went to the Boardwalk. Here you can explore shops, sometimes catch fireworks from IllumiNations, or go to ESPN Zone. You can get to Boardwalk by taking a shuttle bus from the hotel, then taking the ferry from Hollywood Studios or Epcot.  It was fun to do all that they had to offer. It was a lot like Main Street U.S.A.

Wrong cartoon, but as the saying goes “Th-th-th-that’s all folks!”

Day 2

Today we went to Magic Kingdom. The first thing that happened once we got there was there was a parade — we saw Mickey Mouse, Mini Mouse, Donald Duck and Chip & Dale  — they were singing a song about getting the party started. The song got to be annoying after a while, but it was kind of cool, because it felt like we were being welcomed into the park by them. Then we went to Futureland and went on Space Mountain, Buzz Lightyear’s Shootout, and The Carousel of Progress. Space Mountain was awesome, but Buzz Lightyear’s Shootout was kind of disappointing, more for little kids.  After that we headed to Adventureland and went on Pirates of the Caribbean, which was not worth the wait in line: low fun ratio. After that we went on Splash Mountain, the best ride of the day!

After some pool time at out hotel and dinner, we went back to Magic Kingdom that night for Dreams, a firework show. It was awesome seeing the fireworks go off above the castle. Then we went on Thunder Mountain Railroad, which I liked doing in the dark. After that we saw a parade of lights with more Disney characters.  While the parade went by, I had my caricature drawn, a very cool souvenir to have.

Day 3

Today we went to Epcot. It was fun, but it was not as fun as Magic Kingdom. The first thing we did was go on Mission Space – a virtual reality of being an astronaut blasting off into space and landing on Mars.  It was really exciting. Then we went on Soarin’, more virtual reality, this time of a hang glider ride over California.  It felt pretty real and was cool to see California from above like that. Later we went on Test Track, where we got to ride a car through all its road tests, including a 65 mph ride around a racetrack.  At the time, I thought it was the best ride of the trip, but there were a lot of  “best rides.”

We went back that night to Epcot to go to the Mexican restaurant in the International Village, called San Angel Inn. That was one of my best meals of the trip.  If you like Mexican food, be sure to have your parents bring you here.  After that we saw IllumiNations, fireworks and a light show together. From therewe headed to Downtown Disney by going to another resort and taking the ferry there. I thought it would be like Boardwalk, but it was more like a giant outdoor shopping mall with restaurants and dance clubs. We also wanted to go to Disney Quest, but it was closing just as we got there. Overall Downtown Disney was a failure for children that are minors or don’t have a lot of cash on them.

Day 4

This day was Easter and we went to Mass at Disney’s Contemporary Resort. They have a huge meeting room there, and there were about 1,000 people at the service!  We stayed at that hotel for Easter brunch and our waiter was super friendly.
After that, we didn’t do much except to take our bus and get on our cruise ship, the Disney Wonder, which was nice. It had an arcade, pool, or should I say, pools. There were three pools, each with their own age group. The kids club was nice and fun to hang out in.
That night the stage show was the “Golden Mickeys”, which was an awards show of Disney movies. It was a mix of live Disney characters and clips from various Disney movies. Later that night we went to dinner and met our very kind server, Brent. We went to Triton’s for the first night. It was so-so. My favorite restaurant was Animator’s Palate, but I’ll tell you abut that later. This is the end of day 4.

Day 5

Today our boat docked in Nassau. The one bad thing about this was that it was Easter Monday and nearly everything was closed down. Luckily the Straw Market was still open. This allowed us to buy some nice souvenirs. After that we went back on the boat and swam around in the pool for a bit. That was nice after walking around in 90-degree weather. After that I went to the Oceaneers’ Lab. This was the middle-age kids club. We did some pretty fun stuff there.
Tonight we went to Animator’s Palate. This was my favorite restaurant on the whole cruise. Here there were small TVs that displayed black and white images that eventually went to color and brought life to the restaurant. To top off this great night our server Brent did some cool magic tricks for us.

Day 6

Today we docked in Castaway Cay. This is Disney’s private island. Here we rented snorkeling gear and went snorkeling for a bit. This was awesome! We saw lots of cool fish and even saw a sting ray and an anemone. This was one of the best things on the whole cruise.  Later my dad and I hiked up to a place called Lookout Point. Here you could see all the way back to the cruise ship, which is where went after a long, fun day at the beach.

Tonight my parents went to Palo, the adults-only restaurant. My cousin and I went to Animator’s Palate again — this time it was Pirate Night. Later there was a crazy party on the deck with Captain Hook, Smee and Mickey Mouse dressed as the captain of the ship.  They even shot fireworks off the ship!

Day 7

Today was the last day of our Disney cruise, a day at sea. This is when the kid’s club really came in handy. Besides the kid’s club there was really nothing to do except for to swim. Today we played dodge ball, made pizza, and created ‘Flubber”. That night we went to Parrot Cay, the last restaurant of the whole cruise. I didn’t really like it, but it was very colorful. That night we didn’t do much but go to the arcade.   It was fun but really expensive!

Day 8

This morning we ate breakfast at Parrot Cay then got on a bus that took us to the airport.  I was sad that our family vacation was over but eager to get back home and to living my regular life.

We had a great trip, but if I got to choose, next time we would stay at the park one more day and spend one less day on the cruise.

I hope any kids who read this will get some ideas for their Disney vacation.

Related Orbitz resources:

• Family vacation
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• Disney World vacation
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• Walt Disney World Magic Your Way tickets
  

Tagged: Cruise, Disney, Family time, Florida