Walt Disney World is one of my favorite places. I was super excited to take my little nephew to Orlando for a quick trip to experience all things Disney!
Thanks to a fellow blogger, Veronika, I booked our entire Disney trip though an authorized Disney vacation planner, Lori of Minnie More Vacations. She is a godsend and made the planning process extremely easy. She managed the booking for our hotel, transportation, meal plan, park tickets, and all the fast passes. The only thing I did was book out flights through Southwest – with points! We booked a 3 night stay, 2 day ticket with admission to 1 park per day, and the Disney quick service dining plan. The dining plan was worth every penny and extremely convenient that we did not have to worry about food! We used all of our meals and snacks throughout our stay at the hotel and parks.
We stayed at All Star Movies Resort in a preferred room. I put in a request for a room in the Dalmation area, because my nephew is obsessed with dogs. He was over the moon with the location of our room. The resort was great and the staff was incredible. We utilized the buses from the resort to go to and from the parks. Magic Kingdom is a bit far from the resort (about a 20 minute bus ride) however Animal Kingdom was super close! The buses run on schedule and very consistently.
Per Lori’s expert suggestion we spent Christmas Eve at Magic Kingdom and Christmas Day at Animal Kingdom. We started the day at Magic Kingdom with breakfast at Be Our Guest. I ordered our meals ahead of time through the Disney app, which cuts down on waiting in line. Additionally we were able to use our quick service dining plan for the meal. For Magic Kingdom Lori booked FastPass for It’s A Small World, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, and Peter Pan’s Flight. Once we completed those 3 FastPass I went on the app and booked passes for Mad Tea Party (3 times, my nephew was obsessed with this ride), Dumbo the Flying Elephant, Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin, and The Magic Carpets of Aladdin. See all my outfit details in this post here.
For Animal Kingdom Lori booked FastPass for Festival of Lion King, Kilimanjaro Safari, and Na’vi River Journey. Once our FastPass were used for the day I booked 2 passes for River of Light: We Are One 8pm show. We started the day exploring Africa and going on our FastPass rides. Afterward we made our way to Pandora. We had lunch at Satu’li Canteen in Pandora. Thanks to Lori we were able to find out beforehand that Satu’li Canteen accommodates halal dining options, the beef and chicken can be prepared halal. Pro tip – you can always reach out to Disney parks ahead of time to inquire and notify about special diet requests. The information can be found here. We had a delicious lunch of chicken bowl and a shrimp bowl. After lunch we head back to the hotel for my nephew to nap. We went back to the park in the afternoon to explore the rest of Animal Kingdom and ended the night at the River of Light: We Are One show.
If there is one piece of advice I can give you it is: use a certified Disney Vacation Planner to book your trip, specifically Lori! I normally plan all of my vacations and spend endless hours planning itineraries and booking every detail. However there are so many aspects involved with planning a Disney trip. Lori was incredibly helpful and managed absolutely everything!
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