Throughout my childhood, my parents have taken us on family holidays, mostly throughout India and in more recent years, outside India. Some of my most memorable trips within India were to Kerala, Shimla & Manali and Gujarat. It is hard for me to pick a favorite out of the international trips. London & Scotland will forever remain closest to my heart but our Eastern Europe trip would be a close second. It will forever remain emotional as being the first ever international trip we took without Mummum, with the exception of my first entry into US via NY and Chicago. Anyway, it has always been my wish to take my parents on a trip where I paid for the whole end to end trip right from the flights to the hotels to all our meals and shopping! While I was unable to do that for my mother, I was finally able to do it this year, for my father!
When it came to choosing where I would want to take my father for an all expenses paid by me holiday, it was a tough choice for me between two places really – Disney World and London! One would question the choices considering how different the two destinations really are. But for me, London holds a special place and Disney is simply the happiest place on earth, for everyone! In the end, as the title of the article suggests, I chose Disney!
When I first started doing my research, it completely overwhelmed me. The sheer amount of information out there was just too much. I couldn’t make head or tail of where I should start and how I should go about booking tickets. The websites held bits of information spread across so many different sites, it made my head hurt. To make matters worse, all the Disney Resorts would show as booked for the dates I was targeting – Babi’s birthday week. Luckily, I remembered Ryan. Ryan does this annual Disney trip through an agent who does all his bookings for him. Of course one still needs to chart out what attractions they would cover, but the agent takes care of all the hotel bookings and the part tickets. They can also take care of all the meal booking at specific restaurants which are hard to get if you just decide to do a walk-in. Thankfully, Ryan introduced me to Juli Russ.
Through Juli, I got started with all my bookings, step by step. She helped me plan the Disney + Universal Studios trip for a whole week. She gave me options to choose from in terms of the resorts. Never realized how many different categories there are of just resorts. Ended up choosing the Yacht Club at Disney and Loews Royal Pacific Resort at Universal studios. For Disney, Juli also helped book the park tickets based on the days that I planned for and dinners based on the parks for each day. For Universal studios, it was more free flow. We of course did our own planning in terms of the rides / attractions we had to cover in each of the parks. By we, I mean me. Babi did help with some of the planning, but his interests began and ended with the Animal Kingdom!
The Disney Trip –
We started our vacation with Disney. On the day we arrived, we spent the evening at Disney Springs. The best part of staying in Disney Resorts is probably the bus service. There are frequent shuttles between resorts and parks. So, we took the shuttle from our resort and reached Disney Springs! It was heaven for me and as expected, I collected as much Disney souvenir as I possibly could, keeping in mind the limited luggage space and the fact that I still had the whole trip ahead of me to collect more! We had dinner that day at Jaleo, chef Jose Andreas’ famous restaurant. The tapas style restaurant did not disappoint! The next day, we chose to do Animal Kingdom, Babi’s choice for spending his birthday. It was definitely both our favorite park. We chose to only do select rides and trails and in between stopped for lunch and some water / coke. We ended the day with dinner at the Rainforest Cafe. This was my second Rainforest cafe after Toronto, Niagara Falls. It was just as lovely. On Day 3, we went to Magic Kingdom. We had to do a few rounds of the whole park in order to make some rides based on the timings. For this day, we even took the Lightening pass so we could take certain rides without wasting too much time in long lines. I majorly geeked out at the Little Mermaid section. I may be biased but Prince Eric’s castle is the best disney castle in Magic Kingdom! We had dinner at the Plaza Restaurant. After dinner we whiled time away until the spectacular fireworks at night. On day 4, we went to Epcot. This was a more relaxed day compared to the other two parks. We visited all the countries in the World Showcase and ended with dinner at the Coral Reef Restaurant. On day 5, we went to Hollywood Studios. This was my second most favorite park as I completely geeked out in Star Wars land. Even Babi admitted that the Millenium Falcon ride was a fun ride! We had dinner at Mama Melrose’s Ristorante where we had a combo reservation with the Fantasmic show. We ended the night with the Fantasmic lights and fireworks show.
The Universal Studios Trip –
On day 6, we checked out and checked in to the Loews Royal Pacific Resort. We then headed straight to Sea World. It was a short trip and was good for the few live shows we saw like the Dolphin adventure, Orca encounter and the Sea Lion and Otter shows. After Sea World, we headed to the City Walk, Universal’s shopping strip. Once again, I collected most of my souvenirs here. We ended up with dinner at Panda Express. On day 7, we headed to the first park. We had breakfast coupons for the Leaky Cauldron. So of course, we started with Harry Potter World. We definitely had a wonderful breakfast. The attractions like Diagon Alley, Ollivanders, Gringotts bank, Weasley’s Wizards Wheezes, the Hogwarts Castle and all other attractions were just mesmerizing. We of course, had to binge on some butterbeer too! We took the Hogwarts express to come to the other park to enjoy some more of the universal studio rides. We ended up having dinner at the resort – Pizza and key lime pie. Day 8 was the more relaxed day. We started with breakfast at Three Broomsticks. Then, we took the Hogwarts Express back to the first island to complete the rest of the sights from the first island. The ride we both enjoyed the most from both parks was probably Jimmy Fallon’s ride through New York. We ended up doing it twice! We ended the day with dinner from Hard Rock Cafe. On day 9, we headed back home! It was certainly a very memorable trip.
This was a trip down memory lane for my father who came here more than 30 years ago! For me, it was an opportunity to completely geek out and just enjoy! The satisfaction of managing the whole trip on my own, was just the cherry on top! I am looking forward to the next one!
Musings of a confused nut! 