Our Third (!!!) Trip to Disney World

If you would have looked at me this time last year and told me that within 12 months’ time I would have visited Disney World 3 times (with a fourth trip on the books), I would have called you insane. I spent the first 35 years of my life dyyyyying to make it to Disney. We finally saved up enough to make it happen last fall and, well, we were immediately hooked.

Since then, Corey and I have gone on an adults-only trip, and we just got back from a bit of a last-minute kick off to summer trip! We had the best time, and I wanted to share a recap of our experience this time around.

Animal Kingdom Lodge: Our Review

First up, let’s chat resorts. We decided to book at Animal Kingdom Lodge this time, as it’s been a bucket list item for both Corey and I for as long as we can remember. It’s probably the most unique resort on Disney World property, and it’s so incredibly gorgeous.

I had a lot of people asking what we thought of the resort. First of all, let me say, Animal Kingdom Lodge is objectively incredible. It’s absolutely stunning. The food is delicious. The pool and splash pad are great. I genuinely have no complaints about the resort as a whole! I was worried about the bus-only transportation to the parks, but the busses ran quickly and efficiently and we never waited more than a few minutes for a bus.

A Few Reasons We Preferred Caribbean Beach

• We all VERY MUCH missed the skyliner access!
• Corey and I actually preferred the “motel style” of CBR. It felt like a tiny little town versus a hotel. There’s something so uniquely “Disney” about the way that it’s set up, you really can’t find anything like it anywhere else. Animal Kingdom is, of course, also incredibly unique, but the setup of the resort itself feels largely like any other hotel.
• We all preferred the pool at Caribbean Beach to either pool at Animal Kingdom.
• We found it so much easier to access ice, water refills, and soda refills at Caribbean Beach.
• CBR has ceiling fans in the room, which is a random but incredibly wonderful perk.
• We loved the 5th sleeper room at CBR – the boys didn’t have to share a bed, which led to a lot less complaining.

Again – not everyone will agree with me here. AKL is many peoples’ favorite resort of all time! And, truly, we loved it. But, in the end, Caribbean Beach feels like home to us and we can’t wait to visit again in September!

Our Summer 2024 Disney World Trip Recap

Anytime I share about our Disney trip I get lots of questions about what we love to do and my best tips and tricks. So, let’s do a little run-through of the trip, along with what we learned this time around!

Day One: Arrival & Resort Day!

We woke up extra early on the first day of our trip for a 5:55 AM flight. It makes for a painful start to the trip, but getting to the resort before lunchtime is truly such a nice way to kick things off! We spent the first day of our trip exploring the resort, checking out the pool, and watching animals. And, of course, squeezing in a quick nap because we had been up since 3:30 AM.

We had dinner at Boma (at Animal Kingdom Lodge) on our arrival night. It was absolutely delicious! I’ve heard their breakfast buffet is also something really special, so that might have to be something we consider trying on a future trip.

This first day was really relaxing and calm. That’s how we love to kick off a Disney trip! We do a lot of go-go-going while we’re there, so the little pockets of calm and rest are invaluable.

Day Two: Hollywood Studios

For this trip, we took advantage of the special ticket offer where you can go to each of the four parks over four days. So, we had four park days and had to visit each park one time. We kicked things off with Hollywood Studios, which is always a delightful way to start a vacation.

Since this was not our first trip, it was really nice to be able to take things a little slower. We didn’t feel pressure to get every single thing done, so we just took our time. The crowds were way more intense than they were in September or February, so that was definitely an adjustment!

A few highlights from our Hollywood Studios day:

• We were reminded that mobile ordering is your BFF! We forgot to plan ahead for lunch and ended up scrambling a bit. If we had just thought ahead and mobile ordered something a little while before we wanted to eat, it would have been so much easier.
• We met some of our favorite characters – Sorcerer Mickey, Darth Vader, and Goofy & Max!
• The fooooood!!! We had a breakfast Ronto wrap, a Wookie Cookie, the tastiest Teriyaki Chicken Bowl…it was delightful.
• We took a midday break at our resort for some rest. We didn’t do this at all on our first trip, but with the crowds this time around it felt super necessary and was really refreshing!
• We had the best seats for Fantasmic, the evening show. We’ve learned that even when it’s super crowded it’s pretty simple to get a good seat. We showed up about 25 minutes before the show started and had a perfect view.

Corey and I wrapped up the night with pizza from our resort in bed while the kids slept, which is pretty much the perfect ending to any day.

Day Three: Magic Kingdom

Ahhhh my favorite place on earth. I could spend an entire week-long vacation just in Magic Kingdom. It truly doesn’t get any better than this. Of course, it’s also everyone else’s favorite park, so it’s the most busy of them all! We fought more crowds than ever on this day, but still managed to have a pretty fabulous time.

One thing we learned on this trip is that we’re table service people. At Disney World, there are two “levels” of restaurants – table service restaurants generally require a reservation, take longer to eat at, and are a more slow-paced experience. Quick service restaurants are more like fast food, where you order at a counter and then find a table. We did all quick service for our park day meals this time around, and we missed the table service experience! Having that midday break to sit for an extended period of time and have a waiter serve us versus ordering at a counter makes such a difference. It was a good lesson, and is something we’ll make sure to prioritize in future trips!

A few Magic Kingdom highlights…

• Ice cream from the ice cream parlor on Main Street is something we kept forgetting to try, and we finally did it. It was so fun and so delicious. We also had some cheeseburger spring rolls and I got my trusty chicken nachos from Pecos Bill (the worst but also the BEST).
• We got front row seats to the parade right as it was starting in Frontierland, and it was just as wonderful and heart-warming as it always is.
• It was hard to get on all of our favorite rides because lines were wild, but we managed to ride almost everything we wanted to! And knowing we’re coming back later this year made it no big deal to miss out on a few.
• Took another midday break this day, this time it was a little longer! We went to the pool, took a nap, and recovered from the chaos while we stacked some Lightning Lanes for the evening. It really helped us last a long longer in the evening!
• We decided to skip the fireworks chaos at the end of the night and just rode rides instead. It was so fun. There’s something so magical about being on Dumbo while the fireworks go off all around you!

Day Four: EPCOT

When we walked into EPCOT, I was so incredibly delighted to see that some of the Flower & Garden Festival topiaries were still up! We had just missed the festival and I was really bummed about it, so it was such a nice surprise.

We kicked off our day with a few favorite rides (Guardians! Remy’s!), and then we had a giant breakfast at Les Halles, which might be my favorite quick service option in all of Disney World. EPCOT is always our favorite place to meet a lot of characters, so we did quite a bit of that today!

A few EPCOT highlights include…

• We snagged a last-minute walk-up table for the Space 220 Lounge. We’ve always wanted to try it just to be able to say we’ve experienced it, and it was so fun! The food was fine (a little pricey and too fancy for the kids), but it was honestly worth it just to have been in the building!
• We all got to meet the characters we were most excited about. I met Alice, Grant met Figment, and Jackson met Pooh! The boys were also dying to hang with Pluto, and we saw him with Minnie in the “secret” Disney Visa Cardholder meet and greet!
• On this day, we moved a little slower and took it a little easier. We didn’t do a midday break, but everyone was feeling really wiped from a late night at Magic Kingdom. So, we left EPCOT early and got back to the resort in time to pack up to head home the next day and get a good night’s rest.

Day Five: Animal Kingdom & Travel Home!

And finally, the last day of our trip! We don’t love going to a park on our travel days but this was our third trip and the third time we’ve done it. I swear, next time we’re going to make the last day a rest day!

We hit up Animal Kingdom bright and early this day, and we hung out until about 3:30. We took it really slow and saw all of the things we wanted to see, but there’s still so much at this park we haven’t seen yet!

A few highlights of Animal Kingdom include…

• We skipped buying Genie+ and instead just rode all of the rides except Flight of Passage first thing in the morning. We were able to ride every other ride in the park before 9:30 AM! We bought an Individual Lightning Lane for Flight of Passage and ended up not having to wait in any lines all day. It was delightful.
• We got to meet Mickey & Minnie, Chip & Dale, and Donald! It’s always so fun to squeeze in so many of our favorites in one day. I also love that they have all have such unique costumes in Animal Kingdom.
• I tried the buffalo chicken chips and holy cow they were delicious. We also loved Flame Tree BBQ!
• We snagged VIP seating for the Finding Nemo show and it was such a magical experience. The show was so cute and we had incredible seating. It was so fun!

We flew home late on Friday evening, and spent basically the entire weekend resting and recovering. It was, once again, a truly magical and wonderful trip. It’s safe to say we’re a Disney-obsessed family and we’re already eagerly counting down to our next trip. September, here we come!