Christmas at Disney Day One

I’ve had a few people ask me about our Disney vacation so I figured I’d write about it. Plus it is fun to remember a great trip. I’ll break it up day by day, kinda like an old-school TCG tournament report.

Disney World Day One (Friday 12/21)

The first day was laid back. We planned on arriving a little after lunch, spend some time at Animal Kingdom (since it was near All-Star Movies, our hotel), go to eat at Ohana, and then hit the Very Merry Christmas Party at the Magic Kingdom. Everything worked out perfectly and we had a great time. We ate lunch at the All-Star cafeteria and it was pretty good for cheap food.

All-Star Movies – Since we were staying there six nights the cost outweighed the benefits of the next step up. Next we’ll definitely stay at the next level resort, we liked the Port Orleans a lot more. Before leaving for Animal Kingdom we picked up Pal Mickey for Emily. Pal Mickey is expensive but man was he a trip to listen to.

Animal Kingdom – All we really did was walk around and look at things. We were only going to be there a few hours before we had to change for dinner. The Little One rode some rides in DinoLand USA. We did find a few Hidden Mickey’s (2 HM) and got to see the beautiful scenery that is Animal Kingdom. Pal Mickey gave us some interesting tips about the different wildlife exhibits and sang a few songs.

Dinner – We got the meal plan so meals were covered, one table service and one quick service per day. If you’re going to eat at the resort we’d really recommend it, if not then it is expensive. Because food was already paid for we made sure to pick the nicer places to eat, ones we’d never be able to afford. We didn’t just go for expensive, although they usually were expensive, we wanted places that would be great to eat and memorable. The first one was Ohana at the Polynesian Resort. This place was incredible, our only regret was that we scheduled it first. A long day of travel and a full night planned we weren’t able to full enjoy the place. It is a five course meal featuring Polynesian, Hawaiian, and random other pacific island type foods. It had quite possibly the best turkey I’ve ever had. There are places I’d recommend eating at over this one but not because of lack of quality. Man was it good food. If you go give it at least 90 minutes of your time.

Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party (at the Magic Kingdom) – This was the last night they were running the party and Pretty Bird and I wanted to go to it. Obviously the Little One wanted to go. Disney does a great job with the party and the events were well scheduled and pretty good. We will probably not do the Party again however. It is not worth the money, it costs almost as much as single day admission. Almost none of the events are exclusive; you can catch them later on. They do schedule the events more frequently and they actually break their ‘only one character per park at a time’ rule. It just wasn’t worth another admission.