4 Parks, 1 Day

Back in November, an actual lifetime ago, Eric and I went to Disney World. And then I got pregnant some time after that and I got very very very tired. That’s why it took me until February 26 to get out all of my blog posts for that trip. Between Landen, Joey, and first trimester exhaustion, I was not about to sit and write after bedtime. So I sat and watched TV instead. Or just went to bed.

Then about a week after that final blog post, I went back to Disney World with Jen and Jackie and I had high hopes for all of the posts I would provide you with now that I was entering my second trimester, and regaining some energy. Fun fact: three days at Disney while pregnant is less exhausting than parenting toddlers while pregnant.

And then like five minutes later, Disney World shut down, the world shut down, and most significantly preschools and babysitting shutdown and we weren’t allowed to utilize grandparent services. We have now been home (and pregnant) with two toddlers for 57 days (fun fact, I started this at 57 days and it has now been 114 days and that’s how long it took me to actually finish writing this) and I’m finally starting to feel some control over this new normal (since I wrote that I think I’ve lost and regained control many times). Although as I write this I am on 3 hours of sleep because of multiple middle of the night power outages leading to dysfunctional sound machines and a very sad three year old. It’ll probably take me so long to finish this post that I’ll read it over and that won’t even be relevant because it’ll have been weeks ago and I’ll be caught up on sleep, but I’m sitting here and writing and enjoying it, so progress. Edit: that was SO LONG ago. I barely even remember it. HAHA JK that was an unforgettable night and every time there’s a storm (every day) I get anxiety about it happening again. And why did I think “caught up on sleep” would ever be a thing? Whatever.

BUT this post is not about being pregnant or quarantined with toddlers or the world shutting down. You can read about that here. This post is an opportunity to think and reminisce about other things. With Disney finally reopening this week, this is about that final trip before all the crazy started, and the time we visited ALL FOUR Disney parks in the same day, somewhat by accident.

If you’ve been here since the beginning, you may remember that I have actually done the 4 parks one day thing before. However, that was on a VIP tour, so it’s essentially cheating and not at all the full experience. This time was different, and we did it the regular old Disney way.

On our final of three days at Disney, we planned a half day at Animal Kingdom with the intention to go back to whatever park we felt like we didn’t get enough of in our previous two days.

The day before this, we did the afternoon at Hollywood Studios and it was madness. We couldn’t get many fastpasses, the lines were insane, and we sort of just walked around taking it in but not actually doing anything. We ended up only riding Tower of Terror and Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster. So after actually riding every single ride at Animal Kingdom (with a fastpass because we’re wizards – except Flight of Passage but we got there early and didn’t wait super super long), we figured we’d try our luck again at Hollywood Studios.

We were able to get some good fastpasses in Toy Story Land,

and we felt productive enough and tired enough that we could move on. And here’s how it went:

Jackie: what should we do next? Try to get more fastpasses here? Go somewhere else? I really want to ride the skyliner or the monorail.

Arden: Well the skyliner is right here so we could just hop on for a ride.

Jen: I wouldn’t mind heading back to rest before dinner after that. We’ve done a lot.

Arden: Same. I’m tired.

Jackie: No way! We’re here! We need to keep going!

Jen and Arden: *eye roll*

Arden: Well, we could ride the skyliner to Epcot, and then hop on the monorail to Magic Kingdom, then we’ve been to all four parks today AND ridden the skyliner and the monorail.

Jen and Jackie: UM yes!

Arden to Jen: did we just go from wanting to go rest to wanting to hit two more parks? *shoulder shrug*

Disclaimer: I have no idea what words were actually said in this exchange. The opinions were preserved and the outcome is the same.

So, we shot our last few plates or whatever on Toy Story Mania, and headed to the skyliner.

We decided that we would do one ride and take one photopass picture at Epcot and Magic Kingdom to make sure we actually hit all the parks without missing our dinner reservation. We scored a Soarin’ fastpass for Epcot on the skyliner over for the perfect time frame for this plan.

We got off at Epcot and while I was waiting for Jen and Jackie to get their bags checked because they didn’t wear pack mule pants, I spotted none other than THE MOUSE with a not so long line. AND we were the LAST photo taken before the changing of the guards, so one minute later and we would’ve had to get going and skip this opportunity. Yes, we did all four parks AND MICKEY! IN ONE DAY! Seriously, can you think of a better day ever?

On our way to Soarin’ my pregnancy stomach took over and decided it was not waiting another two ish hours for dinner, so we stopped in Canada for a poutine. It was pretty good, but I think we got one with cheese curds and realized afterwards we should’ve gotten the one with meat? Next time.

We also got to walk through the setup of the Flower and Garden Festival which lasted all of like five minutes (COVID) when it finally opened.

We hopped on Soarin’ and then after a quick picture in front of the globe,

we made our way to the monorail

to head over to Magic Kingdom, where we started searching available fastpasses. And we got….WINNIE THE POOH! If you know me you know how important this is. I didn’t ride this on my last trip in November, and we didn’t get to it on our Magic Kingdom day this trip either, so I was super excited about this. It was perfect, as expected.