18. Have People Visit Me

After living here for a while and learning so much about this magical place, I really wanted to share it with my family and friends. Luckily enough, my family was able to visit for a few days in November and I was able to show them everything in the parks. They came for three nights and four days, so we were able to do a park a day, and stay long enough in each one to do everything.

The morning they flew in we went straight to Hollywood Studios, where we rode all the rides and watched all the shows. Despite being told (by me, a current Florida resident) that it gets very hot during the day, even in November, they roasted in jeans and jackets. We even found semi-decent seats for Fantasmic, which we had been told was standing room only. We also got to see the Osbourne Christmas Lights for the first time, which was so much fun.

The next day we spent 17 hours in Magic Kingdom, pretty much cheating the system along the way. On the day we needed to go, my guest passes were blocked out and there was a Mickey's Christmas Party going on that night. Fortunately, they were filming the Christmas parade that morning, and cast members were allowed to sign up to be in the crowd and bring guests in with them. So, we went to the park at 7am, spent a couple hours watching some performers sing the same songs over and over again, and then simply didn't leave the park and went to ride all the rides. In order to stay past park close, we bought discounted tickets for the Christmas party, so we were able to stay past regular park close and wait in shorter lines for the rides that are usually really long waits.

The third day we spent at Epcot, first doing everything Future World had to offer, including eating at a new revolving restaurant, that was home style and a character breakfast with Mickey, Pluto, Chip, and Dale. Which was awesome because then we didn't have to worry about meeting them anywhere else. We walked around the World Showcase and ate at some of the Food and Wine stands. Tommy did the Kidcot activity where you bring a paper Duffy to each country to get a stamp, which was a lot of fun for him too.

Before they left for the airport the last day we managed to do everything Animal Kingdom had to offer, which wasn't hard because there really isn't much there. But we had a perfect safari and an awesome last day, and very little tears shed at the goodbye. It was really sad to see them go but I'm so glad I was able to offer them a great and (relatively) cheap vacation. My mom said I should be a vacation planner since I was able to time everything out so that they got to do pretty much everything, but she also said she feels like she spent the whole time looking at my back walking in front of them, so there's that too.