Although I am dutch and not good in english I like to send my trip report to you: Honeymoon Trip report from Edwin and Linda (Holland)
On Sept 5th, one day after our wedding day we flew with Delta Airlines from Amsterdam to Atlanta and from Atlanta to Orlando. We arrived at 5.10pm and Larry (a friend we met in the RADP newsgroup) picked us up at the airport.
The first week we stayed in Comfort Inn Lake Buena Vista. The hotel was good value for money. Since we didn't have a car the first week, we were thankful there was a free shuttle service to the parks. The second we week we stayed at Inns of America on Highway 192. This hotel was really good value for our money and very close to the Disney parks. It was good that we had a car since the distance to International Drive and the other parks (Sea World, Universal Studios) was a bit far.
I want to make this report a bit different from the most reports I've read. Most reports handle from day to day. Since I can't imagine that someone would be interested in what I ate and until what time I slept I will write about the parks only.
In the two weeks of our holiday we went to the following parks:
Magic Kingdom (2 times)
Epcot (4 times)
Mgm Studios (1 times)
Sea World (2 times)
Universal studios (1 time)
Blizzard Beach (1 time)
Also we went to Kennedy Space Center, two dinner shows (King Henry and Wild Bills) and Blazing Piano's.
Magic Kingdom
The first day we wanted to go to the Magic Kingdom. We heard a lot of big crowds and long lines, so we decided to be there early. Well, we arrived at 8.30am and.....NO crowds at all. Because it was not crowded at all the park attendants decided to open the park early.
The first ride we wanted to do was Splash mountain. In the RADP newsgroup the said we should do this ride first because of the crowds. Well, like I said before there was no line at all so we had a boat of our own. We really liked this ride.
After Splash mountain, we did the rest of the rides in the park clockwise excluding some rides in Fantasyland (teacups, Dombo) and Mickey's Toontown Fair. We did the whole park in less than one day. That was really great, since we thought we would need two days to see the entire park. We did all the rides and shows before 5.00pm and decided to go to Epcot for a while. We came back in Magic Kingdom at 7.00pm and found a great place to wait for Spectromagic and the fireworks.
Since we went to Disneyland Paris in March of this year we were comparing the rides in the two parks. Disneyland in Paris is much like Magic Kingdom. There are only some rides that are in different parks in the USA like Star Tours and Indiana Jones rollercoaster. The biggest disappointment was Space mountain. We did that ride in Disneyland Paris and it was so much faster, darker, scarier than the one in Magic Kingdom.
After spending the whole day in Magic Kingdom we decided that Disneyland Paris was a little better than Magic Kingdom.
What are the rides you don't want to miss (best ride in our opinion comes first):
Alien Encounter
Spectromagic and the fireworks
Splash Mountain
Legend of the Lion King
Big Thunder Mountain railroad (take the right line)
The Hall of Presidents (why doesn't like Clinton at all like Clinton?)
Jungle Cruise (if you have a funny guide this ride is great, otherwise it is disapointing!)
Pirates of the Caribean
We were happy to see that It's a Small World was closed for a while. We didn't like this in Paris at all. We didn't like the Tomorrowland Speedway, Mr. Toad's Wild ride and Take flight.
Epcot
Epcot is great. We didn't want to believe the people on Radp when they said we would spend most of our time in Epcot but they were right. We visited Epcot 4 times. One whole day and 3 times a part of a day.
We liked almost every ride and movie, but we must say that there are too much 9-screen movies in all the Disneyparks and The American Adventure was too long. We were surprised by the size of Mexico and we liked how they made the San Angel Inn restaurant. We even liked Maelstrom in Norway. But don't do this ride if you don't want to see the movie afterwards or walk through the exit doors before the movie starts otherwise there is no exit.
We liked the food in France and visited the "boulangerie" a few times. Illuminations 25 at 9.00pm was breathtaking. We never saw something like this before. Check out all the lighted houses. We spent a lot of time at innoventions. Don't forget to watch the little show about molecules in innoventions. It is a short but good show.
Honey I shrunk the audience was great. Actually it was the first 3d movie was saw in the parks so we thought it was great. But actually there is one better 3d movie (see Universal Studios).
Don't forget to see the movie the Making of Me in Wonders of life.
What are the rides you don't want to miss (best ride in our opinion comes first):
Illuminations 25
Honey I shrunk the audience
Ellen's Energy adventure
Living with the Land (interesting)
The Living Seas.
Spaceship earth
Actually we liked all of Epcot, so you really should spend most of your time here. Visit the World Showcase when it's dark. At that time it is even better.
If you don't have to much time skip Horizons, skip a few of the 9 screen movies in the World Showcase and skip Body wars of you get motion sickness easily. We liked Star Tours, but Body wars was to bumpy for us and we didn't feel too good afterwards.
MGM Studios
We had great expectations of this park, but it was a bit of a disappointment that this park was not so big.
Because it still was not crowded at all(the first line we had to stand in in our entire holiday was the one at the airport(45 minutes)) we had an almost private ride at the Great Movie Ride. After that we visited the Indiana Jones Stunt show(great) and Tower of Terror(WOW!!!). We knew it had to be a great ride but we never would expected it was so much fun. Although it wasn't very scary.
Well, we liked and did all the shows and rides here, excluding the Beauty and the Beast show(no reason for that, we just skipped it).
The Magic of Disney Animation was good, especially the part were you could ask some questions and the sneakpeak of the new Disneymovie that comes out in 1998 and where one of the characters has the voice of Eddy Murphy.
What are the rides you don't want to miss(best ride in our opinion comes first):
Tower of Terror
Indiana Jones Stunt Show
Muppet Vision 3D
The magic of Disney animation
Studios Backlot Tour including Catastrophe Canyon, which is better than Earthquake in Universal Studios
As I said before, most of the rides and shows in MGM are good. It didn't took us all they to check out the park, which was nice because we were getting very tired because of our wedding and the long(12hour) flight.
We didn't like the Backstage Pass very much. You could take a look on the set of "from the earth to the Moon" with Tom Hanks, but there wasn't anything to see.
Maybe this sounds typical Dutch, but this park was a little too expensive for what it has to offer. What there is is good, but there could be more.
Sea World
Wow, what can we say about this park. Fantastic, best shows, best atmosphere.
Yes the atmosphere really does it here. We liked just walking around watching the animals. And what a shows. Even the preshows are great here. Make sure that you are early there for a show. The preshow is just as good.
But beware, if they say you gonna get during a show when you sit on certain seats YOU WILL GET WET.
There were a lot of people ignoring the advice to sit somewhere else if they wanted to tape the show and they ended with a very wet camera.
In this park there is nothing you want to miss, but since it is a bit difficult to do all shows in one day, make sure you will see these shows!
Clyde & Seamore
The Shamu (killerwhale) Show
The Dolphin Show
The Baywatch show
If you have time try to be there when they gonna feed the sealions. You will be surprised about the noise they can make.
When we were in Seaworld they had a second day free action so we were able to visit seaworld a second day. And we needed it to finish watching the shows. Unfortunately we couldn't watch the fireworks, because we booked a dinnershow on both days. Well, so we can see something next time we gonna visit Seaworld when they open a new ride called Atlantis.
Universal Studios
This park was a bit chaotic and noisy. The first thing we did was the E.T. ride. And it was so disappointing.
But the next show was a lot better. In fact it was the best show we ever saw. It is Terminator 2 3D. Make sure to see this one. This was the big winner. Make sure you go see this 3d movie last in your vacation, because all the other 3d movies will be a bit disappointing when you saw this one first. Same with the Back to the Future ride. Same ride as Star Tours(MGM), Body Wars(Epcot) and Wild Artic(Sea World) but SO much better made.
For the rest we enjoyed Jaws and Kongfrontation, but you could see that these rides are a bit older. We didn't like this park as much as the Disneyparks(there was no magic). And we noticed that drinks, food and parking were more expensive than in the other parks.
What are the rides you don't want to miss(best ride in our opinion comes first):
Terminator 2 3D
Jaws
Back to the Future
Animal Actors
We didn't plan to go back to this park although we had a free ticket for a second day (same action as in Seaworld).
Blizzard Beach
We bought a 4day World Hopper Pass and that included one day River Country. But River Country was closed for some repairs so we could choose Blizzard beach or Typhoon Lagoon. We heard that Blizzard beach had more slides so we decided to go there. Remember: There is no direct bus from the Ticket center to Blizzard Beach. First take a bus to one of the Disney Resorts (Key West or Coronado) and from there you can take a bus to Blizzard beach. We asked but got the wrong answer and that did cost us a 2 and a half our trip along the Disney property.
Blizzard Beach is a nice waterpark, a lot of great slides and the biggest and fastest slide in the world.
But this was the first time we had to stand in line. Not because it was so crowded but because for safety they let only one person on a slide at a time. So that takes about one minute per person. The second problem was if you ended to the slide you had to take the stairs up again to the next slide or take the chair lift (30 minutes wait).
We felt a lot of pain in our legs the second day because a the walking we did on the stairs. We really enjoyed this park, but couldn't do a lot of things a second time because of the long lines.
What are the slides you don't want to miss(best ride in our opinion comes first):
Summit Plummet (World's tallest free-fall slide)
Slush Gusher
Teamboat Springs(world's langest raft ride)
Runoff rapids (3 slides with tubes)
Cross Country Creek (flowing creek around the park, nice and relaxing)
We heard that people who like slides better go to Wet 'n Wild (open till 11.00pm), but since we didn't go there we wouldn't know if it is true.
Kennedy Space Center
I always wanted to go here when I was little. My wife didn't want to go at first but even she enjoyed it a lot. We liked to see all the rockets in the rocket garden. After that we saw a 3d movie about living in space.
Next we took the RED bus tour around the property (saw the Space Shuttle, will be launched on Sept. 25) and visited the Apollo/Saturn V Center. This center was terrific. Make sure you go to the firing room where you see a reconstruction of the launch of the Apollo 11. What a great reconstruction.
Altogether we spend a whole day at the Kennedy Space Center and we liked it very much.
Don't forget to take some change with you when you go there because the highway is a toll-highway.
Well this is the end of this short trip report. Although I am only a first time visitor I will be happy to answer all questions you may have. Just mail me at Ed95@pi.net. And sorry for the bad English, it's not my language!!
Edwin Hendriks
ed95@pi.net
If you like to see some of Edwin's photo's of their trip, please go to http://www.gend.nl/home/E.Hendriks, there are about 40 photo's. Remember that there is no link back to this site.
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