My most recent Walt Disney World adventure started out as a potential beach trip with my sister-in-law and her family. We have done several family trips together but hadn’t been to Walt Disney World together since 2017 when I was pregnant with the littlest cousin!
It may sound crazy, but our goal when planning this trip was to make it feel like a relaxing beach vacation, while still hitting all our favorite Disney attractions. With a bigger group, we splurged on some bougie extras that, I think, really helped us achieve that goal!
We had a total of 4 adults and 4 kids ages 13, 13, 11 and 6. I was able to book us into a Treehouse Villa at Saratoga Springs Resort. This villa has 3 bedrooms, 2 full bathrooms, a full kitchen and a washer and dryer (just like many of the beach houses we were looking at) and this was the perfect home base for us on this trip.
Day 1 – Arrival day
We arrived at Saratoga Springs Resort right around lunch time on Sunday. Although check-in at the villas is not until 4:00 pm, we lucked out and they had a villa ready for us when we arrived. They were also able to put us in a villa in the location I requested – near the boat dock to Disney Springs and the quiet treehouse villas pool.
One of the things that we were excited about at Saratoga Springs was the proximity to Disney Springs – just under a mile walk or a short boat ride away. So, after getting unpacked and settled in, we headed over to Disney Springs to grab some lunch and stretch our legs.
We came back and waited for the rest of the family to arrive, and then headed back to Disney Springs for dinner at T-Rex Cafe. T-Rex is a bit of a family tradition – it’s busy and overstimulating and the adults love to hate it. The kids just love it. Everyone gets light-up glasses and the grownups drink Coronaritas and it’s a great kick-off to our vacation.
After dinner, we window-shopped a bit but headed back to bed on the early side as Monday was the only day we planned for an early start and a long day.
Day 2 – Animal Kingdom and EPCOT
Since we were splurging on some other things later in the week, we wanted to avoid buying Genie+ (the system changed the week after our trip) or Lightning Lanes today. Our plan was to rope drop Animal Kingdom, do as much as we could there, take a mid-day break, and then take advantage of extended evening hours for deluxe resort guests at EPCOT.
This plan worked great for us. I usually only use Disney transportation when I’m in the parks, but as we had driven down to Florida, we had cars available to us. Driving to Animal Kingdom this morning allowed us to let the teenagers sleep a little bit longer and still get to Animal Kingdom well before the gates opened.
We headed straight to Flight of Passage at park opening and we were able to do everything we wanted to before lunch. This included taking the train to Conservation Station and back, enjoying The Festival of the Lion King show, visiting all our friends on the Kilimanjaro Safari, several rides on Expedition Everest, and getting wet on Kali River Rapids.
Once we finished up there, we headed back to the resort for lunch and a dip in the pool.
Around 4, we hopped on a bus to EPCOT. We started with Journey of Water and then dinner at Biergarten – another family favorite. After dinner, we checked wait times and ended up heading to The Land for Soarin’ and Living with the Land and then to Spaceship Earth. At 6:00, I was also able to grab us a spot in the virtual queue for Guardians of the Galaxy. Once the park closed to regular park guests, we were also able to ride Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure with a short wait and ended the night with Guardians!
The kids also loved recreating a bunch of the pictures from when they were little!
Day 3 – Typhoon Lagoon
Keeping with our relaxing beach trip theme, we planned for today to be a low-key day at the water park. Knowing that the big kids would want to be able to go off on their own, we made our first splurge and reserved a cabana for the day.
The main idea was that the cabana would give us a home base for the day. This way if the kids went off on their own, it would be easy for us to meet up periodically throughout the day. In addition to having a shaded seating area, the cabana also comes with a refrigerator, a lockable cabinet and refillable drink mugs for everyone in your party.
Besides all that, you also get a designated cabana attendant for the day. Our attendant – Lee – was superb! He kept us stocked with cold waters and fresh towels throughout the day. For anything else we needed, all we had to do was send a quick text message and whatever we wanted would appear!
The food offerings were amazing perfect for us as well. We ordered a family size nacho platter and a family size chicken finger platter. This was more than enough food for us throughout the day and we actually leftovers to take back with us!
As tends to happen in the late afternoon in Florida in the summer, a thunderstorm rolled through around 4 pm. We had just ordered ice cream, so while everyone else raced out of the park towards buses or tried to find somewhere to shelter, we relaxed in our cabana eating and drinking and hanging out. Once the storm passed, Lee brought us warm towels fresh from the dryer!
I may never do the water parks without a cabana again!
After the storm, we headed back to our villa to relax and hang out.
Day 4 – After Hours at Hollywood Studios
Today we planned for another splurge by buying tickets for Hollywood Studios After Hours that night. Disney’s After Hours events are 3 hour parties held in a designated theme park after it closes to the general public. Included in the ticket is entry to the park 2 hours prior to closing and unlimited water, soft drinks, popcorn and ice cream!
Many of the people in our group had not yet experienced Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, and we are all huge Star Wars fans, so I knew we needed to have plenty of time to explore Batuu. We also were very aware of the weather in Florida in July and knew we wanted to avoid long, sweaty days in the parks. Doing an After Hours event meant that we were in the parks mostly after the sun set, making it much more manageable.
Most of us slept in and then spent the day relaxing by the pool at the resort. One of us golfed and another of us headed to Disney Springs to pick up Gideons cookies and coffee and Ever Glazed donuts.
We headed to Hollywood Studios around 6:00 pm to check-in and get our wrist bands. We started our evening with hugs from Chewbacca and drinks at Oga’s Cantina. From there were were able to experience both Star Wars attractions before the park officially closed for the day. Once the park closed, we were able to experience just about every other attraction at Hollywood Studios! We rode Slinky Dog Dash, Toy Story Midway Mania, Mickey’s Runaway Railway, Tower of Terror, Rock and Roller Coaster, and Star Tours and ate our fill of popcorn and ice cream before calling it a night!
Day 5 – Rest Day
Keeping with our theme of a relaxing vacation, we knew we didn’t want to have too many plans after a late night at Hollywood Studios. So, our only plan for the day was brunch at Topolino’s. We were able to sleep in and take our time getting over to the Riviera Resort for brunch.
After breakfast we split up again, one heading to EPCOT for some shopping, others to the pool and still others to Disney Springs.
It was another day for us to just relax and enjoy being together. At the end of the night, we walked over to the other side of our resort to watch “Disney Dreams that Soar” the summertime drone show.
Day 6 – VIPs
For our final HUGE splurge, we booked a VIP tour for our last park day. I have been lucky enough to experience a couple of VIP tours in Walt Disney World, but the rest of the family had no idea what they were in for.
Walt Disney World VIP tours are the ultimate way to experience the parks. When you book a VIP tour, your group of up to 10 people will be escorted through the parks like royalty by a Disney cast member. You have access to all Lightning Lanes (and front of line access for a few attractions), dedicated parade and/or fireworks viewing, private van transportation between the theme parks, and tons of snacks and water throughout the day. Tours can be booked for a minimum of 7 hours and a maximum of 10 hours. The VIP tour guides are some of Disney’s best cast members – most of whom have worked for the company for many years and are experts in all things Disney!
Our tour guide, John, is one of my favorites. He has worked for Disney for more than 20 years and is a fountain of knowledge. He was also the guide for some VERY famous people over the years!
We started our day at EPCOT where we grabbed some coffee and took a ride on Spaceship Earth before it was time to meet John. Once we met up with John we were off and running! We started out at Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind. John then escorted us out a back entrance where a luxury van (already equipped with a booster seat for our 6 year old) was waiting to whisk us over to Hollywood Studios.
When we arrived at the backstage entrance, we were greeted by additional VIP cast members with water and a variety of snacks. We were again off and running – to Tower of Terror, Rock and Roller Coaster, Rise of the Resistance, Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run, Slinky Dog Dash and Toy Story Midway Mania. When we were done there, the backstage cast members had already moved our van over to a different back stage exit closest to where we were! We loaded back into the van for the ride over to Magic Kingdom!
At Magic Kingdom we were again greeted by cast members with waters and snacks. We entered through a back entrance and then rode Tiana’s Bayou Adventure and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad before heading to the train station for the Festival of Fantasy parade complete with popcorn and drinks. We also had our choice of ice cream before heading back out into the park for Tron: Lightcycle Run, Space Mountain, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean.
If you weren’t keeping track – we were able to experience a total of 15 attractions in 7 hours!
In between all of the attractions we had a great time with John chatting about the parks, history, some of his unique experiences, making for a truly magical day.
After all that we were tired and hungry. I had anticipated that and booked dinner for us with Winnie the Pooh and his friends at Crystal Palace. This was a great place to rest our legs and refuel!
After dinner, some of our group headed back to the resort for the night. The rest of us stuck around to ride the People Mover, check out the new Country Bears Jamboree and do some shopping.
Day 7 – Last Day
For our last day, we planned another low-key day to swim, hit up the arcade, shop at Disney Springs, play golf etc. Everyone was able to do what they most wanted to do before we met up again to get ready for our evening plans.
Our only scheduled plan for the day was a late dinner reservation at ‘Ohana. We hopped on a bus to Magic Kingdom and then planned to do a little monorail crawl among the three monorail resorts. We shopped and explored a bit at the Contemporary Resort and the Grand Floridian Resort & Spa before heading over to the Polynesian Village Resort for our reservation.
The plan was to time our dinner so that we could watch the Happily Ever After fireworks show from the beach at the Polynesian. This was the only real hiccup in our trip. The monorail was busier than usual due to several different bachelor/bachelorette parties happening. This meant we arrived later than planned to our reservation. The restaurant was not busy, but it still took a long time for us to be seated and service was very slow once we were seated. This meant that we were not done eating when Happily Ever After began. Although I was able to run outside with the kids to catch most of the show, it was harried and some of the adults had to stay behind to pay the bill.
Although it was a bit of a bummer to end the trip this way, we still all had a wonderful vacation and were thankful that THAT was the worst part.
No two Disney trips are the same. If you’re ready to craft the perfect Disney trip for your family, I’d love to help! You can contact me at pam@magicaltravel.com or submit a quote request to get started!
