yes, i brought a book.

hello, my story-sparkle friends, and welcome to my happy place! that is, the most magical place on earth: disney world! as people have asked me how my trip was, the reply i’ve settled on is “it was wild!” but would i go back? of course.

here’s a few of the things i managed to take pictures of.

my husband & i went to disney world for the tail end of our honeymoon 6.5 years ago. he has refused to go back… until they built “batuu”—the star wars outpost at disney hollywood studios! so that was our priority and we went there our first day!

needless to say, nathan was living his best life. the parks were SO crowded, however (more on that when we get to magic kingdom!) that the line for RISE OF THE RESISTANCE was 4+ hours long. so we went ahead and splurged on the “lightning passes” (no more free fast passes with a time to come back! blargh!) to get us a spot in line for 8pm that evening. (i mean, you’re at disney, what’s an extra $60?! ack!! i can’t imagine doing that for a large family— and on every ride!!)

he and dad were able to ride the SMUGGLER’S RUN easy enough— maybe a 40 minute wait. i passed just because i’m incredibly claustrophobic and wasn’t going to risk it. (i hyperventilate in elevators, so, uh, no thanks. as cool as flying the millennium falcon might be, my career lies elsewhere!)

behold: the first-ever built-to-lifesized scale millennium falcon! chewie and rey would make occasional appearances beneath it, but never caught them for a selfie.

this is the “black spire” trading post/market place. everything was incredibly well-designed, of course, and we loved the immersive set design of the whole experience. (i am also a fangirl nerd for the fact that if you asked a batuu cast member about a tee-shirt you were jealous of on another tourist, they replied with “‘star wars’ is a construct from your galaxy. you might try the shops on hollywood boulevard.”)

yes, it took some debating, but i totally made the RIGHT decision on which pair of minnie mouse ears to get. (they’d sold out online when i was about to buy them last year; so grateful they still made them!!)

and behold: MY favorite ride at DISNEY HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS! it’s mickey and minnie’s runaway railroad! the old great hollywood movie ride is gone (oz was great, but the alien drool in the ceiling i could have done without; and the gangster shootings and the indiana jones rubber snakes, and yeah… i don’t miss it at all!!) and in its place is a track-less ride that is essentially as close as i’ll ever get to being in a cartoon. here for it!

i rode it by myself the first time (line was a doozy; nathan had gone back to star wars world and parents were eating lunch), and then convinced my parents to ride it with me while we were waiting for our star wars ride reservation.

it’s combination of big screens, animatronics, black light, and projections make it a wacky ride and all kinds of hallie-ness fun.

if you haven’t watched the new mickey mouse cartoons on disney+, i recommend them. they’re quirky and weird and fast, and back to the squash-and-stretch looks-like-2d-animation of yore instead of the rendered 3-d stuff i don’t love so much.

so inside the theatre isn’t too much of an immersive line, but the posters from the series line the way and i just love minnie mouse and daisy & co. so much, i’m into it. (and obviously willing to wait in an hour+ line twice in one day.)

i took no pics of the RISE OF THE RESISTANCE star wars experience… it was AWKWARD because you get captured by the bad guys, so the people telling you where to go are MEAN (which is so un-disney-like!) and then you’re in one capsule/ship/holding area after another and i’m freaking out because claustrophobia and not knowing if the bad guys are gonna be coming through the door… or….. ! it all worked out okay (thank you, disney happy endings!) and the ride was great once we were “rescued,” but it was stressful. i’ll enjoy it WAY MORE next time i’m there. (in FEBRUARY! with some fellow writer friends! YAY!!)

here’s me being my happy dork-ness self on the way to magic kingdom! the park of my heart!

both because of the “lighting lane” (paid) queues and because of the crowds, most attractions have NEW patterns for the stand-by waiting line! at least one great one was the NEW peter pan line— through the darling children’s nursery! tinker bell would shimmer and shine and make things move… it was cute!

yes, this is an awful picture, but here’s the thing:

so that crowds don’t accumulate and hover and block the sidewalks for hours, parades are SHORT and frequent! like, two or three character floats, tops. and because of covid restrictions, there’s NO character meet n’ greets… boo! (sometimes they’re behind a rope and you can take a picture with them awkwardly ten feet or more behind you, but whatever.)

anyway! we were shopping on main street and caught the end of such a pop*up parade! i was filming, and peter started pointing and waving frantically at me— and then i remembered i was wearing a PETER PAN SHIRT. (but duh! you’ve probably seen me wear it. i don’t just save it for the parks!) ;D anyway, on instinct, i blew him a KISS, and he caught it, and it was magical and i’m still blushing. :)

and yes— that book in my tsum sum backpack! i’d recently gotten elizabeth lim’s SO THIS IS LOVE (a disney cinderella twisted tale/retelling) signed at y’all fest, so just had to bring it to take a pic in front of cindy’s castle, right?! :)

the other mistake we made was waiting for the fireworks. mom sat on a ledge— for like three hours— to save our spot. but an hour before show time, cast members came by to say that was going to be an emergency walkway so we couldn’t be there. ACK!

dad and i had gone to ride the haunted mansion (the wait was down to an hour; the shortest it’d been all day, but you wouldn’t know from the family complaining behind us the whole time) and came back to mom and found a spot to stand in the middle of main street for another hour and a half as crowds formed and waited…

i LOVE how they project things onto the castle. more stage magic.

i’m not sure this picture encapsulates the MASS OF HUMANITY that was at the park. this is waiting for the fireworks. an hour before they started. i COmPLETeLY understand people who experience the crowds and therefore believe they hate disney world. in ALL my decades of going to these parks, i have NEVER seen it this crowded. and we went in-between thanksgiving & Christmas. which is usually the OFF-season.

but i guess with vaccines available and travel restrictions lifting (we still had to wear masks indoors & on attractions), people were tired of being cooped up. AND it was the 50th anniversary celebration of disney world, so there was new merchandise and snacks around….? but it was still insane. i will have to find a NEW off-season before i return.

also wish we’d been closer to the castle to see those projections that they of course synchronize with the music! but at least we saw the speck of a human tinker bell fly her wire? and the fireworks are pretty cool from any distance.

next day: epcot! ALSO NUTS. (man, people love those food stalls along the world showcase!)

i’d somehow miraculously (magic!) figured out how to join the VIRTUAL QUEUE for the new ratatouille ride at 7am— they don’t even have a stand-by line, it’s so crazy long of a wait. so we puttered around (uh, mostly sat in the shade of the japanese temple) until our group time to ride this one that afternoon. it was a DELIGHTFUL surprise.

another track-less ride: you’re shrunk down to rat-size and have to escape the kitchen! #nospoilers

the whole courtyard was the parisian aesthetic of my dreams. and yes, i posed on the fake vespa and now i want one.

our final (short) morning before heading home was at animal kingdom!

next to star wars, it was nathan’s favorite park. and since we stayed at a disney resort, we got in early enough to ride the safari without a wait! (they’ve made GREAT changes since i’d been; no more “poachers” to catch; just animal facts and lots of sightings!)

it was a cool and misty morning, so all the animals were super active. the giraffes came up to the jeep, and we even heard the male lion roar! the cheetah posed on her rock, the hippos walked along the bottom of their pond (they’re too heavy to float!), and it was lovely.

and HERE’s the most relaxed you’ll ever be at a disney park: the pandora river ride! bioluminescent plants and animals… you’re floating in the dark (photos did so not turn out) through the river as spa music plays. also, people recognized us in line, so that’s fun. ;)

i hadn’t been to the new pandora part of animal kingdom, and we didn’t have time to get in the 2.5 hour line (yes, at 9am) for the flying ride, but i hear that one’s amazing, too. here’s to next time!

our final adventure was the himalayan yeti whatever-it’s-called ride in the asia part of animal kingdom! it’s my favorite coaster in the parks, and no spoilers, but yes, i’m a little dizzy when i get off and i LOVE it.

to recap: it was a WILD trip!

i tried my first dole whip (do NOT get me started on ordering ahead on the app and then waiting in line to pick up your food; just give me a human to buy a soda from, please!!) :P

also tried my first mickey pretzel. the weather was warm and perfect. (came home to 40 degrees and raining; i much prefer sunny and mid-70’s, thank you!)

was SUPER GLAD i’d been to the parks before so i knew my highlights because with the crowds, even with early admission, and staying late— you absolutely could NOT do everything!

i’m grateful for my confetti sparkle minnie ears and i’d like to normalize wearing them every day and not just in the parks! (others wear baseball caps everywhere, why can’t we wear minnie headbands?!)

blessings on your head if you’re attempting to go soon.

all the same, i’m anxious for the next trip! :)

(p.s. by the time you’re reading this, i’m not sure how the park admissions might have changed, but at the time of writing this, you have to buy your tickets in advance, download the disney GO app, and figure it out well enough to make reservations for which park you’re going to in the morning; if you have the park hopper ticket for the day, you can switch parks after 2pm. we never did because we couldn’t even get to all of our favorites in each park in a day! but if it’d had the stamina to go to the LATE epcot fireworks show, the park hopper might have been useful??) :)