My first trip to Disney World. I was around four at the time, so this was in August 2003.
It is hard to pick just one memory from that trip, so I will cheat a little and say the entire trip was my favorite memory, as I have been fortunate enough to have been to Walt Disney World multiple times.
The hotel we stayed at was absolutely stunning. My favorite franchise at the time (And even now) was Toy Story, and this hotel was centered around animation, so it had a huge 100 foot tall statue of Buzz Lightyear right outside our room! We could look out from the balcony and see it and I loved it. We also saw Woody, who was just as big, although sitting down, so he was not as tall. I got many pictures at that hotel, many I still have and may possibly upload here if anyone wants to see
. My little self is just a spec compared to Buzz Lightyear (I was sitting on his foot in the photo).
My first Disney ride ever was the Classic Peter Pan ride, which I loved because of the illusion of being so high above the streets of London. We also went on Snow White's Scary Adventures, a traumatizing experience for me when I was little, I came out crying. It is for the best that that ride is gone
.
I
loved the Haunted Mansion, I rode it about five times in a row. I loved the humor of the ghosts, as they weren't scary but more funny. Although I did hate the stretching portrait room, and the lights blacking out did not help. The Ghost Host continues to be one of my favorite narrators of all time.
Then there was the Tower of Terror... My dad made the mistake of taking me on that thing and I can tell you it took me about seven years before I rode that thing again. If it hadn't have been for how young I was, I think I would have loved it but the unexpectedness of suddenly falling caught me off guard.
And to top it off with rides that scared me to death (Which seem to be the memories I remember fondly
) the Dinosaurs ride.
That was intense. I had expected maybe a nice stroll through fields and seeing grazing dinosaurs but oh, no. Jurassic Park was less horrifying to me (I had ridden it on that same trip), and it had a seventy five foot drop! It was the dinosaurs popping out and screaming that got me, but the very end was what put the cherry on top. A feature of the ride that is now removed (I had noticed they removed it when I rode it again in August 2012), is that at the end, a T-Rex would open its mouth in front of you and you would go
into its mouth and be swallowed as an exit. That terrified me, and my mom bought me a Dinosaur playset kit to help me feel better.
I have so so many memories from just that trip alone and I could honestly write pages and pages. But I feel no one would read that so... I just put the memories that stood out most to me. Disney is truly magical, and I feel right at home whenever my family takes a trip there. I love it all so much. The reason we go so often is because we have family out in California so we go to Disneyland whenever we see them there. And then, Florida is just our favorite vacation spot, at least in the United States. So obviously you cannot go to Orlando and skip out on Disney World, Universal, etc.