Orlando – June 28th to July 6th, 2012

The young Mathews crowd

From Copenhagen, we flew via NYC to Orlando, and drove to Kissimmee, just south of Orlando.  We stayed at Cherian´s parents timeshare for the week. Fortunately, we were lucky to get a bunch of family to come to the area for the same week – so, we were 18 people total, including Cherian’s parents, his sister’s family and his aunts, uncles, cousins and their kids.

The cousins

We went to 4 Disney Parks: Epcot, Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom. One day in each park. Frej also went to Universal Island of Adventures with his second cousins.

The trick in all the parks was to make it to the rides with the really long lines early in the morning just when the park opened its gates or in the afternoon when it was less crowded. Otherwise we used the FastPass service that allowed us to come back to the ride an hour or two later and get to the front of the line. Although, there were lots of people at all the parks, we seemed to be able to get to most of what we wanted to see.

Kiran, Jake and Frej in Epcot

We started at Epcot, making sure we got to the ride Soarin first thing, and had fun talking with Crush, the turtle from Finding Nemo.  After taking a crazy ride to Mars in Mission Space, we became secret agents, helping to save the world from Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz (from Phineas and Ferb) by finding clues and solving missions in Norway and Mexico.

Selina and Belle at the Castle

Main Street, Magic Kingdom

In Magic Kingdom we started the day having breakfast with all the princesses in Cinderella´s Castle. With our reservation, we could get into the park before it opened, and walk on Main Street before it got crowded. 

The Magic Carpet of Aladdin, Magic Kingdom

We hit all of the 'lands' in Magic Kingdom staying most in Tomorrow Land and Adventure Land, and got to see the afternoon parade and the evening parade, the lightshow on the castle and the fireworks.

Amma in Hollywood Studios

In Hollywood Studios, we brought Amma and had shooting practice at the interactive 4-D Toy Story Mania ride, saw amazing stunt shows, and flew out of our seats at the Tower of Terror.

Kali River, Animal Kingdom

In Animal Kingdom, we started at Expedition Everest, which was a little too wild for Selina, but then got really wet at the Kali River Rapids ride that we went on twice (since Cherian was the only one that got really soaked the first time)...  The Festival of the Lion King show was filled with amazing juggling, trampoline, ballet and musical numbers. The Kilimanjaro Safari tour was also pretty cool, as it got us decently close to a lot of the big African animals.

Asia, Animal Kingdom

And in all of the parks, we met a lot of the Disney characters, with lots of hugs and smiles while filling up Selina's signature book with fun photos and pictures.

Rafiki, Animal Kingdom

We had a couple days when we didn't go to the parks and we spent a lot of time at the pool, and one day, we avoided the heat and went to see Madagascar 3 at what turned out to be a Dine-In Movie Theater. We also walked around Disney Downtown and went shopping a bit.

For the 4th of July we went to the neighbor town, Celebration, to watch the fireworks. We didn't know it would be so crowded, and by the time we got there, we had to walk more than a mile to get to the lake downtown to see the show.

On the 6th, all the rest of the families had to fly back to their homes, and we took a LOT of the leftover food, packed the car and before heading down to South Florida, we stopped and visited our old neighbors from Denmark who now live in Orlando.