🏰🎢 Quick Guide to living your best life in Disney World!✨ *warning - contains theme park spoilers*

It’s been a couple of weeks since I returned from the most nostalgic trip to Disney World for a reunion with my international besties! ✈️ It’s hard to put into words what an incredible trip this was!!

First of all, I managed to pull off surprising two of my friends (with the help of their husbands) by turning up in Tampa and knocking on their doors!! The looks on their faces were absolutely priceless and 1000% worth every bit of anxiety, stress (and lying to them on FaceTime calls) in the months leading up to it 🥳✅

A couple of us then road tripped over to Orlando where the Disney World reunion began! It was 5 days of eating our body weight in Mickey-Mouse-Shaped-calories, screaming our heads off (mostly me) on the rides, and becoming a kid again as we chased our favourite Disney characters around the parks! I mean it when I say that Disney gets better the older that you get. As we age, life can start to lose those little sparks of magic that we see so often as children, and I believe that Disney is a great place for us to leave reality behind and just embrace all the things that we don’t have the opportunity to in day to day life. I wore my Minnie Mouse ears like a crown and bounded around the park in a state of sheer happiness for those 5 days!

It goes without saying that I loved it! But there’s a couple things that really stood out for me that I thought you might like to know.

First of all, this was my first visit to the parks since the Pandora section from Avatar opened, and I was extremely impressed. Not only is it filled with bright, colourful plants, stunning waterfalls and air-suspended rock formations - but the entire area glows in the dark at night time. And when I say glows, it GLOWS!!! It’s so good how they’ve designed it, that even walking around the land feels like an attraction.

Now, we HAVE to talk about Flight of Passage - the new ride in Pandora! I’ve been on lots of rides (even though I hate rollercoasters!) but let me tell you - I didn’t think anything could get better than the Harry Potter rides Universal Studios. But Disney went one step further and took this ride to a whole new level! It’s quite possibly the best ride I’ve ever experienced!! If you want it to be a complete surprise for your trip, I’d recommend you skim past this bit.

The ride is a simulation of a ride through pandora on the back of Mountain Banshees (Those flying animals in the movie that the na’vi link up to). I’ve never sat in a ride seat like this, the best way for me to describe it is to imagine that you have a motorbike in front of you - you climb onto the seat and straddle it, your legs are then strapped in and pressed up against the “bike”. The instructions prompt you to lean your body forward over the seat, then a cushioned bar presses against your body at the front and your back to secure you in. Finally you put on your 3D glasses. If you’ve been on Disney’s Soarin’ ride, it’s similar in the sense that when the ride starts, the floor falls away to give the illusion that you’re flying. Now, this ride is absolutely breathtaking!! you can feel every single drop, turn, and gust of wind as you fly through the air. You can even feel the lifting and falling of your Banshee BREATHING against your body. It’s immense!

It’s common knowledge that theme park food and snacks come with a super hefty price tag, but for this particular trip, I was still in “it’s Christmas” mode, and allowed myself to indulge in delicious theme park treats (way more than I probably should have!) 🤤 My favourite snack of the entire trip was a giant, oversized, glazed, Mickey Mouse shaped donut covered in sprinkles from Magic Kingdom 😋- The first time in my life I’ve spent $10 on a donut, but it was like eating 5 donuts in one go! And in all honesty, I would probably do it again - No regrets!