Our family just returned from an 8-day journey to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. Since I got so much help from forums and blogs before I left, I wanted to offer our experiences and comments.

It is difficult to imagine how incredibly vast WDW is. The official documents say it is 47 square miles, but the number doesn't really tell the story. There are 4 theme parks, two water parks, 6 golf courses, about 25 large resort hotels and a number of vast lakes, and yet it is still mostly empty space. For comparison, the "urban sprawl" area of the city of San Jose, CA, is 61 square miles.

One of the first major decisions you have to make is where to stay. Each of the Disney resorts is themed, and few people are better than maintaining an immersive theme experience than Disney. We have two teenagers, so we wanted three beds. At the time we called, three months in advance, the only resort that could guarantee us bunks was the cabins at the Fort Wilderness campground. We like the cabin experience, so we chose that. Fort Wilderness is about 2/3 RV park and 1/3 cabins. The cabins are about the size of a single-wide mobile home (which they might actually be), and were plenty big enough for our family. It had a full kitchen, and a large patio with barbecue.

If you do plan a WDW vacation, start planning your meals early. I had seen the notes saying that one could make reservations up to 180 days in advance, but I merely chuckled at that. I started two weeks out, thinking I was ahead of the game. I was dead wrong. When I called, all three of the dinner shows (Hoop-De-Doo Revue, Mickey's Backyard BBQ, Spirit of Aloha) were completely sold out, all week long. In fact, of all of the "table service" restaurants we wanted, only one was available for dinner at all. By persistent calling, we did manage to get Hoop-De-Doo tickets, but the rest of the table service meals we ate were at lunch.

I've made each day a separate blog posting, and the file times should allow them to appear in order. Here are links to the entries:

Sunday, Arrival
Monday, Magic Kingdom
Tuesday, MGM Studios
Wednesday, Blizzard Beach and Hoop-De-Doo Revue
Thursday, Epcot Center
Friday, Typhoon Lagoon and Downtown Disney
Saturday, Animal Kingdon
Sunday, wrap-up and go home

Three days after the UK terrorist scare. We were worried that we might have to fly naked. As it turns out, other than the inconvenience of not being able to take sodas, lattes, and contact lens solution on the plane, the security process wasn't significantly different from the last time I flew.

We used the "Disney Magical Express" service to get from the airport. We put special tags on the luggage, and Disney folks pick it up for us and take it straight to the room. This allowed us to concentrate on getting checked in and finding our way around. However, when using this option, be aware that your luggage does not travel on the same bus that you do! We arrived at the Orlando airport at 8:15 PM, and were finally in our cabin by 9:45 PM. However, our luggage was not delivered until 2:20 AM the next morning. Since we could not take toothpaste or contact lens solution on the airplane, this left us in an uncomfortable situation.

When I was charting out our days, it turns out I fell into a trap that nearly everyone falls into: I scheduled the parks in the order they opened. That is, Magic Kingdom, then Epcot, then MGM Studios, then Animal Kingdom. This pattern is so common that Monday is the Magic Kingdom's busiest day, Tuesday is Epcot's busiest day, and so on. Fortunately, the meal problems we encountered forced us to scramble that schedule a bit.

However, we did start our week at the Magic Kingdom. It was much less crowded than we expected. A cast member told me later that the park attendance for the first part of the week was about half of their usual number, and they weren't sure why.

Being Disneyland veterans, the Magic Kingdom was familiar to us. We did our favorites: Pirates of the Caribbean, Thunder Mountain Railroad, Space Mountain, It's A Small World. I made the kids sit through the Hall of Presidents, which I remembered from the early Disneyland days. The animatronics have improved; it is hard to remember that those are not real people sitting on the stage.

Our first Disney meal was a fast-food lunch at the Starlight Cafe in Tomorrowland. We happened to catch a special Disney promotion that saved us a boatload of money. By booking a 7-day stay at a Disney resort, we got the "Disney Dining Plan" for free. This gets you one snack, one counter service meal, and one table service meal per person per day. This is a fabulous deal. We tracked the actual prices during the week, and found that we would have spent just under $1,300 on meals had we not had this plan.

As a general rule, the counter service (fast food) meals end up averaging $13 per person, and table service meals average from $30 to $45 per person.

The Disney meals are expensive, but the food is good, and unquestionably plentiful. On the dining plan, each meal includes an appetizer, an entree, and a dessert. When dining out, we almost never order appetizers or desserts, so right off the bat we were getting more food than usual. Plus, the entrees are large. We spent most of the week stuffed to the gills. At that first lunch, my 13-year-old son got a double bacon cheeseburger, and could not finish the brownie. We had to take it with us.

As it turns out, we got so much food at the meals that we barely used the snacks. By Friday, we still had 20 of our 28 snack credits unused. The snack credits can be used to buy drinks and packaged snacks as well, so we used the last on items to take with us to the airport.

We had our first table service dinner at Tony's Town Square, themed after the restaurant where Lady and the Tramp have their spaghetti and meat ball supper. This was a delightful place, and the food was great. We got seafood, steak, and pasta, and all of it was very good.

One of the advantages of staying at Fort Wilderness is that one can take a boat to the Magic Kingdom. The boats were less crowded and more relaxed than the busses or monorail.

We spent our second day at the Disney MGM Studios. I think this was my favorite of the four theme parks. We did the (Trip through the Movies?), which we all enjoyed. The "tour guide" leaves the vehicle partway through and rejoins later. We did the Indiana Jones stunt show on fast pass, which is well worth the wait. Excellent. We did Star Tours, which I had seen in California. I really liked the Tower of Terror. We also watched the stage show of Beauty and the Beast, which was well done. We did the

We went to the 50's Prime Time Cafe for lunch. The theme here is the TV generation of the 1950's situation comedies. Your experience here depends strongly on your waiter. If he or she plays the part well, and scolds your party for manners violations, it can be really fun. The menu is your basic comfort food. The meat loaf was great. We had warned my son about the elbows on the table thing, and at one point, when the waiter walked in the room, he suddenly sat up straight when he realized his elbows were on the table.

We did dinner at the ABC Commissary. Because we were so stuffed from lunch, we didn't start looking for dinner until after 7. By that time, most of the quick service places have closed. Be warned that your choices go way down after 7 PM, even though the park itself is open until 9 PM.

Today, we headed to the Blizzard Beach water park. I was really looking forward to the water parks, and I thought Blizzard Beach looked to be the more fun of the two. The lockers are small; be prepared to get one small per person, or one large per two people.

My family talked me into floating around the "cross country creek", which runs all the way around the park. You get in and get out wherever you want. This was fun and relaxing, but it meant that we didn't get into the water slide lines until later in the morning. We ended up waiting a long time for one of the two premiere slides (the "Slush Gusher"), and it was over in 30 seconds. We spent the rest of the time in the wave pool.

In the evening, we had reservations for the Hoop-De-Doo Revue back at Fort Wilderness. This was a hoot and a half. We all enjoyed it immensely. The cast of performers are all right out of vaudeville. It looks like it's about one third improvised. They get the audience involved in many ways, all of them hilarious. Plus, the food is great (ribs, fried chicken, beans, corn, salad, cornbread, strawberry shortcake), and it is all you can eat and drink. The waiters are very attentive, and took care of every need promptly.

The Hoop-De-Doo takes two "table service" credits per person. Several people commented that this was not a good deal, and I have to say I agree. A nice table service meal ran about $45 per person (with tax and mandatory 18% tip), and the Hoop-De-Doo runs $50.22 per person.

We relaxed in the cabin after the show. I was surprised to find that they charged $10 per day for high-speed Internet. You'd think that, for $250 a night, they could give me the darned cable modem connection for free.

Today was our Epcot day, and we seemed to catch up to the crowds. We only made it through half of the Future World, and breezed through the International World very quickly. We did do Soarin', which I had done in California and really enjoyed. I believe we did all of the rides in the "Land" pavilion.

The Circlevision 360 movie in the Canada pavilion is worth the effort. I have always liked the Circlevision 360 movies, where the movie is played on movie screens all around the top of the theater, clear back to the old "America the Beautiful" movie at Disneyland. This one was every bit as good.

We had table service lunch at Coral Reef, in the "Living Seas" pavilion. One entire wall of the restaurant is a glassed-window view into the huge aquarium in "Living Seas". It was quite beautiful, although it was rather loud. The food was OK, but there are so many other good choices at Epcot that I wouldn't do it again.

I do want to offer one caution to people using forums as a resource. I had found a menu for Coral Reef that showed lobster tail and filet mignon. Since my daughter is nuts for lobster, we were looking forward to that. It turns out that, when they changed the pricing on the Disney dining plan a few months ago, they changed all of the menus. No more lobster, and the filet was replaced by a New York strip.

Epcot is really a bonanza for foodies. All of the international pavilions have at least one restaurant, and sometimes as many as three. For dinner, my kids went to the teriyaki place in the Japanese pavilion, and my wife and I got brats at the German pavilion. My kids, who do a lot of teriyaki meals, said it was one of the best they'd ever had. The brat was good as well, but I wish I could have been in the Biergarten...

Today, we split up. My son and I wanted to go to the other water park, Typhoon Lagoon. The girls had had enough water, and wanted to go shopping at Downtown Disney.

I have to say that Typhoon Lagoon is, hands down, the better of the two water parks. We got there during the "extra magic hour"; guests of the resort can get in an hour before the general public. That was GREAT! We managed to go down 4 water slides each in the first 40 minutes, and they were all fun. By then, I was huffing and puffing pretty good, so we floated around their "lazy river", and then went into the wave pool.

The wave pool at Typhoon Lagoon is incredible. Their wave generator makes a surfing-quality wave that is at least 8 feet high, which actually breaks as it approaches shore. A number of people actually did body surfing, quite successfully. After running the 8 footers for a while, they switch to a different wave generator that makes, basically, "moguls". It was fun and challenging. I would go back there.

After that, my son and I headed to Downtown Disney for table service lunch at Captain Jacks. This was one of the better meals we had at WDW. I wish we could have been there for dinner instead; they told us the dinner menu is quite a bit better.

We spent the rest of the afternoon at Downtown Disney. We eventually made our way up to the "West End" and spent a few hours in Disney Quest, which is basically a 5-story video arcade. My kids had a fabulous time there. I was worn out from Typhoon Lagoon, so I actually napped for a while in the cafe...

When we got back to the cabin, it was still relatively early -- about 7 PM. It was "extra magic hour" day at Epcot, which means it stays open from 9 PM to midnight for resort guests, so we decided to head down to Epcot to catch the parts we missed. This turned out to be a joke. EVERYBODY heads down to whatever park is open for the "extra magic hours", so it was significantly MORE crowded than it had been the day before. We watched the fabulous fireworks display in the middle of the Epcot lake, and we did catch a nice counter service dinner of burgers and chicken strips at the Electric Umbrella, but we couldn't get into any of the rides. We wanted to do the Test Track, but by the time the fireworks were over, the wait was already up to 50 minutes. Only a few of the rides are open during the "magic hours", although you can bet that all of the stores are open. In fact, the "magic hour" concept appears to be primarily another way to separate you from your money. We went through the Spaceship Earth exhibit (which is a good one), and then headed home in a very exciting thunderstorm.

On our last full day, we went to the last remaining theme park: Animal Kingdom. My wife says this was her favorite part of the trip. We were able to get fastpass tickets for the Expedition to Everest, and I would love to do that again. I've never been on a roller coaster than spend much of its trip going backwards, in the dark...

We actually caught a lot of attractions at Animal Kingdom, even though it was very, very crowded. We did the 3D movie at It's Hard To Be A Bug. The best show in the whole park is the Lion King. Very impressive. You can skip the Pocahontas show; it's nothing but a short lesson in deforestation.

We did a counter service lunch at the Tusker Cafe in the Africa section. This was a pretty good fast-food lunch, with rotisserie chicken and big crispy chicken sandwiches

In the late afternoon, we headed over to MGM Studios, to catch some of the things we missed. My son wanted to buy something at the Star Wars store, and my daughter wanted something at the Indiana Jones store. We caught our last counter service dinner at the ABC Commissary again, and then the skies opened up and it started to pour down rain. My wife is always prepared, so we had plastic rain ponchos in our backpacks. The stores were doing a bang-up business in Mickey ponchos, but a lot of people were just soaked to the skin.

The advantage to the drenching rainstorm is that it clears the humidity out of the air. By the time we got back to Fort Wilderness at 9 PM or so, it was the most pleasant weather we had felt all week. My wife sent the three of us off to the pool so she could repack our suitcases in peace, and we bedded down for our last night.

We debated long and hard about what to do on Sunday. We had been go-go-going all week, and were somewhat cranky as a result. My wife wanted to return to the Magic Kingdom. My son wanted to go back to Typhoon Lagoon. However, the timing would be tricky. Our bus back to the airport was scheduled at 2:50, we had a lunch reservation at the Trail's End cafe in Fort Wilderness at 12:30, and we had to check out of the cabin no later than 11:00. The Disney transportation system is great, but it can really eat up the time.

In the end, I convinced everyone to stay in Fort Wilderness for the day. We had the pool to ourselves for quite a while.

The Trail's End Cafe at Fort Wilderness has a very good buffet. It's basically the same food you get at the Hoop De Doo Revue (in the same building, cooked in the same kitchen), plus a big salad and sandwich bar, and some additional entrees. We ate well for our last table service, because we knew we wouldn't be getting anything on the airplanes.

The most unfortunate part of the trip happened on our way out. As I said, we were scheduled to board a Disney Magical Express bus at 2:50 PM to head to the airport. The bus (#3215) was 5 minutes late, driven by a young woman. As soon as she pulled away from the bus stop, she made a wrong turn and headed into the campground instead of to the highway. Now, this is a 45' bus; you can't just take those into narrow campground roadways! Oddly enough, the DME driver who took us in told us about other drivers that had made that very mistake.

She did manage to get the bus turned around, and in the process told us that it was her first trip on this run. Oh, goodie. She then missed the bus stop locations at both of the Pojrt Orleans resorts, and had to pull out and come in again. She didn't know how to handle the luggage, and there was a huge crowd at Port Orleans Riverside waiting to board. The bus only had three stops to make, and it took an hour before we were on the road and rolling.

Once we got rolling, she pulled out her cell phone and started playing with the camera. I assume that she received a briefing about good driving practice with a busful of passengers, but apparently it didn't stick. She drifted out of her lane and nearly hit the center divide before she put the cell phone away.

So, finally we get on the freeway to the airport. As we're approaching the Orlando Airport exit, I notice that she is in the left lane, making no move to take the exit. Sure enough, as we passed the exit, I heard her mutter to herself in unkind terms that she missed the exit. Now, this is rural Orlando. It's 5 miles to the next exit, and of course, 5 miles back. When we got to the airport, she had no clue which airlines were in which terminal, and she had not written down which airlines her passengers actually needed.

Our pickup was at 2:50 PM. Our flight was at 5:40 PM. Plenty of time, right? We did not escape from the bus until 4:50 PM. Two hours travel time. The bus driver is fortunate that security was easy that day.