A College Disney Trip
Sarah, Brian, and I in front of Cinderella’s castle.
The only thing that gets my heart racing more than spontaneous trip is animals and this blog post is not about animals. Being in college this year has taught me a lot of things: the time applied to work is how acceptable the work shall be, you are the only person you can rely on, coffee really does work wonders early in the morning, and group plans almost always fall through. This being said, they fall through unless it is spontaneous and crazy enough that you may just have to do it.
On a very cold and windy Sunday afternoon, my friends Sarah, Brian, and I decided while munching on some food, “It is slightly less cold today than most days. Why don’t we go to the beach?” This sounded like a terrific idea until we got to the beach that was under construction and about fifteen degrees colder than it was in Downtown Savannah. So it was time to turn around because if the air was that cold, how cold would the water possibly be? We all took a deep breath of disappointment and started to turn around, and as we slowly walked back towards the entrance of the pier we stopped as we all had the same idea.
Why not?
I mean we were there, yes the water would be freezing, and yes the air around us was fog-ridden, but at the end of the day, why not? We smiled and walked as far down the beach as we possibly could and then ran straight into the bone chilling water. What a day. On the ride home we laughed and sang and from Sarah’s mouth came the words that changed our plans and our bank accounts, “We should go to Disney World next weekend.” Less than two seconds had passed when Brian said, “I was honestly thinking the same thing!” That was it. We were going to Disney World for the upcoming four day weekend that we had been blessed with. Time to start planning.
At SCAD, we have school Monday-Thursday. We get off Friday-Sunday. We had a Monday off for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. We made the decision to leave on Thursday night after our classes let out at 7:30 and start our four and a half hour trip.
The trips vlog will be up on my YouTube channel. What will not be shown in there is the rough patches and a lot of the smiles. The hardest part? The hotel. Little did we know, apparently a lot of hotels in Kissimmee and Orlando tend to have a bit of mold or bugs. Whoopsie. So we had a list of hotels that fit our price range and then decided that we will narrow it down to one while in the car on our way. This did not work as planned when all of them became a little... iffy. Luckily, Sarah’s dad helped us out and found one that was seemingly very good and we were back on track.
Getting there and sleeping was one of the best feelings after a ride of a lot of singing and coffee. The next day was Epcot. If ever going to Epcot, do exactly what I did when I was little and what I showed Sarah and Brian to do: get a passport. They sell these little passports at the first shop when you enter all of the different countries, and they are the cutest things you will ever see. They not only are a great keepsake of the time you spent there but they make it so you have to go into every shop and really enjoy the sights. Epcot is easy to stroll right through and not take in. Buying the passport forces you to have a goal in each country, to get the country’s stamp, and enjoy the culture that they have made around you. Highly highly suggest. After a long day at Epcot, what more could we do than get dinner and go to bed over a nice movie? Absolutely nothing.
The next day was Magic Kingdom. The day before was almost a test run for this park. We had gotten into the groove of things and now we knew that we had to bring the energy and happy attitudes for Magic Kingdom. I mean it is where dreams come true after all (spoiler alert: they did). While walking into the park, we almost missed the woman of my childhood dreams, Snow White. She’s able to live in the woods and have little critters love her and amuse her all day long? Ummm yes please! She was absolutely wonderful and this was the first princess I had ever met. An absolute pleasure.
Throughout the day, we rode an abundance of rides, ate an abundance of churros, and met two more princesses, which is where the whole dreams thing comes in. I got to meet Tiana and Rapunzel, which with no background sounds not so exciting, but for someone like me who is absolutely obsessed with these two and their movies, is insanely exciting. WOW.
After a long day at Magic Kingdom, we returned to yet again another dinner and an exhausted sleep. We had an open day on Sunday because we chose to only go to Disney World two out of the four days that we had open. This was not only for money sake but also for adventure sake. We are three young adults in a city that we can do anything in. What to do? Of course we chose exactly what started this whole idea. We went to the beach. There is a beach about an hour away from Orlando called Cocoa Beach that I had gone to with a friend about half a year before, so yet again we figured why not?
If you have never been to Cocoa Beach, you have to go. It is not phenomenal. It is not insanely remote. It is simply beautiful though. It has such cute, beachy restaurants surrounding it as well as a massive Ron Jon shop and Cocoa Beach surf shop. You do not want to know how much I love Ron Jon aka how much money I spent there. We ate at Epic Burritos which was SO YUMMY. Then we decided to go home. There was some time left with the day so we went on an escape room late night run at 10:30. Don’t ask us why we thought this was a good idea.
For the final day, we wanted to stop at Disney Springs to look around and take in the incredible world of fast and expensive consumerism. One can only dream of being that wealthy and careless about the environment as to shop like a lot of the people there were. Needless to say though, Disney Springs is comparable to Disney World without the rides. It is insanely big and quite a sight to see. A trip to Chipotle and two iced coffees at Dunkin later, we were on the road back to Savannah, Georgia.
Once home in the dorm, it was back to daily life. It was time to study for the art history exam that I had the next day and to read fairytales to try and pick out the structural narrative. The everyday life of an being an art student was back on track. The spontaneity however has been waiting to fill my body again and break my bank account. I can only imagine where I will be going next.
Sarah, Brian, and I with the one and only, Snow White.
Sarah and I in front of the three duck’s candy shop.
Brian and I attempting to pull the sword from the stone. Someone then broke it two days later.
