Disney World Surprise Trip

By kelli on August 6th, 2011

We're Going to Disney World!

This is the look of “Heck yeah….We are going to Disney!” from our 5 year old, Brooke! On this day in March 2010, we totally surprised her. Paul and I picked her up from school early, which all by itself was totally exciting! The expression that you see above is when she finally understood that we were leaving for Walt Disney World RIGHT THEN AND THERE from the school parking lot. Brooke had no idea that we planned a surprise trip to The World. She was ready to roll!

Out of all of our Disney excursions, this surprise trip was one of the best that we have ever had! The seed was planted when Paul’s parents offered us a few nights in their timeshare. So we had a free place to stay in Orlando! Then we had to coordinate school and work schedules. It just so happened that Brooke had a day off from school which meant a long weekend. And a surprise trip was born!

The drive down from South Carolina to Disney was uneventful, just lots and lots of rain! We were all dry until the minute we stepped out of the car at the timeshare….and of course that is the moment when the heavens opened up again and we all were officially baptized into the Florida weather!

Rainy Trip Down I-95

We kept an eye on the Weather Channel. These crazy forecasters kept telling us that it was going to be a rainy weekend. Being in Disney denial, we ignored them…until about 3:00 in the morning when it was raining so hard it woke us from a dead sleep! Uh oh….

In the early morning hours, a debate occurred with the Gowder clan. Do we suck it up, gather the rain gear, and head on to the Magic Kingdom? Or try to find a dry, indoor activity? You can probably guess the answer…..a little bit of rain will NEVER keep us out of the Magic Kingdom! So off we went!

We pulled up to the parking lot of the TTC and were surprised to find that we were on the very first row of cars parked. THAT has certainly never happened before. We didn’t even have to take a tram that morning. We walked it!

There was nobody in the Magic Kingdom!

Rainy Fantasyland from Dumbo

Have you ever seen Fantasyland this empty?

Here we are on Main Street USA….

Family Portrait on Main Street USA

Then we were off to ride as many attractions as we could! We had a blast! There was very little wait to get on any attraction. We were running to attractions and jumping on then running right to the next one! It was awesome! We had never been able to ride attractions one right after the other! See how much fun we had?

Riding the Mad Teaparty

Riding the Honeypots of Pooh

Rainy Fantasyland

Dumbo in the Rain

Getting a Break from the Rain on the TTA

These are just a few of the pictures from our rainy day in the Magic Kingdom. Throughout the day we kept wondering if the 3:00 parade was going to happen. The closer it got to 3 the harder it rained! We decided to wait near City Hall to see the parade was going to happen. To our surprise the parade was sort of canceled. Instead of the parade we were treated to the Rainy Day Character Cavalcade! It was really cool and such a great experience that we would have never had….thank you rain!

Rainy Day Character Cavalcade

One last shot from Main Street USA!

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One Response to “Disney World Surprise Trip”

Lea Schroeder says:

October 10, 2011 at 3:52 pm

That must’ve just made her day! I wish my parents could do that but we live in Canada so it’s kind of impossible!!

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