Orlandont

This autumn my friends and I planned a trip down to Florida to visit Disney and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter to celebrate a handful of birthdays! This vacation was special because it brought together friends from Connecticut, Florida, Maryland, and Montana for a few days of sun, swim and (sweating at) theme parks. The days leading up to the trip really exercised Murphy's Law, however we weren't going to let anything stop us from enjoying our vacation and out of that a star (#orlandont) was born!

Magic Kingdom
Our first day in Florida was a busy one! We started the day off at Magic Kingdom, I had the most amazing Nutella waffle sandwich for breakfast at Sleepy Hollow! We spent the better half of the day riding rides, exploring, and having some yummy snacks! Savanah created a multi-park scavenger hunt for us to complete on our trip, and to say that my team was the most competitive would be an understatement. Amanda and I took countless photos around the park trying to score some points early into the trip. We ended up leaving the park on the earlier side to lounge poolside at our rental before heading back out that evening.

Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party
This was probably the thing that I was most excited about on this vacation! The last time I visited Disney in October, we missed the Halloween party by one day. Thankfully when we planned our trip this time around we took the Halloween party dates into consideration. If you're unfamiliar with the Halloween party; it's an after-hours park event that requires separate admission. You have the opportunity to not only go on rides, but also to dress up and trick-or-treat throughout the park! The Disney princesses retire to their quarters for some much needed beauty sleep, and the villains take center stage. There's a show at the castle, parade and fireworks that all have a spooky undertone! 

The birthday girl, Savanah, wanted to do a group costume for the evening and decided on a fruit salad. We had a watermelon, strawberry, peach, orange, pineapple, kiwi and blueberry in attendance. I was so impressed by everyone's costume creativity! You can read about my watermelon costume DIY here! Sadly there aren't that many photos of us from that evening, have you tired taking photos in the dark at Disney? It's difficult to say the least.

Epcot Food & Wine Festival
The following day, the royal drinking team assembled to take on the Epcot Food & Wine Festival. This is a must do if you're in Disney during the autumn months! You have the opportunity to eat and drink your way around the world with a handful of special pop-up stops for different countries during the festival! It's even better when you go in a group because you can share with everyone! We had these amazing shirts printed from Twilfitt and Teta that were interactive and let us log what we ate and drank throughout the park! You can see that I stopped logging my consumption in the US when it felt like I was literally wearing everyone else's drink.

Besides eating and drinking our way through the park, I was set on riding Frozen Ever After. Unfortunately, I was beyond heartbroken when I found out that the ride had two hour wait... and subsequently shut down for the afternoon. Jason and I decided to jet over to Animal Kingdom to stand in line for two hours (against our better judgement) for Avatar Flight of Passage. Spoiler alert: the ride is definitely not worth the two hour wait or any of the hype that we previously heard. 

Wizarding World of Harry Potter
It's not a trip to Florida without a visit to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter! To say that Savanah is a huge Harry Potter fan would be an understatement. She is beyond talented and actually custom designed all of our Honeydukes outfits! Can you believe that?! You can read more about the process here! 

It was a first time trip to the WWHoP for a few of the people in our group! It was such a fun time watching their faces light up in shock (and also horror) as we explored the Wizarding World. 

Savanah hired Stephenie from Photography by Stephenie to take some glam shots of us around the park; below are some of the beautiful images that she captured!

xoxo, me