I was just down in Orlando last week, returning to Disney, after visiting the joint back in 2000, although I basically kept myself in my family's hotel room that time, fiddling around with whatever the Nintendo 64 systems in those rooms back then had to offer... This time, however, some 16-17 years later, I definitely appreciate the place that much more, to the extent that I'm already planning on checking out the park in Paris, France, although I already missed a glorious opportunity to visit the park in Tokyo, Japan, except if that hadn't happened, then I probably would've already returned here, courtesy of Disney's "own" college program, so the company itself probably would've covered some of the costs there, and if it had happened, then this probably wouldn't have happened, since my family might have been so surprised by something like that that they would've thought I had overcome my personal "fears" from back in 2000... On a shorter term note, however, I changed my concentration, still in business, except in marketing instead of finance, and while I still consider sports my first "love", I definitely like Disney even more now than I did when they kept putting out movie after movie back in the 1990s, and also this decade, with a few throughout the 2000s ('00-'09), mostly 'cause they seem to have always been brilliant at marketing, just as Apple has always been so brilliant at marketing computers, but since these places are "few and far between", I guess I'll mostly be sticking to sporting venues in the foreseeable future, since there are quite a few more of those than there are Disney theme parks throughout this country!
Last but not least, I'll tell you that I saw just about every state represented there those few days (which I had previously noticed, weirdly enough, up in Maine a few years ago, when it seemed as if there were more visitors than locals), and even a few other countries - especially Brazilians - muitos Brasileiros! Also, almost everything was bilingual, in English and Spanish, with a few other languages thrown in occasionally, depending on location, and that not everything was operating, including the monorail system there having occasional "traffic delays", which I, at least, would expect more from the MTA than something like that system... Perhaps the biggest "takeaway" from there, however, is that the place is just obsessed with fireworks - like, I wouldn't be surprised to learn eventually that these parks use more fireworks each week than the Macy*s fireworks show/Times Square on New Year's Eve combined! My biggest disappointment, personally, is that Disney doesn't seem to "celebrate" its history that much - like, I would gladly take some piece of merchandise featuring all the Disney characters, past and present, since I'm into that stuff myself - how things like that have evolved up through today!
...in less positive news, I lost my phone last month, literally right around Christmas, so you might notice a bit less "clarity" here, since this is another Samsung Galaxy S5, which got "left behind" last year, when my mother upgraded to an S7, although this S5 should be a "lame duck" for only a few months until my upgrade comes along...
P.S.: Down below here will be some videos of those few days - you'll likely notice a certain "order" to things, specifically about which parks we visited, and when:
Magic Kingdom:
(the next few videos are a few "snapshots", of sorts, of one of the few ways in which Disney does "tie its history together", in a sense - it's basically a show featuring some of the best-known tunes from Disney movies past and present, and a few "miscellaneous" tunes, in no particular order, with some scenes from whichever movie while each plays throughout the park - if you've seen something like that in the past, well, trust me, it's that much better now, with more "variety" in the lineup than however many years ago!)
(end "castle light / sound show")
Animal Kingdom:
As for "history", actually, everybody in my family had previous visits down there - my father visited with his 3 daughters literally just months after the place opened back in 1971, and my mother's side of the family ended up having that place be among the very first places in this country they ended up visiting, back in 1986 or so, when they had just moved here from Peru, and I had previously been down there with them back in 2000, so we all have some personal "history" with the place...
As for this specific visit, however, years later, we got lucky and just avoided bitterly cold (by Florida standards, at least) weather by just a few days, when temperatures barely reached 50 degrees by day, and got down below 40 at night, and landed in 75-80 degree highs/60-65 degree lows, so especially if you've "never been" there, I'd suggest you avoid encountering such weather if you go around this time of year, and just plain don't bother doing so during the summer months, either from a crowd standpoint (majority of schools on break; etc.) or weather standpoint (temperatures frequently approaching 100, as my lone visit up to this point to the AZ/LV region of the country, a bit over a decade ago, ended up teaching me, although that's usually a "dry" heat), although in general, you should almost expect massive crowds, with even more massive crowds on weekends, and plan on setting yourself up to perhaps visit just a single park each day of your visit, assuming you only have a few days in which to do so, which we did, although anything longer than about 4 days might actually make you run out of things to do, assuming you're not also planning on visiting Universal, or perhaps some other city entirely, like Jacksonville or Tampa or wherever else down there... I also wouldn't suggest waiting until 2021, assuming, at this particular point in time, at least, we're even still around by then, since that year will be Disney World's 50th anniversary, although, as I mentioned when I said I had a "missed opportunity" to visit Tokyo Disney, and might end up having another next year (2018), if we don't end up visiting Disneyland Paris (is it wrong that I still refer to that place as "Euro Disney"?) at all over there, but, having yet to visit the place over in California (Disneyland), I'd say we should all should try to visit that park at some point during our lives, along with possibly an international park or 2!
