Earlier this year I was supposed to have taken a family member to Disney World with me. We were going to run a runDisney 10k in April. My cousin hadn’t been since she was a little kid and her wife has never been before so I found myself excited to plan a trip for these Disney World newbies.

While I was working with a travel agent to decide on which parks we would visit on which days and which attractions we wanted to try to get FastPass+ for, I realized that my last several trips had been very laid back, not much planning took place, and I had done half of the planning that I used to do for my Disney World trips.

I was 11 the first time I visited Walt Disney World, so I had no say in the planning of that trip back in 1986. I remember my parents telling me and my sister that we were all going to Disney World with my aunt, uncle, and my three cousins. I should have been super excited but instead I remember thinking, “I’ve heard of that place. That should be fun!” And then I really didn’t think much about it until we left on the road trip from West Texas to the Orlando area that June.

As weird as it sounds, I was never really excited about going on that first trip in the beginning, even as we made our way there. My aunt and uncle had an RV that we ended up taking for this trip. I loved the adventure of staying at campgrounds overnight on the way and for some reason I was more excited about staying in the RV than anything else. But when my mom told me that we were staying at a campground during our Disney World vacation, I got more excited about getting there.

When we arrived to Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort and Campground, I was pleasantly surprised. The other campgrounds we had stayed at the other two nights on the road were not anywhere near as nice as Fort Wilderness. As a matter of fact, that morning, I had been freaked out at the campground we were leaving from because there were huge spiders in the bathroom stall and the shower and I took the fastest shower ever.

I couldn’t tell you what loop we stayed at in Fort Wilderness campground, but we were very close to a comfort station and I LOVED how clean it was. We started exploring around the campground and I was starting to realize this was going to be an amazing vacation. By now, I don’t remember a lot of details about what we rode at Magic Kingdom or EPCOT, but I do remember seeing Cinderella Castle for the first time and my mouth just dropping open. The characters just walked around and people gathered in groups around them waiting for a picture. It was the most fun I’d ever had on vacation.

My aunt planned a very strict touring plan so that we could see as much as possible during that trip because at the time we all thought this was going to be a once-in-a-lifetime vacation. We got up early and stayed up late so that we could do and see whatever the adults planned for us. Once we got home, my mom told my dad that she was going to start saving money so that we could try to go back to Disney World again in a year or two. I had already fallen in love with Disney World after that first visit, and hearing that we’d be able to go back in a couple of years made me so happy.

To be continued tomorrow! °O°