As I reflected on what my favorite moments from this May/June 2021 trip were, I realized that there’s SO MUCH that I loved about this trip. I pretty much always love any trip to Walt Disney World but once my kids got older and decided they didn’t like going as often as I like to go, I’ve found that my favorite trips these days end up being when they go with me.

For this trip, our dates were May 30 -June 5, 2021 and it was a bigger family event. My mom joined my two sons and I (my dad passed away in 2019 and I still wish he had been here for this trip 😞), and my sister and her family went too. This was partially a trip to celebrate my twin nieces’ high school graduation and they ended up bringing along their best friend, so we were a party of 10.

My sister and her husband decided not to visit the parks at all and my mom doesn’t visit the parks anymore either due to her mobility issues, but the rest of us went to all 4 parks during the week. My two nieces and my nephew have been to Disney World before but they hadn’t been in several years while the girls’ best friend had never been at all. It was 2019 when my sons last visited so they were ready to go back to the parks. Here’s where I try to decide what my favorite moments are when I loved so many things about this trip.

Favorite Moment #1
As with my previous trips in 2021, a highlight was where we were staying for the duration of our trip. I prefer to stay on Disney property and now that I’ve bought into Disney Vacation Club, I’m able to stay at the Disney Vacation Club resorts (which are basically most of the Disney deluxe resorts). For this trip, we stayed at Old Key West, which has easily become my favorite! Seven of us stayed in a two bedroom villa while my nieces and their friend stayed in a deluxe studio. I just love how big Old Key West rooms are compared to the other DVC rooms I’ve stayed in. And the large patio area was great for sitting with my mom and sister to relax and talk during our stay.

Our patio faced Disney’s Lake Buena Vista Golf Course which was still a nice view, but I’ll admit I liked the lake view better from building 55 from my 2019 stay at Old Key West. During this trip we encountered a lot of golfers, squirrels, a mouse, and even had a golf ball hit the enclosure of the patio. I know some people might see this as a negative (which is why I’ve included it), but I found it just made for new experiences and memories and I wasn’t bothered by any of these things.

Favorite Moment #2
On the first night of our trip, after I had explained to everyone that Disney wasn’t doing the fireworks or nighttime shows at any of the parks yet (they didn’t start them again until July), I suddenly heard fireworks a little after we came inside from sitting out on the patio that night. I went back out and saw some fireworks through the trees and behind several buildings. I never looked into where exactly they were coming from but Disney was probably testing fireworks at either Magic Kingdom or EPCOT. Either way, this was funny and memorable because all of the kids looked at me like I had been lying about there not being fireworks in the parks. And yeah, the youngest “kid” in our family is 16 but I still refer to them all as kids. My 23 and 19 year old sons LOVE that. 😒

Favorite Moment #3
Favorite moment #3 this week mirrors favorite moment #3 from last week, only with more details! Last week I talked about how my cousin and I saw some weird shadowy outline of a person during the drops in Tower of Terror. Well, during this May/June trip, I was telling the kids who decided to ride Tower of Terror with me (which was all of them except my younger son) about that incident and we joked around about it while we were in line. Once we were on the ride, my nephew (who was sitting next to me) suddenly asked me about halfway through, “Is that part of the ride?” I looked around the area and asked him which part he was talking about and he said, “That man that just walked in front of us.”

I looked at him to try to decipher if he was kidding or not because of us joking around about my previous experience. All I said was, “What man? I didn’t see a man.” The look on his face immediately told me he had not been kidding and he was suddenly confused. He kept asking me if I was being serious and asking how I did not see the man that walked right in front of the ride elevator car. He started asking his sister who was sitting on the other side of me and she just looked at him and told him to stop trying to scare her.

All of this happened in about a minute before the ride starts to do the drops. I still wasn’t sure what he had seen and I told him we’d discuss it after the ride. Then the ride starts the drop sequence and during one of the slight pauses before it goes back up to drop us again, I saw something. I only got a look for two seconds before the elevator went back up but I literally stopped laughing and screaming from the excitement of the ride drops and said “Oh!” before the drops commenced and I went back to screaming and laughing again.

The elevator car had stopped right in front of an area where light came in from a door opening for a second above it and I saw what looked like plastic Christmas light up statues of what might have been Goofy and other characters. Here’s a picture to help you understand what I’m talking about.

I saw what looked almost exactly like that Goofy decoration on the left side of what may have been a line of three or four different similar statues/decorations. All of these had no paint left on them or maybe were painted a light gray or white color. But my “Oh!” reaction was because whatever was there on the left was the same shape that I had seen in March, so I knew this was what I saw then, only the door had not opened above it so I couldn’t see anything but the outline of it at the time.

After the ride, my nephew still swears that he saw a man walk in front of our ride elevator. We were in the front row so he kept saying he doesn’t understand how no one else saw it and it seemed to freak him out for a while.

Favorite Moment #4
My last favorite moment from this trip is something simple and sentimental to me and something that I was not expecting to happen, but I loved it! At the end of our Magic Kingdom park day, I told the kids we were going to go and walk through Cinderella Castle on our way out. The walkway tunnel at Cinderella’s Castle isn’t always open but since they weren’t doing the stage show at that time, I had seen that it was open and wanted to make sure we went through there. I hadn’t been through there with my sons since they were little kids so as we all walked through the castle, I got a little emotional. I had to fight back the ugly cry that was trying to materialize but it was nice to see my sons enjoying Disney World and thinking about walking through here when they were little made me happy.

So that’s it for my favorite moments for this trip. We had such a good time and I hope we can do another big family trip like this again soon! In other news, my new mission is to get a picture of what I saw in Tower of Terror, or at least get a better look and talk to anyone else who has seen this so I can figure out what it is exactly. I’ve got one more 2021 trip to discuss next week! °O°