The Most Magical Day of Our 4th Visit to Walt Disney World

The most magical day of our 4th trip to Walt Disney World happened almost one year ago. It was Todd's birthday, the actual day of the big day, and our last day of vacation. Again, maybe we were more relaxed, more into vacation mode, more open to magic. Anyway, the day started at Disney's Hollywood Studios. We had two things going for us. . . one was extra magic hours in the am, so we arrived before the 8:00 am rope drop, and the other was it was Todd's birthday and we were cashing in on the Birthday Fastpasses. Remember Disney's free admission on your birthday offer? Well, if you already had admission, then your choices were a gift card worth the same as a day's admission or 5 birthday Fastpasses for the birthday person and up to 5 members of your party. We went to Guest Services, presented the birthday certificate and each of us were given a card--similar to our Key to the World Cards, which could be used at Fastpass distribution at any time. (there were some stipulations as to how many you could get from the two categories of attractions, etc.) Anyway, we were set!

First stop, Toy Story Mania! We went through the stand-by queue and captured the famed photo with Mr. Potato Head as shown in the photo above. Click here to read more about Toy Story Mania!

We ended up using both Birthday Fastpasses and regular Fastpasses to ride Toy Story Mania 5 times that day. We were in the queue for our 6th ride when the attraction went down and the queue had to be emptied. We knew we were headed out of the park by then, so we gave our Fastpasses to another family. Click here to read more about Fastpass.

After lunch, we used the Birthday Fastpasses for Lights, Motors, Action and got one big surprise. Since we had the special Fastpasses, we were escorted to the left of the regular queue and passed hundreds of people already in line. We were then escorted into the stadium, taken to an elevator, and given a ride to the level for the reserved section which was right in the middle. OK, here we were ahead of the crowd, sitting in the best seats in the house, and ready for a cool show. We captured the awesome photo below. Disney magic at work!

We had an ADR for Hoop Dee Doo at Fort Wilderness, so we left Studios and hopped a bus to Fort Wilderness. We actually ended up at Wilderness Lodge and then switched to another bus to take us to Fort Wilderness. Since we weren't sure how long it would take, we had given ourselves plenty of time and arrived with time to spare. Walking up to Pioneer Hall, home of the Hoop Dee Doo Review, we discovered pony rides and met Snickers the pony. The boy enjoyed the ride, and you get to see the back of Todd's shirt in the photo below, just in case folks didn't know we were celebrating.

Dinner at Hoop Dee Doo was wonderful and so was the show. Todd was picked out of the crowd to join the show as a dancing angel. The first photo at the beginning of this post is
Todd at the end of the show. Click here to read more about our adventure at Hoop Dee Doo.

Once again, Disney had exceeded our expectations for a magic day and Todd had a great birthday!