15 Minutes In The Magic Kingdom

Ha! What a title! Let me tell you that story...

It's a well documented fact that I love a quick trip to Florida in the spring. I used to go to Tampa to visit my grandparents at Spring Training for the Yankees every year in college. This year, I went down to Florida for a long weekend, and even went to a spring training game, but it went a little differently than it ever had before.

In February, I took a long weekend and went down to Orlando to visit my friend Brittany and some of our friends who are on property staff at Southwind. Brittany and I shared a room last summer on assignment and had one of those, "Where have you been all my life?!" moments! She and I clicked instantly and have stayed great friends!! While I was in Orlando, she and I stayed with her good friend Lexi. Saturday night, we decided to go over to the Polynesian Village Resort because they've got a really cool bar/deck area, and we thought it would be fun to just go sit and hang out. Lexi's friend Elle came to hang out with us as well, and at one point we all started talking about the Magic Kingdom. The girls that live in the area all had passes, but I didn't and neither did our friend Kelly. Elle, who's something impressive with Disney Corporate says, "Well I've got passes for everyone, how much time do we have until the park closes?" It was 9:15 and the park closed at 10 that night! We left our credit cards with Lexi and Brittany (who were going to close our tabs for us) and Elle, Kelly, and I jumped on the monorail and took off for the Magic Kingdom! By the time we got there and got inside, it was 9:45. We had just enough time to walk down Main Street, take a bunch of silly pictures in front of Cinderella's Castle, and head back out! Let me just say, 15 minutes in the Magic Kingdom is still magical and definitely better than 15 minutes in almost any other place!! Once we left the Magic Kingdom, we decided that we'd rather walk across the street to The Contemporary Resort and catch the monorail there instead of waiting in the long lines. Well, when we got to The Contemporary, we decided to go up to the restaurant on the top floor (The California Grill) to have a drink and see the view of the park. As the elevator doors opened, we were met by a host who informed us that they were closed for the night. Bummer! We went back downstairs and found The Wave Lounge and hung out there for a little bit. Around 11:30 we were all tired and ready to go home, so we walked upstairs to where the monorail stop is, and THEY WERE CLOSED! The monorail wasn't running anymore for the night! So we headed back down to the front entrance and at one point I said, "Well, can't we just walk back to the Polynesian (where the car was)?" I got several "no's" and one, "Mary Clyde, you don't understand, the car is on the OTHER SIDE OF THE KINGDOM!" Hahaha #onlyatdisneyworld. We finally ended up getting an Uber for the 5 minute drive around the Magic Kingdom back to the Polynesian, just so we could get in the car and go home!

On Sunday, Brittany and I went to ESPN's Wide World of Sports complex to meet up with Beth and Sean and a couple of our other friends from Southwind. We went to a Brave's spring training game and had so much fun! It was honestly so great to hang out with friends from camp outside of camp. 

My most recent quick-trip to the Sunshine State will definitely go down as one for the memory books. I loved getting to spend time with YL friends, and meet new friends along the way! And a little baseball thrown in the mix didn't hurt either!