Tencennial August 2022: Index

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Welcome to my 2022 trip report.

I’ve copied and pasted the cast introduction from the pre-trip report so if it sounds familiar that’s why. We are:

Me: Michelle, chief planner and trip report writer. Lover of Animal Kingdom, Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure and SpiderMan (the ride). Can be found relaxing with an adult beverage and taking in the Disney / Universal sights when not being the family Drill Sergeant at rope drop

DH: Mat, does the driving on our holidays. Loves all the classic Disney stuff, less of a fan of what Universal has to offer, mostly just goes along with what the rest of us want to do on holidays

DD1: Seren, 16, Disney obsessed, just started A-levels. Little kid at heart, loves meeting all the characters and watching the parade and cavalcades.



DD2: Freya, 14, proper teenager, emo, big fan of The Mummy, Hagrid’s and basically all the thrill rides. Doesn’t want to ‘waste time’ meeting characters or watching parades and will not currently go near a Disney t-shirt. Wants to spend Florida holidays dressed in black even when it’s hotter than the sun. My two absolute favourite photos from December 2021’s trip are of Freya looking super happy and excited and forgetting about how difficult being a teenager is:





Three of us (except Freya) are vegan (she is pescatarian and a massively fussy eater.) Being vegan and having a Freya requires a little bit of extra planning with an Orlando holiday as not all Disney / Universal restaurants cater for vegans or Freyas, and very few offsite restaurants do.

So an overview of the trip:

We flew to Orlando from Heathrow on 6th August 2022 for 20 nights in Orlando, one night in Nashville and one night in Miami Beach before flying home from Miami.

We did eight hotel stays at seven different hotels including three at Universal and two at Disney.

We visited the four Disney theme parks, all three Universal parks, did Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party, did mini golf at Winter Summerland, spent time at Disney Springs (but not enough, there is never enough time at Disney Springs in my book) and enjoyed Epcot Food and Wine festival as well as eating a lot of food and drinking a lot of drinks at Disney and Universal.

We rode the monorail a lot more than I would have expected as I don’t love the monorail. The trip report title was nearly something about monorails as while we were at Disney, it felt like we spent a lot of time on the monorail. But I have a newfound affection for the monorail as it’s air conditioned and handy when you’re staying at Polynesian Village and also when you’re trying to get to Epcot seemingly every day you’re at Disney.

We did some more unusual things like visiting Mills 50 in downtown Orlando so the girls could visit a thrift shop there and we found an actual vegan burger restaurant there which I wasn’t expecting to be a thing in Orlando. We also spent way longer than is reasonably necessary in Hot Topic at Florida Mall.

We fell in love with Miami Beach on this, our second visit to the city of Miami Beach. We saw My Chemical Romance in Nashville and hung out in the bars on Broadway there, both of which were awesome. We even managed a museum visit which I wasn’t expecting, to the Country Music Hall of Fame to fawn over Queen Taylor’s outfits, guitars and handwritten lyrics.

I failed at bringing home all four of the Disney parks 50th Starbucks mugs and blame scalpers and supply issues for only managing two of the four. A quick check on eBay last week told me I could purchase the Magic Kingdom one for around £80 - £100 plus shipping from the US 🙄. I did however pick up a Nashville, a Tennessee and a new Miami one so managed to expand my already extensive collection.

We sweated our butts off and got soaked by multiple huge thunderstorms as is par for the course in Florida in August.

We found a new favourite Disney ride: Guardians of The Galaxy Cosmic Rewind which was just outstanding. I got pretty addicted to this amazing ride and we ended up riding ten times in ten Disney days which is one of the reasons the trip report title is Tencennial. Ten rides felt like quite the commitment when it doesn’t even have a standby line, but I knew I’d regret it if we didn’t ride as many times as we could while we had the chance.

The other reason for the report title is that 2022 is ten years since we first took the girls to Florida when they were five and four. When we saw a t-shirt in the Vault collection at Disney that said ‘Tencennial’, a term that Disney basically made up to celebrate ten years of Walt Disney World in 1981, it felt fitting for this report.

Here is the index:

Pre-trip Report

Highs and Lows

Day 1: Travel Day

Day 2: Islands of Adventure, Super Target, Cabana Bay, Disney Springs and Raglan Road

Day 3: Islands of Adventure, Bistro 17 and Vivo Italian Kitchen

Day 4: Islands of Adventure, Florida Mall, City Works and Disney Springs

Day 5: Checking into Epcot, Spice Road Table and Magic Kingdom Deluxe Evening Hours

Day 6: Disney's Hollywood Studios, Boma and Epcot

Day 7: Disney's Hollywood Studios, Sebastian's Bistro and Epcot

Day 8: Disney's Animal Kingdom and Jaleo

Day 9: Epcot and Topolino's Terrace breakfast

Day 10: Checking out of Yacht Club, Checking into Polynesian Village, 'Ohana Breakfast, Magic Kingdom, Steakhouse 71 and Deluxe Evening Hours at Epcot

Day 11: Magic Kingdom, Garden Grill and Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party

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