Dear Journal,
I’ve just gotten back from the trip of a lifetime: the senior class trip to Disney World. It was magical, enchanting, and everything that comes along with visiting Walt Disney World. About 150 NPHS students and 6 chaperones flew down to Orlando, Florida last Thursday night and arrived at Disney’s Pop Century Resort around 1:15 am. After checking in, we went straight to bed, waiting anxiously for our vacation to begin. My roommates and I woke up Friday morning at 8:45 am to get ready to visit our first park, Epcot. This park has many attractions as well as the World Showcase, a circle of countries from all over the world that surround the park. Each section has stores, restaurants, and rides that represent that country.

But first my friends and I ran to Test Track, a ride where you get to design a car and see how it handles different weather, terrain, safety tests, and speed tests – that was my favorite part. We waited in line for this ride for over an hour, which is the longest time I waited for any ride the whole trip. We stayed in the park for a little while after this ride then headed over to the Magic Kingdom. The rest of our day was spent going from ride to ride, getting pixie dust sprinkled in our hair and meeting famous Disney characters. We may sound like we’re 10 years old, but when you’re in Disney, you got to do it all!

We then went and used all of our fast passes. The fast passes allowed us to go to the front of the line of a specific ride and skip the long line, but we had to get them in advance and could only have three passes per day. But they came in handy when we didn’t want to wait in a three hour line! Our first night ended with the famous Castle Fireworks show displayed behind Cinderella’s castle. It actually gave me chills to watch and think about where we were and how special this trip was. I went to bed smiling that night. The next morning my friend Julia and I went for a run around the hotel grounds, admiring the beautiful weather and towering palm trees. We then stopped by at the café and ate breakfast. Mickey waffles, fruit and juice were on the menu!

After eating, we rushed back to our hotel room to put on our bathing suits and ventured off to the tropical Typhoon Lagoon. This water park had some slides and a huge wave pool to play in or lie next to. This day was very relaxing, sitting by the water’s edge while drinking a cool strawberry smoothie, enjoying my time with good friends. We left the park around 4:30 pm to go back to the hotel and get ready for the night ahead of us. We all had the choice of going to Epcot again or Downtown Disney. My friends and I chose Epcot because we wanted to spend more time in the World Showcase. We ate Fish and Chips in London for dinner and enjoyed some French ice cream for dessert. We ended our night by walking “around the world” during Epcot’s light show. This was my favorite memory of the trip.

The next day was an early one, and we woke up at 7 am to one of my roommates yelling, “wakie wakie, artechokie!” We left our hotel at 8:30 am and rode the bus to Universal Orlando Resort. This park is not affiliated with Disney World but was just a short 15 minute ride from our hotel, and it is quite popular, especially because it houses the famous Harry Potter world. The park recreated the Hogwarts Castle and the town it’s in, right down to each little detail. The town had stores from the movie, a place to buy wands that the wizards in the movie used, and a store to buy Butter Beer, a delicious frozen drink that tastes like a sweet cream soda. My friends and I stayed in Harry Potter world for most of the day, but ventured to other sections of the park to see what it was like. After we left the park, all the seniors on the trip had a huge pizza/pool party back at the hotel. At first I thought it would be lame, but it was fun having everyone together and enjoying one another’s company. We all hung out for a couple hours, then were sent to bed at 11 pm. We had to pack up our things that night because we were leaving the next day, so you can imagine how depressing that night was. The next morning we had to have our luggage ready by 8 am to be loaded onto trucks that would take them to the airport. After dropping off our bags with the trucks, we headed off to Hollywood Studios for our last day in the most magical place on earth. We had fast passes for the Hollywood Tower of Terror first thing in the morning, so we went on that ride first. The pictures taken during that ride came out so funny! We then saw a live show from the movie The Little Mermaid. That’s my favorite Disney movie, so you can assume that I loved the show. The live music was my favorite part. After the show, we used our fast passes on Rockin’ Rollercoaster, a ride that goes 0 to 57 mph in 2.8 seconds. It’s awesome! Afterwards we walked around the park for a little to find a place to grab lunch. Once we ate, we walked around the park once more to fill our time before we had to leave. We ended up seeing Beauty and the Beast, another live show on stage. It was the perfect way to end our Disney World experience.

We then solemnly walked out of the park to the buses that would be taking us to the airport, moving as slowly as we could to stay in the park as long as possible. We finally made it to the airport at 5:30 pm and had time to relax before the plane left at 8:30 pm. Even though we were sad to be leaving, all the students made the best of it and had a fun last plane ride together. We landed at 10:45 pm and made it back to NPHS at midnight. Overall, the trip was unreal and I would totally recommend it to all incoming seniors. It’s definitely worth the time and all the money. Each student on the trip had a wonderful time, and we all loved sharing this once in a lifetime experience with each other.

Until next time,
Molly