Typhoon lagoon.

Our rationale was to hit what you couldn’t hit in Southern California. So we chose not to do magic kingdom and Hollywood studios because you can basically cover what’s there in Southern California. And when it comes to universal there is no diagon alley in universal studios so we knew we wanted to hit that.

Animal kingdom is a must. It was our favorite day. The safaris are great, the avatar ride is great, expedition Everest is fun, the lion king show is fun, it’s just really great.

If your kids love Harry Potter I think universal is a must. Islands of adventure is the better of the two in my opinion. But diagon alley is in universal studios and it’s only in the Orlando one.

Volcano Bay was amazing. Maybe our second favorite day. If you like water parks it’s one of the best ones out there. The way they schedule your rides with a wristband watch is pretty cool and helps eliminate time waiting in lines.

Epcot is fantastic. Our kids loved it. It has a couple rides that are worth doing... a car ride, mission to Mars, a dinosaur ride... but visiting the countries is great. Kids got a passport and were motivated to get stamps in all the countries. We made to sure to eat lots of variety of foods from the different countries. As a lover of travel... it’s a must for me when I’m in Orlando. Don’t hesitate to do it if you have an appreciation for world travel and or culture. It offers a great change of pace to just standing in lines for rides. And you can’t do it in California.

Make sure to have a budget for frozen butterbeer in universal. It’s so so good.

I rank our six days

1 animal kingdom
2 Epcot
3 volcano bay (almost 2 but I just love Epcot)
4 islands of adventure
5 universal studios
6 typhoon lagoon

We stayed in a homewood suites by Hilton with a nice buffet breakfast and our own two bedroom suite with a kitchen and rented a van and it worked out well. Could come and go as we pleased. Could eat out where we wanted and go shopping for needs.

We went to the largest mcdonald’s in the world.., had it’s own arcade.

Went to Disney springs for shopping.

Universal has a voodoo doughnuts by the park entrances

One regret was not going out to the beach. But we maximized our days in the parks and felt the water parks might outweigh the beach. We thought about the Kennedy space center but when we realized Epcot had a space simulator of their own it kind of sealed the deal for going to Epcot instead of Kennedy space center and I think it was the right call although had we gone to Kennedy space center we would’ve also hit the beach.

We maximized the amount of food you could pack in. Universal limits you to a smaller cooler. But we packed that thing full. Eat at the three broomsticks in the Harry Potter stuff... great great eating there. Disney world you can really pack in a lot of food to save on costs. We ate at the Mexican restaurant inside the pyramid at Epcot and it had a great atmosphere and good food... although it’s probably not a bad idea at Epcot to your around and eat a smattering if things from the different countries.