In a few weeks, we head to Disney World on our first trip without our daughter since before she was born. I’m not going to lie; I have mixed emotions about it. It’s been a year since our last trip to Disney World and our first real vacation since April, so I look forward to a few days of downtime. But, on the other hand, I am unsure how I will react to not having our travel companion with us. For 16 years, we experienced the park through her eyes. Will I cry? Sure, but truth be told, I always shed a tear when I hit Main Street and see the Castle. I’m sure it will feel like something is missing, but I’m also looking forward to this next chapter of experiencing the parks.

Things at Disney are not always magical. The pandemic has changed the parks, mainly how they operate. I’m not a fan of most of them. They have removed the spontaneity of choosing parks with park reservations, but at least they have brought back the option to park hop after 2:00 pm. In addition, replacing Fast Passes with Genie+ has made it more difficult and expensive to ride as many rides as you used to.

The good news is we don’t have a little kid to entertain in long lines. Also, we can skip rides and still have a great time if it is too crowded. Speaking of crowded, I am interested to see if the crowds are still large or if we will ever have off-season crowds again. I miss off-season crowds. The question becomes if this trip becomes a ride-heavy trip or roaming around the parks with an adult beverage trip. Either way, we win.

We have no real plan other than our daily park reservations, and John is running a 5K. We have no dining reservations and don’t plan on using Genie +, so I will report on how this trip works out and if the magic is still alive at Walt Disney World. My guess is that the magic will always be there as long as there are fantastic cast members.