If I could turn back time

For many people, a trip to Walt Disney World is the trip of a lifetime. They plan and save and then have a week or two to experience all that The World has to offer. As anyone that has been there before will tell you, it is impossible to see it all in such a short time. The place is much to vast, with so many things to do and see.

I should know – I spent 16 months living and working in WDW and I still didn’t see it all! I missed out on some huge things, like Animal Kingdom, simply because they didn’t yet exist but I missed out on some other things because I didn’t know about them, didn’t have time or I just never got around to it. So there are a few things I wish I’d seen and done and I call this my big regret list. So in no particular order…

Discovery Island. If you’ve never heard of this, this was a sort of wildlife refuge/ mini zoo located in the island on Bay Lake, which you can view from the Wilderness Lodge. For a few years this was open to the public and they could come and see the birds and whatever else they had there. It’s been closed now for a while (since 1999) and may never open again so I wish I’d gone to have a look while I had the chance.

Magic Kingdom utilidors. It is a pretty well known fact that there are tunnels under the Magic Kingdom (‘utilidors’) that are used for cast members to walk from one end of the park to another easily, to transport goods, to provide break areas for cast, to store costumes, etc. They are one of the worst kept secrets of the park but they are pretty amazing and people pay good money to go down there on official tours. I did visit the utilidors once or twice but I wish I’d taken the time to explore them more because all I can remember is the staff restaurant and a couple of staircases!

Epcot utilidor. Yes, Epcot has one too. It isn’t very big as the water table was too high to build basements and instead the park has a perimeter road, away from sight of guests, which is how cast members get to work and take breaks, etc. I worked in World Showcase so I got to know the perimeter road very well but the Epcot utilidor I only saw ONCE. What a missed opportunity!

Adventurer’s Club, Pleasure Island. All the news recently about PI closing all the clubs down there made me regret this even more. I spent probably about half of my Thursdays partying down with all the other cast members at PI but I only went into the Adventurer’s Club once, maybe twice. I vaguely remember there being some show and drawers full of letters that you could read and other great little touches but sadly I never experienced it fully and it appears like I never will. Which is a shame as it is such a little gem.

Magic Kingdom. Of course I went to the MK and I did go quite a lot. I spent a lot of time looking in the shops, taking photos and sometimes just sitting on a bench and taking the atmosphere in. I wish I had got on the rides more often though, especially the really good, classic ones like Jungle Cruise and the Haunted Mansion. I also wish I’d stayed to watch the fireworks more often – I knew the Epcot Illuminations backwards and forwards as I did a lot of evening crowd control shifts but I barely know the MK fireworks, which brings me to…

Fantasmic. I never saw these although, in my defense, they only started a few weeks before my contract was finished so it would have been a tight squeeze. However, even in subsequent trips we’ve never seen this show and I hope I get to see it before it too disappears forever!

Photos. This last one is one of my biggest regrets – I didn’t take a lot of photos. I know a lot of people that took thousands in the time they were there and if it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t have that many photos myself! This was before the days of digital cameras of course but I can’t even remember owning a camera in the entire time I was there. Fortunately my DH (then my boyfriend) had quite a nice camera so he took lots of photos and those are now ‘our’ photos. If I could go back in time though I would take photos of everything that I was allowed to!!

So this are a few of my WDW regrets. Next time I’ll tell you about the awesome and fantastic things that I DID get a chance to do while at WDW!