Betty’s 2026 Florida Family Vacation
On September 26th, we hit the road to Orlando, Florida where my family would stay for 2 weeks! We had a big trip ahead of us.
We left at lunch and were on our way. Our van was very full! The drive took almost 24 hours, so our parents made us comfy seats in the van so we could sleep while they drove through the night. Naturally, I brought a ton of stuffies, blankets, toys, my neck pillow, and more. My parents also had lots of fun activities and special toys to keep us entertained on the long drive. I enjoyed sleeping in the van!
I loved the condo we stayed at in Orlando. We were on the 5th floor and had a balcony that I enjoyed spending time on. We had a palm tree right outside our window! My younger brother Walt and I took turns pressing the buttons on the elevator and using the room key to get in to our condo.
While we did lots of awesome things over the 2 weeks, here are just a few of my favourites:
The condo we stayed at had a pool, and we went swimming many times over the 2 weeks. I enjoyed using my mermaid goggles to see under water, and splashing around with all of my brothers. My dad tossed us around in the pool. My baby brother Patch kept trying to climb out of his floatie because he loved the water so much! I also did lots of cannon balls off the side of the pool.
A really cool thing we did was go to the Peppa Pig Theme Park. It had a lot of cool rides, but my favourite (by far!) was the Daddy-Coaster. I probably rode this 10 times with my parents and 2 oldest brothers. It was SO MUCH FUN. I also enjoyed the boat rides and meeting Peppa Pig herself. The whole park was amazing.
On another day, we explored the Walt Disney Animal Kingdom Resort which had a lot of cool animals (like giraffes, zebras, and more), an arcade, and a cool playground. But my favourite part was seeing my favourite animal in person: Flamingos!! There was an entire exhibit which probably had 30 flamingos. I wore my special flamingo dress and my dad wore his flamingo hat. It was so much fun. We even got to ride a shuttle bus on the way to the resort! I enjoyed every part of the Animal Kingdom Resort. It was so awesome.
There are so many other fun things we did: We went shopping, explored Universal Orlando’s City Walk, ate at the world’s biggest McDonalds in Orlando (with a huge indoor playground), explored the Orlando mall (and riding the escalators!), and even mini golfed at a course which looked like one of my family’s favourite movies Madagascar. My parents described mini-golfing with 4 kids under 8 (one autistic, one a baby) as “absolute chaos” but I think all of us kid had a fun time.
A big highlight of our vacation was taking my older brother Leo to explore Disney’s Art of Animation Resort: specifically the Cars area. Cars is Leo’s favourite movie ever, so we were really excited to walk around the resort. We all rode on the Skyliner from Disney’s Hollywood Studios Park over to the resort. The Cars resort is a really fun place with life-sized Cars characters. We went back a second time at the very end of our trip to do it all again. Overall my brother Leo really enjoyed seeing his favourite cars come to life.
But by far the best part of the whole trip for me was a special date night with my mom. Us girls went out to a special buffet Disney Princess dinner at the Grand Floridian Resort near Disney’s Magic Kingdom. While there, I got to meet 4 characters: Aladdin (dressed as Prince Ali), Mirabel from Encanto, Princess Tiana from Princess & the Frog, and Cinderella. They were all so awesome! After that, we explored the resort and rode the monorail over to the Contemporary Resort. We saw lots of shops and played in the arcade. The best part of the night was hanging out on the roof of the Contemporary Resort where the rain stopped long enough for the fireworks show over Cinderella’s Castle. It was amazing!! I felt so special spending this alone time with my mom and we had a ton of fun together. I even got a new Princess Ana stuffie (from Frozen). My mom said I could get one extra special stuffie because I was such an amazing helper on this trip, and that my parents were very proud of me. They said they couldn’t have done this trip without me. I know my mom and dad love me very, very much. (My brothers too)
This Florida trip was the best vacation our family has ever been on. I was sad that it ended, but I had so much fun and have so many great memories. I cannot wait to go back to Florida again. My mom and dad say we can probably go in 2-3 years when I’ll be old enough to ride some of the real rollercoasters at the theme parks. I can’t wait.
I love my family and the magical time we had at Disney in Orlando.
