Leo’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.
I loved the condo we stayed in 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!
We had a huge bed to sleep in. I, of course, had to bring all of my cars along for the trip too.
While we did lots of awesome things over the 2 weeks, here are just a few of my favourites:
We went out to dinner for my mom’s birthday. To be honest, this wasn’t my favourite thing, but my mom really enjoyed it. And everyone else said the food was really good.
Something I did really love: Swimming in the pool at the condo. We went many times and all had a blast. My baby brother Patch kept trying to jump out of his floatie because he loved the pool so much! My dad tossed us around and we all had a lot of fun. The weather was very hot in Florida! My dad sweat a lot.
Probably one of my favourite things on the whole trip was 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. My mom got a short video (below) of how much fun I had as the ride goes around and even splashes you with water. It was SO MUCH FUN. I can’t wait to do bigger rollercoasters when I’m older. My family think I’m an adrenaline junkie. They’re probably right.
I was a bit of a wet blanket at the beginning of the day, but I turned it around halfway through and we had a blast. The water park was also awesome. I hope to go back someday.
On another day, we explored the Walt Disney Animal Kingdom Resort which had a lot of cool animals, an arcade, and a cool playground. I was a little anxious at times in a new environment, but still had fun overall. The arcade was my favourite part of the resort: playing air hockey with my sister and rolling around on the floor with my baby brother. All of the bright lights and fun games are fun to play. I even got to ride a shuttle bus there!
There are so many other fun things we did: Exploring Universal Orlando’s City Walk, eating at the world’s biggest McDonalds in Orlando (with a huge indoor playground), exploring the Orlando mall (and riding the escalators!), and even mini golfing at a course which looked like one of my 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.
But perhaps one of the biggest highlights of the trip for my family was taking me to explore Disney’s Art of Animation Resort: specifically the Cars area. We 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: Lightning McQueen, Mater, Sally, Sarge, Luigi, Guido, Sheriff, Doc Hudson, Fillmore, Ramone, and Flo. They even had the Cozy Cone Motel (a swimming pool), Luigi’s Tower of Tires, Sarge’s Surplus Building, and Mater’s Tow Yard sign. It was super cool to see. We went back a second time at the very end of our trip to do it all again. Despite some moments of trepidation of the unknown, overall I really enjoyed seeing my favourite cars come to life.
This is by far the coolest vacation our family has ever been on. I had so much fun staying up late every night and seeing so many exciting things with my siblings. I love my family and can’t wait to do some of this stuff again!
