A few months ago, my mom was telling me about a conference my dad would be attending in Florida. The conference was at a convention center in a Disney World hotel, and she was going to join him.

When my dad was in meetings, she planned on renting a car and driving to visit her aunt (my great aunt) one day.

I thought it might be nice to join them. Our aunt is 98 years old, and I haven’t seen her in a few years. Not sure how many more opportunities I’ll have!

(She’s doing great. You wouldn’t believe she’s really that old!)

Anyway, the trip was this weekend. I flew down to Florida on Sunday.

Since I haven’t been to Disney since I was a kid, I wondered if maybe it wouldn’t be as much fun as I remembered …

But yes, it is!

Sunday evening we went to Epcot Center and went on Test Track, Soarin’, Mission Space (less intense version, because my Dad doesn’t like spinning!) and the Norway and Mexico boat rides.

We just squeezed into the last Soarin’ slot before the park closed!

Then we went over to the Magic Kingdom — they were open until 2 a.m. Sunday for guests of their hotels. After dodging the fireworks crowd, we went on Pirates of the Caribbean, Thunder Mountain and Space Mountain (which I wanted to ride again, except the line was really long, even at 12:30 at night!)

Monday we went to Animal Kingdom, which I hadn’t been to before. Their new coaster, Expedition Everest, was quite a ride!

I’m impressed with the attention to detail that went into creating this.

Can you believe this is in Disney World?

As you walk through the line for the ride, you go through what looks like a gear shop to help you prepare for your journey. As you wind through rooms, there are exhibits to view.

Dinosaur was also museum-like.

They probably figured it would be good to entertain the people as they wait for hours for the most popular rides!

We fortunately didn’t have to wait too long since we were there during the extended hours (only 11 p.m. this night, but we were able to see everything we wanted to in just a few hours). The safari wasn’t open at night, though, the animals go to sleep!

Fun, but exhausting. We crammed a lot into a short amount of time!