During our WWCE events, we love to host raffles to encourage participation in cultural activities. Disney World is one of the most sought-after attractions in Orlando, Florida, so we gifted two park tickets to Krztyn Dupet, our latest raffle winner! Read about her magical day at the ‘Happiest Place On Earth’ below!

Tell us about your day at Disney World!

I was extremely excited from the get go. It was going to be my first time going into one of the Disney World parks here in Orlando and the bubbling excitement only doubled as soon as I knew my dad was going to visit for a couple of days, and I could spend time showing him the places Orlando’s well known for: it’s amusement parks (I brought him to both Disney World and Universal Studios!).

We decided to go to Animal Kingdom with our One Day One Park tickets, and we absolutely had a blast! The queue lines were quite long and the trip was also decided last minute so we couldn’t book our fast passes ahead of time so we only ended up trying three attractions and watch two shows which were: Na’vi River Journey, Kilimanjaro Safaris, Expedition Everest, The Festival of the Lion King and, It’s Tough to be a Bug. We really wanted to test out the most popular attraction at the park which was the Avatar: Flight of Passage. However, the queue was a whopping hundred thirty-five minutes so we decided against it, but we still enjoyed the rest of our day (despite the rain— but this is Florida, what can we expect? HAHA) even though we weren’t able to try it out.

We arrived at the park around midday and the heat was crazy, so my dad and I went straight to Satu’li Canteen by the Pandora section to grab some Na’vi-esque lunch. After queueing and trying out different rides, we headed out to the Africa section and ate some snacks from the Harambe Market. 

The park was packed when we arrived and with the scorching heat and the sudden downpour, we couldn’t really explore Animal Kingdom as much as we wanted to. At the beginning, we were trying to get indoors as much as possible to relieve ourselves from the heat, while on the latter part of the afternoon, we were doing the same thing only to escape the rain. It did dampen our day a little bit to not be able to explore the park to our heart’s content, but weather wasn’t something we could control and so we just shook off the water from our ponchos after the rain and carried on with our day! It ended up being a really enjoyable day with my dad!

 What is your favorite Disney movie? Disney princess?

Favorite Disney movie is a tough pick for someone who grew up watching Disney movies throughout her childhood. There’s just a lot of great Disney movies out there, and it’s so difficult to choose just one, but I have to say it’s a tie between Tangled and Mulan. My favorite Disney princess, hands down, is Mulan because not only was her character inspired by a person that existed in real life, it’s also because she inspires women to stand up and empower themselves. She’s been my role model even before I knew what role model was!

Did Disney World live up to your expectations?

You can never really get disappointed with Disney as a whole. The budget, all the technology and well thought of planning and physics behind all their attractions, shows and concepts? Nothing ceases to amaze me. I really lucked out when I won these Disney World tickets, I am thankful to have been able to bring my dad (who I haven’t seen in months and who was only coming to visit for a few days before flying back home to the Philippines.) along and glad that we both explored and discovered the parks together! It was a really great experience, and I’m thankful for WWCE for making that happen!

What was your happiest moment of the day?

Probably when we finally got a fast pass slot on the Kilimanjaro Safaris because what’s the point of visiting Disney’s Animal Kingdom for the first time (or anytime for that matter) if you don’t get to see the creatures that comprise the Animal Kingdom itself? One of my co-workers used to work at the attraction and has told me all about the awesome stuff about it which only fueled my excitement even more! I raved to my father about all the animals we were about to see and boy were we excited. And we were not disappointed! Cheetahs, Lions, Elephants, Giraffes, Flamingos, you name it, we saw them all up close! Seeing the animals in their natural habitat and living their lives was extremely therapeutic if you ask me.

What ride did you enjoy the most and why?

I am a big fan of rollercoasters so you could only imagine my level of excitement when we got fast passes slots for Expedition Everest. I only ever heard about it from my coworkers so I was practically vibrating in my seat when we were finally buckled into the ride. Best part of the ride was when it suddenly went the opposite way and started going backwards in the darkness of the mountain so we absolutely had no idea where the tracks were going. It was awesome! 11/10 would recommend.