My Extra Day

Gracie Smith
MSMU Class of 2027

(2/2024) In all honesty, the idea of having an extra 24 hours every 4 years seems irrelevant to me. While people make these grand plans for leap day, do any of them actually see it through? For instance, this year our leap day is on a Thursday. How can anybody make any plans to do anything when our extra day is in the middle of the week? There is no use taking the day off for a long weekend because then you would have to take Friday off as well, and that’s too much. Not to mention, it's pointless skipping classes on Thursday for a long weekend because again, Friday. While realistically speaking may not satisfy our desire for an extra day, that doesn’t mean we can’t fantasize about the perfect "extra" day.

On my perfect "extra" day, I would do a day trip to Disney World. This seems very controversial compared to what I previously said about leap days being pointless. However, this is fantasy. Believe it or not, I have constructed the perfect way to have the perfect day in Walt Disney World. Allow me to lay out the itinerary.

First thing is first, waking up at 2 a.m. to get ready, gather our things, and get to the airport by 4:30 a.m. for a flight to Orlando at 6 a.m. Of course, we have to allow ourselves some wiggle room since airports can be so unpredictable. Not only that, but we have to get food before we get on the plane. Also, security is a whole other issue. A flight from BWI to MCO takes approximately 2 hours and 10 minutes if there are no delays and little turbulence. This gives us 2 hours and 10 minutes to, hopefully, sleep and prepare for our magical day.

Landing in MCO at roughly 8:15 a.m., we have to travel from our gate to the baggage claim—not to pick up our luggage but to meet our Uber driver. Once we locate our driver and get in the vehicle, we can estimate around 30-45 minutes to get to Disney’s Magic Kingdom. PERFECT! Magic Kingdom opens at 9 a.m., so we’d be right on time.

Arriving at Disney’s Magic Kingdom, we can begin to use our mobile app to book rides for certain times, getting the most out of our visit. Designating roughly three hours to Magic Kingdom, this gives us plenty of time to ride the rides we desire, shop, sightsee, and character meet. Given how many times I have visited Magic Kingdom, I would be in and out, with a dole whip to go, of course.

Leaving the park around noon, we would take a bus to Disney’s Animal Kingdom. Due to the irregular bus patterns, we can assume that this would take about an hour to do. Immediately entering Animal Kingdom, we can use our mobile app to start booking some rides while heading over to Flame Tree Barbeque for lunch—easily the best restaurant in that park. In Animal Kingdom, I would designate around 2-2½ hours since there are only three main attractions to ride—Flight of Passage, Expedition Everest, and the Kilimanjaro Safari. With this, we would head off to our next park—Hollywood Studios.

Hollywood Studios is always such a fun park. Similar to Animal Kingdom, this park can be completed rather quickly with help from the mobile app and booking rides. In this park, there are four main attractions to hit—Rock n’ Rollercoaster, Tower of Terror, Slinky-Dog Dash, and Mickey’s Runaway Railroad. However, Rock n’ Rollercoaster is closed for refurbishment until the summer of 2024, so we can cross this one off our list (unfortunately). I would designate the same amount of time for this park as we did for Animal Kingdom. When leaving Hollywood Studios, we would take advantage of the Skyliner transportation method to travel to Epcot at around 5-6 p.m.

Once in Epcot, we would walk the world showcase enjoying all the food from countries around the world—this is what we would count as our dinner. However, there is one attraction I would say is a must, and that is TestTrack. Saving Epcot as our last park is most desired since it is the park that closes at the latest—typically around 11 p.m. This means that we would have as much time as we wanted in any of the parks, theoretically, and not have to worry about not making every park. However, it is unlikely that we would stay until park closing since we would need to Uber back to MCO airport to catch our flight back home to BWI.

With all of this being said, that is how I would choose to spend my leap day in a perfect world. It would probably take at least two days to recover from this adventure, but it would be worth it in my opinion. Disney has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. From my first trip in 2012 to my most recent in 2022, I can say that I have officially become a Disney adult. Over the past ten years, I have visited Disney eight times and am currently planning my next visit for 2025—fingers crossed.

If I were given an extra day to do whatever I pleased, I would go to Disney for a day and leave all my problems here in a heartbeat. Nevertheless, this year our leap day is a Thursday… and that makes it rather impossible to really do anything with it. That’s not to say that in other four years, or eight years, or 12 years, it might fall on a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. When that happens, you can believe I’ll be doing my much-needed day trip to Disney.