The Orlando DINKS At Disney's Animal Kingdom Park.

Walt Disney World After COVID Reopening Part 1: Visiting the Parks

July 10, 2020

With the parks closed for the last few months we have been anxiously awaiting to see what they would be like once open again. Well yesterday we were fortunate to get that chance as we attended an Annual Passholder preview day at Disney’s Animal Kingdom park. Honestly leading up to this visit we have had so many thoughts in our head. While we weren’t concerned about Disney properly handling safety we did wonder:

Can we last in a park, in the heat with a mask?
What will crowds be like? Will they comply with rules?
Will Disney still feel magical?
At the end of the day is paying for a ticket to Disney still worth it?

Read on for a full review of our park experience including plenty of info on new safety measures and changes…

Pizzafari Family-Style Dining Review (2020)

June 20, 2020

While we find Disney’s Animal Kingdom to have some of the best dining options in the parks (like Tiffin’s!), on our last visit we decided to try something a little different: a pizza joint. Pizzafari is located in Discovery Isle and offers a dinner option that is a cross between quick service and table service. We were in the mood for carbs and the price seemed reasonable so we ventured over to try out this spot. Read on for a full review of the Family-Style Dining offering…

Our Review of Spice Road Table at Epcot (2020)

April 20, 2020

While we love strolling Epcot’s World Showcase and sampling food and drink along the way, once in awhile we love booking a table service meal in one of the countries. Morocco has always been one of our favorite stops for flavorful cuisine. The menus can seem a bit more adventurous for some, which we find can actually lead to less kids and a quieter atmosphere. Having opened in 2014, Spice Road Table is a newer addition to the pavilion and has quickly become one of our favorites. Read on to hear more about this great dinner spot…

Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival

April 17, 2020

Throughout the year there are a few different seasons that bring some extra magic to Disney parks. One of those times happens to be in the spring when Epcot hosts the International Flower & Garden Festival. We had been to this festival years ago, and boy has it grown! (Food booths didn’t even exist back then!) While the 2020 festival season was cut short we were lucky enough to visit a little bit in the beginning and wanted to share the offerings this year. From beautiful gardens, to fresh food, and springtime merch, read on to hear what this festival has to offer…

Liberty Tree Tavern Dining Review: Beyond the Thanksgiving Feast

March 13, 2020

This past Christmas we tried something new and booked a visit to Disney’s Magic Kingdom on Christmas Day (make sure to check out our recap article on 5 lessons learned). We knew we wanted a cozy holiday meal, and decided to book a mid-day reservation at Liberty Tree Tavern. This colonial-style table service restaurant is known best for family-style Thanksgiving meals. More recently they have also added some a la carte options too which we decided to explore this time. Read on to hear about this hearty dining option…

The Epcot Festival of the Arts: An Overview of Our New Favorite Festival

February 25, 2020

Throughout the year there are a few different seasons that bring some extra magic to Disney parks. One of those times happens to be in the winter when Epcot hosts the International Festival of the Arts. This was the one festival we had never attended before this year (can you believe it?) We couldn’t wait to see an artistic spin on the park and see all of the offerings available. While we are sad to say yesterday was the last official day, we still wanted to provide an overview of our thoughts and all of the reasons this is our new favorite festival that we can’t wait for again next year…

Disneyland Paris California Grill Review: Our Top Signature Dining Experience!

February 1, 2020

While visiting Disneyland Paris and using the Premium Half Board Dining Plan, we were able to dine at some of the top restaurants at the resort. On our last night of our trip the concierge at our hotel was nice enough to snag us a reservation at one of the fanciest places. We were excited to cap off our trip with a dinner at California Grill, located inside the luxurious Disneyland Hotel. While there is a California Grill in Florida, these two restaurants are pretty different from each other. Read on to hear our experience at this signature location (and for some of our best food photography to date!) Also, if you want to see all of our articles about Disneyland Paris you can see them listed at the bottom of this article or we recommend to start here: 2 Disney Loving Americans Go International (Part 1): How to Plan a Trip to Disneyland Paris…

Disneyland Paris PhotoPass Review | Not Worth It?

January 16, 2020

Most who have been to a Disney Park in the U.S. are familiar with a service called PhotoPass. There are photographers throughout the parks to capture professional images of your whole group on vacation. We have always found it worth it to buy a package and come home with tons of fun memories from the trip. When we recently visited Disneyland Paris, they too advertised having PhotoPass as well, but we soon found out it was nothing like the U.S. version. Read on to hear why we do not recommend purchasing PhotoPass here and what we did instead…

Popular Blog Posts from The Orlando DINKs

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Update: Why We Changed Our Name to The Orlando DINKs

Yup, you read that correctly, after 6 years of being known as The Disney DINKs, we are officially changing our name to The Orlando DINKs.

While changing one word doesn’t seem like a huge change, it feels pretty huge to us since this has been our identity for so long. There are a few reasons why we decided to make the change, some of which are directly related to Disney and some that aren’t. Before we really get into it, we want to be very clear that this article isn’t an intent to bash Disney by any means. We have had amazing experiences related to Disney, from our wedding, multiple Anniversary trips on both coasts, and Disneyland Paris. Being Disney Vacation Club members has allowed us to experience some amazing destinations including Hawaii, Hilton Head Island, and Vero Beach. None of these would have been possible without DVC. We have also had the pleasure of sharing these experiences with friends and family throughout the years. So while it may seem like we are quitting Disney, we certainly are not (and please note we are even keeping our fun mouse ear branding!) Read on to learn more…

Moving Near the Mouse: Moving to Orlando to be a Disney Local

Everyone dreams about moving to their happy place whether it be the country, the mountains, or, in our case, near the house of the mouse. Last year we were able to make our dreams a reality and left Maryland to start a new chapter in Orlando. It’s hard to believe it, but we have now been Floridians for one year! We wanted to take a look back at this last year and chat about:

How we pulled off a big cross country move last year
What we are loving and missing now being in FL
A peek into our home (with several before and after projects!)
and finally, how our Disney habits have changed now being locals

Setting Sail on a Disney Specialty Cruise with a Private Fireworks View

With the July 4th fireworks at Walt Disney World canceled this year, we figured it was the perfect time to reminisce about a special fireworks experience we had last fall. We are always amazed at the amount of special activities and tours available at Disney and booking a private specialty fireworks cruise was one awesome time. Technically our friends Max and Niki had booked the experience for their honeymoon, but they let us crash the party and come along (how nice are they right?). One night last fall our group of four enjoyed some drinks at the Top of the World then set sail on our private pontoon. Read on to hear all about our enchanted evening sailing.

Is Disney Vacation Club Worth It? A DVC Review & Guide

If you have read some of our resort reviews before, you may have figured out that we are Disney Vacation Club (DVC) members. We have been blue card holders since 2013 and have used our membership in various ways. We find that we get a lot of questions about DVC, with the most frequent being “Is DVC worth it?” It can be a bit confusing at first to figure out how the membership exactly works so we wanted to break it down for our readers. With this article we will be covering…

Our Story: Why We Started The Disney DINKs Blog (Dual Income, No Kids & Disney Travel!)

We were recently asked to participate in a “Disney Friends Blog Hop” for people to discover other Disney blogs in the community. (You can learn a little more about that at the the bottom of this post!) We also realized with many new visitors recently it may be a good time to share a bit more about the two authors behind the posts. There are two things we tend to get asked pretty frequently. Many people are curious of how we decided to launch a Disney based blog geared towards an adult crowd. Many people are also curious about the term “DINKs” (Dual Income No Kids) and we wanted to touch a bit on our journey to decide to be childfree. So here is a little peek into the world of Julie and Andrew…