The culmination of my cheerleading season is the Cheerleading Worlds, which is held annually in Disney World in Orlando. I’ve only been to Disney once before, for high school cheerleading nationals, and I was excited to go back. I also used the trip as an opportunity to see the national parks in Florida. On Thursday morning I boarded an early flight to Orlando with Felix and two of my cheerleading teammates, Elise and Marquet. We weren’t competing until Friday so after stopping at the hotel we headed to the parks (minus Elise, who met up with a different friend). 

I’m not a huge Star Wars fan but I really wanted to see Disney’s Star Wars themed world so our first outing was to Hollywood studios, which is the park that contains Star Wars land (real name: Galaxy’s edge). As we walked in we saw there was only a 15 minute wait for the Star Tours ride so we immediately got on that. It had a forest of Endor and an AT-AT (Felix informed me of its name). The trees in the forest were all cut off in the middle, which was lame, especially after having been in the redwood forest. 

The ride is a motion simulator where you’re in some kind of transport pod and it flies around. It was really effective at making you feel like you were moving and honestly I felt pretty motion sick afterwards. The other rides in Star Wars land had much longer waits and I was surprised this one wasn’t more popular because it was a solidly cool ride. We walked into Star Wars land and they had a bunch of ships and droids and cool themed stuff. They were even selling themed soft drinks with the logos in an alien language and the bottles were spheres. We had lunch there and I was excited for the themed food but it wasn’t that interesting looks or taste wise. I got a blue milk drink that was ok. There were almost no characters around—the only ones we saw were two storm troopers. 

Next we walked through Toy Story land which was really nicely decorated and had a lot of rides but they all had long waits so we didn’t bother. We saw a show called the Indiana Jones stunt spectacular which was about recreating stunt scenes from the Indiana jones movies. I didn’t like it because it was very cheesy and they spent too much time standing around talking and not enough doing movie scenes. Star Wars land was really all I cared about it Hollywood studios to after that we left and went to Epcot. 

EPCOT has some futuristic stuff and 11 pavilions representing different countries (Canada, UK, France, Morocco, Japan, US, Italy, China, Germany, Norway, and Mexico). We went on some rides, mainly looking for short wait times. One ride I really liked was Soaring around the World, which is a motion simulator that takes you on a glider ride through scenes all of the world. Then we walked through the country pavilions, had dinner in Japan (mediocre), and watched the fireworks show, which was good. The show is about global togetherness. I think it’s funny/kind of messed up that EPCOT is supposed to be a futuristic idealistic community and the selection of countries represented are mostly white and friends of the US. 

The next day was our competition day! We got ready and headed to the ESPN wide world of sports to compete. We were competing in the prelims round among 20 US teams and we’d need to make top 10 to make it to semifinals. 

We did our routine and it wasn’t perfect but was very good for us. Our coach was really proud and was crying afterward. We placed 14th so we didn’t make it to semifinals, which I was totally fine with since it meant we didn’t have to compete again. We did our best but were nowhere near making it to semifinals so it didn’t feel like we had missed out on anything. This was our teams first year of existence and most of the athletes have never competed at worlds before so we did pretty well given all that. Here’s link to watch the routine. 

After competing, we watched the international teams compete. There’s a division at worlds where each team represents a country and they do a routine that includes a cheer for the country. A lot of international teams will have part of their cheer in their language and part of it in English. France didn’t bother translating any of their cheer into English, which was very French of them. Also at one point of their routine the can-can started playing and the fliers did a kick line, which was super cool. It was fun seeing the cheers in other languages and made it feel like a truly international event. 

It was also cool to see such an advanced level of cheerleading. Some of the pyramids were insane. I commented to Felix that some of them looked like hour glasses instead of pyramids because they were squeezing in so many fliers at the top. Some of them had like two middle layer flyers holding six top layer flyers. Very fun to watch. 

The next day we didn’t have to compete again so we hit the parks! We went to Magic Kingdom first and got there early so we could do some rides before the lines got long. One ride I was excited about was the Pirates of the Caribbean ride and I honestly loved it. It’s a slow boat ride that starts going through a bunch of caves with pirate skeletons but then it opens up to a big pirate ship in the middle of a battle. I was going “wow” at everything and Elise (who has been to Disney many times) was loving how much I was enjoying it. I wish I had gotten a picture of some of the animatronic pirates. 

We did some miscellaneous stuff in Magic Kingdom: got an obligatory photo with the castle, climbed through the Swiss Family Robinson treehouse, rode It’s a Small World, saw a parade. By the middle of the day we were running out of things to do that didn’t involve long lines. I’ve learned I’m definitely not a Disney person. The park activities are shopping for Disney merch (not interested), meeting characters (not interested), going on rides (interested, but have very little patience for lines), seeing some shows, and eating vaguely themed, overpriced, mediocre food. This doesn’t give me much to do. I thought I’d spend a whole day in magic kingdom so I was surprised how quickly I ran out of things to do. I guess you’re supposed to spend the majority of the day standing in line. 

Having done pretty much everything I wanted to do in Magic Kingdom, we left the park to grab lunch, and then went to Animal Kingdom, which is the park everyone was most excited to see. The first thing we did was go on the safari ride because it had a surprisingly short line. The ride is really cool–it mimics a safari as you drive through areas with different animals. Some of them are just free roaming in the area with the road. Some animals are inside enclosures that you drive next to, but the enclosures are designed to look like natural landscape. We were stopped for a while because giraffes were blocking the road, which apparently is a common problem. We saw crocodiles, hippos, rhinos, giraffes, elephants, lions, cheetahs, antelope, wildebeest, and more! This was a super cool ride. 

Afterward we walked around the zoo area which had gorillas and some other animals. Going into this, I thought the animals would be the lamest part of Disney World because you can see animals at any zoo, but I appreciated them more because I didn’t have to wait in line to see them. 

Next we rode the Expedition Everest ride, which Felix loved. It’s a roller coaster that take you on a journey on a mountain where you encounter the Yeti. It was pretty overcast out but I saw that the Kali River Rapids ride had an unusually short wait so I wanted to ride it. We didn’t really want to get wet and the ride had a sign warning that “you will get wet, you may get soaked” but we did it anyway (except Marquet who bailed after seeing how wet people were getting off the ride). I ended up getting soaked but it was a lot of fun. 

The last thing we did was see a Bug’s Life themed show that used 3D effects which was quite lame. Then we had to leave because the park closed. 

The next day we returned to Animal Kingdom to do the thing I had been most anticipating: seeing Pandora, the world of Avatar. I don’t actually care that much about the Avatar movies but I saw an in-depth youtube video about this section of the park and it made me really want to go. I knew a lot of the lore behind the park so I was nerding out the whole time and explaining the lore to my friends, like how in the Avatar movie, which is called, “the documentary” they say the air on Pandora isn’t safe for humans to breathe, but the park has a giant pod that purifies the air. 

We wanted to get to the park super early to get in line for the Flight of Passage ride, which is super popular, but by the time we got there it already had a 100 minute wait time. We just stood in line and took in the park ambiance as we waited. Thankfully, there was a lot of cool stuff to look at in line. The story of the ride is that you’re linked to an avatar body that is on the back of a banshee (an alien dragon) and it takes you on a flight around Pandora. It’s a motion simulator and it made me really motion sick but it was a super cool ride. It had great effects, like that you can feel your banshee breathing beneath you as you ride. 

After the ride we walked around a bit and saw another area of Animal Kingdom called Dinoland USA, which is just a dinosaur themed carnival that I thought was disappointing. It’s funny that the areas of animal kingdom are Africa, Asia, Pandora, and Dinoland USA–all four corners of the animal world. We came back to Pandora to have a pod-themed lunch, which I was excited about but it wasn’t great food. I got cheeseburger buns, which were just ok. 

We waited an hour in line to ride the Navi River Journey boat ride. I wrote some of this blog post while waiting in line. It’s a slow boat ride that takes you through the Pandoran forest at night and there are a bunch of cool glowing plants and one really good Navi animatronic. It was pretty short and probably not worth the hour long wait but I wanted to get the full Pandora experience and didn’t have much else to do with my time. 

We went and saw a Lion King show where they sang a bunch of music from the movie and had dancers and circus performers. 

Then we rode the safari ride again because it was so good. 

At the end of the day we headed back to EPCOT to meet up with some of our teammates who were planning on drinking around the world. This is an activity where you have a drink at every country’s pavilion. 

We found our teammates right when they began the challenge and they very quickly realized that drinking at EVERY country is a lot. They were struggling to finish their drinks and moved very slowly. Elise and I participated by getting non-alcoholic drinks, including bubble tea in China. 

We very slowly moved through the pavilions as my teammates got progressively drunker. I was trying to move them along because I desperately wanted a funnel cake from the America pavilion. My funnel cake was extremely satisfying once I got it–definitely the best thing I ate in Disney. We had fun talking about cheerleading and our team and plans for next season. My teammates miraculously finished their journey around the world before the fireworks show. 

A good time was had. Disney isn’t my favorite place to vacation but I had a lot of fun. Stay tuned as next I will be doing something much more up my alley: visiting the national parks of Florida.