What do you consider the best time of the year to visit the park?

What is your favorite—and least favorite—ride?

What do you consider the essentials to pack with you when going to the park?

What are your top places to eat in the park?

What do you consider the top three places to stay for a family on a budget?

What are “Hidden Mickeys”? Can you tell us about a few you may have spotted?

What do you consider the best places for a good photo op?

What do you remember about your first trip to Disney World?

Outside of the park, what do you consider the must-see sites in and around Orlando? Where would you go on a day trip?

Who is your favorite Disney character, and why?

1. What do you consider the best time of the year to visit the park?

The best travel times are February or September through November if you want to avoid crowds. But remember that September and October are smack-dab in the middle of Florida's hurricane season. During these months afternoon thunderstorms are common. Still, the temperature is usually lovely and the throngs are thinned in the early fall.

2. What is your favorite — and least favorite — ride?

My current favorite is easy: Expedition Everest. It opened officially in April 2006 at a reported cost of more than $100 million. This is the No. 1 ride to Fast Pass when you get to the park. Disney Imagineers have built a somewhat scaled-down Mount Everest (now the tallest mountain in Florida) upon which they have recreated a small Himalayan village. You will be steeped in Yeti lore as you board a simulated steam train on the way to the base camp of Mount Everest, which adds to the tingly anticipation of meeting said mythical monster. Everest is a must, with a storyline that takes would-be trekkers through the picturesque village before boarding a train/coaster through the “forbidden mountain” guarded by the Yeti.

Least favorite? All together now: “It’s a world of laughter, a world of tears...” The Magic Kingdom’s iconic attraction, “It’s a Small World,” gives me a full-body rash. It makes me queasy and sweaty. Worst of all, it reliably causes my brain to fill with an endless loop of the high-pitched voices of children singing the dreaded song, each in his or her own native tongue. Other people love this ride and are passionately devoted, making annual pilgrimages. Some people actually like the song, unperturbed by the fact that you hear it 7,000 times over the duration of the 10 1/2–minute ride. This is a striking testament to how different we humans can be — which, in essence, is what the ride is all about. That is why it is listed near the top of my Fantasyland lineup, despite my own revulsion.

3. What do you consider the essentials to pack with you when going to the park?

Comfortable footwear is of paramount importance, as is sunscreen and extra water (while you can buy beverages throughout the parks, lines can be long and prices are high; refill at water fountains around the park). A backpack or fanny pack is wiser than a purse in terms of keeping your hands free and your valuables firmly attached to your body on the rides. In many attractions you will get wet—if this doesn’t appeal to you, bring a compact rain poncho or even a disposable garbage bag you can don during these attractions. Cell phones or walkie-talkies ensure that you’ll find each other again if your party splits up.

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3. What are your top places to eat in the park?

Cinderella's Royal Table is the place to go for a pull-out-all-the-stops character meal. Dining here means a personal photo with Cinderella, and kids are even given a light-up wishing star for a wishing ceremony. Along with the sophisticated New American cuisine, you get tableside meet-n-greets with Cinderella, the Fairy Godmother, Sleeping Beauty, Belle, and other major players. This is the priciest dining in the kingdom, but worth it if you have a princess fan in your entourage.

For sheer range of options, Epcot’s World Showcase Pavilions cover four continents and eleven countries with no passports, security checks or complicated foreign currencies. Alright, so strict cultural accuracy is not always top priority in these 11 pavilions arrayed on a 1.3-mile promenade around World Showcase Lagoon, but each gives some plausible national flavor through its architecture, wares for sale, cuisines, shows, and "ambassadors." Disney has even added indigenous flora of each region in its landscaping. Oh, and did I mention there is beer?

5. What do you consider the top three places to stay for a family on a budget?

The cheap motels along U.S. 192 in Kissimmee have lots to offer the budget traveler. Otherwise, camp. It’s fun, really. One of the single coolest places to stay at WDW is Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort and Campground, where you can get a spot for as little as $41 per night, with nice bathrooms and a nightly campfire and marshmallow roast with Disney characters and a Disney movie. If you are a large group staying for multiple days, the most economical thing to do is rent a vacation home in the greater Kissimmee area for a week. Then you can make meals at home, spread out a bit more, and accommodate different bedtimes and schedules.

6. What are “Hidden Mickeys”? Can you tell us about a few you may have spotted?

It started as a joke. Disney Imagineers entertained themselves over the years by slyly introducing tributes to the big-eared mascot of Disney’s 47-square-mile kingdom. You know the shape: a big ball topped on either side by two smaller balls, signifying Mickey’s head and ears in silhouette. In murals, queue areas, on new attractions, in golf course sand traps, in hotel lobbies, in snack bars — the shape is everywhere, sometimes understated, sometimes flagrant.

Millions of annual guests couldn’t care less. But for some, sussing out this “Hidden Mickey” stuff has become a hobby verging on obsession. There are even websites devoted to the sport. It’s a bit like avid birders who “collect” bird sightings in a life list; Hidden Mickey hunters catalogue their finds, sometimes arguing over whether something is the genuine article or just wishful thinking.

The Haunted Mansion boasts "999 Happy Haunts," but you can also find a mouse, formed by an arrangement of dishes on the table in the attraction's banquet scene. Riding Splash Mountain at night, you will see, fleetingly, that the burning cabin on Tom Sawyer's Island off to the right is burning in the shape of a Mickey head.

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7. What do you consider the best places for a good photo op?

There’s an iconic, photographable “soul” to each of the four parks: Cinderella’s castle at Magic Kingdom, Sorcerer Mickey’s hat at Disney-MGM Studios, the big golf ball at Epcot, and, my favorite, The Tree of Life at Animal Kingdom. It’s not a ride — it doesn’t do anything, sing anything or catapult you anywhere, but The Tree of Life is still the beating heart of Animal Kingdom. It’s 14 stories high, 50 feet wide, with 325 animal carvings swirled into its rough “bark” trunk. It took ten artists and three Imagineers 18 months to create, topping the whole project off with 103,000 translucent, fluttering manmade leaves. The single greatest view of the tree is where the Oasis area empties into Discovery Island.

8. What do you remember about your first trip to Disney World?

If I remember correctly, I experienced bouts of irrational exuberance followed by extreme fatigue and crabbiness — a very common mood arc. Visiting Walt Disney World Resort is like going to the Louvre. Well, not really, but it’s a stamina event. Channel the tortoise and not the hare. You can’t do it all in a day and you shouldn’t even try.

9. Outside of the park, what do you consider the must-see sites in and around Orlando? Where would you go on a day trip?

Gatorland is as “Old Florida” or “Real Florida” as you’ll find, with a low-tech charm that is at once wholesome and campy. It opened as a roadside attraction in 1949. Owen Godwin, Sr., an enterprising butcher and postmaster, tinkered with the idea of an alligator attraction, calling it first the Florida Wildlife Institute (too serious), then Snake Village and Alligator Farm (too pedestrian) before settling on Gatorland. His first attractions, a 13-footer named Cannibal Jake and a 15-foot croc called Bone Crusher, drew thousands of road-tripping tourists with strategically placed highway billboards.

These days, people come to this 110-acre theme park and wildlife preserve as a sort of antidote to the glitz and marketing slickness of nearby Disney. Hundreds of gators and crocs bask in the sun while good folks bean them with hotdog chunks as an exhortation to do something. Mostly the hotdog chunks go unnoticed, collecting on the mighty reptiles’ backs until enterprising ibis and snowy egrets pluck them off. If you want to see the beasts in action, you have a few choices: the Gator Jumparoo Show brings gators leaping up out of the depths to grab a snack; the Gator Wrestling Show, pitting young animal keepers against the snapping jaws and foul breath of big gators; but the best, for an additional $10, is the Adventure Tour in which park guests go behind a big fence and actually hand-feed the gators. Chicken thighs and something that looked like horsemeat are heaved straight at the assembled crowd of gators, who are not above a little friendly jostling for position. It’s truly heart-thumping.

Beyond the gators, Gatorland has a lovely aviary and a fine collection of snakes. It also bosts a boardwalk “swamp” walk and observation tower, and a sweet train ride that takes visitors through the jungle crocs and breeding marsh areas. Pearl’s barbecue is fairly good and the gift shop is de rigueur for gator tchotchkes.   

10. Who is your favorite Disney character, and why?

It’s not really a Disney character, but I’m utterly charmed by DeVine at Animal Kingdom (but maybe that’s just because I’m a John Waters fan?). This particular DeVine is a woman on stilts, done up like a trellising grape vine. She walks around the park with the grace of a prima ballerina, slowing the crowds to google-eyed stupefaction.

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