WDW Trip - Day One, Part Two

After snapping a picture of the airport Disney store, we set off to check in with Magical Express. We didn't have our Magic Bands yet, as they won't ship them to Canada, but I had my booklet from Disney with all of our confirmation information. It went very smoothly, and we joined the line for the All-Star Resorts. While standing in line, I remembered that I had forgotten to do online check-in, so that's when I did it. We stood in line for less than 10 minutes before we were directed onto a bus! We ended up sitting on the Magical Express bus for about 15 minutes waiting for more passengers before we started driving to Disney. We used this time to take our first selfie on our Disney trip 

We were staying at the All-Star Music Resort, so we were the third stop out of four (Coronado Springs guests were also on our bus). We had used the yellow luggage tags and I had checked in online from the airport, so after walking off the bus we were at the counter getting our Magic Bands and room number within 2 minutes. After receiving a map of the hotel with the location of our room, we decided to stop at the Intermission Food Court. We hadn't ate much all day as I really try to limit myself to what I eat on travel days (I have Crohn's Disease, so flare-ups on an airplane are not fun for anyone). It was late by this point, so the menu was limited but we didn't care. We activated our refillable mugs - I chose blue and Luke grabbed a green one for himself. Luke ordered the chicken nuggets with salad and I had the make-your-own pasta with penne, a chicken breast and marinara sauce with a breadstick and salad on the side.

For this meal, we paid out of pocket as we didn't want dessert that late at night, and we didn't even think about saving it for the morning. Total cost was $20.10. We were both pleasantly surprised at the quality of the meal, especially for the cost. It was nothing fancy, but it really hit the spot after a day of travelling!

After eating, we set off to find our room. It really surprised us how large All-Star Music was! We were in the 7th building, Broadway themed. We found our room and tested both of our Magic Bands to make sure they worked. No issues there, so we settled in to wait for our luggage to arrive. It ended up being a pretty late night, our bags didn't arrive in our room until 12:20, but we were asleep within 20 minutes of it arriving.

I also forgot to take pictures of our room when I first got there, and didn't actually take these pictures until the morning we were checking out...oh well! Here's our room!

Next up: Race Expo and our first day in the parks!

xoxo,

Fallon

The beginning of the WDW Trip Report....

Now that our trip to Walt Disney World is over, and our weekend trip to California (which Luke won!) is over, it's time to start my trip report of Florida! I apologize now, this post is lacking on photos, but I will more than make up for it in future posts!

The day before we left, we woke up extra early to drop our dogs off at the kennel before going to work for the day. We take them to one that is about a half hour drive away, and they are only open during certain hours, so we knew there wouldn't be time after work while we were trying to finish packing, and our flight left early the next morning so no time then either. I'm always sad saying goodbye to them, but I was just so excited that I was going to be in Disney by the next day!

On our travel day, our alarm went at 4am. I am NOT a morning person, but that morning I had no problem getting out of bed - we were going to WDW! We had most of our packing complete the night before, so we were on the road by 5, and had a very quick and easy drive to the airport. Traveling can sometimes be a bit of a risk in January, but lucky for us there were no storms in the forecast! We checked our car in at our preferred parking lot by 5:30, and waited less than two minutes before a shuttle bus to the terminal had pulled up. We had decided to splurge and reserve valet parking, so it's the last stop and the bus was full by the time we got on, so we had to stand. We were the only ones on the bus going to the US Terminal of the airport, so we were the last ones off the bus. Luke had checked us in online, so we used the kiosk to print off our baggage tags, went to the desk to get our boarding passes, and off to customs! Security was really quiet, we were the only people in our line. Once we got to customs there was only one other person using the electronic kiosks, so we walked right up to one. Once it printed off our receipt, we took it up to an extremely friendly customs agent who made a few jokes with me about my hair colour, and then we were through! While we were looking around the duty free store, I remembered that I had forgot my headphones at home, boo! So I had to go to the tech store and spend my first $20 of the trip. Oh well, such is life.

We decided to grab some Quiznos for breakfast - turkey, swiss and ranch on white bread for me and a honey chicken club on whole wheat for Luke. Sorry, no pictures of that meal. By the time we finished eating it was still only 6:30 - our flight didn't leave until 8. We were expecting security and customs to take a bit longer...but better to be early than risk missing the flight. While we were waiting, Luke went to Starbucks with a gift card we had found on the weekend to get himself a coffee and a Very Berry Hibiscus for me.

Our flight to Minneapolis/St.Paul left on time, even with de-icing. The flight offered free Wi-Fi and had a decent selection of free movies to watch, so we watched the original Jurassic Park (which I had never seen...). 

We ended up landing early in Minneapolis, so we had plenty of time to get to our next gate (we were originally worried we might be cutting it close). Our next flight was to Detroit, and it was packed. It left a few minutes late, but made up the time in the air and ended up landing early as well. We had trouble getting the Wi-Fi to work on this plane, so we just played games on Luke's iPad. I was really impressed by the Delta Terminal at the Detroit airport, I thought it was really nice! I was way too entertained by watching the mini-monorail thing inside the terminal...

Our flight from there to Orlando was close to full, but not 100%. There were actually less children on it then I thought there would be. The flight left on time, and arrived in Orlando on time. We spent our time on that flight getting into the Disney mood by watching Brave (we're big Pixar fans). 
After our quick ride on the fake monorail, we saw our first sign of Disney - the Disney Store in the airport!

I'm going to finish this post here! My next post will cover our arrival at our hotel (complete with pictures!) and our first meal at Disney!

xoxo,

Fallon