Hello, humans! My family just returned from a whirlwind, extended stay at Walt Disney World, where we tried lots of new things and extended our stay by a day and a half (because we just couldn't say goodbye!).
The family includes myself, a thirty-four-year-old Disney World lover; my husband, a forty-one-year-old Disney convert (I hope); and our five-year-old daughter, who is an emerging Disney World fanatic. This trip was the result of a promise made after our December 2014 trip. My husband told our daughter that we would return to celebrate her fifth birthday. Not one to forget anything, she started angling for her birthday trip about a year ahead of time, and I booked it in February.
By some stroke of magic, I managed to book right about the 180 day mark, which meant I was able to score a couple of coveted ADRs: Be Our Guest and Cinderella's Royal Table. More on these later. I also grabbed our room/ticket package when a modified free dining plan was offered. We received one quick service meal per person, per night. This ended up being a great decision for us, and a little research allowed us to stretch it out significantly.
But first, we had to get there. We live in the Raleigh area, so we drove. We have done many road trips in the past, including a long haul from Boston to Toronto when DD was nine months old, so this was a logical choice for us. But we have never had to do this:
That's me, taking a creepy selfie whilst in the cab of a tow truck with my beautiful, beastly machine riding on the back. Oh, yes. We got a flat tire on the side of I-95 north of Daytona, Florida. My husband and I are both able to change a tire (although at seven months pregnant, I was willing to let him do most of the work), but we were missing the wheel lock key. To be honest, I didn't even know I had wheel locks on the tires, so I am absolving myself from the blame here. But what that meant logistically was the we had to be towed to a Honda dealership to have the tire replaced. Roadside Assistance found us a tow truck that could accommodate three people in the cab, but it was forty-five minutes away. The Honda dealership closed in under an hour. But humanity won out as the manager of Hendrick Honda in Daytona offered to keep members of his team past closing so that we wouldn't be stranded. And on that note, if you need any Honda help in Florida, Rich at Hendrick is your man.
We were back on the road about three hours after the initial flat, and we arrived, finally, at our destination around six p.m.
We stayed at All-Star Movies. I had checked in online several days prior and made some room requests. I received the text with our room number (and a digital map of the resort) while waiting for the tow truck, so we shlepped all of our stuff directly to the room. Our bands worked perfectly, and we were in (and relieved) right away.
We stayed in room 1747, which was on the backside of the first Dalmations building. The location was awesome. We were close to the lot where we parked our car for the week, and it was always quiet. Our view looked like this:
The room/ticket/dining package mandated a preferred room, otherwise I wouldn't normally request one. But I was really happy with our location. The room itself was the typical value resort experience:
Snowman blanket not typically included.
Somehow (read: by force) my daughter has inherited my genes for organization, so she put her things in a drawer and aligned her stuffed animal friends before we headed out to see the resort and obtain some food.
The family includes myself, a thirty-four-year-old Disney World lover; my husband, a forty-one-year-old Disney convert (I hope); and our five-year-old daughter, who is an emerging Disney World fanatic. This trip was the result of a promise made after our December 2014 trip. My husband told our daughter that we would return to celebrate her fifth birthday. Not one to forget anything, she started angling for her birthday trip about a year ahead of time, and I booked it in February.
By some stroke of magic, I managed to book right about the 180 day mark, which meant I was able to score a couple of coveted ADRs: Be Our Guest and Cinderella's Royal Table. More on these later. I also grabbed our room/ticket package when a modified free dining plan was offered. We received one quick service meal per person, per night. This ended up being a great decision for us, and a little research allowed us to stretch it out significantly.
But first, we had to get there. We live in the Raleigh area, so we drove. We have done many road trips in the past, including a long haul from Boston to Toronto when DD was nine months old, so this was a logical choice for us. But we have never had to do this:
That's me, taking a creepy selfie whilst in the cab of a tow truck with my beautiful, beastly machine riding on the back. Oh, yes. We got a flat tire on the side of I-95 north of Daytona, Florida. My husband and I are both able to change a tire (although at seven months pregnant, I was willing to let him do most of the work), but we were missing the wheel lock key. To be honest, I didn't even know I had wheel locks on the tires, so I am absolving myself from the blame here. But what that meant logistically was the we had to be towed to a Honda dealership to have the tire replaced. Roadside Assistance found us a tow truck that could accommodate three people in the cab, but it was forty-five minutes away. The Honda dealership closed in under an hour. But humanity won out as the manager of Hendrick Honda in Daytona offered to keep members of his team past closing so that we wouldn't be stranded. And on that note, if you need any Honda help in Florida, Rich at Hendrick is your man.
We were back on the road about three hours after the initial flat, and we arrived, finally, at our destination around six p.m.
We stayed at All-Star Movies. I had checked in online several days prior and made some room requests. I received the text with our room number (and a digital map of the resort) while waiting for the tow truck, so we shlepped all of our stuff directly to the room. Our bands worked perfectly, and we were in (and relieved) right away.
We stayed in room 1747, which was on the backside of the first Dalmations building. The location was awesome. We were close to the lot where we parked our car for the week, and it was always quiet. Our view looked like this:
The room/ticket/dining package mandated a preferred room, otherwise I wouldn't normally request one. But I was really happy with our location. The room itself was the typical value resort experience:
Snowman blanket not typically included.
Somehow (read: by force) my daughter has inherited my genes for organization, so she put her things in a drawer and aligned her stuffed animal friends before we headed out to see the resort and obtain some food.