We leave home on Thursday very early so we can get the the park for a decent day (6 hour drive for us). The plan is to go straight to MK so we don't anticipate our room will be ready but I'm wondering if it's possible we may be ready to go directly to our room around noon or 1?? We wanted to bring a few items like milk and coffee creamer but if we will not be able to drop it in the room first we won't bring it. It's obviously not a big deal but just curious what check in times have been like lately. I'd much prefer to just drive to the park but my husband loves riding the busses so if we can go to the room first and then ride the bus to the park he will be happy. He was worried check in after being at the park would be rough but I reminded him it's direct to room like we had done previously at the cabins.
As others have reported, we too have sometimes had a room ready at 7am (split stays), and sometimes not ready until 4pm. On trip, I arrived at nearly 10pm, and had to go by front desk, despite doing online check-in. Turns out, my room had been upgraded, so they wanted me to stop by front desk to let me know.
Another option if you want to bring milk/cream for coffee is to buy shelf-stable milk boxes. As long as they are unopened, they don't have to be kept cold. A well known brand is Parmalat, but Parmalat tends to come in quart size boxes. Horizon is one of the brands that comes in 8 ounce boxes, like for kids' lunch boxes. I've even packed them in my checked luggage (I pack them in a large ziplock bag just to make sure, but they have never leaked. bottled water, yes. Milk boxes, no.)
The biggest challenge is to find it in the grocery store. The lunch box milk boxes are often with other lunch box snacks (chips, goldfish, cracker packs). they can also be in the juice aisle, with juice boxes and chocolate milk. I have also found them in the baking aisle with the canned condensed/evaporated/powdered milk or non-dairy creamer/artificial sweeteners.
As for where to go, to retrieve your cold items: it depends. At the deluxe resorts, I think we've always just called, and they brought up our stuff. I can only recall one time we asked them to actually keep stuff in a fridge. One thing I can tell you is on the tail end of the trip, some of the hotels couldn't freeze an ice pack for us. I could not say specifically where we had trouble, but I gave up on that idea. We bring a soft sided cooler to keep chocolate from melting. chilled soda cans stay cool for along time, and make good makeshift cold packs (not frozen, just in the fridge).
