Hello, fellow Disney fiends! My family and I just returned home from a short visit to the World, and I wanted to share our journey with all of you.
The traveling party includes:
Me, Sarah, a 32-year-old teacher and mother of one
DH, a 40-year-old Scrooge
DD, a 3-year-old who regularly requests that I tell her stories about princesses who are lost in Disney World. (How she came up with this idea remains a mystery.)
I have been vacationing at Disney World for twenty-two years, and I have accumulated lots of knowledge about the comings and goings of the parks and hotels (thanks, in great part, to wonderful trip reports on this site). I thoroughly enjoy the planning that goes into a trip, and because of that, I found I really enjoyed the My Experience app. Throughout the trip, I changed Fastpass+ reservations several times, and except for never getting the wifi to work at Magic Kingdom, I appreciated the system.
We began our trip on Saturday, December 20, when we left our home in a Raleigh suburb and drove to WDW. We have done many road trips in my young daughter's life, but this one was tedious. I think I just wanted to BE there, so the journey paled in comparison to the destination. The ride home was equally tedious, though, so I might just be outgrowing the road trip phase of my youth.
At any rate, after about ten hours, we arrived at our home for the week:
Let the angels sing, y'all! Art of Animation! I lucked into a four-night reservation just about 50 days prior to our trip. If I hadn't had this hotel, I might have considered forgoing the trip for a year or so, but this was too good to be true. I knew my Pixar-loving girl would be fascinated by the Cars section, and her burgeoning love of princesses meant our room in the Little Mermaid section would also make her happy.
And it did. In fact, she was thrilled and surprised to find that we would be sleeping here for four nights.
After unpacking our luggage (only three small drawers in the dresser) and putting cooler items in the fridge (bottom shelf of fridge fit a gallon of milk), we went out to take pictures... I mean, explore.
We had a first floor room in building nine (room 9557), and we had a view of the parking lot and an arm of the building.
I didn't mind the view at all. In fact, the first floor location was convenient given all the extra stuff we had to bring for the extensive ride. Plus, because we got a prime parking spot right at the edge of the lot, we could actually see our car from our window. And from time to time I had to run to the car to get something/put something away, and it was really easy for us.
I will say that our building was noisy. At home, we sleep with a fan on, so I think that was really the biggest difference. But we definitely heard the kids jumping around upstairs and knocks in the rooms adjacent as we tried to get our preschooler (and her exhausted mom) to sleep.
The traveling party includes:
Me, Sarah, a 32-year-old teacher and mother of one
DH, a 40-year-old Scrooge
DD, a 3-year-old who regularly requests that I tell her stories about princesses who are lost in Disney World. (How she came up with this idea remains a mystery.)
I have been vacationing at Disney World for twenty-two years, and I have accumulated lots of knowledge about the comings and goings of the parks and hotels (thanks, in great part, to wonderful trip reports on this site). I thoroughly enjoy the planning that goes into a trip, and because of that, I found I really enjoyed the My Experience app. Throughout the trip, I changed Fastpass+ reservations several times, and except for never getting the wifi to work at Magic Kingdom, I appreciated the system.
We began our trip on Saturday, December 20, when we left our home in a Raleigh suburb and drove to WDW. We have done many road trips in my young daughter's life, but this one was tedious. I think I just wanted to BE there, so the journey paled in comparison to the destination. The ride home was equally tedious, though, so I might just be outgrowing the road trip phase of my youth.
At any rate, after about ten hours, we arrived at our home for the week:
Let the angels sing, y'all! Art of Animation! I lucked into a four-night reservation just about 50 days prior to our trip. If I hadn't had this hotel, I might have considered forgoing the trip for a year or so, but this was too good to be true. I knew my Pixar-loving girl would be fascinated by the Cars section, and her burgeoning love of princesses meant our room in the Little Mermaid section would also make her happy.
And it did. In fact, she was thrilled and surprised to find that we would be sleeping here for four nights.
After unpacking our luggage (only three small drawers in the dresser) and putting cooler items in the fridge (bottom shelf of fridge fit a gallon of milk), we went out to take pictures... I mean, explore.
We had a first floor room in building nine (room 9557), and we had a view of the parking lot and an arm of the building.
I didn't mind the view at all. In fact, the first floor location was convenient given all the extra stuff we had to bring for the extensive ride. Plus, because we got a prime parking spot right at the edge of the lot, we could actually see our car from our window. And from time to time I had to run to the car to get something/put something away, and it was really easy for us.
I will say that our building was noisy. At home, we sleep with a fan on, so I think that was really the biggest difference. But we definitely heard the kids jumping around upstairs and knocks in the rooms adjacent as we tried to get our preschooler (and her exhausted mom) to sleep.
