Disney Day 1, 2013

Today we arrived at Disney World.  We woke up at 5:30am at a hotel in East Boston, in order to get to Logan for our 7:30 flight.  It went so smooth. We then had a smooth flight.  The way it works for us is we split up, one kid per one adult sitting on opposite sides of the plane. Our kids are much better behaved split up.  We rolled into Orlando 20 minutes early.  We got out of the terminal and our car man was waiting, and so were our bags.  We walked two feet to our private car.  We were at our hotel within the hour of landing.  That was magical!

Sadly, then the magic ended for a little bit.  We got to our hotel and despite tons of preparation in getting our wristbands, checking in online ahead of time, everything- we still waited at the hotel front desk for about 20 minutes while the lady helped us out to get us into our rooms.  I am not quite sure what all of that was for, I thought we did this already?  Slightly annoyed, but super glad we could get into our room we headed down the hall and opened our door with our Mickey bracelets.  Then immediately noticed the previous occupants' dirty sheets and towels were everywhere.  Yuck.  By that time our bags were being brought down and the 20 minutes it took to affirm stuff we had did in 5 minutes from home made me think it was far better to get someone into clean than to try to switch rooms.  So, we shoved our bags in the closet and I told the cleaning lady that showed up about 50 times that we were not here prior, we need a big clean, huge clean (DVC people only get a light clean once a week, she needed to know we were new.)

While the lady was cleaning the previous' people's mess, and luckily they were not that messy.  We have left a room a lot worse than that on a consistent basis - if I had walked into a room like we will probably leave this one then yeah, I might have insisted on a new room.  Alas, I digress.  We had some more To Dos to check off.  We are planning on going to Disney every year for the next who knows how many years, so we bought the Annual Pass.  This means, that next year our trip has to end before November 17, the start of our trip this year - and we save lots of money.  So, we had to go get our pass set up.  Similar to the hotel check-in, this did not make sense to me.  We bought it online, why do we need to do this?  And, again, 20 minutes of wait and 10 minutes in line later and we now have our passes hooked up.  One day they will fix this, right?

 Then, we were back in our room which was now clean, we unpacked and we went.  Hollywood Studios, Toy Story Mania was our first stop this trip.  When we went with Joel we had this magical experience where the first stop was the Magic Kingdom and we saw Pluto. Actually, we were able to distract Joel enough that he didn't see Pluto until it was his turn in line, and then it was epic.  Not the same effect here sadly.  James keeps looking around like, "this is it?  What is this place?"  Toy Story Mania was lost on him but he was excited to see his favorite Toy Story characters.  The line for the actual Woody and Buzz was too long so we ran past and instead went to Lighting McQueen and Tow Mater.  Please observe below how Joel Andrew is all in, but James is just not so sure.

 We had lunch at Mama Melrose, and when you get it as part of the Fantasmic package, you get the whole shebang including app, entree and dessert.  It was shades of Disney Deluxe Dining Plan again and again I ate myself silly.  James was so tired he rested/watched Monsters University with his head in my lap while Joelly, Daddy and I enjoyed conversation.  When the meal showed up, James popped up his head with a burst of energy and proceeded to clear the plate.  After dinner we did Muppets 3D, which I love.  No one cried.  Everyone laughed.  Then the Joel's went to Star Wars and James and I facetimed Ama and Grumpy.  That was pretty funny, facetiming someone from Disney.

We had a little bit of time before Fantasmic (which Joel Husband really, really wanted to do), so we went to go see Mr. Incredible.  James LOVES the Incredibles.  He always asks to watch the movie.  This was perfect I thought, the first real character he would see would be Mr. Incredible and there would be that magical moment.  We get to the end of the line, and he walks up to Mr. Incredible and cries.  Runs away.

He runs over to the window and points at Wreck it Ralph and says he wants to see him.  Really, how is Wreck it Ralph not as scary as Mr. Incredible?  Frozone tried to work with James but he wasn't having it.  Joel Husband and I are worried about tomorrow.  How will he do at a character breakfast?  Hmmm. this could be interesting.  Joel Andrew fell right into it again and got his signatures and flexed his muscles with Mr. Incredible.  At one point today I told Joel when he was being impatient, that he needs to be thankful and he needs to be a gentleman.  That only a very few little boys and girls get to go to Disney.  For every one he sees today there are many, many more at home who do not get to come.  He looked at me wide-eyed in disbelief.  I am so glad he can be compassionate, and that I remind myself to have these conversations with him.  How is he supposed to know that everyone doesn't get to say hi to Frozone every year?

 We made it to Fantasmic.  The Halls never really did things like this.  Large park draws like shows or parades meant that all the morons were fighting to see one thing and we could then go around to all the rides with less lines.  Clearly, Joel Husband does not operate under this and insists we go.  It was a really nice show and I thought the boys would get scared but they didn't.  When there were loud booms, James would put his fingers in his ears (and not really in his ears, but on the top of his ears which was hysterical).  Joel did great.  I spent way too much money on Mickey ear hats (I believe in the end it was about $22 per hat.  James immediately rebuffed his - which was fine with me, Mickey ears for me!  I pointed out to Joel that our hats both blinked colors at the same rate, to the music and that this was all magic.  The look on his face was priceless.  But this is true - they now have these hats, that when you are within a vicinity of a parade, light show, fireworks show, etc - your hat blinks in choreography to the show.  When you are not, or when the show is over, they blink like normal. Crazy.  They can do this but checking in takes 20 minutes?  After the show I asked Joel Husband if wearing these hats would lead to brain cancer.  Once every year isn't so bad, right?

After the show, even though the place was open for many many more hours we walked home.  You can walk from Hollywood Studios to the Beach Club resort.  It takes just about the time for a Baby James to pass out hardcore and sleep through getting his clothes off, diaper changed and refusing to put Pjs on.  Mostly naked baby is still in the fetal position with Baby Thumb in a pack n play in the bathroom.  We are taking advantage of the pack n play one last time here. Frees up valuable bed space!

Lessons learned:  Car service rocks.  They came with booster seats, the helped with the many bags, we were from the airport to the hotel in 30 minutes, from getting off the plane to the hotel in 50.  We used Happy Limo - and it was happy.  It was $60 with a $5 additional charge per car seat; Disney's Magical Express is free, but a cab would have cost about $50 at least, so we are happy with it.

Checking in stinks.  Not sure how to fix that but we will.

There are lots of crazy Disney people out there.  I keep meeting DVC members and they are all your stereotypical Disney nuts, I love them all.  You think we know stuff?  We know nothing compared to these people. We are at the beginning.

Go big for your first thing.  This was such an amazing experience with Joel, I hope we can find something like that for James.

Don't buy the cheap Mickey stroller for $20 from Walmart.  Unless you are less than 5 feet tall.  The handles are so low I think I may need back surgery after this trip.

Walking is always better than waiting for transportation.

If you are staying in a Villa (DVC room with laundry) get food delivered from the Garden Grocer.  It comes, and you have yogurt for breakfast, snacks, wine, beer, coffee - I even got To Go cups delivered.  We are not doing the dining plan this time so at least I save on the $2 coffee all week.  I can have a cup in the room and a cup to go for the cost - well, now that I am thinking of this by the time we bought the To Go cups, the coffee, and the filters, you had to buy the filters, it would have been breakeven if I went to the convenience place in the hotel and bought a cup each day.  If I had a spouse who drinks coffee, it def would have been smart.

I'm tired.  The boys are passed out.  Tomorrow Animal Kingdom before we hit the Magic Kingdom.  You think James can hold on a few more hours before he gets to see the Castle?