As promised, here are our pictures, tricks and tips for Disney!
First of all, I would not recommend going on Spring Break if at all possible. Thankfully March 17 was a little earlier that some school breaks, so it wasn't *too* crowded yet.
There are a lot of airport options near West Point. If we were willing to take an early flight, we could fly out of Stewart, which is about 30 minutes away and doesn't require a drive into the city. Our flight left at 7, so the 4AM wake up call was a little early! We put the girls to sleep in their clothes and didn't get them up until the last possible minute.
5:45 at the gate - everyone was excited!
Our frequent flier miles are with AirTran (or Southwest), but by far our favorite airline is Jet Blue! Free bags, tv in every seat, better snacks and a direct flight from Stewart to Orlando. A direct flight with kids is worth any extra you pay!
The girls were seated behind us and watched Frozen almost the whole flight! Easy!
Arrival Orlando!
This is how Lucy was for a good portion of our trip! As long as she was in the Ergo, she would sleep anywhere!
Disney's Magical Express is the bus that takes you from the airport to your resort. They take your luggage off your plane and put it in your room - no hauling bags around! Best part - its free!
We stayed at Disney's Pop Century Resort. It is a Disney Value resort. We are huge fans of staying at a Disney resort for a few reasons:
1. Dining Plan - that is a non-negotiable with us
2. Direct Bus routes - for instance, staying at Shades of Green requires an extra stop of the Transportation Center, while we had direct bus routes to the parks staying at Pop Century.
3. Military Discounts on rooms
The rooms are big enough for our needs and we don't really see the need to pay for a bigger room. One thing we did learn this trip - while we don't care about a bigger room, we do care about how crowded the buses are. The moderate resorts always had shorter bus lines at the parks. Moderate and Deluxe resorts also have better pools. If those things are important to you, than it may be worth the extra money to stay at a nicer resort.
It rained the entire first day, but thankfully we didn't really have any specific plans. It gave us a chance to get solid naps and the girls even got a little time to swim. After getting up so early, we made sure everyone was in bed by 7.
Here is our take on the Disney Dining Plan:
As I tell people who ask how we do Disney - you have to understand that we are park people. Riding rides is the most important on our agenda. If its not for you, than this may not be the right plan for you.
This is our 3rd visit on the Quick Service Dining Plan. We got 2 quick service meals and 2 snacks per person (not Lucy) per night of our stay. The meals are not divided into adult vs. kid meals, which is great. The kid meals are much smaller portions and are normally more unhealthy choices. Since we always get to the parks when they open, we don't have a lot of time for sit down meals in the morning anyway. Chad would get ready and go get some food and bring it back to the room, most of the time using snacks. I brought energy bites, fruit and granola, so Chad would got 1 milk that lasted for Mya's cereal all week. He used 2-3 snacks to get enough yogurt for Addison for the week. He would grab a muffin for himself and boiled eggs for me. Thankfully Disney put refrigerators in the rooms, which made it much easier to keep food. By the end of the week, we had enough food in our room to not have to get much for breakfast.
For lunch and dinner in the beginning of the week Addison and Mya would share an adult meal, which gave us extra meals to use later if we needed them. Most of the time this was more than enough food for them.
When eating in the resort, we always got a bottled water to save to use in the park. We would use our refillable mugs in the resort. With every meal you get a dessert, and we just don't need that much sugar. Occasionally we would get a dessert to share, but otherwise we would get snacks that we could eat later.
In the parks there are definitely some restaurants that are better than others as far as the quality and amount of food you get as quick service meals. More on those later!
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