mindylee847
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Mar 6, 2012
- Messages
- 613
I'm so excited to be staring my trip report!! Although it's sad because it means I'm back to reality. The first update is pretty text heavy so I apologize, but I'll try to make it a little interesting!
Travel - On the Open Road
Today was the day! I set my alarm the night before for a 3 AM wake up time. Unfortunately, I didn't get all the sleep I wanted since I needed to see the finale of Dancing with the Stars. (YAY NYLE!)
We were all packed up except for the final morning necessities. We made sure to shower at night so there would be no delay and I also hoped that it would help relax me a little since I was way too excited.
3 AM rolled around and we packed up the rest, had some waffles, and were out the door by 3:40 AM.
Mike was hoping to hit the road by 3:20 but I was hoping for a realistic 3:30. We were distracted by our adorable cats though and ya know, eating... ah well, in no time we were on the open road!
We always play this song from A Goofy Movie first on our way out to Disney World to get us pumped up!
It was a pretty uneventful experience for most of the drive. We had purchased some Jimmy John's subs for the ride down so that there would be no delay in stopping to our first destination. Our goal was to get to the Sleep Inn in Valdosta, GA from a little North of Milwaukee, WI. That was about a 15 hour drive without stops or hitting traffic. We hit a lot of traffic in Atlanta and that was pretty much the only rough patch of our ride. Chicago was fine so early in the morning and no issues were in the mountains. We did stop to have a sub in the Smokies which was pretty cool.
We made it to the Sleep Inn by 9:15 PM ET. I'd recommend this stop. The room was nice and large. We were given a King size bed and the shower was pretty nice for a hotel. They did have a breakfast offered in the morning - but don't expect to eat it unless you are okay with just some cereal. We grabbed tea and some bananas but when we tried to eat the bananas in the car, they were all brown on the inside. Meh - it was only about $55 for the night and I didn't expect much.
We were up and back on the road by 6 AM ET as we had about a 3 hour drive to go to get to Animal Kingdom Lodge!!
This last leg was pretty uneventful too. But we did make a stop at the gas station that's on the freeway along the Turnpike. I can't remember the name of it... but it's really weird and I'm not sure how to even pronounce it. We stopped here to pick up our Sun Pass!! We figured that since we are driving down in October and March again in the next year that it's worth the investment.
We saw some of our first palm trees and I tried to take an artsy shot through my sunglasses.
Soon after, we started to see some signs leading us to Disney World!
We did go under the arches, but for some reasons I only did a Snapchat video and forgot to save it.
Know this though - I put it in fast forward mode and we both yelled "WOOO!" the entire time and we sounded like chipmunks. So just picture that. 
We went through the security gate and went to park our car.
We took everything with us out of the car as I had received a text message from Disney World at 8:58 AM ET telling us that our room was ready! We were in room 4004 on the 4th floor along the Giraffe trail. I looked at the map and was a little sad since I realized I wouldn't have a view of animals - not that I paid for that anyways. So I expected we would be looking out over the buses. For those of you that know the resort inside and out, you may know our view... but I'm going to leave this here for now as our travel is done!
Did our Magic Bands work and let us in our room right away? What kind of view did we get? You'll have to wait to find out!
Travel - On the Open Road
Today was the day! I set my alarm the night before for a 3 AM wake up time. Unfortunately, I didn't get all the sleep I wanted since I needed to see the finale of Dancing with the Stars. (YAY NYLE!)
We were all packed up except for the final morning necessities. We made sure to shower at night so there would be no delay and I also hoped that it would help relax me a little since I was way too excited.
3 AM rolled around and we packed up the rest, had some waffles, and were out the door by 3:40 AM.

We always play this song from A Goofy Movie first on our way out to Disney World to get us pumped up!
It was a pretty uneventful experience for most of the drive. We had purchased some Jimmy John's subs for the ride down so that there would be no delay in stopping to our first destination. Our goal was to get to the Sleep Inn in Valdosta, GA from a little North of Milwaukee, WI. That was about a 15 hour drive without stops or hitting traffic. We hit a lot of traffic in Atlanta and that was pretty much the only rough patch of our ride. Chicago was fine so early in the morning and no issues were in the mountains. We did stop to have a sub in the Smokies which was pretty cool.
We made it to the Sleep Inn by 9:15 PM ET. I'd recommend this stop. The room was nice and large. We were given a King size bed and the shower was pretty nice for a hotel. They did have a breakfast offered in the morning - but don't expect to eat it unless you are okay with just some cereal. We grabbed tea and some bananas but when we tried to eat the bananas in the car, they were all brown on the inside. Meh - it was only about $55 for the night and I didn't expect much.
We were up and back on the road by 6 AM ET as we had about a 3 hour drive to go to get to Animal Kingdom Lodge!!

This last leg was pretty uneventful too. But we did make a stop at the gas station that's on the freeway along the Turnpike. I can't remember the name of it... but it's really weird and I'm not sure how to even pronounce it. We stopped here to pick up our Sun Pass!! We figured that since we are driving down in October and March again in the next year that it's worth the investment.
We saw some of our first palm trees and I tried to take an artsy shot through my sunglasses.

Soon after, we started to see some signs leading us to Disney World!

We did go under the arches, but for some reasons I only did a Snapchat video and forgot to save it.



We went through the security gate and went to park our car.

We took everything with us out of the car as I had received a text message from Disney World at 8:58 AM ET telling us that our room was ready! We were in room 4004 on the 4th floor along the Giraffe trail. I looked at the map and was a little sad since I realized I wouldn't have a view of animals - not that I paid for that anyways. So I expected we would be looking out over the buses. For those of you that know the resort inside and out, you may know our view... but I'm going to leave this here for now as our travel is done!
Did our Magic Bands work and let us in our room right away? What kind of view did we get? You'll have to wait to find out!
