Day One Plans (January 3, 2017)
9 weeks until WDW!
3 days until FP day!
I figured I'm close enough to the trip now to start going over our daily itinerary, which makes me so excited!
I should actually start before our actual vacation day. I've also found out that the shop I work at is closing down for the week between Christmas and New Year's, so when I leave work on December 23rd, 2016 I won't be back to my office until January 16th, 2017! This is actually pretty nice, because it means I'll be able to get all of my Christmas decorations taken down and put away, and have our suitcases all packed and ready to go well in advance so we're not scrambling around last minute. Luke and I both live in different provinces than our families, so Christmas is a really relaxing time for us, where we just hang out with each other. My mom lives in the same city as us, but she's pretty sure she's going to go back to New Brunswick for Christmas this year (my grandma is still in the hospital, over 3 months later).
We're still not sure what we're doing with our pets while we're away this time. Depending on my step-dad's work schedule, my mom will sometimes come stay in our house with the cats/dogs/degus. Sometimes the dogs go to a kennel and my mom just stops by once a day to check on the cats and degus. Sometimes the dogs go to my best friend's acreage. I actually have a friend moving to Edmonton from New Brunswick, and I told her she could stay in our house rent free for the month of January if she would look after the pets. So, we'll see what happens. If we need to drop the dogs off somewhere, that will be done on January 2nd.
January 3rd will be a super early wake-up. The airport in Edmonton is well outside the city to the south (it's like 45 minutes to an hour from downtown). Luckily, we live close to the perimeter highway that circles our city, so our drive to airport is usually only around 20-25 minutes. We'll be going early enough to avoid morning rush hour, but fingers crossed it isn't snowing that morning! Our first flight is domestic, which is good - we don't have to go through customs/immigration first thing. Our first flight leaves at 6:25am, but is only a 55 minute flight to Calgary. From there, we need to get through customs over to the US Departures. We do have a 2.5 hour layover, so that should give us plenty of time to grab breakfast from somewhere as well. Once we board our plane in Calgary, it's straight to Orlando! It's a 4 hour and 51 minute flight, and we cross two time zones, so we lose two hours of our day going there. We land at MCO at 4:46pm.
As soon as we land and I turn my phone back on, I should receive the text that our room is ready! We'll head to Old Key West on the Magical Express, and go to the check-in counter to pick up our Magicbands (they won't ship them to addresses outside the US). We'll probably go check out our room and balcony, and then we'll be heading over to Disney Springs on the boat! I'm so excited for this!
Depending on what time we get to Disney Springs, we might look around for a bit, or grab a drink at Jock Lindsey's Hangar Bar. Then at 7:30 we have to check in for our reservation at Chef Art Smith's Homecoming! I'm still undecided on what I'll order to eat, but I imagine we'll both be hungry! I'm leaning towards either the fried chicken or the chopped BBQ pork plate - my only concern with ordering chicken is that I don't eat dark meat, and they tend to load you up with thighs and legs... Luke has mentioned the Fried Chicken Sandwich, so that could be a possibility for him. The hummingbird cake also sounds like it's right up Luke's alley, so I'm sure that will be placed on our table at some point. The drink menu also sounds pretty fantastic!
We'll roll ourselves out of the restaurant and back over to Old Key West, where our Garden Grocer order should have arrived. We'll grab that and head to our room, do a bit of unpacking and settling in, and then call it a night!
I honestly think we are done now with our ADR's, I don't even know where we would fit another one in! 
