buzzrelly
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2005
TRAVEL DAY AND THE NOT-SO-MAGICAL EXPRESS
APRIL 8, 2021
I usually start taking pictures as soon as I get up, or at least when I get in the car on travel day, but since I wasn't feeling good I didn't, and now I have no idea what time we left for the airport. But Mike (my DH) drove us to BDL which is about 30 minutes from our house and we had all our luggage checked and our boarding passes by 5:45 am and we were headed to our gate when I finally remember to take a pic!
Ava was so excited to use her Frozen suitcase that Santa had brought her!
After waiting in a fairly long line at Dunkin Donuts for coffee for my mom and tea for me, we headed to our gate. The airport was hopping busy this am and it seemed like any other years as far as traveling. We couldn't even find a seat so we stood to have our drinks but our plane was on time so we weren't waiting long anyway.
Just before we boarded, Ava went over to say hello to our plane.
With Ava with us, we were able to use family boarding
which is between the A and B boarding, and were in our seats by 7:16.
Ava wasn't scared at all and loved having the window seat.
We had a great, uneventful and drama free flight and landed at MCO little early...
I'm not going to lie, the was where the most frustrating (and challenging) part of our trip began. As you probably know, DME isn't doing the luggage delivery to your WDW resort any longer so we went to grab our luggage. Now consider our travel party…me, who still wasn't supposed to be lifting anything over 10 pounds, my 77 year old mom and a 5-year-old. This was tough. I rented one of the carts and managed to somehow drag our luggage onto it, but it wasn't easy. Luckily the carts are easy to push once they're loaded. At any other time, I wouldn't have missed the luggage delivery as much as I did this time and once DME stops after this year, I can see that being a deterrent for people like us. Thankfully, we had Allie on the way home who is young and strong and did the lifting for us
So after the struggle of getting our luggage and getting to DME, the lines were absolutely crazy. All in all, our plane landed at 10:15 and we didn't get on a bus until almost 12:15. I think we must've just missed a bus for our resort because we were first in line but we waited about an hour and a half for the next bus…sigh.
It felt so good to finally get on a bus and with lots of tipping,
we never had to worry about our luggage after this.
The guy from Gold Mobility, where we rented our scooters from, had been texting me because we had arranged at 12:30 drop-off and we were still on the bus. Our last text was at 12:54 and I told him we were at The Boardwalk, so all told, it took almost 3 hours from our plane landing to get to our resort I think that's a new record for us and honestly, if it were just me I would have just called an Uber or Lyft.
Once we finally arrived at The YC, we got our scooters and tutorial from Gold's…they were soooo nice, by the way, and I would HIGHLY recommend renting a scooter from them if you ever needed to! We then grabbed our swim suits from our bags and gave the rest of our bags to bell services to store (since our room wasn't ready), and we hit the pool.
I don't think I mentioned yet that we didn't have park tickets until April 10th because this was the week following Easter and my Gold AP had this week blocked out. Honestly, having nothing to do and no pressure to hit the ground running was an absolutely perfect way to start a vacation. We literally had two (one and a half) resort days where we could just relax and not feel pressured to go anywhere, especially with how I was feeling!
See, this stuff all happens for a reason!
Ava wasted no time getting into this amazing pool,
while my mom and I relaxed in chairs nearby.
A couple hours later, we got the text that our room was ready.
I left them at the pool and went up to call Bell Services to deliver our luggage,
and let's be real, to take a million pictures of our room before we messed it up!
That's next!
APRIL 8, 2021
I usually start taking pictures as soon as I get up, or at least when I get in the car on travel day, but since I wasn't feeling good I didn't, and now I have no idea what time we left for the airport. But Mike (my DH) drove us to BDL which is about 30 minutes from our house and we had all our luggage checked and our boarding passes by 5:45 am and we were headed to our gate when I finally remember to take a pic!
Ava was so excited to use her Frozen suitcase that Santa had brought her!
After waiting in a fairly long line at Dunkin Donuts for coffee for my mom and tea for me, we headed to our gate. The airport was hopping busy this am and it seemed like any other years as far as traveling. We couldn't even find a seat so we stood to have our drinks but our plane was on time so we weren't waiting long anyway.
Just before we boarded, Ava went over to say hello to our plane.
With Ava with us, we were able to use family boarding
which is between the A and B boarding, and were in our seats by 7:16.
Ava wasn't scared at all and loved having the window seat.
We had a great, uneventful and drama free flight and landed at MCO little early...
I'm not going to lie, the was where the most frustrating (and challenging) part of our trip began. As you probably know, DME isn't doing the luggage delivery to your WDW resort any longer so we went to grab our luggage. Now consider our travel party…me, who still wasn't supposed to be lifting anything over 10 pounds, my 77 year old mom and a 5-year-old. This was tough. I rented one of the carts and managed to somehow drag our luggage onto it, but it wasn't easy. Luckily the carts are easy to push once they're loaded. At any other time, I wouldn't have missed the luggage delivery as much as I did this time and once DME stops after this year, I can see that being a deterrent for people like us. Thankfully, we had Allie on the way home who is young and strong and did the lifting for us
So after the struggle of getting our luggage and getting to DME, the lines were absolutely crazy. All in all, our plane landed at 10:15 and we didn't get on a bus until almost 12:15. I think we must've just missed a bus for our resort because we were first in line but we waited about an hour and a half for the next bus…sigh.
It felt so good to finally get on a bus and with lots of tipping,
we never had to worry about our luggage after this.
The guy from Gold Mobility, where we rented our scooters from, had been texting me because we had arranged at 12:30 drop-off and we were still on the bus. Our last text was at 12:54 and I told him we were at The Boardwalk, so all told, it took almost 3 hours from our plane landing to get to our resort I think that's a new record for us and honestly, if it were just me I would have just called an Uber or Lyft.
Once we finally arrived at The YC, we got our scooters and tutorial from Gold's…they were soooo nice, by the way, and I would HIGHLY recommend renting a scooter from them if you ever needed to! We then grabbed our swim suits from our bags and gave the rest of our bags to bell services to store (since our room wasn't ready), and we hit the pool.
I don't think I mentioned yet that we didn't have park tickets until April 10th because this was the week following Easter and my Gold AP had this week blocked out. Honestly, having nothing to do and no pressure to hit the ground running was an absolutely perfect way to start a vacation. We literally had two (one and a half) resort days where we could just relax and not feel pressured to go anywhere, especially with how I was feeling!
See, this stuff all happens for a reason!
Ava wasted no time getting into this amazing pool,
while my mom and I relaxed in chairs nearby.
A couple hours later, we got the text that our room was ready.
I left them at the pool and went up to call Bell Services to deliver our luggage,
and let's be real, to take a million pictures of our room before we messed it up!
That's next!