The <Insert Imaginative Trip Report Title Here> Trip Report - WDW 03-31-12 - 04-04-12
Day One Saturday, March 31, 2012
You never really know or understand how long and dark the night is until you drive it. I mean you have a sort of idea, but usually you're asleep during the night and don't really have a firm grasp on exactly how long and how dark the night is. Let me tell you, after driving to Orlando in it, it is very long and extremely dark.
We entered Alabama around midnight and drove straight through to Florida.
We stopped off at the Florida Welcome Center around 1:00a.m., of course the information area was closed, but we just needed it for the restrooms.
One good thing about the Florida rest stops is that all the ones we passed had nighttime security guards, so we felt safe stopping off with two kids. By some miracle, the kids were still awake despite the late hour and had passed the time watching a Disney movie on the DVD player.
Anyway, we did our business and after we got loaded back into the car, I took a photo.
I also tried to take one of the Blue Angels plane on display, but I was too far away for my camera's flash to work correctly so the photo looks like I took it with the lens cap on. I'll spare you a look at that image.
We took off back on I-10 towards Tallahassee, my wife and I switching off the driving duties every 100 miles.
Traffic was very light, pretty much no cars on the road and only the occasional 18-wheeler. Most of the 18-wheelers we did see were parked at the rest areas resting for the night. We practically had the road to ourselves.
We passed through Tallahassee, somehow missing the time zone notification sign, although I knew by the time we got to Tallahassee that we had to be in the Eastern time zone by then. We drove further East and then hit the other Interstate (75 I think) finally headed South towards Orlando!
Dawn graced us with its presence sometime a little after 6:00a.m. and about an hour later we stopped off at a Dunkin Donuts to stretch all our legs and get a bit of breakfast.
After standing in line for a bit (which would help us get used to standing in line at WDW) we got our pastries and piled back in the car for the last push to Orlando.
We paid a couple of tolls along the way and saw our first orange grove, complete with oranges on the trees. The kids had never seen that before.
I believe we entered Orlando sometime around 7:30a.m. and got onto Disney property somewhere near 8:00a.m., I don't know, we were just so excited to be at Disney that we didn't really pay attention to the time.
We navigated our way to our resort, Coronado Springs Resort, it was big and very nice looking. We went into El Centro and Jane and the kids went to look around the gift shop a bit while I checked in.
I know I could have done online checkin a week or so before, but I wanted the full interactive experience of checkin.
I told the CM that I knew rooms wouldn't be ready at that early hour, but they actually had a room ready for us, but it was the Casitas right next to El Centro. Knowing that that's near the convention center and possibly any convention attendees, I really didn't want to stay there.
From my research here on DISboards and from the Unofficial Guide, I knew that the best room for us in terms of closeness to the Dig Site and a bus stop would be either 8A, 8B or 7B. So, I marked those on the map for the CM, asking if it was possible for us to get a room in one of those areas.
She was surprised, she told me that people usually want to be closer to El Centro, but I told her we wanted to be close to the Dig Site pool. She made a phone call and in a few minutes had us a room in 8B, but it wouldn't be ready until later in the day. No problem I told her, we would be going to Epcot for a while.
So, I gave her my cell number so they could send me a text when our room was ready. She gave me our Keys to the Kingdom that would get us into our room and the parks. I asked about First Visit buttons for the kids and for me and Jane, explaining that we hadn't been since the 70s. The CM told me that if we hadn't been to WDW since the 90s, then we could consider ourselves first-timers. Sweet! So I had buttons for us all! I also arranged for the resort staff to leave gift bags for the girls that I had made earlier in the week as welcome bags in the room. They even offered to add some balloons to the bags.
We loaded back into the car, drove to the parking area outside our building, parked, got our park-going gear out of the car and walked to bus stop #4.
We only had to wait no more than 5-8 minutes for a bus that was headed to Epcot. Soon we were on our first bus ride to one of the parks!
The bus was not crowded at all, I think we were about the only family on it. Within 10 minutes, the bus pulled into the Epcot entrance and dropped us off.
We started our PhotoPass collection, looked at some of the topiaries that were part of the annual Flower and Garden Festival that has started a week or two earlier. We also went to the butterfly garden to see the pretty flowers and butterflies.
We went over to try to ride Soarin' but found that even though we had measured Joanna a couple of weeks earlier and she seemed to be just at the required height for most rides, somehow between that time and the time we arrived at Epcot, she had shrunk a bit and didn't meet the minimum height requirements of a lot of the rides.
So, we didn't ride Soarin', but we did get to ride Nemo and that was fun. The kids enjoyed it. We also found our way into Turtle Talk With Crush. We split up at the door, the kids went to sit on the floor down front while Jane and I sat on a row in the back. The interactive nature of the show was very interesting, we enjoyed it. When it came time for Crush to take questions, a couple of kids were selected and got to interact with Crush. When Crush started talking to the third kid, we realized it was Susanna!
She had been talking about how she wanted to talk to Crush and she actually got the chance. Her question was Who is your friend? Turns out, Crush's friend is Dori and that provided a segueway for Crush to bring Dori into the program. This was a very good first experience for the kids and gave Susanna a great memory.
We looked around the area outside of Crush at all the fish in the aquariums for a bit and then went outside and to try to get on Test Track. The wait time was 60 minutes and while Susanna and I wanted to ride, it wouldn't be fair to make Jane and Joanna wait for all that time, so we got out of line and decided to try to tour the world.
We started our tour at Mexico. Since it was close to lunchtime by that time, at least maybe by our stomachs which were still on Centro time, we decided to try the food at Cantina de San Angel, a QS eatery right outside the Mexico pavilion.
This was my first introduction to the Disney food machine. Not too bad, go up to the CM taking orders, literally left and right, his left and right, then advance to the next line in front of the counter. Had our food within 10 minutes and found Jane and the kids holding a table for us.
We split an order of nachos. It was big enough to feed all of us a little snack. We liked it, the meat was seasoned perfectly and everything, we really liked them.
It was at this time that I realized I hadn't charged my phone in a while and forgot to charge it in the car on the way down like I had planned. I was hoping it didn't die before I got the text about our room being ready.
We wanted to go look around the other pavilions and find some characters, but it looked like a storm was coming.
We decided to hop on one of the boats and head over to France to see if we could see Beauty and/or the Beast.
After a short boat ride, we were let out at Germany.
We made our way over to Morocco where we saw our first characters: Aladdin and Jasmine.
After getting their autographs and photos, we walked briskly but trying to see some detail, all along watching the skies grow darker.
It was during this time that I got the text about our room being ready and then my phone died. The battery held out long enough for me to get that message.
We eventually found our way to France where we saw a line for Beast. We got in it and let the kids and Jane meet Beast.
Just as their time with Beast was coming to a close, the skies started opening up and Beast's handler had to cut everyone else in line off in order to get Beast out of the rain.
It really started to pour so we decided to stop off somewhere so we could get our ponchos out in order to enjoy Epcot while most people were taking cover.
Unfortunately, by the time we stopped off in some perfume shop in France, we were already slightly soaked. But, we all got our ponchos on, got out the umbrellas and tried to brave our way through the rest of the world pavilions.
That plan didn't work too well. It was ok at first, but by the time we got to the U.K., it was pouring like I hadn't seen since a tropical storm. We ducked into some shop in the U.K., I can't even tell you what shop it was, where we tried to wait the worst of it out.
The streets were flooding, we were soaked all through. We decided to make our way back to the front gates of Epcot and head back to the resort.
So, we didn't get to ride Soarin', Test Track, and didn't really get to see most of Epcot. We were soaked, chilled and tired, but we enjoyed what time we had at Epcot and just put those missed items on the list for the next time we would visit.
We boarded a bus for our resort and headed back, wet and tired. The room was nice. About the size and décor of an average hotel room anywhere else I've been, but this one had Mickey Mouse in different areas of the patterns in the room: on the runner down the middle of the bed, in the frame of the mirrors, etc.
The girls also found their welcome bags which each had an autograph/photograph book and a few trinkets.
I unloaded the car, we ate a supper from the supply of food we had brought with us, and I hung up the ponchos to dry and tried to pack our backpacks for the next day.
I had also discovered that we had no hope of our shoes drying in time for the next day's park. I tried drying them in the resort's dryer but that didn't work. It was noisy and they kept knock the dryer door open.
Since I had made everyone else pack a second pair of shoes, they were fine, it was me that didn't pack a second pair of shoes.
I had to walk to Panchito's in El Centro in squishy shoes to purchase a pair of Mickey
Crocs for me to wear in the park the next day. They actually were comfy and stylish, I thought.
Yes, I did wear socks with them. They were moisture-wicking socks and also kept the top edge of the crocs from rubbing my feet raw.
We turned in kinda early as we were exhausted from the very long day that had started at 10:00p.m. the night before.
We watched some TV, found the Disney channel that had a bedtime story, let the kids watch that and then they were out followed very shortly by Jane and I.
So, that was our first day at WDW, tomorrow would be another day, but this time Magic Kingdom!
NEXT: Day Two!!!
Your girls are absolutely adorable! Can't wait to hear about the rest of your trip. 
