Okay, I have navigators and kids programming at my desk for 3-4 and 5-7 groups. Feel free to ask any questions. I'm putting our land and sea details all in this thread.
Day one
Arrive in Orlando. Kids doing okay but getting a bit cranky. Get the car, drive to Disney while looking for a grocery store. Get into Disney property and have still not seen a grocery store. Made DH turn around, and got completely lost in Orlando, wound up in outlet mall area and asked for nearest grocery store. Directed to Super Walmart, got there, kids asleep in car! DH went and got groceries (fruit, bread, pb, cereal bars, chips, water and beer)
Checked in at CBR at 3:00- kids still asleep in car. Check-in very smooth, drove to room and kids were awake. Dropped the luggage, grabbed a camera and some bottles of water and headed out to MGM even though AK was a late night, we felt that AK would be better in a morning.
First camera shot at MGM discovered digital camera batteries were dead and we hadn’t unpacked the back-up ones. DH turned around and went to camera store, snarky CM (our only bad experience) told him that we’d need to buy double A batteries off-site, as Disney was sold out. ??? I found them at the next concession. $6! But what can you do?
MGM was a blast, kids loved the big hat, the muppet show, meeting Mike/Sully (whichever is the big blue one) from Monsters Inc, and Fantasmic. So glad we stayed for the show.
Got back to CBRt and picked up a late dinner at the Port. Decent cafeteria style food, some good salad selections.
What we’d do differently- Glad we bought groceries, I wouldn’t buy as much next time and would look at that on-line delivery service. Buying bread and pb and some fruit was good, chips were a waste really as the bags were too big to take to park, too greasy as a snack at night.
Should have bought 24 bottles of water/beer instead of 12, we went through them all and spent another hour on the day of cruise having to stop and buy water and beer.
Should have brought a stroller. My kids are not “walkers” (4 and 5) and for 4 days strollers would be around $50 in the parks, and we really needed them from the tram to the car, from the car to the hotel room, etc. If your kids are not walkers, consider buying a decent umbrella stroller and just selling it after the trip. I don’t have a double umbrella style and should have bought one for this. But the strollers at Disney ARE great. And the lines were not bad at all.
Tickets we purchased were on the old system, which meant we got 4 days from the day we arrived to the day we checked out. We were not able to add the non-expiry option to them. So we had to make a decision to either lose part of the day on the ship, or lose a part day in the park. Kind of a bummer. I asked if I could pay more $ to use the last day after the cruise, but they said not able to do it with our type of ticket.
Bring a pen for autographs. DOH!
Rented a stroller, even for only 2-3 hours. It would have been worth it!
What worked- Would stay at Disney, however might stay at a value instead of a moderate if the price is that much better. We never once even looked around CBR, too busy with the parks. The little we saw was nice, we just were hardly ever there! Apparently they have a great kid’s play area… we never saw it!
Thanks to the poster who suggested using a scrapbook for the autographs. It worked wonderfully and now I can put the pictures right around their names.
DH and I each having our own camera (him digital, me not) worked GREAT. We each took pictures based on what we wanted and there were surprising few duplicates.
Day one
Arrive in Orlando. Kids doing okay but getting a bit cranky. Get the car, drive to Disney while looking for a grocery store. Get into Disney property and have still not seen a grocery store. Made DH turn around, and got completely lost in Orlando, wound up in outlet mall area and asked for nearest grocery store. Directed to Super Walmart, got there, kids asleep in car! DH went and got groceries (fruit, bread, pb, cereal bars, chips, water and beer)
Checked in at CBR at 3:00- kids still asleep in car. Check-in very smooth, drove to room and kids were awake. Dropped the luggage, grabbed a camera and some bottles of water and headed out to MGM even though AK was a late night, we felt that AK would be better in a morning.
First camera shot at MGM discovered digital camera batteries were dead and we hadn’t unpacked the back-up ones. DH turned around and went to camera store, snarky CM (our only bad experience) told him that we’d need to buy double A batteries off-site, as Disney was sold out. ??? I found them at the next concession. $6! But what can you do?
MGM was a blast, kids loved the big hat, the muppet show, meeting Mike/Sully (whichever is the big blue one) from Monsters Inc, and Fantasmic. So glad we stayed for the show.
Got back to CBRt and picked up a late dinner at the Port. Decent cafeteria style food, some good salad selections.
What we’d do differently- Glad we bought groceries, I wouldn’t buy as much next time and would look at that on-line delivery service. Buying bread and pb and some fruit was good, chips were a waste really as the bags were too big to take to park, too greasy as a snack at night.
Should have bought 24 bottles of water/beer instead of 12, we went through them all and spent another hour on the day of cruise having to stop and buy water and beer.
Should have brought a stroller. My kids are not “walkers” (4 and 5) and for 4 days strollers would be around $50 in the parks, and we really needed them from the tram to the car, from the car to the hotel room, etc. If your kids are not walkers, consider buying a decent umbrella stroller and just selling it after the trip. I don’t have a double umbrella style and should have bought one for this. But the strollers at Disney ARE great. And the lines were not bad at all.
Tickets we purchased were on the old system, which meant we got 4 days from the day we arrived to the day we checked out. We were not able to add the non-expiry option to them. So we had to make a decision to either lose part of the day on the ship, or lose a part day in the park. Kind of a bummer. I asked if I could pay more $ to use the last day after the cruise, but they said not able to do it with our type of ticket.
Bring a pen for autographs. DOH!
Rented a stroller, even for only 2-3 hours. It would have been worth it!
What worked- Would stay at Disney, however might stay at a value instead of a moderate if the price is that much better. We never once even looked around CBR, too busy with the parks. The little we saw was nice, we just were hardly ever there! Apparently they have a great kid’s play area… we never saw it!
Thanks to the poster who suggested using a scrapbook for the autographs. It worked wonderfully and now I can put the pictures right around their names.
DH and I each having our own camera (him digital, me not) worked GREAT. We each took pictures based on what we wanted and there were surprising few duplicates.
