Trying to make 1st day ADR's....PLEASE HELP!!!

[suzquig]

We are going to WDW August 30th-Sept 4th...there are 8 of us-4 of which are our children ages 12-2. We arrive at MCO at 2:53PM. We are staying at BCV's. I am trying to plan a "special" dinner on our 1st night to kick off the week. If I remember correctly it "uually" takes about 2-2.5 hours from landing at MCO to get to property...is my memory correct??? Then I am thinking roughly another 30-45 minutes for check in and getting to villa. I am thinking of trying to make a 7 ish ADR at a restaurant.
Questions:
1)do you think 7ish is reasonable...probably will go to an Epcot area rest or MK area restaurant
2) Thinking either Crystal Palace or Chef Mickey's because the 2 year old would be in utter amazement...any other suggestions...Garden Grill, Cape May rest.... Want to get the kids in the Disney mood, but doesn't Have to be a character meal....
Thanks so much in adavnce!!!!

 

[PoohsFan1]

That is always a hard one for us, because we never do parks on our first day, therefore we don't know where we will be at dinnertime. We leave for Disney tomorrow and I don't have anything planned because we still haven't made up our minds as to what we are going to do, so I think we are just going to either eat at our resort's FC or head down to DTD (staying at POFQ), or possibly we'll go over to B&C for some burgers and then ice cream sundaes. But for our September trip, we did make ADRs for our first night at California Grill because we are staying at CR so it will be very easy to get to .

 

[Missytara]

We are going to WDW August 30th-Sept 4th...there are 8 of us-4 of which are our children ages 12-2. We arrive at MCO at 2:53PM. We are staying at BCV's. I am trying to plan a "special" dinner on our 1st night to kick off the week. If I remember correctly it "uually" takes about 2-2.5 hours from landing at MCO to get to property...is my memory correct??? Then I am thinking roughly another 30-45 minutes for check in and getting to villa. I am thinking of trying to make a 7 ish ADR at a restaurant.
Questions:
1)do you think 7ish is reasonable...probably will go to an Epcot area rest or MK area restaurant
2) Thinking either Crystal Palace or Chef Mickey's because the 2 year old would be in utter amazement...any other suggestions...Garden Grill, Cape May rest.... Want to get the kids in the Disney mood, but doesn't Have to be a character meal....
Thanks so much in adavnce!!!!

It takes ninety minutes to reach your resort from MCO.

You are staying in a villa; these take a bit longer to get ready than regular rooms because they take longer to clean.

DVC specifically starts check-in at 4:00 pm. They just start it; we were in a studio and didn't get our room call until 4:50 pm. Our luggage was delivered at 5:00 pm.

We had ressies fro 6:15 pm at Kouzzina's, which meant we had to shower, change, and that was just three of us. The earliest we could get to the bus stop was 5:45 pm, and it only gave us 30 minutes to transfer to a park/DTD to get to a resort bus.

We opted for a cab, and still just made it in time.

If you are insistent on doing some kind of special meal the first night, I would stick to the BW loop area where you could take the boat from BCV.

 

[Brook1099]

I think Clambake @ Beach Club is a wonderful idea, we love it there and so do my kiddies, they love to draw on the paperlined table. We make sure we go every trip whether staying @ the Beach or not.

This way if u are running late u don't have to rush to the parks w/ little ones in tow.

 

[pixarmom]

This is my third plug for Garden Grill on this board in the last 15 minutes! We have three boys, aged pre-school to pre-teen and Garden Grill is our arrival night tradition. Great character interaction (including Mickey, Pluto, Chip and Dale) with good food in a relatively relaxed setting. We stayed at BC earlier this month, and it made our arrival night tradition at Garden Grill even better!

So OP, you could walk right into EPCOT through IG, enjoy dinner at Garden Grill, and then see Illuminations. One of the best things about BC and EPCOT resorts is proximity to EPCOT dining - no bus, no monorail, just walk right over - a great way to end a busy travel day!

 

[suzquig]

Thanks so much for the insight!
PixarMom...given our arrival time of approx.3PM into MCO....would you think a 7PM ADR at the Garden Grill be "OK"...or is that pushing it??
1st time at BCV...we stayed our last 3X at the Poly but thought we would explore....hoping our kids love BCV's as much as they do the Poly!
Thanks again!!!