Trip Report November 2013 - Day #1 - Flying, Driving, and Port Orleans Riverside Alligator Bayou

It's October 31, 2013 and the McKnights are heading to the airport.  We were ready to embark on this epic Walt Disney World and Disney Cruise Line vacation.  Twelve nights total with three of them on the Disney Dream to celebrate Doug's parents 40th Wedding anniversary.  It will be the first time we travel with family to our favorite destination. It was a crazy busy day with school Halloween parties for Sam and Clair.  (Alden had to miss his Kindergarten Halloween party to make it to the airport in time, he seemed okay with the trade off of Disney World a day sooner.  

Because we were traveling on Halloween we thought we should all be in "costume" so the girls went with a Star Wars theme and the boys went Avengers.

Sam and Clair at the Airport with their Her Universe outfits on.

Sam spent the travel day as her favorite Star Wars character Ahsoka Tano and Clair was R2D2.

Almost as entertaining as the back side of water.

R2D2, Asoka, and Captain America ready to fly

My trio of mini Disney Experts.  The kids liked the extra attention they received from their outfits.  Their were a few other people dressed up a little for the holiday.  

Alden on the first flight from Omaha to St. Louis.  

We flew on Southwest down to Orlando.  At the Omaha airport the Southwest employees were the only ones in costume for Halloween.  The flight attendants told the kids they weren't allowed by the government to wear costumes when they asked.  

Sam was already hard at work on home work.  

Clair was doing her "homework" too.

The first leg of the trip we sat girls in one row and boys behind us.  I was wearing a Asajj Ventress Tunic from Her Universe. 

And a shot of Alden doing his home work just to prove we did it.  I was proud of the kids for working on it so much on the flight down.

Alden kept trying to boss Doug around because he was the "captain" of the Avengers.  Doug would simple reply that no one can tell Iron Man what to do.  They were a little too into the outfits at times.  

The kids about to board the plane.

After a stop in St. Louis we were getting back on our way to Orlando.  In St. Louis, we were able to grab a greasy bite to eat.  As you can, see we make the kids pull their own weight by carrying their own back packs.  We really like the back packs that have a chest strap.  This prevents them from letting it just fall off their shoulders.  The backpacks we like best are from Pottery Barn Kids. 

From STL to MCO I got to sit with the oldest and Doug got the pleasure of sitting with Clair.  It really is a toss up on who you want to sit by.   We fight over Alden as he is the best travel buddy.  The girls are higher maintenance, but over all they all travel very well.  We try to force feed Clair something as the plane takes off and lands.  Usually fruit snacks or something chewy so there is lots of saliva to swallow.  This was the first trip that Sam and Alden could handle gum.  Our flight out of STL was possibly the roughest we have ever had as we took off in a thunder storm.  Our kids though it was cool, Doug was glad he had put on a patch (for motion sickness), and about 30 middle school Softball players on our flight thought it was a good reason to scream like they were on the Tower of Terror.   

Here we are waiting for the bags to arrive and letting Alden test his camera skills.  Since we got in late and we were renting a car we had to pick up our bags.  One huge advantage of staying at a Walt Disney World Resort is the Magical Express and their bag service.  You get to skip picking up your bags at the airport.  You get a tag to put on them at home and then they are delivered to your room, but it takes a few hours so if you are arriving late in the day or evening you might want to grab your own bags or you could have a bell hop show up at your door at 11:00pm.   We rented a van for this trip because we need to drive to the port and we were switching hotels 3 times.  

The picture we take every trip to show how much stuff I pack and make Doug lug around.  However Alden is starting to become useful at pulling bags.  Samantha and Clair still have a ways to go.

Headed down with our bags to rent our van and found this nice big line at Alamo.

But no line at the kiosk so we swiped our drivers licence and it pulled up our reservation and after a few screens we were out in the parking lot picking out our van.  

After a very low stress drive we have arrived  at "Where Dreams Come True".  

The Kids in the lobby of Port Orleans Riverside

We found our way to the lobby of Port Orleans Riverside where we will be staying for the first part of our trip.  It is also the portion of the trip we will be using the Disney Dinning Plan.  The dining plan comes with refillable mugs, so we grabbed those from the food court before we left for our room.  We were in building #39 which is about as far from every thing as you can get.

A map of Port Orleans Riverside Resort find more info on the resort at the website
www.portorleans.org

The Disney World Moderate resorts all have a large foot print and are quite spread out.  It was about a 7 to 10 min walk to the food court/lobby.  

As a family of 5 our choices our limited when choosing a resort.  Port Orleans Riverside is the only moderate that can sleep five.  The beds have Louis from Princess and the Frog movie on the pillows.  The painting on the wall also features characters from the movie.

This is where Disney got creative with having a 5th person in the room. During the day it was nice to have the bench under the TV.

The cabinet under the TV folds out to reveal a bed.  This bed was fought over the whole time as to who's turn it was to sleep with Louis and Ray.  The bed was easy to put up and down.

A mickey head greeted us as we entered the room.

They put the bayou theme everywhere and hid lots of little gems like the "92" on this wash board is for the year the resort opened in 1992 as Dixie Landing Resort.

The refrigerator is in the cabinet with the coffee maker and ice bucket on top.  

It almost feels like you are taking a shower in a wash tub.  

The curtain is nice for the mornings when I was up getting ready. It let the kids and Doug get a little more sleep.

It was late and we had to get to bed but it is tough to fall asleep when you just arrived in Disney World.  So the kids watched the "Must Do's" with Stacy to help unwind.

After a mean game of rock, paper, scissors  Clair won the rights to the special bed for night #1.

By this time it was about 11:30pm Eastern Time, so we had to get them to sleep so we can hit rope drop at the Magic Kingdom in the morning!

Trip Report - Day 4 Disney Dream Back to Orlando

Our last few hours aboard the Disney Dream have arrived.  For the breakfast on your final morning they tell you what time and where to eat based on where you ate the night before.  Since our final dinner was in the enchanted garden, that is where we ate breakfast the next morning

The breakfast is a nice way to be able to say goodbye to your servers and new friends at your table.  The servers really help make your trip memorable. 

Here is our whole dining crew.  We were often one of the last tables to clear out from our meals, I guess that means we enjoyed each others company.  

This is a shot in the middle of the Enchanted Garden with Cupid Mickey behind us.

After breakfast we went up to the atrium and they announced a few minutes later we could get off the ship.  To get off they scan your room key again to make sure your account is all settled up, so if you are not sure you can check the night before at guest services or before breakfast (warning: the lines can be long the last night).  Breakfast was at 6:45 am and they mean business - promptly at 6:45am! 

When we exited, you head into a large customs room to find your bags which are sorted by your stateroom numbers making it easy to find them.  We were through customs in just a few minutes.   We decided to grab a cab back to the rental car location rather than wait around for their shuttle.  We had our car and were on the road back to Orlando by 8:30am!

It was raining hard most of our drive back to Orlando but we swung by Art of Animation to get a picture of the sign, because we would be there later in the month with the kids!

We stopped by Downtown Disney to do some quick shopping and Doug thought this might be the worst idea ever!  I really worry about anybody that would want their car to smell like a turkey leg.

We then got lunch at Wolfgang Puck Express.  

After some time at Downtown Disney, we drove over to the Polynesian where we had made a reservation at Kona Cafe.  We ended up  just getting a Dole Whip at Captain Cooks (Quick Service Food).  

Doug says it's not a trip to Disney until he has had a Dole Whip...or 2! 

We walked a round a little because the rain had stopped.

We walked over to the TTC (Ticket & Transportation Center) to take a ride on the Highway in the Sky...Monorail!

Waiting for the Monorail! 

Monorail pulling up.

According to Doug this is how I really looked once we were back on land.  3 days is a long time without a cell phone, but it was nice to be "unconnected" for awhile!

Zipping through the Contemporary Resort.

A shot of Bay Lake Tower as we went by.  We will also be here with the kids in a few weeks!

We wished we would have sprang for one day tickets.  We really did not realize how early we would make it back from the port and as this shot shows it was not a busy day at the Magic Kingdom.

After our Monorail ride we drove to the airport.  We were super early which is never a bad thing when dealing with airport security.  

It was a great cruise and a very memorable way to celebrate our 10 year anniversary! 

Trip Report - 10th Anniversary Disney Cruise on the Dream - Travel and Planning

Enjoying a sunset on the Disney Dream

On August 3, 2012 Doug and I celebrated our 10th Wedding anniversary.  We knew we wanted to do something special and I had been wanting to try a Disney Cruise for quite some time.  A 10th anniversary made perfect sense to me, however I had to convince Doug this was a good idea.  Doug has a little bit of a motion sickness problem (by a little bit - I mean he can't even ride the carousel without throwing up).  He had tried all the over the counter products with no help on airplanes or roller coasters so I told him to look for other solutions (more on that later) while I looked at all the cruise options.  

I dove into planning our first cruise, as neither of us had ever cruised before.  There were sooooooo many options.  First we picked a time of year to shoot for, then we started to narrow it down to which cruise line and port.  This was tough because there are so many great options.  We could go to Florida, California, New Orleans, Galveston, and the list goes on.  It seemed like we both liked the idea of Port Canaveral because it is familiar to us with our Disney travels and still relatively inexpensive to reach the port from the airport.  There were some ports where it was less expensive to reach the port from the airport but those cities the flights were significantly more expensive from Omaha.  

Now it was time to narrow down which cruise line we wanted to sail with.  Looking back it is almost funny how much we looked around and how much research we did to make an informed decision.  In the end,  it came down to Royal Caribbean and Disney Cruise Line.  Yes Royal Caribbean was less expensive, but it seemed like more was included with Disney.  We also both liked the fact that there was no casino on the Disney ships.  Disney also has more square footage on its ships dedicated to "adult only" areas per passenger then the other ships that matched our time of year and port.  Add that to the reviews we read of the food and shows and we were sold on the Disney Cruise Line.

It was time to book and even with all the research we did I still felt more comfortable using a travel agent to book our cruise.  I really wanted to book through someone that had been there and done that.  We used a Disney Travel Specialist (which is exactly what my job title is now!!)  to book and she was able to answer all our other questions.

We chose a 3 night cruise with Disney Cruise Line on the Disney Dream!

With lots of other planning and packing we were off on our dream vacation... 

We flew in the day before to allow a little wiggle room just in case there was a problem with the airlines.  

When we arrived in Orlando we picked up our rental car and headed to the hotel.

The biggest mistake I made when planning this trip was letting Doug pick the hotel for the night before the cruise.   Doug wanted to find a hotel that was near the port but not past it.  This limited his options and he was looking for CHEAP options.  He met all his criteria by finding a hotel about 5 miles from the port and just off the highway.  It required no back tracking and we got the bulk of the driving done late at night with little to no traffic, so that made Doug happy.  However it might have been the worst hotel we have ever stayed in.  It was just gross.  I will stop there with the details.  (We stayed at America's Best Value Inn - this is the new name of it, as it has changed hands since we stayed there.)

The next morning we loaded up the luggage in the car and headed to return the rental car bright and early.  

Michelle likes to point out Merritt island because Merritt was her maiden name!

The first view of the Disney Dream as we drove towards Port Canaveral.

 There was a free shuttle from the car rental place to the port, but they can not take passengers until 11:00 and we wanted to get there earlier. (In other words, we wanted to be at 'rope drop' at the port.)  So we got a cab from the car rental to the port for $25.  We felt it was money well spent, because we beat the masses of people to the port.   

Stay tuned for more on our cruise soon!