February 2017 Disney World Trip Report Part One
So Melody just had her first trip to Walt Disney World! You can read all about the planning here. There are so many pictures and details, I decided to break up my trip report into different "parts". Part One is our general visit to Orlando days one and two. On this trip, we wanted to spend time with Brad's grandparents who live in Orlando. So we opted to do that at the beginning of our journey. Read all about it below!
Melody had her first flight experience day one. Our flight departed at 1:00 p.m. right at the time of her bottle. We started to board the plane around 12:30 p.m. We flew Southwest, so we did not have assigned seats. We were in Group B, but we were able to participate in family boarding after Group A. Of course, seeing that this is a flight to the Happiest Place on Earth...if you weren't in Group A, you were more than likely part of the family boarding! Luckily, we found decent seats and we were able to all sit together.
We did not buy Melody a plane ticket since she was under 2. She just sat in our lap the entire time. No one ended up in the seat beside Brad, so she did have a little bit more wiggle room. We started feeding her a few minutes before 1:00 because she was getting fussy. However, she did really well during take off, but she did not sleep until after about an hour into the flight. When she did fall asleep, she was out! I plan to do a post in the future regarding flying with a baby. So be on the lookout for that!
We landed in Orlando at 3:30 eastern time. We made it to the Magical Express line by 4:04, then we were on the bus at 4:18. We left the airport at 4:29, and we were at our resort at 5:03. An hour from line to the hotel isn't that bad at all. We even made one stop at Art of Animation on the way to our hotel. Melody practically slept the entire time on the bus. She woke up about the time we arrived at the Art of Animation.
We made it to our room around 5:15. We had to wait a few minutes outside of the bus to get our car seat, base, and stroller. You can read about the resort here. I will say, we did have to go downstairs to request a pack and play even though I listed it in our resort reservation. That seems to be the norm from all of our hotel stays with Melody. The big problem was that our phone wasn't working in the room, so Brad had to actually go to the front desk.
We fed Melody her bottle in the room, then we headed to the bus for Disney Springs. We waited about 10-15 minutes for a bus. We had some time for a few selfies beforehand. We also took a few pictures on the bus of her first ride on a Disney bus!
We got to Disney Springs around 7. We went straight to D-Luxe Burger to get in line for dinner. We were both super hungry. Here is a post about our experience there, but it did take us about 30 minutes to get through the line and another 10 minutes before we received our food. Not the quickest of meals, but it was what we had already planned to do, and it was Saturday night.
We did some shopping and exploring of Disney Springs since this was the first time Brad had been in almost two years. A lot has changed for sure. We aren't huge fans of the changes so far, but they may grow on us over time. It was just super crowded and didn't feel Disney to us. I felt like I was at a busy outdoor mall. But to some, that may be what Disney Springs is about anyhow. I also feel like they have too many table service restaurants and not enough quick service ones. We were limited on our options for dinner because we didn't make reservations and didn't want to deal with a sit down experience.
We got back to our hotel around 10 just in time to feed Melody. We let her play a little on the bed just to burn some energy. In the meantime, Brad set up our door jumper. She seemed to enjoy it. It really made her day since she could see herself in the mirror too! We had Melody in bed by 11:30, and we showered and went to bed around midnight.
Day two we spent visiting with Brad's grandparents. Not a lot of Disney stuff to report on this day. We did split a Bounty Platter (which I wasn't a fan of here) for breakfast, but we were with his grandparents from around 11:00 until 8:00. We watched the Super Bowl with them through half time, then came back to the room to give Melody a bath and put her to bed. I also had to get our park bags ready since we would have an early morning with breakfast at Epcot!
