Traveling to Disney World - October 2021
Not much fun is involved on travel days to Disney World. Especially when you are driving 10-12 hours. We got up as early as we could and headed down. We had to make the trip in one day, and we needed to get down to Orlando early enough that we could go to Shades of Green to get our park tickets before the ticket office closed.
Melody was really happy at first, but the attitude eventually came (see below). She was always ecstatic when we got out of the car though. We tried to make as few stops as possible other than lunch and gas.
On the way down, our friends were already at Disney World. After some texting with them, we decided to rent a stroller. We opted to not bring one due to room in the car mainly. I wanted to be able to see out the back window when driving and adding the stroller would have kept that from happening. Renting a stroller at Disney World is $13/day if you rent it for multiple days. We weighed the pros and cons, and we decided to rent from Kingdom Strollers. I had already looked into them the past, but I was always hesitant. Plus Disney changed their delivery policy at hotels. But at Doubletree that was not the issue. So I ordered it at 3pm on Sunday. It was only $60 and was waiting at bell services the next morning. I highly recommend them if you can make it work. The price is nice and the availability is great.
We made it to Shades of Green in plenty of time to get our tickets. I was exceptionally thankful. And I even got them linked to our account before they closed just to be sure there were no issues. Since it was dinner time, we decided to stay there and eat pizza. It was cheap and really good. The resort was really nice, and we hope to stay there in the future.
By the time we made it to the hotel, it was already dark. I had really hoped to get there early and spend some time at the pool or playground or to even make it to Disney Springs. But that just did not happen. Instead we got checked in, unloaded (no carts was a bummer), and got unpacked and settled. Then I got our park bag and clothes ready for the next day. I plan to do a whole post all about our hotel stay and experience. But a dilemma we were faced with first thing that we did not expect was the bus transportation to the parks. It is set up much different than pre-COVID. You have to book the bus on a website and pick a time. Time slots are limited and there were very few. I plan to go into more details later. But due to the change, we had to drive the next day to make sure we had the transportation we needed. Not the best ending to the day, but we were just hours from getting to go to Disney World, so we made the best of it!
