Day 1- Getting There

The 20 days from Christmas morning until the day that we caught our flight to Orlando flew by with the preparations of all things Disney.  I spent a good portion of the time hunting down and gathering up Mickey shirts, sandals (in January!), ponchos, costumes, smashing pennies, glow sticks, decongestants for the flights and anything else I thought we might need in the parks.

And then we got on the plane!

Boy, for kids who haven't flown since 2012 this was a VERY exciting day!

It was just a quick two hour flight and we were looking up at palm trees!  We met up with our chauffeur, made a quick grocery store stop and were on our way to Disney World.  I tried but didn't quiet succeed at explaining to the kids that we weren't going to be IN a Disney park until the next day.  Every time we went somewhere new (the hotel lobby, our hotel room, the pool) Noah would ask, "Is this Disney World?"  There was so much to take in and so far, none of it looked like Mickey Mouse or Buzz Lightyear, which must have been pretty confusing for him.

My original plan for our first evening there included taking the Disney bus over to the Magic Kingdom and riding the monorail to the Polynesian, where I knew we could play on the beach and watch the fireworks from across the Seven Seas Lagoon.  I'm glad that plan didn't work for reasons that I'll explain later- and the minute the kids saw the pool, they weren't interested in anything but swimming.  So we swam!  The water was heated and it was just so fun to say we were swimming outside in January.

That plus Goofy gummies and giant letters to sit on and movies projected at the pool and the overall warmth of the night and the beautiful flowers and trees to enjoy and tired little travelers made for a magical, but rather calm, first evening.  We even managed to go to bed at a fairly reasonable time (for the first and last time of the trip).

And the next morning, we were ready to hit the ground running!