Day 1 – We Leave the Cold Behind for Some Sun and Palm Trees!
Our travel day began early. I mean really early. Our flight was at 6am, leaving from Montreal, Quebec to Orlando. Being an international flight, we had to be at the airport at 4am. With the excitement building up, I don’t think either of us slept more than a couple of hours.
Even though we were ready to go before the sun had even risen, we were in a good mood and managed a smile for a picture. Try to get me to smile at 4am on a regular day and you might not survive. But in this case, we were headed to Disney, so even I managed to not be grumpy
We had a moment of dread before boarding the plane as there was a group of cheerleaders headed down to Disney as well. But thankfully the girls slept the entire flight. In fact, most of the people slept. Including this man next to us who looked like something straight out of a horror movie:
Other than that scary sight, the flight was uneventful and we landed at Orlando around 9:15am. I had rented a car with Thrifty through Bookit for only $240 for 2 weeks. We had 3 days planned at Universal, so it was just more convenient to have a car.
I brought my trusty GPS with me from home and he (we call him Mick) has never gotten us lost…until today. I had programmed it to go to Walmart and I missed an exit. Mick re-routed us.. right into the Florida Mall and then round and round in circles. A good hour later we finally found Walmart. We made a quick stop to get some breakfast foods and souvenirs and off we went! Thankfully Mick found AoA with no problem.
We got a room in the King Triton building as last time. I had done online check in 30 days prior and had requested a room on the second floor and close to transportation. Last time we had a view of the Little Mermaid pool. This time we had what they call a courtyard view room, closer to the parking lot. We were actually able to see most of the Illuminations fireworks from our room.
I know a lot of people complain about the walk from the lobby to the Little Mermaid section, but I actually timed it on a night that we were pretty tired and it took us 5 minutes and 24 seconds. Really not that bad at all, although I can see how it can be far if you have little children to carry (or drag, whichever).
We also picked up our Magic Bands from the lobby. I had bought stickers ahead of time so once we got to our room, I stuck them on:
I got the green with a Loki decal and my mom got yellow with a Queen of Hearts decal. They actually stayed on the bands the entire trip, even though we went in the pool almost every day. Loved them!
We quickly unpacked and then jumped in the pool. It was a REALLY long winter this year so we wanted to soak in as much heat and sun as we possibly could. Around 3pm we got showered, changed, and headed to Downtown Disney for dinner. Of course, I had to stop and take some pictures of the resort along the way to the bus:
We also made a quick stop at the gift shop and food court to pick up gift cards (which we loaded with money and used for the duration of our trip) and to get 2 refillable mugs.
You’re probably wondering why I’m wearing long sleeves in my pictures when all I wanted to do was soak in the sun and heat. Well, I wore long sleeves because Disney likes to keep it’s buses cold enough to store meat. Seriously though, what is up with the air conditioning in these buses?
I didn’t make many ADRs this trip like I did last year – just a few that we really enjoyed. However, this time I did want to try Raglan Road as it seems to get a lot of love on the DIS. So off we headed for our 5pm ADR.
We were given seats right near the stage so we got a great view of the wonderful dancers:
I forgot to take a picture of the bread, but our waitress brought us bread with oil, Guinness, and sugar. For our meal, I ordered the Bangers and Booz – sausages with mashed potatoes and Guinness beef stew, which was about $20:
Mom chose the Fish & Chips, but changed the chips for onion rings. I believe this was also about $20:
We both really enjoyed our dishes. I found mine was a bit heavy and would have been better in cold weather, but overall, we enjoyed the food and entertainment. I wouldn’t necessarily say this would be a must-do for future trips, but I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to others!
DTD had undergone a few changes since last year, so we walked around to see some of the new additions (and to walk off our meal!). I really liked Boathouse and what they did with the inside and outside of the restaurant:
I found the menu to be just a bit too pricy for my liking, but I’m interested in seeing more reviews as time goes by.
As we were walking, I noticed there was no line at Ghirardellis. I thought there must be something wrong – every single time we walk by this place, the line is out the door. There was not a soul in sight! So I finally got to try this ice cream:
We shared the Sea Salted Caramel sundae and it was definitely worth $10!
After walking around for a bit, we were so stuffed and exhausted from our long day that we decided to head back to the resort around 7:30pm. Before we caught the bus, we just had to stop into Goofy’s Candy Co to pick up some snacks (did I mention we were stuffed?). Mom got some Jelly Bellies and I got my favourite treat:
Red velvet Mickey cake pop – yum!
It didn’t take long before we were in bed and lights out at 8:30pm!