First day at Magic Kingdom part 1
We wake up, bright and early in a hot and steamy Orlando. Straight out the door and over to Magic Kingdom for the opening. We had checked out the opening hours on-line before we left Ireland so we knew we needed to be there for the 9am opening.
Why so early? Less crowded, not as hot, smaller queues for the best attractions! Worth doing it early then you can relax in the afternoon, head back the villa, take a dip in the pool and then head back to MK for the evening fully relaxed.
There’s no parking at Magic Kingdom, you have to park at the “Ticket and Transportation Centre” and then get to either the monorail or the ferry. This being our sons first time we went with the ferry. Main reason being that as you sail across the lake the following view appears:
And so begins the magic. You can’t beat watching Cinderellas castle appearing from the woods for a good start to a WDW vacation.
Before you enter any WDW park there is a quick search of any bags you may have with you. Present your ticket at the turnstile , walk under the steam train station and there it is! Main Street.
Travelling from Ireland to Walt Disney World, Florida
Excitement! At long last! Time to head off on our long awaited holiday to Disney in Florida. We were there last in 2002 before our 4 year old was born and have been waiting patiently for him to grow up to an age when he would actually enjoy the trip.
Image via Wikipedia We had booked our holiday quite a few months back and got a very good deal by going through the UK (Gatwick) and Virgin Atlantic over to Orlando, the downside to this being a long day of travelling and the joy of conecting flights in different terminals. The other option was to have flown Aer Lingus direct Dublin -Orlando.
Taxi to Airport – Uneventful
Flight Dublin to Gatwick – Unevenful
Actually navigating through Gatwick between terminals wasn’t too bad until we reached the Flight Connections desk. Sheez! The woman looking after Virgin Atlantic was soooo slow, it took us 50 mins just to get a boarding pass and there was only about 10 groups in front of us! Learn a lesson! Leave plenty of time for delays when going on connecting flights otherwise prepare for stress!
Getting onto the Virgin flight, the staff could not have been more helpful (they must have been looking forward to the Orlando stopover!) Got settled into our seats and started to prepare for the 9 hour flight. We’d never had our son on such a long flight before so had no idea whether he’d be bored, sleep the whole way, act up etc. We had prepared with plenty of distractions, colouring books, play-dough, treats etc.
Turned out he was happy enough to watch the Kidz channel on the in-seat t.v., chomp through some snacks, colour some pictures, devoured the airline meals. Loved looking out the window too at the wings, engine, clouds etc Oh and looking at the moving map and asking “Are we there yet?” he thought that was very funny! every 10 mins!
Amazingly the flight arrived only 10 mins late into Orlando International so all was looking good.
Off to collect our bags, they came out quickly enough although they hide the stollers once they take them off the plane!
Customs was next, bags xrayed etc. And out we pop to transfer over to the main terminal, there are two options here
- Put your bags on the conveyor belt, advertised as a “convienience”
- Haul your bags up the stairs and bring them with you.
Don’t ever do 1) your bags will almost definately disappear and you will spend 2 hrs standing around waiting for airport staff to figure out what happened! And will take some lateral thinking by your airlines luggage rep to figure out that your luggage actually went over to yet another terminal to a completly different airline.
So repeat after me “I will bring all our luggage with us and not put it on the nice “convienient” converyor belt”
While all this was going on we decided to take care of the car rental. A part of our package we had prepaid car rental with all the various insurance bits and pieces but as per usual the car rental staff had to try and sell an even bigger car (we had gone for a full size SUV) for the 3 of us plus wanting to add extra insurance with added snide remarks about how for an $2 a day we could have all this peace of mind when we had our accident! Politely declined.
At this stage we are very tired, its 8pm Eastern, 1am the next day according to our bodies so we crawl into the SUV, take photos of the car noting scratches etc, drag out the maps, fire up the GPS on the phone and head off to find the villa. 45 mins later, we get there, Regal Palms resort out in Davenport, we got a 4 bed pool home in Highlands Reserves. Love driving in the US, decent roads, slower pace and less aggresive driving style towards my usual rush commute in Dublin.
A Publix was literally “just down the road” so popped down for some essentials, water, snacks, apple pie. And then back to the house and bed.
Early morning tomorrow! Magic Kingdom here we come!
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