Disney Day 1 - January 6, 2012

I need to hurry up and document all of the details of our Disney trip!  We had such a great time and did so many things.  So it will take me a little while to document everything.  I think it will be easiest to do it one day at a time!

Day one started very early!  Our flight left Birmingham at 7:00 a.m. so we left our house at about 4:00 a.m.  We met up with our friends and headed to the airport!  I have to say that I am very glad that we decided to fly and highly recommend it!  Southwest has direct flights from Birmingham to Orlando and if you catch it at the right time you can gets tickets for as little as $59 each way.  So it can be very budget friendly as well.  Disney also made flying very easy!  We checked our bags in Birmingham and the next time we saw them they were being delivered to our hotel room at Disney World!  No baggage claim hassles!

We printed our boarding passes the day before, so all we had to do when we got to the airport was check our bags and go through security.  All of that went very smoothly.  Before we knew it, it was time to board the plane.



Elijah, Mattie and Avery at the Birmingham airport

 This was Avery's first time to fly and I was a little nervous about it.  But she loved it!  We boarded the plane and took off right on time.  Avery loves watching the Little Einsteins and if you have ever seen it, you will know what I am talking about.  When we were taking off, she started patting hers legs and saying, "Pat, pat, pat, pat..." and the she said "Blastoff!" just like the Little Einsteins do when they take off in Rocket!  Taking off didn't phase her one bit!  Then as soon as it was safe to unbuckle our seatbelts, she climbed in my lap and went to sleep.  She woke up right before we got ready to land.  The flight is only 1 1/2 hours from Birmingham so we had enough time to get some peanuts and a drink and then it was time to land.  The whole flight was very smooth.

We landed in sunny Orlando at 9:30 a.m. Eastern time.  Since we didn't have to get our bags, we headed straight for Disney's Magical Express.  This is the bus that took us to our resort.  It was only about a 30 minute bus ride from the airport.

We stayed at Disney's Pop Century resort.  It is one of the value resorts and it was very nice.  When you go to Disney World, you don't spend a whole lot of time in your hotel room, so we weren't looking for anything fancy.  It was a little farther away from some of the parks than the more expensive resorts, but it worked great for us.  Different sections of the resort are themed for different decades.  We styed in the 1950's.

We stayed at the resort for a little while and I let Avery take a nap (one of only 2 naps she took the entire week!).  Then we headed to Downtown Disney that afternoon.

Downtown Disney has a lot of stores and restaurants.  There's a Lego store, World of Disney, which is a HUGE store with anything Disney you could ever want, a Ghiradelli Chocolate store, and much more.  It's a fun place to walk around, try different things and buy souvenirs.  This is also where I saw the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique and decided to make reservations for Avery at the one in Cinderella's Castle for the next day (stayed tuned for pictures...she was so cute!)



Let the Memories Begin!  Avery and Daddy at Downtown Disney.

 

In front of the Lego dragon

 

Buzz and Woody made out of Legos


 We had dinner reservations that night at T-Rex.  (Word of advice...it is recommended you make dinner reservations up to 6 months in advance at Disney World restaurants.)  T-Rex is a dinosaur version of the Rainforest Cafe.  The decor was amazing!  And every 20 minutes or so all of the dinosaurs would start roaring.  It was actually a little scary for the younger kids.  Avery really didn't care for that part.  But the food was great!  I would definitely recommend it.




Me, Laura, Meghann and Melissa at T-Rex

 After dinner, we walked around some more and got some treats at the Ghiradelli store.  Adam got hot chocolate, I got salted caramel hot chocolate, and Avery got some chocolate squares.  It was the perfect end to a great day!