Disney World Part 2 - We made it to Florida, now what??

First things first, we all put our magic bands on in the airport. You will start using these in the airport and up until your very last day. These bands were magical indeed. EVERYTHING is on them, including all of our resort info, key to our room - you just wave it in front of the keypad on your door, your park admission, your dining plan, fast passes, you name it and it was on there. They came in a cute box and personalized with our names on them.

 One of the things I loved about staying at a Disney resort is once you booked your luggage at your departing airport you never see it again until it's delivered to your resort room! That's right! You don't have to hassle with it in the airport, getting it on Disney's Magical Express, off the bus, in the hotel and in your room. They do it all for you! And when you're leaving too. I will say the line to get on the Magical Express was long. They have all the lines divided by resorts in the airport. And after weaving in and around lines we finally were able to get on the bus.

 We stayed in a value resort - which is the most economical (ok, cheapest) resort. However, we loved every minute and although it was the cheapest you wouldn't know it. The value resorts are all geared towards kids. We stayed at Disneys Pop Century Resort. Which is decorated around the different centuries. I really wanted to stay at the Art of Animation Resort but they were already booked. Our plan is to go back in 2015 and stay there.
Everyone at the front desk at Pop Century was super accommodating in explaining everything you need to know for your first trip and that's where you get your first free gift. Tell them it's your first trip and you get first trip pins to wear. They give these pins for just about every special occasion birthday, anniversary, newlywed, etc.
In order to get to the food court you have to go thru guess what?....a gift shop! Be prepared to shop, because you will. Especially if you're there for 8 days like we were.
Talking about the food court. The food was wonderful!!! Everywhere we ate on the entire trip no matter the hotel or park was great!! They give you souvenir refillable cups at the hotel. Everyone can pick their own color however, there were only 3 choices. Thanks to my mom bringing a sharpie we just wrote everyones name on the cups.  Keep in mind you can only refill these cups at the hotel not at any of the parks. And if your using a stroller you may think it's a good idea to refill them before you leave to take to the park. Good idea IF you have an extra pair of hands. This was not a good plan for us with 1 parent getting the kids on the bus and situated and another handling the stroller and camera bag and sometimes a tri-pod (oh yes, he did bring it! :-/). So we just refilled them at breakfast and then again when we got back in the evening.

 Let's talk about Dining Plans...
Do you pay extra for the dining plan or not - that is the question! Well, since it was our first trip I decided we either go all in or not. And I'm glad we did! I'm pretty sure we will always use the dining plan. For several reasons, it's extremely convenient, easy to use, you can book character dinners so you don't have to wait in long lines at the park, and the food is great! Again, we did not have one single bad meal.
There are 3 dining plans, Quick Service, Dining and Deluxe Dining. We had the dining plan. Which meant we could have 1 quick service (which was our lunch) and 1 tables service (sit down dinner) and 1 snack (ice cream, pretzel, etc.). This worked pretty good but I think I would like to budget for the Deluxe Dining next time so we can have an actual breakfast. In regards to Character Dining this has to coordinate with your park tickets. If you pay extra for the park hopper then your fine. We did not, so our reservations had to line up with the park for the day. Which is not a problem. So what I did was research which restaurants had character dining. Now be careful because sometimes you will see small print that says character dining is only at breakfast and lunch, but the pictures look like it is always character dining. The waltdisneyworld.com website was very user friendly when making reservations. You just pick the day your going, which park and character dining and it will let you know when you can make reservations for. If they don't have any reservations available keep checking. I checked on a weekly basis and was able to book several of the dinners we wanted. Also, book these reservations ASAP. For real, these book up fast. But keep in mind you do not have to put any money down to reserve and can change up to 24 hours before. Here is what I used to help us with coordinating our dining, park, and fast pass ride plan.

I just changed the morning, afternoon, and evening to say Park ,Rides, Reservations. Worked perfect for us! Here's the link when I posted this previously on how to get it. Getting organized for Disney.
Here's what our looked like......

The only thing we changed once we arrived, was on Thursday. Once I found out our Christmas Parade tickets could get us into magic kingdom at 4 pm we decided to spend the day at Animal Kingdom then took the monorail to magic at 4. Was a great day!

Next post on Animal Kingdom......