Disney Cruise - Travel Day

We booked a Disney Cruise at the last minute. We have a Disney Visa card that accumulates rewards towards Disney. We try to save them for our next vacation.  The rewards expire 5 years from when they are accrued so basically this ensures that we will do something Disney about every 5 years. Our last trip was in December of 2009 (a bunch of the pictures are gone so I have a feeling they were linked to Facebook or something and someone deleted them) so we started looking into our trip for this year. We wanted to book it before December of 2014. We used Small World Vacations to book the cruise- I have used them in the past to book travel to Disney World itself and they watch for better rates. The representative was very good and answered any of the questions we have- she was very knowledgeable about anything I asked, both with the resort and the cruise.

We ended up finding that you can get very good rates on some of the Disney Cruises. We decided to try to go while Neil was still young- between the ages of 1 and 2 he's not really going to remember much either way, and I'm a bit worried that as he gets older he will be more scared of the characters. Right now he really likes them. We booked what they call a GT rate on Disney- you pay a little cheaper than the cheapest you could buy in the category. There is IGT (inside stateroom), OGT (oceanview stateroom), and VGT (verandah stateroom). We decided to go for VGT so that when Neil was napping we could sit on a balcony.

We also decided to travel the day before because if you make your own travel arrangements, get delayed, and miss the boat leaving, you are out of luck. We were VERY glad we ended up doing that because it was a very bad travel day for us.

Our flight was through Southwest (free checked bags!) and was supposed to leave around 4:30. About mid-morning Dave started getting texts that it was delayed. We wondered if we could hop on an earlier flight so we fed Neil his lunch and then hoped he would nap in the car on the way. He didn't.

When we got to the airport, we asked about other flights but the only other one available left after 6 so they told us to stay on our original flight and see how much farther it got delayed.

Since we had time to kill, we hung out in the airport for awhile. Pittsburgh has a good children's area that Neil played in for a bit (and was the only kid there).

We went to TGI Friday's and had some food there as well, figuring this would be dinner.

Finally, our flight was delayed enough that they let us switch to the other flight. They were calling everyone else to the desk as well.

When we got into the Orlando airport, Neil was past his bedtime, hadn't napped much (including on the plane although he did nap for a little bit), and was coming down with a cold. We were kinda hoping to get to our hotel and crash.

BUT:

• The luggage took forever to get to baggage claim. I'm not sure what happened but it took I would guess an hour. They apologized over the loud speaker, after awhile, and said sorry for the delay but the luggage is on its way. Neil was really cranky so I tried walking him back and forth in the airport.
•  It seemed like it took a long time for our hotel shuttle to get there (I'm sure it wasn't longer than it would normally take but by then it had been a looong day).
• When we checked in, which was a smooth process, they said that the pack n play was in the room. It wasn't. Neil is usually asleep by 8pm at the latest. At this point it was after 10. He was cranky, crying, coughing, sneezing. We called the office and they said they'd bring one up shortly. 15 minutes later Dave asked again where it was. It turns out they had to go to a different building to get one.

Dave and I were both questioning, by the time we went to bed, if this was a good idea for a trip. When morning came, though, we felt a bit better having some sleep (not enough and poor Neil didn't sleep well with his cold), and we figured everything else was going to be better. I tried to think about the positives of everything. I'm very glad we booked for the day before. At least we weren't worrying about making it to the boat on time. That would have just added to the stress. We did make it in, even if it was on a different flight. We did have a place to sleep, in a bed, with a pack n play. And, our luggage wasn't lost! Delayed is much better than losing. Especially when you're going to be on a boat for 5 days without a chance to get your luggage. They won't be able to drive it to you where you're staying.

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