I have! I love it (and him!). Does he have in his satchel what he carries around in it for most of the movie?
Finally making time to read this and friend!! I am so sorry your sweet baby was so sick. How awful. 
And I am so sorry you had such an awful experience at Tiffins. I’ve only been once but it was amazing and our service was stellar. I’m so sorry the manager and hostess were terrible but YAY for amazing GS folks and waiters to infuse a little Disney Magic when you needed it. So happy they comped you a few days of tickets to use on another trip and that your waiter basically gave his manager the finger!!
I feel you on naps + hotel rooms. The worst. We always let the littles snooze in the stroller in the parks. Just seemed easier than having 4 kids in a single hotel room trying to get them all to rest! 
3 Likes
I’m so sorry the baby was sick but glad you had a good experience at Nemours. Our local children’s hospital was the original Nemours and I always warn my kids when traveling that it isn’t right up the street - but it is at Disney! My older son has a G-tube so it’s great to know that if there’s an issue at Disney, a branch of our local is right down the road.
I really hope this day is the turning point of the trip but I’m a bit behind.
3 Likes
You’ll have to ask 
1 Like
Day 9: Epcot & Departure Day 12/11
One thing I had been able to do the night before was request late check out and for once we actually got it! We didn’t have to be out of our room until 12:30 which meant we had a lot more flexibility today. We took our bags to resort airline checkin. It is SUCH a wonderful service & makes departure day so much easier!
I grabbed a last minute 8:00 Akershus reservation the day before. I changed more than half of our reservations for this trip. Some due to illness, but many due to changing our minds on time or location. So always keep checking even during your trip!
We enjoyed our breakfast & were finished and in line for FEA at 8:50. I think we were the second or third family in line. We walked right on to FEA which the girls loved again. We planned to head straight to A&E to meet with hopefully shorter lines. Well this plan was foiled by DD10 months having a massive blowout on FEA (those darn antibiotics were not kind to her digestive system). Then the other girls needed to potty too, so about 20 minutes later we finally got in line to meet Anna & Elsa. The posted wait was 45 minutes. Actual wait was 42 brutal minutes. The girls loved it & the pictures are darling, but woof that wait was our longest of the trip (not counting our nightmare with DME).
After this we headed to Spaceship Earth. It’s a great ride to nurse a baby on haha. It’s really stuffy though & my kids really didn’t care about it. We headed to TT to use up our last anytime FP to let DD5 ride 2x. Then we went to Figment which the kids enjoyed. But man, it’s so lame. I hadn’t seen it for a VERY long time. After this we headed back to Beach Club because the kids wanted to swim. Everyone got changed & we finished up packing (that late checkout made things SO MUCH easier). We took our bags to bell services & headed down to swim. My parents took DD10 months on a walk & ended up rocking her on the porch. DH sat poolside & I swam with the girls. It was a little chilly today. They were disappointed that the “sand pool” was closed for “unscheduled maintenance.” 
is my guess!
We swam for awhile, but between the kids they kept needing to potty every 15 minutes, taking turns. DH took them & I stayed with the other. We did the small waterslide several times. Then DD5 had an accident (thankfully not in the water!) and that ended our pool time.
Beach Club has really nice family changing rooms/showers. The 4 of us ended up in one getting the girls cleaned up, then I finished getting myself ready. DD3 was in meltdown mode due to no nap. She was also hangry which was poor planning on my part. We had booked a last minute reservation at San Angel Inn for a late lunch/early dinner, so we headed back to Epcot. DD3 fell asleep in the stroller immediately, so she ended up missing most of her meal. They charged us a dining credit for her anyway which was annoying since she didn’t eat, but oh well. We had deluxe dining, so we really enjoyed our appetizers. The guac & the queso were so good. Our food was good overall.
We finished up then headed back to Beach Club. It was getting windy/chilly & was about to start raining at any minute, so we walked very quickly back. We got our bags from Bell Services & all took turns getting changed in to our warm clothes (we live in the Midwest where it was below 20 degrees that day). It was very annoying how small the bathrooms are there. There was absolutely no space and the bathroom only has 3 stalls. A member of housekeeping kept glaring at me because she was trying to clean the bathroom while I helped the girls change. We finished up, and I ran to the Marketplace to use up our last few snack credits. DME arrived right on time & we headed to MCO.
We had a very unfortunate experience with a TSA agent at MCO that I ended up reporting. He told me DD% & DD3 could not go through security with me and forced them to hold their own boarding passes, answer his questions, and made us wait on the other side of him while he did so. It was so grossly inappropriate. He then moved from his checkpoint to the scanner/x-ray machine where he proceeded to flag every single one of our bags for a manual search. I know we were targeted because as soon as we went through he went back to his check station. He also made a few very inappropriate comments under his breath to me. Grrrr, I just hate it when people abuse power. It really just made me want to get home even more.
Thankfully our flight was on time. Our flight home was fairly smooth overall. DD3 fell asleep fairly quickly. DD5 did too. Our bags all arrived safely & we managed to all squeeze back in our minivan. We fell in to bed around 1:30am. DH & I worked the next day.
I’ll do a summary of a few things in another post.
5 Likes
The issue with the TSA agent sounds so frustrating and inappropriate. Sorry your trip ended that way.
Summary & some take home points for me
- This trip went so much differently than I expected. Having a sick child on vacation is very difficult & really puts a damper on things.
- Disney did a lot to help us when DD was sick, but they really need to get up to date on car seat safety. We were put in a position to break Florida law multiple times & had no alternative. I won’t travel to Disney without an infant seat again if we have a child under age 2 for this reason.
- 9 days is a lot, but we still didn’t get to do everything I wanted & had planned. Granted several days were “wasted,” so I am thankful for the length of our trip now since we still managed to enjoy a lot on our remaining days.
- Pop is a great resort, but having 5 in one room is a tight squeeze. Having a connecting door to my parents was helpful in this way, although challenging in other ways Skyliner access really puts Pop above the other values & unfortunately Disney is pricing it accordingly now.
- Beach Club is a lovely resort, but some of the guests were quite noticeably snooty in comparison to Pop. We really enjoyed the larger rooms and the pool was amazing! The front desk staff were very helpful and had much shorter waits for assistance. The location was a big winner too. I’m not sure I’ll be able to talk DH in to staying anywhere else again.
- Strollers slow you down, but man, having 2 is a drag. Hopefully on our next trip we’ll be able to get by with just our double stroller, possibly with a riding board. We used our baby carrier a lot anyway, so I think we could have managed without the single. DD5 really only needed the stroller for the walk in/out of the parks.
- I don’t like being tied down with evening ADRs. DH loves it & so do my parents. I just found it so stressful to have a very specific time to be out of the hotel in the evening. Moving forward, I would prefer to tour RD to late afternoon. TS brunch or lunch in the middle. And have totally free evenings for whatever we want.
- Fireworks are just so hard with young kids. On our next trip I think I’ll just plan one fireworks night and call it good.
- AK is a great park for a late start, especially if you have a FP for FOP.
- Watching your kids overcome fears & experience new things is so much fun. Seeing DD5 overcome her fear and ride SDD and 7DMT is one of my most favorite parts of this trip.
- Family style meals or ordering from a menu >>> Buffets! (at least with young kids)
- Traveling with those who have different expectations that you can be…challenging. I need to do a better job next time of laying out some guidelines. “We’re leaving at 6:45 to head to Magic Kingdom. You’re welcome to join us or you can meet us there whenever you’re ready…” sort of thing.
-Parties (ex: MVMCP) on a bigger trip are a lot and probably not worth it. We did a short trip for MNSSHP in September and it was wonderful as our only park day. But having MVMCP in the middle of our long trip was difficult. Trying to fit in naps, then having a late start, everyone being so tired, etc. We hope to do MNSSHP for a weekend trip this fall, but I don’t think we’ll plan a party as part of a longer trip again at least until our kids are older. - We saved a lot of money by sharing the DxDP. The way we did this is now currently “dead” although I do think we could potentially find some savings in the future if we had 2 rooms. It’s definitely not the “no brainer” it was this time though.
One thing I feel like I’ve finally gotten the hang of is focusing on what my kids are in to. My kids love meeting characters, love Fantasyland, TTA, Buzz, etc. So we focused on that. No one rode ToT, Space, Splash, RnR, etc. And it was just easier for us than messing with RS most of the time. As another recent thread discussed the FOMO is real. But I am trying to embrace the stage my kids are in knowing that one day they’ll be too big for BBB and they’ll be dragging me on RnR 3 times in a row 
It’s also a good excuse for a solo trip (hopefully coming this spring)!
I probably have other thoughts too that I’ll try to jot down at some point as I think of them.
So when is our next trip? Well DH is pretty over Disney with kids right now. We already got APs because we’re headed back for our 10th anniversary this fall (likely September). I did convince him to take a weekend trip this fall for MNSSHP. So my lineup looks like:
- Potential couple’s trip 1/31-2/2 (super tentative right now)
- Solo trip for F&G in April or early May
- MNSSHP weekend this fall, probably in August
- Anniversary trip this fall, probably in September
I’ve also got the week before Thanksgiving off work so I’m going to do my best to convince him to take the kids then. I doubt it will work.
Thanks for reading along with us. I’m happy to answer any questions if you have them.
14 Likes
Loved your trip report. Sorry you had so many bumps along the way but sounds like you had the right spirit about everything eventually and we’re able to enjoy some of the time.
I agree the walk to HS from the Boardwalk has the tiniest possible sign, super confusing!
1 Like
Uggh what a rough day! I would have been so mad especially at the car seat situation. I am a stickler for car seat safety, which is why I lugged our huge convertible along when we went. My 6 year old is still in a 5 point harness and was rear facing until 3.5.