Paul's Dream is Renewed

I’ll go into all the details and rationale for the plan in a later post, but the plan is to meet Mickey or Tink at Town Square Theater, ride it’s a small world, and do Enchanted Tales w/ Belle. I think like you - I wanted to give them a good taste of Disney in the 3-4 hours we will be there that first evening.

During the day of the “move”, I am betting on a 50/50 chance for naps at the hotel (if the room is ready). Otherwise, we will just have to figure out naps in the stroller. Or one of us will just leave the park early with DD1 whenever the room is ready. Its so far in the future, there is no way to know how DD3 or D1 will handle naps on the go or possibly missing a nap.

Yes, I’m planning “split” evenings where I will take DD1 back to the hotel early while DW stays in the park with the boys. I’ve actually loosely planned each evening like this in case DD1 can’t make it beyond dinner time. The only tricky one will be MNSSHP since we will have to make a guess beforehand when purchasing tickets. It will stink to pay for a ticket for me if I end up missing it to put DD1 to bed. Time will tell.

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Glad to see that you have a trip planned!

YMMV, but with my family if we are planning to see a night time show we need a later start on the next day. And if we are doing a party we find it better to make that a resort/shopping day so we are fresh for the party.

There are no flights scheduled yet for October, but I expect to be landing at MCO around 930 or 10, will then take DME to CR with a Chef Mickey’s ADR at 12:30. Thoughts on that timing?

When I was planning my trip, people told me that CR is usually the 4th stop on DME (after GF, Poly and WL). They said plan on about 1/2 hour bus ride to the first hotel and to add about 15 minutes for each stop. That brings the total trip from MCO to CR to about 1.25 hours. Then you factor in time to get from your plane to the DME area and that there may be a wait before the bus leaves. That makes CR arrival about 1.75 to 2.25 hours from when the plane lands. I don’t know if the timing is accurate, but I was advised of that from multiple people and it sounded reasonable to me. Then you need to put your carry-on luggage with Bell Services, Check-In, and get to where you want to go.

After receiving that information, I decided to book a Minnie Van to pick us up from MCO (pricey but after doing it, I thought it was worth it with the 2 little ones) and take us to CR and that was much faster. In prior trips before kids, I took MDE to GF and it worked out well because GF was the first stop.

In any event, if your plane arrives at 9:30/10 am, I’d guess that you probably ok with a 12:30 pm lunch res at Chef Mickey’s IF the timing of everything works out. If your plane is delayed, then it becomes much dicier. If the kids all need washroom breaks, that will add time too. If there is a long bus delay for some reason, that could also be an issue. Of course, everything could go smoothly, there could be no people on your bus for 1 of the prior stops and you could arrive with plenty of time to spare. It’s more risk/stress that I would want to start my vacation, but I couldn’t blame you for trying to make it work.

As an aside, I thought the food at Chef Mickey’s was awful, but seeing how much my kids enjoyed it made it worth it and I would highly recommend Chef Mickey’s for a lunch at some point during your visit.

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