The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Have you seen that booking.com commercial with the exhausted family walking towards their hotel room? The voice over is saying how the flight went and ends with saying "he left his shoes on the plane. His SHOES." 

I'm pretty sure that's how we looked at the end of our trip. Exhausted. Spent. Relieved. 

I'm going to blog about each day but I'm doing one overall blog about the entire experience. 

I'm going to start with the negatives.

The Ugly. 

We've been to Disney World several times. We LOVE Disney. It's always been a fantastic time with little crowds. And then we thought it would be so magical at Christmas. The problem is so did 8 MILLION other people. I'm sure it is lovely at Christmas - we couldn't tell because we couldn't see through the people but I'm sure it's lovely. Seriously - if you're thinking about going at Christmas time - don't. Just don't. TRUST us. The lines were so bad, the only ride we rode was It's a Small World. And we rode it once.

The people. Everywhere. 

And when you get this many people together, it takes a magical place and turns it into a battlefield where your entire focus is hunting down the best parade watching spot and refusing to move until the parade is over....the parade that doesn't start for another 3 hours. Or it makes you cut in line (which we feel should be punishable by death. DEATH! so rude) or claim any available spot to sit and eat whether it be a curb or the middle of the walkway. Seriously. Don't ever go at Christmas. Ever.

I've never seen so many strollers in my life.

Strollers aren't allowed in lots of places so there were gobs and gobs of abandoned strollers everywhere. EVERYWHERE. And it's always so surprising to me how much stuff people leave in their abandoned strollers. We left nothing but our name tag. I don't trust people. At all. 

The Bad.

Traveling with an almost toddler is never ideal so we tried to be crazy prepared. And the things we thought would be hard were super easy! And the things we thought would be easy - were horrible.

Secutiry at the airport - a BREEZE!!

The flight - SO GREAT! She slept most of both flights.

Napping during the day - no problem! She napped for hours in her stroller! 

Time in the hotel room - nightmarish.

Feeding her her baby food - horrible.

Sleeping - never happened.

Alice likes to people watch so when we were away from people - she didn't appreciate it. Our sweet little happy girl turned into Rosemary's baby and SCREAMED. I'm sure our poor neighbors thought we were horrible parents. 

So every night we had to go for a walk for her to fall asleep.

And the hotel room had unprotected outlets and beds to climb and drawers to open! It was exhausting. They provided a Pack-n-play for her to sleep in which she did until about 4am when she woke up screaming. Every night. And our child is now a monkey so by the last night she was doing this....

Yeesh. 

See - we were ready to come home.

The Good.

Taking a baby to Disney World is super easy! They do everything they can to make sure you have everything you need - like only Disney can. This trip we got to use their Baby Centers. Thanks to our friend Lesley for telling me about them!

SUPER FABULOUS! A room of changing tables, lots of place to wash up, a room with highchairs, a kitchen where you can purchase anything you might need. BRILLIANT! And we LOVED IT. It's the first thing we located in each park. And it was great. The cast members were all SUPER accommodating and would talk to her and engage her. It was super sweet.

Even with all the no sleep and the eating fights, we had a good time! It was fun to watch her watch people. She could care less about characters or parades or lights - our girl likes people. And it was great to get to spend time with family. She got to see Grandma, Grandpa, Uncle David and Aunt Shelly every day! And that was lots of fun. I know they enjoyed getting to spend time with her too. 

And it was nice to be away! Not to have to clean or cook or deal with the dog. It was a lovely break. And we look forward to taking her back when she's older and can recognize characters and enjoy the magic. 

Now let's talk about the fun!