Disney world - Day 1 - Travel Day
I've been waiting over five years to go back to Disney World. I was so excited to finally get to go back. My older sister Lisa and I planned to take this trip together. She is 2 years older than me. She lives in Minnesota so we don't see each other very often. We love to travel together and we both love Disney. We decided to go for 3 days, so we picked 3 parks to visit while we were there.
We chose Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, and EPCOT.
To prepare for this trip, we picked our favorite restaurants and made our reservations. Some of the more popular restaurants are hard to get reservations for. We had good luck getting all of the ones we wanted.
We also saw that the weather had been rainy all month. We knew it would rain while we were there but we were going to make the best of it. I brought 3 pairs of shoes with me. I usually don't pack that many shoes but I didn't want to wear wet shoes if we got rained on and couldn't dry them. I also brought a very compact umbrella, and a rain poncho that folded up very tiny.
The last thing I did to get ready for this trip was to get myself a DAS Pass.
DAS stands for Disability Access Services, and Disney will give a DAS Pass to anyone with a disability that makes it hard to stand in the ride lines. I have a very severe spinal cord injury. Because of my injury, I have balance problems, mobility issues, and I have severe nerve damage in my hands and in my feet. I have serious neck problems also resulting from my surgery. My surgery saved my life, and I am very lucky I am not paralyzed, but I was left with a lot of issues. I made an appointment with the DAS people, and got scheduled for a video chat with a DAS team member to get approved for the pass. During my chat we spoke about my injuries and my limitations, and I was able to be approved for a pass.
This DAS Pass, does not allow me to skip the ride lines. I still have to wait the entire wait time for each ride I want to go on. If the wait time for a ride is 55 minutes, I still have to wait 55 minutes. I just do not have to wait in the line. I can wait off to the side sitting on a bench, or wherever I am comfortable. When my wait time is up, I can get in the Lightening Lane line, and be on the ride in 10-15 minutes.
Before my trip I was cleared by my Doctor to ride low-impact rides. No roller-coasters or anything that had a warning sign. Nothing with a big drop or anything that would jar my neck or back.
HA! Sounds like I shouldn't be going to Disney world with all of these problems, but I'm not going to let all of this stuff stop me from going to my Happy Place!!! I'm definitely going!!! I'll see how much I can actually do, and I'll make the best of it :)
Turns out, there are a lot of rides I can ride at Disney World!
So, bright and early on a Wednesday morning, my daughter and my baby grandson Kam dropped me off at the airport.
My flight was on time leaving Kansas City around noon. I found a window seat in row 8 and I settled in for the almost 3 hour flight to Orlando.
I like to put in my ear buds, listen to an audiobook and try to sleep on my flights.
Sleeping makes the flight go so much faster.
As soon as we landed in Orlando (around 3 PM), the skies opened up and it rained and poured. It was like a monsoon!
They got us all off the plane just before the storm hit, but the luggage was still on the plane.
Because it was lightening out there, the guys couldn't get the luggage off the plane.
So we all waited for the storm to let up, or the lightening to stop............
We waited............
and we waited...............
People were laying around the baggage claim area, everything was backing up. Planes couldn't leave because luggage was stuck on planes.
My sister had landed in Orlando about 30 minutes before I did. So we sat outside and caught up on all of our latest news. I kept going inside to see if the luggage was moving yet.
While we waited, I used my phone app to order a case of water and some snacks to be delivered to our hotel. I used SHIPT and the delivery went just fine. The SHIPT person did the shopping and delivered our groceries to Bell Services at our hotel. Later Bell Services delivered everything to our room. It worked out really well.
Meanwhile, we were in a hurry to get our Disney vacation started, but we were still sitting around waiting for my suitcase.
We ended up waiting there for THREE HOURS!!!!
Finally, the storm let up and we all got our luggage.
Around 6 PM, Lisa and I hopped in an Uber and headed for THE POLYNESIAN RESORT !!!!
I was so very excited to get to stay at this resort! It's very expensive. WAY too expensive for me to ever stay there. Its usually $700 to $1200 A NIGHT! YIKES!! That is ridiculously expensive.
When We booked this reservation, Covid was in full swing, and also the monorail platform was being fixed at this resort. We booked this at just the right time and we got our reservation for about $300 a night. Still expensive, but MUCH better, and we split the bill so I only had to pay half of that. It was kind of a chance of a lifetime for me to get to stay at this resort.
Here we are, in the rain, entering Disney World property.
WOMP. WOMP. My picture of the Disney sign is pitiful! LOL!
This is what it's supposed to look like:
(Google image)
I wasn't going to let our rainy entrance bother me, I was so excited to be back!
The Disney World property is actually huge. It's 40 square miles.
Inside the property are 4 amusement parks, 2 water parks, and 32 hotels and resorts.
After we entered the property, it still took about 10 minutes to finally arrive at the Polynesian.
As we arrived, we didn't get to really see the front of the resort. We pulled in from the side. Since it was raining, I didn't walk out and take a pic of the front of the place, but here is a Google pic, so you can see what it looked like.
It it really gorgeous. Just amazing.
So as we pulled in, here is what I saw.
Above us is the Monorail, and beside us were these beautiful ponds, waterfalls, and beautiful greenery.
Hawaiian music playing over the speakers, and a cast member came right over to put a lei around each of our necks. Another guy got our luggage out of the Uber for us. It was a really amazing entrance!
Disney has hotels and resorts all over their property, but only 3 resorts are on the Monorail that goes to Magic Kingdom park. I was so happy we were going to be able to take the monorail to the park, rather than to have to take a shuttle bus. Disney has a very nice and efficient shuttle bus system that will get you anywhere you want to go for free, but the monorail is so much faster.
I couldn't find a very good map showing the monorail path, but this one will do.
The monorail goes around this lake and stops at each place there is a star. The Polynesian, where Lisa and I stayed is at the bottom of the map and Magic Kingdom Park is at the top. With a quick stop at the Grand Floridian Resort, we could be at Magic Kingdom park from our resort in about 10 minutes. Another option to get to Magic Kingdom from the Polynesian Resort is to take a boat across the lake. Taking the shuttle bus would take more like 20-30 minutes.
Google Image
Back to the Polynesian, we entered the lobby and it smelled AMAZING! Like fresh flowers and a summer breeze. Just lovely!
And looking up:
I love this chandelier. It makes me happy :)
I had been to the Polynesian twice before on different trips to Disney World. As a Travel Agent, I like to try to visit the different resorts if I have time. It's nice to be able to describe them and get a feel for each resort. They all have a different theme, and they are all really great. The different resorts do have different price points.
Lisa and I had both checked in to the hotel online. Our Disney App told us we could go directly to our room.
Here is a map of our resort.
The red circle is over the Great Ceremonial House, which is another name for the lobby. It was the building we entered into, and it has the front desk, Guest Services, the gift shops and the restaurants and bars.
The resort is made up of several buildings, called Longhouses, and those are where the guest rooms are located.
Mine and Lisa's room was in the Fiji building. I put a black circle around our building, and I put a star over where our room was located. We were on the first floor. I was more than happy with our room location. It was very convenient.
We found our building,
And then we easily found our room.
We were pleasantly surprised to find our room was just about 10 steps inside the door to our building.
I honestly could not have asked for a better room location. The ice machine was also across from our room. It was perfect.
We were able to get into our room using our Disney Apps on our phones.
Disney has streamlined the check in process, and it works very well.
Our room was Moana themed, and it was more than I expected.
I'll let my pics speak for themselves:
Do you see Maui and Moana on the wallpaper?
It really was nicer than I expected.
We checked out the room. I picked the bed by the window.
We dropped our bags, freshened up, and headed out to find the shuttle bus.
We were going to Disney Springs, otherwise known as Downtown Disney. It is an area with shops, restaurants and bars. We had already made a reservation at a restaurant called The Edison for dinner. Because we had spent 3 hours in the airport waiting for my luggage, we were running a little late.
We walked back to the Great Ceremonial House, and back out the front doors. To the left, we found the the shuttle bus stop. The shuttle busses come by every 5- 10 minutes and they each go to a different park. They also have shuttle busses that go to Disney Springs.
Our ride to Disney Springs took about 15 minutes. It really wasn't bad.
We walked around a little bit and found our restaurant, The Edison.
It was a strange and interesting place.
We were seated on the 2nd floor. There was a band playing lounge music below us.
The food was good.
Lisa and I both got a bacon cheeseburger and fries.
After we ate, we went out to walk around and do some shopping.
I wanted to go into the World Of Disney store.
Its a HUGE store with everything Disney!
This picture only shows the Halloween section.
I bought myself a new MagicBand Plus. This is a bracelet that opens your hotel room door, lets you enter the parks, has your restaurant reservations.............everything about your Disney stay is linked to your Magic Band. I wanted a special one for Disney World's 50th Anniversary.
I picked this one. It comes with a charger cord, and it also lights up and has some games on it that I never had time to figure out.
This particular Magic Band was a little pricey. It was $44.
They have much cheaper Magic Bands. You don't have to buy the expensive ones.
You actually don't need one at all if you don't want one.
The only other thing I bought at World Of Disney was this awesome 50th Anniversary spirit jersey
I am IN LOVE with it.
I'm still not mad about the $85.00 price tag, LOL!
That picture above really doesn't show how truly amazing this Spirit Jersey is.
Here is a better pic of the back of the shirt that shows the actual color:
OH!!! I am IN LOVE!!!
I should have bought myself two of them :)
OK, so after I drooled all over my new Spirit Jersey (LOL, just kidding!), Lisa and I walked around Disney Springs until it got dark and we got tired.
We saw this cool piano guy rolling up and down the sidewalks playing Elton John tunes.
It was definitely something I had never seen before
We saw the hot air balloon ride all lit up in the night sky.
We saw the carousel, and a cute little train
Around 9:30 we went back to the shuttle bus to go back to our resort.
We were back at our room by 10 PM
I left Lisa in the room and I went out to have a smoke and walk around the resort.
The first thing I looked for was the castle at Magic Kingdom Park. You can see it across the lake.
It was purple and it was so magical shining on the lake.
I walked around the resort a little bit and found the pools
There are two beach areas at the Polynesian. I found them both. I walked down by the smaller beach and I hung out by this giant tiki guy and had a smoke. There were a couple of other people out having a smoke there too. I thought it was an odd place to smoke, but there was construction going on, and they had blocked off the smoking areas on this side of the resort. I guess this was the new smoking area??
I would find out soon, this area would be blocked off too.
I had a smoke and chatted with a few other people.
I was exhausted. It had been a long day, and we had to get up early to get to Magic Kingdom Park.
It was going to rain in the 2nd half of the day and evening, so we wanted to get an early start in the morning.
I went back to our room and slept like a baby. The bed and the pillows were amazing.
I was sooooo happy to be back in this Magical place!!
.jpg)
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment