[stardust190]

The plan was to be on one of the first buses out of MCO to head to the terminal. I woke up SUPER early as I was so excited. I got up to get ready and ended up stepping on my daughter. I failed to mention in the last update that we had a room with double beds that we booked before we knew my mother was joining us. Once my mother was along for the ride we looked into getting a second room at the Hyatt, but they were already booked. So we decided to “cheat” and sleep 5 in this room. DD is 3 and needed bed rails that they didn’t have anyways so we figured she would sleep in a pack and play which would leave the two beds for the 4 of us. Well they didn’t have a pack and play either just a crib so we got that. Only DD refused to sleep in it. So we ended up taking out the mattress and she slept on the floor. And then got stepped on. Which woke her up too. And since her mouth never seems to shut when she’s awake it wasn’t long before the whole gang was up. Not everyone was happy about it, but everyone’s eyes were open.

We took turns showering and we had some ironing to do so it was a bit of a slow morning getting ready. We looked out the windows to see this:



Crummy view and foggy weather. The night before you could actually see the planes out of that window which was kind of neat, but not exactly a stellar view. The kids were saying they were not hungry, but we knew they needed something before we got on the bus. We ended up grabbing something at the airport (I have no idea what, but coffee was part of it) and bringing it back to our room. Eventually we were all fed and ready to head out. This was about 30 minutes after the buses started running to the terminal.

We headed down to the magical express area and handed off our luggage for it to be sent to the terminal. Then we got in the line to check in for the bus. We waited about 5 minutes and then the line started to move. They had two buses and they were splitting everyone up onto the two buses. No idea why they didn’t just fill one and then fill the other. There were enough people. We got on the bus and had about a 15 minute wait before it actually took off. Everyone was excited!





The bus ride was fine. They played a video about the cruise. The kids were excited, but not bouncing off the walls. It was a little under an hour and then we were on our way through the security check. Everything was pretty quick and painless except DD wanted to be carried EVERYWHERE. By me and no one else. I was checking us in and had to hold her at the same time. It was quite difficult. And for some reason she did NOT want them taking her picture at check in. It was fun times.

We ended up getting boarding group #7 and not long after we checked in they started boarding. DD was being a crabby pants:



She was agreeable to NOTHING. So we didn’t meet any characters or do much other than sit and wait. DH and DS looked for a while at the model ship and I did take DD over to see the boat and around the terminal trying to cheer her up. Her foul mood continued though.





I tried to get a picture of everyone happily waiting to board, but DD wouldn’t let me put her down and she also didn’t want her picture taken. And DH apparently wasn’t paying attention…



DS was, however, doing happy dances:



It wasn’t long before our number was called and we were heading onto the ship. Unfortunately, Miss CrankyPants Mal was whining and wanting to be carried so I have no pictures of us actually getting on the ship. My husband snapped these:





That’s all we got. I had to carry Mallory or she would drop to the floor and pout. I suppose I should be grateful that she wasn’t screaming.

It was still a little early for lunch and we wanted to get tickets for the Disney Jr breakfast and the princess meets so we headed up to do that. While in line we just people watched and stood in awe of how beautiful and massive the ship was! I loved the chandelier.





This is DH and I pretending the kids are happy and not bored with waiting in the 5 minute line. Or maybe we were pretending that the kids were not with us.



They were distributing the tickets at Port Adventures so we were in line in one of the halls on that deck. I remember thinking that the halls were super narrow. The kids kept wiggling while in line and I had to keep pulling them closer to me so that people could get by. Eventually we had the tickets for Anna and Elsa and the Princesses for the next morning. We could have also done the Disney Jr breakfast the next morning, but I opted for the one later in the week as the next morning my son and I were doing a 5K on deck 4.

Our rooms were still not ready at this point so we headed to Cabana’s to grab lunch. DD got macaroni and cheese and her mood improved. We called some family to say goodbye for the week and then the kids were itching to go swimming. We spent about an hour or so in the Mickey Pool and Nemo’s Reef before our room was ready.





The kids must have been excited to check out the room as they didn’t put up too much of a fight when we said that they had to get out of the water. So we left the pool deck and headed to deck 7 to find our home for the week.

Up next: Sailing Away!