Time passed quickly as we waited for our travel day to arrive.  The travel itself was actually pretty anti-climatic.  The outbound flight for our trip left from Dulles airport.  We had arranged for a cab to pick us up at 6:00 am and drop us at Dulles.  We dropped our bags off and headed to the TSA Precheck line.  We had packed our carry on bags fairly full, mainly because we were sneaking Christmas presents on for our girls.  Of course, our carry on bags got pulled aside for additional screening.  Luckily, the girls cleared without issue and we shooed them away while TSA looked through the bag.  Nancy was able to tell the agent about the gifts and he discreetly searched the bag without revealing to the girls what the presents were.  After we reassembled the bags, we were on our way to the gate.

The plane to Jacksonville was a really small plane, so we had to board outside.  They were also gate checking most of the roll aboard bags.  We had one bag that wouldn’t fit in the overhead so it had to be gate checked.  Once we finally got seated, the seat in front of me broke and I got relocated along with the lady that was supposed to occupy that seat.  Fortunately, we had no further difficulties with the flight.  Once we landed, we gathered our bags and grabbed our rental car with no wait.  We loaded the bags and were soon headed off to Hollywood Studios.  It was about a 3 hour drive with traffic but we were all in great moods.  The weather was warm and we knew we would be in Florida for the next two weeks.

I’ll leave the details of the park visit out until the next post, but after spending a few hours at the parks, we headed out.  We wanted to visit the Character Warehouse and pickup a few souvenirs.  We headed up I-4 until we arrived at the outlet mall.  We parked around back and headed to the Character Warehouse.  It wasn’t super busy, so we took our time walking around.  The girls grabbed a Vera Bradley lunch bag and some Disney Cruise Line shirts really cheap.  Nancy and I didn’t see anything we wanted, so we left empty handed but the girls were extremely happy.  We hit up  nearby Freddy’s Frozen Custard and Steakburgers for dinner, which we all really enjoyed (my vegetarian daughter had a grilled cheese).  We then headed for the hotel.

The Hampton Inn and Suites is located just outside the south 192 entrance to Disney World.  Its about 15 minutes from Epcot and maybe 20 or so from the Magic Kingdom parking lot.  We used some Hilton points to book a basic two queen bed room.  When check in became available the day before, we checked in and selected a ground floor room.  Because I am a Hilton gold member, I was eligible to upgrade our room to one of the suites.  The suites are twice the size of the regular rooms and include a sleeper sofa.  I like the ground floor rooms at this hotel because we don’t have to wait for the elevator.  There isn’t much foot traffic on the main hallway because the parking lot funnels most people right to the elevators.  We were never woken up by noise in the hallway.

After dropping the bags off in the room, we headed to the nearby Target to grab some snacks for the parks and the room.  We probably spent about 20 minutes grabbing some stuff and headed back to the room to unpack and get ready for the upcoming week.  Our trip down was pretty straightforward, including the trip from Jacksonville to Orlando.  Another bonus to staying at this Hilton is the free breakfast every morning.  It’s not the highest end breakfast we’ve ever had, but it has all the basics you would want.  It also has much better coffee than they serve at any of the Disney value resorts!  We do make sure to take the Starbucks Via packs on trips for an extra strong cup when we first get up in the morning. 

Here are the other parts of the trip:

Planning | Travel | Hollywood Studios | Magic Kingdom | Epcot | Animal Kingdom | WDW Part 2

 

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