Arriving at Disney World

Wednesday, July 11th, 2007 at5:20 am by traveltripz

We had just driven from the Kennedy Space Center to Miami. It didn’t seem to take too long – maybe an hour and a half and we were in Orlando. Getting from Highway 95 to our hotel wasn’t too harrowing. The signage is pretty good and we eventually found the sign to our hotel at the Port Orleans French Quarter.

We drove into the main driveway but had no idea how to check-in or where to park the car so I hopped out and asked the guy sitting under the Bell Services sign. With directions in hand we made our way around to the parking area.

Check-in at the hotel was quite pleasant and easy with a nice young man whose name escapes us – Joshua, James, Jeremy? We can’t quite remember but he checked us in smoothly and gave each of us a Disney badge with the words “1st Visit” written across the front as well as a heap Mickey Mouse stickers for Wanda’s grandkids.

We then headed back to our car and drove around to the guest car park which is around the side of the hotel and much closer to our room.

The room was comfortable and clean and we will do a full review later – Once again NO WIFI access.

port-orleans-hotel
As we were intending to head out the next day for the Disney parks we headed back to the concierge to purchase our tickets. We decide on a three day hopper pass which allowed us to hop between parks during the day. This was well worth the extra money as we found out later.

You can also purchase your Disney World Tickets online so that you are ready to go the minute you arrive at the park.

Having already read on the internet that you have to plan for each day we proceeded back to the room to do just that. We found that this is definitely a must if you are going to any Disney park as you will have much better success if you plan what you want to see the night before.

We decided on the Animal Kingdom in the morning as it had the early morning hours for hotel guests, and MGM Studios at night. We also worked out all the rides we wanted to go on for each of the parks and marked them on the brochure in order of preference.

Then it was off to bed as we wanted to be up early the next morning to take advantage of the Morning Magic Hours which allows hotel guests an extra hour in the morning to use the park before the general public arrives…another great advantage of staying at the Disney Resort.