WDW 2009 – Day 1: The Arrival

So how did we start off our grand trip to the mecca of Disney? Well, we left California at 8:30am, had a quick stop in Denver, and then continued on the same plane all the way to Orlando. The Mr. and I are both quite good at sleeping on planes, so we got a bit of rest on our journey and were spry and ready to go when we hopped off the flight. We had a few SuperBowl-bound passengers on our plane, and ran into droves of them at the airport as well, as they readied for their short drive to Tampa.

On my first trip to WDW, in 1998, my parents chose to take a towncar to and from the airport instead of renting a car. Since then, however, they’ve added a free service called “Disney’s Magical Express” which makes the trip even better. We were sent luggage stickers about 2 weeks before our trip to affix to our bags, and once we checked our bags in at the start of the trip, we never had to see them again until they were safely in the room! Talk about great service!

We found our way down to the lower level (thanks to Mr. M) and after a short queue, we presented our bus tickets and were ushered over to the line for our resort where we hopped aboard a pretty new motorcoach. The ride from the airport is only about 30 minutes, but once we were there we only had one resort stop before ours!

Mr. M and I checked into our room at ‘Port Orleans: French Quarter’ and then made a mad dash for the buses to head to Hollywood Studios for dinner.

Our first dinner of the trip was at the Sci-Fi Dine-In, where your tables are set-up in cars, and you’re on the backlot set of a drive-in movie theater. The screen plays all sorts of silly Sci-Fi clips from old movies, as well as commercials from drive-in movie theaters. We chowed down our early (PST)/late (EST) dinner, and then had a bit of extra time to ride a couple of rides as well! We hopped on Tower of Terror first (before dinner) and then went for a nostalgic ride on Star Tours after our food.

We headed back to our resort, where we found our luggage snug inside of our room, and then tried our best to beat jet lag for an early rise the next day!