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I’m not going to bore you too much with the
"trip before the trip" or anything leading up to the big day. We
had just been to Disney World in
September (three months
prior) and shortly before embarking on that trip, we decided to
spend the time right before the holidays in Disney. So this trip
was thrown together rather quickly and I did a lot of the
planning right away and let it rest. That’s a first for me
because I’m usually tweaking everything up until the last
minute.
Although we were super excited to be back
for the holidays, I just didn’t have a lot of planning “oomph”
left in me -
Thank goodness for TourGuide Mike!
We knew
what we wanted to do so I made the arrangements and left it at
that. We knew the places we wanted to dine, had our flight and
villa reservations, Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party tickets
and just needed to wait for our departure date.
We left on a Wednesday for this trip which
is what we did last trip. Leaving in the middle of the week made
traffic both on the roads, in the airports and checking in to
our villa on arrival day much less crowded. We wanted the same
thing this time around, as well.
Since our flight left via Airtran out of
the Philadelphia airport at 7am on Wednesday morning, that meant
that we needed to get down to Philadelphia the night prior. The
kids were just not going to handle the first big day otherwise.
We left after work on Tuesday for
Philadelphia around 4:30pm which would take us to Allentown
around 5:30 - just in time to stop at Red Robin for dinner. We
figured that by the time we were done eating and back on the
road to the airport, that most of the rush hour traffic would be
gone and we’d make it to the airport without issue. That was
very true for the most part, except we didn’t expect a snow
storm. It was lightly snowing here in the Wilkes-Barre area when
we left, but it was a big, messy accumulation by the time we got to
Allentown. Then it turned to just plain messy the closer we got
to Philadelphia. It was a little tough and slow going, but we
made it just fine.
We checked into the Sheraton Suites by the
airport around 7pm. This place is very nice, newly renovated and
we’re able to use our Starwood points for a free stay. It’s a
win-win. The rooms are very spacious and it allows for a
separation between Ernie in his crib and the bedroom. This way
he’s able to get to sleep without any issues. If you want to see
pictures of the suites,
visit this page of our September '08 trip journal.
We bathed the kids, got them into their
pajamas and we all got to sleep before 10pm. We had an early
wake up of about 4:45am.
Pictures from Tuesday:
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