We are off! We’ve been counting down the days… and I’m not sure who is the most excited. Eloise is going to be SO fun to watch this trip! 3 is such a fun age to do Disney! She can’t believe she gets to meet princesses this week!
Me…. I’m excited to get to do more traveling with this crazy crew. My kids are seriously such good travelers and I’m always so excited to go on adventures with them. (Well, maybe just not long road trips. Holy shit. I hate road trips!). Although… hold up. Never fails, the long days of vacation are filled with lots of pissy moments where we’re like… why the eff are we even on vacation together and usually I swear about 100 times that we’ll never travel again. HA! That’ll never happen. It isn’t always easy, it the memories are worth it. Thankfully, it’s usually only the GOOD memories that last :).
We’ve slimmed down our flight necessities. We typically choose Delta, which almost always has the tv’s in the headrests. Travel= unlimited screen time. We are not one of those “no screens, enjoy the journey, take in all the moments that getting to the destination has to offer families. I don’t like entertaining children for long periods of time in small, enclosed areas (like… planes… cars… doctors office rooms… omg why do they make you wait in those small rooms for SO long just trapped with kids??). I’d prefer to just zone out until we’re at our destination!
With that said… headphones are a must have in our book. We take a few small toys for the girls. The boys took homework but… never worked on it. Ipods and an Ipad for Lulu are in our carry ons too.
And snacks! Always snacks! Uhm. Let’s talk real life right here. Is it just my kids that the second you get seated on the plane they’re asking for their snacks and all the tricks you have in your bag within the first 5 minutes? I’m not joking! They KNOW there’s good stuff in my bag and they turn into the seagulls from Finding Nemo the second our seatbelts click.
We didn’t realize that there were special tags to put on our bags before checking them in at the airport that would have transferred them from the airport to our resort without us touching them. (So… if you’re staying on Disney property, take advantage of that!) . No big deal though! We got a text that our room was ready (early!) and we headed straight to our resort via the Magical Express. WOOOH! This trip we’d splurged on the Polynesian and were so excited to see what all the “oohh ahhh” was about at this resort!
Our MUST DO at Disney- every trip- is to eat at Ohana. Our favorite meal is dinner by far. Pot stickers, noodles, veggies, chicken and pork skewers, and the most delicious bread pudding and ice cream for dessert! MMMM! Dinner does not have characters, but breakfast does! At dinner they do a fun coconut + broom race with the kids which is pretty cute.
MY THOUGHTS SO FAR:
• The Polynesian is gorgeous! We stayed at the Rarotonga longhouse, which was SO convenient to be close to the main building near the restaurants and main pool, and also pretty close to the quieter pool as well!
• The pools are heated… our kids swam even though it was only 60* out (Michigan kids!!)
• The rooms are just… okay. Nothing spectacular. After staying in the villas at Saratoga Springs, I feel a little spoiled. I kind of expected the rooms at the Polynesian to WOW me for the price. We had adjoining rooms (we can’t all 6 fit in one room nor would we want to… pretty sure someone would die if we tried that HAHAH!), which worked out great.
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