Where it all started.

The very first time I ever went to Walt Disney World I was 7 years old. My family used to have a cottage in Clear Water Florida and we would spend most of our summers in Florida going to the beach and of course the obligatory one day visit to Magic Kingdom. I honestly don’t remember much of my first trip to Disney as it was a short visit due to the rain. Not to mention my mom and dad were not the biggest Disney fans. My father tragically passed away in a car accident the very next day and after that we sold the cottage and I never went back to Florida....until recently

Fast forward to 2015. I’m a single father and the one thing I really want to do with my daughter is take her on a trip to Disney. Trouble is that I literally know nothing about Disney World and how it all works. I’m looking at the website and all the things you can do and I’m instantly intimidated. I see fast passes, ADR, park hopper, all the different resort options...my anxiety kicks in and I put it on the back-burner.

Lets jump a little further to 2016 and I’ve met my future wife Jaime and her beautiful daughter Keira. We fall madly in love and one of the things we instantly connect on is Disney. She tells me that back in October of 2015 she went on a trip with Keira who was 2.5 years old at the time. So of course I have a million questions for her. How was it travelling with just you and Keira? Does she remember going at all considering she was so young? (this is something people would always tell me. Don't take them too young they'll never remember) What are fast passes? What is ADR? So she calls Keira into the room who is now 3.5 years old and Jaime starts asking her questions about her first Disney trip. She remembers everything with near perfect detail and her face is lit up with a smile the entire time.. This convinces me we need to go ASAP. On top of that Jaime is a Disney planning genius and managed to get free dining (which at the time I never knew was a thing) and a bunch of other perks. I’m blown away and my desire to plan a trip and use all this great knowledge she’s giving me is going crazy. I NEED TO GO lol.

So we start planning a trip. We pick a date for next June we make a deposit and we start planning. With all of Jaime’s expert knowledge we ended up changing our booking from All Star Movies to Port Orleans Riverside and saving almost $2000 CAD. We even managed to snag one of the Royal Guest Rooms. Jaime pretty much handled all the planning of fast passes, dining reservations etc as I had no idea what I was doing. I'm kind of just along for the ride.

We saved every last penny we could and paid our trip off a few months before our travel date. We live in the Greater Toronto Area and in order to save even moremoney we decided we would make the drive down to Florida in our mini-van. I’ll talk more about the drive down there, routes and costs etc in another post. I will say however the drive down with a 4 and 5 year old was actually pretty awesome. They didn’t complain much even after driving for nearly 17 hours on the first day.

Its 2am and we're on the way to Florida. Emily looks impressed!

It’s now June 11th 2017 and we’re in the lobby of the Port Orleans resort and I’m in total awe of everything around me. I can’t believe we’re here in this exact moment. I’m full of all these emotions because I’ve done something I wanted to do since my daughter Emily was born. I’ve given my daughters something some families don’t have an opportunity to do and I’m feeling very grateful. It’s also bitter sweet for me in a way. I haven’t been to Florida in 26 years and that last time I was there it wasn’t the best experience. But I’m here with MY family and I’m going to enjoy every second of it.

Emily and Keira in the Port Orleans Riverside lobby while Jaime checks-in

Being at Disney world with my Fiancé and daughters was just amazing. Watching them meet the characters they have only seen in the movies in real life was worth every single penny and hour of planning. My daughter Emily is absolutely in love with Winnie the Pooh. She has a stuffed doll she was given by her cousin when she was just 6 months old and she has slept with it every single night since. We did the character dining at Crystal Palace and seeing the look of joy on her face when she met Pooh for the first time was so emotional for me. I had never seen her smile so big before, but when Tigger took her hand and jumped up and down with her…pure happiness. This is the moment I became hooked on Disney for life. This is the moment I knew I wanted to come back here as often as possible and share these moments with my family.

Brunch at Crystal Palace. Emily was so in love with all the characters. Keira was all about PIglet

Every minute at Disney is so magical. It may sound cheesy but staying on property and immersing yourself in the full Disney experience…it just feels like you’re in a completely different world. All your worries and stresses just wash away. Everyone is so friendly and there to make sure you have the best experience and we really did. I tell people Disney is a place where you can sneeze and everyone around you collectively says “bless you”. It really is the most magical place on earth.

Its all over and we leave and head back home to Canada after 7 amazing fun filled days. The drive back I can’t stop talking about wanting to go back again and do all the things we couldn't fit into this trip. Jaime was a few months pregnant so we didn't really get to go on as many rides as we would have liked. Once we go back to our house we booked a trip for November 2018 because I wanted to check out Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party. I lied I actually wanted to go the Mickeys Not So Scary Halloween Party but I was betrayed by my family who voted to go to MVMCP instead.

For our second trip Jaime let me take over the planning because I wanted to put in practice all the knowledge she gave me. I’m a bit of a nerd when it comes to planning things and I found it quite exciting planning all of the details of the trip (i'll go into more detail later). We booked during a specific window because it was supposed to be lower crowds as well as the free dining promotion general comes out during that window. Free dining ended up being released during that window of time and we were again able to save a few thousand CAD. I’ll go more into the specifics of planning a trip in more detail in another post. Our second trip with our 3 daughters was even more amazing than the first and i'm really excited to plan our next Disney adventure.

I hope this blog will be a place where I can share my Disney experiences, knowledge and help people who are looking for advice on their first trip. I had a lot of questions when I was looking into it as a single father and there are a lot of helpful resources out there I wasn’t aware of before I met my wife. So if you love Walt Disney World and sharing in experiences with other Disney lovers please follow my adventures with my family.

#newtothis #disneydad #howitallstarted #myfirsttrip