We made it! I survived and I can live to tell the tale. Just a few short weeks ago we returned from our trip to Disneyland. What a roller coaster that was. It was a different trip for us to be certain with a 6 month old, but what a learning experience that was.
I had vowed before we left not to be one of those parents that took their kids into the park and made them push through each day until they would drop from sheer exhaustion. What a blessing that decision turned out to be. It was much harder than I thought it would be to find a routine, but once we did things seemed to work out just great.
Over the next few postings I will share some of the things we learned along the way. Let's start out with flying. We always fly. Why? Simply because we do not like long car rides. While it is only 16 hours or so for us to drive to Disneyland, we would not enjoy that trip. So, we fly. It is important to think about the best way to get your family to Disneyland. If your family does not enjoy long car trips, then it may be well worth the cost of flying to arrive with your sanity intact.
For our family choosing which airport to fly into is the easiest part. We almost always fly into Orange County. The Disneyland Express is not that expensive for ground transportation and they take us straight to the Disneyland Hotel (our favorite lodging). The commute is only around 30 minutes. If you choose to fly into Los Angeles the commute is at least an hour and can be much longer depending on traffic. There is also the option to fly into Long Beach on Jet Blue. We have done that once and found it to be pretty simplistic. There are fewer options for ground transportation, but getting through security is fast. Message me if you would like more info on that particular experience. I would be glad to share it with you.
In choosing our flight we knew we wanted to leave earlier in the day, but I did not want to awaken at 3 AM to make a 7 AM flight. Armed with that knowledge we chose to depart at 10 AM. This turned out to be a wonderful decision. My nearly 6 month old son did great with this flight time. He took a nap on the way to the airport and then slept for the first hour of our 2 hour and 20 minute flight. The mistake we made was in our flight home. Being an annual pass holder we always enjoyed taking the last flight out in order to spend some more time in the park on our day of departure. Things we didn't take into consideration...Elias' nap time and needing to be disconnected from all the excitement at the park. We also could never have predicted that on the day of our departure it would be 108 degrees. (Yes...you read that right.) If I had it to do all over again, I would have taken an earlier flight in order to keep him from being over stimulated and exhausted.
Flying was the easiest part of our trip. On our way home Elias again slept for the first hour. His only real struggle was in descending back to the ground. I am certain that his ears were hurting and there was not much I could do to help him. He wouldn't even nurse. All I could do was smile and think to myself..."At least they won't divert the flight to a different airport. We are almost home."
Until Next Time,
Sean
