Disney World 2017 - Day 1

Okay, this is it. The Real Deal (TM).

I've been woefully negligent in updating this blog over the past few years. I've tried several times to chronicle our adventures, but all I have to show for it are unfinished drafts. But now we have embarked on the vacation to end all vacations (so far), Disney World (with Legoland for an appetizer).

This trip is the reason I started thinking about doing a blog in the first place, so I'd better get to it.

Day One started with us packing the car on Thursday, May 11th. I wanted to drive down rather than fly and thought it would be an especially awesome idea to take the Tesla, so we could make the trip on only electricity, rather than drive our much more spacious van. Not that the Tesla is lacking for cargo space; we actually fit all of our belongings in the car and trunk, and never really put anything in the front trunk, or "frunk". Things were certainly more crammed for the kids, but they were troopers and were excited about the little cubbies that their seats had become once everything was packed in around them.

Ready to Roll!

Mariah has been going all out to make this trip a special one for them and came up with enough cool stuff for them to play with and do in the car to last them a week! She got trapper keeper binders and filled them with travel bingo games, coloring book pages, find the state license plate games, and on and on. Then she made goodie bags for the kids to open up, one for each state line we would cross and one for each of the 5 charging stops we had planned to charge the car.

Needless to say, Ben and Emma were beside themselves with excitement to see all of the loot they were getting and couldn't wait to play around with everything.

So at 12:00 AM on Friday, May 12th, we left our home to drive to Orlando. The plan was to drive straight through the night and all day until we got there, rather than split the drive into two days. The hope was that the kids would sleep through half of the drive this way.

It was drizzling and in the mid 50's when we left, and we made good time to our first charging stop in Rocky Mount, NC, a little after 2 AM. The kids woke up for this first stop and tore into the first goodie bags, which contained the "spinners" that they have been wanting so badly ever since the fad broke out and every other kid in the country seems to have gotten ahold of one. The little things were nearly impossible to find, but my mother, Nani to the kids, had somehow managed to find a really excellent set. To say that the kids were excited would be a massive understatement.

Coloring on their new tray-tables at 3 AM.

We charged for almost 50 minutes at our first stop. Longer than was necessary, but I noticed that we had used more energy than I had previously anticipated on the first leg due to the rain and wet roads and how loaded down the car was, so I wanted to err on the side of caution and have plenty of electrons in the "tank," as it were.

We stopped next at Lumberton, NC, around 5 AM, and this time everyone stayed asleep for most of the charging.

The next stop was Santee, SC, around 7:45 AM, where we got some breakfast at McDonalds while the car charged back up.

Another quick 109 mile leg later and we arrived at the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport in Georgia for the next charging stop at 10 AM. We walked over to the airport for a quick bathroom break and a look around before heading out. Emma was excited to see all of the palm trees, and things were starting to warm up and feel much more tropical than it did back in rainy, 50 degree Richmond!

Our next destination was St. Augustine, FL, which we reached at around 1:30. This supercharger is located at an outlet mall, so we decided to take a quick walk around and did a little shopping while we charged up. Once again, we dawdled longer than necessary and left around 40 minutes later.

Charging in St. Augustine.

Up until this point, we were feeling really good about our progress and were planning on reaching our hotel around 4:30 or so, but Orlando traffic had other plans for us.

While we had enough juice to reach the hotel just fine, I thought it would be more prudent to make one more stop at the Orlando Supercharger before we went further south to the hotel. Since we weren't planning on charging at the hotel itself, this would make sure that we had plenty of range to make it back up to Orlando after our first day at Legoland on Saturday.

Unfortunately the traffic around Orlando was horrible and it added hours to our trip. I think at one point the GPS estimated that it would take us 50 minutes to travel the next 12 miles and it wasn't joking! We finally made it to the charger at 5 pm and after a quick charge forged through the final hour of traffic to our hotel in Winter Haven, FL.

On the road for 19 hours and still smiling!

Exhausted, we picked up some dinner at a nearby Chick-fil-a and finally checked into our hotel at 7 pm to chow down and finally relax.

Overall, other than the last chunk of the trip through Orlando, it really was a great time. By stopping more frequently and for longer breaks, i felt much more refreshed to tackle each new leg of the trip and I think the kids did too. Ben and Emma had an amazing time opening their gift bags at each new state and charging stop. They kept asking to check the map to see when they next prize would become available. They had a blast looking for license plates, coloring, telling the jokes that Mariah had packed in the gift bags, eating earwax flavored jelly beans out of the Harry Potter themed jellybean boxes they received, and it seemed that, through it all, I could always hear those spinners going round and round as they endlessly played with them.

It was a real shame that it all caught up to us at once in the end, but now that everyone has stretched out and decompressed a bit I think we will be good to go for the real adventure tomorrow at Legoland!

Speaking of which, it's now 11 PM and I REALLY should be getting some sleep! Big day ahead tomorrow at Legoland!