Spring Trip with 3 Newbies: Travel and Day 1 in parks

Cast:
Myself-trip planner and list maker extraordinaire
Dbf-Was at WDW when he was too young to remember
DD11-1st time-hesitant thrill seeker
DD8-1st time-total thrill seeker!

We left Appleton on Sunday around 1:00 in the afternoon headed for Chicago where we would fly out the following morning. (Long story as to why we drove all the way to Chicago to fly to Orlando-don't aks! :). I am a nurse who works night shift and I was lucky enough to get sent home at 10:00p.m. the night before due to low census on the hospital floor where I work and the fact that I was in overtime at that point. Score!!! The trip to Chicago would be that much easier. The drive there was uneventful and we settled in to our hotel to try to sleep for the big day ahead of us.
We woke up around 6:00 a.m. and got ourselves ready. We arrived at O'hare around 8:30 for our 10:40 departure to Florida. We were waiting at our gate when there was an announcement that our gate was changed to a completely different level of the airport. Okay, not a big deal...so we headed across the airport and down a level to our new gate. About 10 minutes before we were to begin boarding there was an announcement that there was a mechanical issue with our plane and it was going to be delayed until 12:00. Uggh...maybe we should grab some lunch. As we were eating I received a text from United stating that the time of departure was now 2:00. Dangit! This would completely mess up my plans and the fast passes I had set up. Oh well...we will still be in Disney by evening. My DDs were so patient throughout our 7 hours at the airport, I was completely expecting them to melt down. Thank goodness!! Our flight finally left around 3:00 and we were in Orlando by 6:00. I received a text from United telling me that one of our 3 suitcases had been sent on an earlier flight so I would have to pick it up when we arrived at the airport. Good grief! Luckily, we spoke with a baggage claim agent and he let us look through the unclaimed baggage. It wasn't there and he told us that if it had a yellow sticker on it then Mickey Mouse certainly picked it up and it would be at our hotel. My DD8 loved this! :mickey: Okay, the magic is starting.
We arrived at AoA and our items we ordered from Garden Grocer were in our room. We freshened up a bit and headed to take a bus to MK. As long as I live, I will never forget the magical feeling of walking up Main St. towards Cinderella castle with my daughters for their first time at WDW. It was truly something that will be etched in my memory and on my heart forever. :cloud9:
We missed our fastpass for 7DMT so we decided to ride POTC since the wait was only 10 minutes. Everyone loved this ride! We ended up riding it probably 15 times before we left at the end of our trip. After POTC we rode HM which also had a short wait. Next we decided to eat since we hadn't eaten since lunch at the airport. We went to Columbia Harbor house and had fish for the 3 older ones and DD8 had chicken nuggets. I was disappointed that they no longer have a lobster roll on the menu; that is why I went there in the first place but the fish was okay and we were full. On a side note: We got the dining plan and DD11 was a bit disappointed in the choices for her as she had to order from the adult menu. She wanted something off of the kids menu and she certainly does not eat any more than a kid's meal amount of food. This would continue to be an issue throughout our trip and I learned that I will never get the dining plan again if I have a child with me who is under 13-maybe not even then (we wasted a LOT of food).
Next we rode IASW. I feel like this is a ride you have to ride once, but by the end of it my head was beginning to ache. Everyone agreed we didn't need to ride this ride ever again. By this time it was about 9:45 and we decided to go in stand-by for 7DMT since the wait was 35 minutes. The fireworks began while we were in line and we saw a few of them. We loved this ride!!! I wouldn't want to wait 75 minutes to ride it (which was the wait time for most of our trip), but we did like it a lot. DD11 gets a bit nervous on roller coasters sometimes so she sat by me and absolutely loved it! After we were done we headed to SM since I had managed to change our FP time to 10:30 earlier in the day from the airport. Dbf and DDs absolutely loved SM. I was worried about how DD11 would feel about it but she wanted to ride it again immediately. We didn't do that since the wait was long and we were all exhausted.
We caught a bus back to AoA and all of our suitcases were in our room-yay!! We stayed in a Finding Nemo suite and DDs absolutely loved the theming! DD8 slept on the pull out couch (which was surprisingly comfortable!) and DD11 slept on the pull down bed. I showered and we all fell asleep and dreamed of the magic we would experience for the next 5 days in WDW.