I wanted to do a few reviews from our trip for anyone out there who is thinking of renting a stroller in the Orlando area.

I seriously cannot say enough good things about the stroller rental!  It was by far the best decision we made on our trip and I am so very happy I happened to read about renting them about a week before our trip.  Because of reviews, I originally called Orlando Strollers, but they had a much smaller selection and they didn’t have availability for our whole trip.  They referred me to Kingdom Strollers who did have availability and were extremely easy to work with… in fact, I did it all online, which is my absolute preference to do everything to save myself a phone call and without worrying about business hours.

I was nervous about the price point, especially since we were driving.  Our stroller is massive and only fits in our SUV.  For our little car we just keep a small umbrella stroller in the trunk in case we are somewhere a stroller is necessary.  We were renting a full size sedan for our trip (thanks to hubby’s company for providing that and saving us the wear and tear on our cars!) and although I think our beast would have fit, we most likely could not have fit our luggage.  I’m extremely budget-conscious so it was hard for me to spend money on something we already had and could have made work, even if it meant taking apart the whole stroller and rebuilding it once we got there.  For seven days, the rental stroller cost me $50.  Can’t beat that!  Not to mention the ease of folding it with one hand and carrying it by the handle onto the buses.  That right there is worth the $50 alone.

In addition to the part that my child sat in, it came with a parent console, a rain cover (extra important if you go during the rainy season like we did) and a cooler that hooks on the bottom all at no extra charge.  The parent console must be a nice feature because many of the reviews I read were unhappy with the fact that they didn’t offer this.  It is now standard on every rental.  The only thing they do not offer is the child console on the front of the stroller.  Although it would have been nice to have, we didn’t really miss it.  

Upon check in, we picked the stroller up at our resort’s bell service counter and we left it there when we checked out.  It was super easy.  I will rent from them every time we go!  They also had a sign with our name on it so we could spot it in the park when we had to park it to go on a ride.  I can’t tell you how many people we saw with strollers from Kingdom Strollers.  So, next time you travel to Orlando with a little one, rent your stroller!

Well we are back from our first family vacation at Disney!  We had a great time and we definitely learned quite a few things about traveling with a baby!  I plan on doing a full trip report, but for now I leave you with a small recap of some of our great and not-so-great findings!

1.  Rent a stroller.  Best decision I ever made!  Seriously it was so nice to not have to worry about trying to fit a huge stroller in the car on top of all of the other crap I piled in there.

2.  If you live far away from Disney World — fly!  We made the 17 hour trip from Pittsburgh to Orlando by car, and although we didn’t have any issues on the way down (the way home is a whole other story!), it was a long drive and it would have been much easier to be there in 2 hours via plane.  Having a car was nice, but we mainly used Disney transportation anyway.

3. Getting, and expecting to use, four day hopper passes was just too ambitious.  I planned a trip like we are used to taking and got the hoppers.  We would have been fine with two day tickets and really could have just run on a one day ticket.

4.  If you are spending more than one day at the park, do it slowly.  We had great success on our longest day by going back to our resort and letting Lily take a nap on the bed.

5.  Don’t expect your kid to have the same sleeping patterns as they do at home.  Lily would not, under no circumstances, sleep in her pack and play.  Since we drove I thought it would be best if we brought our own pack and play so she had something familiar, not to mention I have a thing about germs.  Turns out that, despite the fact that she loves the PnP at home, she hated it on vacation and insisted on sleeping with me every night.

6.  Don’t project other people’s horror stories on your own child/trip.  I heard terrible things about babies hating and/or being terrified of characters so I was very leery of introducing them to Lily.  Turns out the kid is a character ham and loved the attention she got from them.  She could not get enough of giving them kisses and holding their hands.

That is a quick overview of the things I learned while traveling with an eight-month old.  Stay turned for our trip report!

… should be packing a baby for vacation.

Ugh!  Talk about frustrating!  I find it a constant internal battle just to dress her day to day let alone picking out outfits in advance for a week!  I pretty much pulled everything out of her closet to try to fit in her little suitcase when I realized this was ridiculous and I needed to go through.

The main problem is, we planned this trip before she was born so I have known for about a year we were going to Disney with an eight-month old.  This in turn means I have been shopping for this trip for that long.  Well, I pretty much forget my own last name on a daily basis so remembering all the things I had already bought while out shopping was just not going to happen.  Couple that with things that friends have bought her to wear on this trip and the kid could probably wear straight Disney clothes for about a month.

It took me two days, but I finally narrowed down what outfits she was going to wear (with sheer luck that some of them would just be way too hot to wear in Orlando in June).  This may or may not have included all but crying while hanging some outfits back in the closet that I really, really liked.

But I digress…

So clothes are packed, 12 bathing suits (I kid you not) are packed, now on to all the other crap we need to take.  Our rental car is  not as big as our SUV so we were trying to really pack light.  Yeah… that almost happened.  Honest-to-goodness if we would have had to put the stroller in the car, we may have to strap me to the roof for the ride because the car is going to be packed!  Mucho praises to  the people who thought of stroller rentals delivered and picked up at your hotel!

So here is to hoping we didn’t forget anything and that when it’s all said and done, we have room to actually put the baby in the car too!