Top Tips for Traveling with an Infant
Hi, all, it's me, Rebecca, the five-month-old baby, back with one last post before Mommy stops letting me use the computer. It seems there is a lot of scary stuff on the Internet. I went to alt.baby expecting to find fellow infants for chatting, but I didn't find any. (And why would an adult want to wear a diaper -- they are bulky and uncomfortable. Strange people out there.)
Anyway, I had promised my top tips for traveling with an infant, or in my case, for an infant traveling with adults. I was going to make this a Top 10 list from the home office in Aurora, Illinois, but I can't count yet.
Strollers:
This is a tough topic, because people have different opinions. Mommy and Daddy brought my car seat / stroller combination with us, and yes, it is a bit large. As for agressive stroller drivers, we saw a few. We also saw a few people who just walked right out in front of the stroller thinking someone would just stop walking their straight line for them. Mommy and Daddy debated for awhile on the pros and cons and finally decided bringing the big stroller was the right idea. Here are some of those pros and cons:
Pro: Having my car seat with us, which was needed for the limo ride from home to O'Hare and back. We originally had a rental car booked with Budget and couldn't get a straight answer from them on whether the car seat rental was okay for an infant, so Mommy decided we needed our car seat. The car seat was also invaluable at restaurants, because, as I mentioned, many of them didn't have any sort of baby high chair. Carrying the car seat through the parks for lunch didn't make sense, but the combo stroller did.
Pro: The WDW park strollers are woefully inadequate for an infant. AK strollers might have been okay, but the Epcot and MK ones would not be. They are very hard and there is no way to keep a baby who has just learned how to roll over from flipping around in them. You also have to carry the baby from the car to the tram to the gate before getting a stroller.
Pro: Having a big stroller allowed me to take naps. In an umbrella stroller, I would slump over if I fell asleep and this would be very bad. In my stroller, I could lie down and sleep through the parks, which made me feel better.
Pro: In my case, familiarity bred content. Having my stroller and car seat made me feel more at home then being in a car seat I wasn't used to.
Con: Taking the car seat off the stroller and then folding the stroller at the airport and for the Disney trams was a real pain. The trams barely had enough room for the stroller, so with the exception of WDW and AK, Mommy and Daddy skipped the trams and walked from the parking lot. You can't do that at WDW, and at AK, the tram lines were short. One hint here is to aim for the front seat where there are two seats facing each other. There is more room between the seats and the stroller fit fine here.
Con: The stroller barely fit on the monorail in a regular car. (Mommy and Daddy don't like to use the disabled persons section of the car.) So we skipped the monorail in the morning and at night when it would be crowded and used the boat instead at MK.
Con: When it rains, the stroller gets wet. There isn't always a place to park it where it will stay dry. Daddy used one of our ponchos to keep it mostly dry.
Baby Care Centers
Use them. They are a great place to get out of the heat for awhile and a comfortable place to change an infant and feed a hungry baby. The restroom changing areas don't have any pads, so you would have to lug your own. They are also crowded sometimes, particularly with older children still in training pants being changed there. The Baby Care Centers were never crowded.
Here is my ranking of the centers from best to worst:
Animal Kingdom: The most colorful center, with a TV playing cartoons for my brothers and a little table for them to sit at. They had rocking chairs for feeding a baby in as well as a nice changing area. This one is located on the far edge of Discovery Island near Africa, which makes it a good location from just about anywhere in the park. The CMs here were very nice and even helped Mommy make a lunch reservation.
Magic Kingdom: This one is near Crystal Palace, which is slightly out of the way. It is older, but they had a TV. The CMs were nice here, too -- very friendly and spent a lot of time talking to us. The seats were not as comfortable here. (Funny story: Mommy and Daddy have this dining table with wooden chairs that they always say are not very comfortable for sitting in for a long time. They've had this set for many years now. When Daddy came back from the Baby Care Center and Mommy asked how it was, he said it was nice, but the chairs were uncomfortable. He said they were literally "our kitchen chairs". When Mommy saw them later, she understood what he meant. They were exactly the same as our kitchen chairs -- same design, same color -- everything.)
Epcot: We didn't use this one at all because it was over near Odyssey and we were never over there at all.
Disney Studios: This center had the worst location. It is near the entrance of the park, near Guest Services, so it is so far away from the attractions. Even worse, you have to enter through Guest Services and some people wouldn't move out of the way to let you in because they thought we were cutting line. The room had no TV and just some padded chairs. It was very noisy because of Guest Services next door. Even with the door closed, you could here everyone in the next room. This center was not ever staffed when we were in it -- I guess you could get help from some in GS if you needed it.
Characters:
I loved them. Early breakfasts were the best time if you wanted a lot of attention, because there were few families in the restaurants so the characters had a lot of time to kill. Chef Mickey's is not the best place if you want to spend a lot of time with each character, because it was always busy, but there are more characters there. Cape May was not crowded at all, and neither was Norway. If you have small children, doing a CB is better than trying to stand in line in the parks to see the characters. And without EE, you can do a CB in the morning and still get to the parks by park opening.
Schedule:
Babies are creatures of habit. Being on vacation is bound to throw off our habits, so we get irritable. We will be sleeping in a strange bed, in a strange place. You have to remember this and try to keep some familiar habits. Again, this is where having my car seat and stroller helped. Mommy and Daddy also brought my blanket and my alligator, so I would have something I recognized here. (Remember, a baby doesn't realize this is a vacation -- for all I knew, we had moved here forever and I would never see my home again!)
If your baby has certain feeding times, or cranky times (like me: 6 p.m. on the dot and I get fussy because Daddy and Mommy want to relax after driving home and I want to play!), try to plan for those times.
More importantly, though, realize that a baby will screw up your schedule. Mommy and Daddy like to plan their trips, with specific days at certain parks, and planned meals. We had to change a few on the way and add a meal or two because I needed to be taken care of. Mommy and Daddy had to split up and hike across the park to the baby center on occasion to change me. You have to roll with the punches and adjust your schedule. Having siblings actually helps because one parent can go ride something while the other watches the baby.
If you have kids who just have to see everything, split up. That's what Mommy and Daddy did to finish MK. Daddy stayed at the hotel with me so the boys and Mommy could go ride all the big rides one more time. Daddy got to sleep in and read his newspaper and drink his coffee and relax, which he likes to do on vacation.
Rides
Any ride without a height requirement can accommodate a baby. You have no way of knowing if your baby will react to the loud noises or the heights or the colors until you try it, so don't skip something just because you think he or she won't like it. If you like it and want to ride it, then ride it. If the baby gets scared of the noises or heights, then you can skip similar rides.
The Heat
Florida is very hot in the summer and babies shouldn't be out in the sun much. Here is another pro for bringing my stroller. The car seat and stroller canopies meet in the top and provide 100% shade. Mommy and Daddy bought a couple of cheap fans at K-Mart and used them to provide a breeze to keep me cool. We also went to a lot of indoor shows to cool off and used the Baby Care Centers when it got too hot. Make sure you bring a big floppy hat, even though if your baby is like me, I'll be pulling it off my head all the time. Hey, it gives you something to do while waiting in line -- put my hat on when I take it off.
Why Go?
Some people thought we were crazy going to WDW with a baby. After all, they said, she won't remember any of this. And you are right, I won't remember this trip to WDW, just like my brother doesn't remember his first trip when he was 3. But Mommy and Daddy remember it, and talk about it every time they come with him. They remind Alex of when he got upset after he and Daddy got off Dumbo and when Daddy asked him why, he cried, "I want to ride more rides", thinking Dumbo was the only one. They remember him running up to give Mickey Mouse a huge hug at the end of a long, hot June day. They remember Thomas riding all of the dark rides with his eyes closed, but loving Thunder Mountain and Tower of Terror.
Somebody else said something in another thread about buying a carpet vs. going to the World and they were right. Years from now, when I get older, and take an interest in boys and get married, and Daddy recovers from his ensuing heart attack, we won't be sitting around the bride's room remembering when we bought that new SUV, or the new carpet, or the landscaping. We'll remember Chip trying to put my pacifier back in my mouth, or me getting scared on JIYI, or anyone of the countless other things I have said in this trip report. Yes, we spent a lot of money on this trip, but we'll remember it forever. I am only going to be a baby at WDW once.
Anyway, time for me to go. Thank you for all the kind words. I hope you enjoyed reading about WDW through a baby's eyes. Mommy and Daddy bought APs this time, so I suspect we'll be back next year. But before then, it is only 114 Days 11 Hrs 44 Mins 38 Secs until we hop on a plane to Orlando in December for seven days on the Disney Cruise Line. Maybe Daddy will let me write about that then.
Love, Rebecca