Carnival Sunshine Review, Part 1: Chicago to Florida + Disney Springsfeatured

Three flights in five days. It started with three flights in five days that crossed the country on a diagonal and stopped in the middle at home in Chicago for a whopping 26 hours. Clearly, I have no regard for my own sanity.

My boss asked me if I wanted to go to Seattle for a few days to work on our operational plan for 2016 with some of our Seattle-based teams and, well, I’ll never say no to a couple of days in Seattle. I love Seattle. I fall in love with the city a little more every time I visit. But the timing of the trip wasn’t ideal – we’d pushed our annual October family vacation to Christmas to maximize Stephanie’s remaining PTO days at work (she was short on vacation days after our nearly three week Eurotrip in May), which meant a week that looked like this:

Work holiday party on Friday (featuring Salt-N-Pepa!), pack for two trips in two separate climates on Saturday, early morning flight to Seattle on Sunday, even earlier morning flight back to Chicago on Wednesday (where I promptly landed at 1:00 pm and headed straight into the office for four hours of meetings, a short appearance at a team holiday party and then back to my condo for our building association holiday party), a half day on Thursday and then a late afternoon flight into Tampa.

To say I was low on energy would be an understatement. But you know, where I was low on energy, I was raking in frequent flyer miles like a boss.

Needless to say, this trip had virtually no planning behind it. I planned a short pre-cruise stay at my favorite hotel in Florida and I bought Mom and Stephanie tickets to Mickey’s Christmas Party for Hanukkah. And I planned to make no plans because I was exhausted and all I really wanted to do was get a tan and take some pictures.

So on Wednesday, I flew back from a productive trip in Seattle, unpacked and repacked my carry on and promptly fell asleep on my couch while giving myself a gel manicure. And Thursday, I went into work for a few hours to wrap up loose ends and then hopped on a bus and a train to meet Mom at O’Hare. From my desk to the security line at O’Hare was less than an hour. Public transit in Chicago fails me on a near daily basis, but when it comes to getting me to O’Hare, there’s no better way than a ride on the Blue line.

Mom and I walked through security (thanks in large part to the dynamic duo of TSA Pre-Check and Priority screening) and power walked to our gate, at the furthest end of the American Airlines terminal. We were short on time because I was late in leaving work, so we grabbed a couple of salads at Wolfgang Puck Express and some coffee from Starbucks before heading over to our gate.

I put in an upgrade request when we booked the flight, but the empty first class cabin filled up a few days before our flight. We got called over to check in, where they only had room to upgrade one of us. My elite status on American allows me to upgrade myself and my companions to any seat in the main cabin at T-24 hours, so I’d already moved us into the bulkhead seats, and declined the upgrade so that Mom and I could spend some quality time together on the plane (read: so I could take a nap on her).

Boarding was a mess. The holiday season brings out either the best or worst in everyone, and it seems to bring out the absolute worst in people on airplanes. We were slightly late in pushing off because no one could find room for their carry-ons in the overhead bins, but once everyone and their luggage found a home, we went wheels up towards Tampa, and I indulged in my Chicken Chinois salad and then took a nap. A short two and a half hours later, it was 30+ degrees warmer and we were in Florida.

Mom rented a car for us through Alamo, and since she completed her check-in before arrival, we were able to go straight to the garage, pick out a car and leave. From the time we got our luggage to the time we were driving out of the garage was less than 15 minutes. Pro tip: always check in online before you arrive. Always.

The drive to Disney grounds was about an hour but it’s a pretty straight shot up I-4 and before I knew it, the lights of the Gaylord Palms came to sight, beckoning us home.

The Gaylord Palms is one of my favorite hotels in the US. We’ve visited at least half a dozen times in the past ten years, but it’s been a solid three and a half since our last visit. The hotel (and adjoining convention center) are amongst the largest resorts in Florida and really, there’s no words to describe it. It’s a breathtaking array of topiaries and lights nestled under a glass atrium. Walking through the atrium and taking in the sounds of the waterfalls, the shadows of the palm trees against the stone ground…it’s like coming home for me.

We checked into the hotel and opted into an upgrade to an atrium view room for an additional $25. So instead of looking out at the parking lot, our room faced inwards, with a balcony that looked out over the Christmas tree in the atrium, the twinkling lights visible from the comfort of my bed. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Even though it was getting late (we didn’t even check in until 8:45 pm), we needed to get some dinner and there was really only one viable option for us: Downtown Disney.

Except Downtown Disney doesn’t exist anymore. Did you know that? I didn’t. They turned it into Disney Springs a couple of months ago. Same concept, same stores and restaurants, bigger space. And parking garages, too. The parking garages were a major upgrade from the mess of a parking lot in the former days of Downtown Disney. The rest of it? TBD. I’m still trying to wrap my head around it.

As we drove towards Downtown Disney, we caught the fireworks off of Epcot right ahead of us, each boom and blast of brightness saying “Welcome home. We’ve missed you, too.”

We parked in that shiny new parking garage and traversed Disney Springs from the parking lot on the West Side to the Marketplace area, stopping into our old stomping grounds at Goofy’s Candy Co to grab some sweet snacks for later.

And for dinner? Earl of Sandwich. An oldie but a goodie. For Mom, there was no other option. She loves that Caprese sandwich. I opted for a sandwich I’d never tried before (the Italian), and I really enjoyed it. But it’s hard to mess up an Italian sandwich, especially when you’ve got freshly baked bread as the foundation.

Italian Sandwich

Caprese Sandwich

We took our time heading back to the car, stopping to explore the new areas and walkways that were added since our last visit and to take in the Christmas decorations. So much was new, but there was enough held over from the Downtown Disney days of our previous visits to keep the nostalgia train running strong.

Instead of running our errands like we’d planned on earlier when we had more energy, we headed back to the hotel to relax a little bit. Our room included free wifi and the television was already hooked into Netflix. We watched Legally Blonde 2 before falling asleep to the colorful twinkling lights of the atrium.