Cruise of a Lifetime- Day 1 Traveling to Orlando

 This vacation was born one day in August of 2024 when we were trying to find YouTube videos of the world’s most epic water park and stumbled upon Royal Caribbean’s newest cruise ship, Star of the Seas, set to sail on her maiden voyage in August of 2025. I called our travel agent, Pam, and we got it booked for February of 2026- giving us plenty of time to save money and knowing that, most likely, Parker would be off on his own adventure: the mission.

If you remember back to 2024, Ray had just started 5th grade and was having a rough time, I was struggling with my insanely challenging kinder class, and we all just needed something to look forward to. And boy, had this cruise been just what the doctor ordered.

It’s been 18 months of dreaming and planning and a dopamine hit every time we thought about how much fun this cruise would be. And now it’s here! The day has finally arrived!!!!!

We flew from ONT to Denver and had to run to our connecting flight, but we made it! We flew into MCO and took an uber to our hotel where we slept peacefully for the night. It’s cold here- like record breaking freezing temps. 34 degrees to be exact. We haven’t boarded the ship yet but I don’t think we’ll be hitting the water slides. The kids did excellent on our travel day. We even got our SECOND OF ALL TIME compliment for the kids’ polite behavior from the flight attendant! Yessss!!!!!! Great job kids!!! When we landed in MCO, all the food places were closed but we were a little hungry. I stopped by Burger King because there was a young woman there making crowns and it looked like maybe they were open. They were not. BUT, she gave us 2 big bags of all the food they didn’t sell! We all chowed down and the food tasted so much better knowing it was not only free, but given to us in such a charitable way. I don’t know, it just set the tone for the trip and really made my heart feel happy. (It’s the little things!) And am I sensing a theme here with Burger KING and ROYAL Caribbean?!?