Tales From the Minivan

Yes, you read that right, not 4 kids, 5 kids! We also picked up another Nannie since my last post! Andrew’s mom decided to come with us as well, and our 5th kid is Mackenzie’s friend and our next-door neighbour Katelyn. Her mother and I conspired on the morning we were leaving and managed to get things pulled together in 4 hours to bring her with us! Mackenzie is just thrilled! Once the girls arrived home from school we broke the news to them then, and headed off to Maine shortly after to stay the night in Bangor.

Travelling with this many is no small feat, there are a lot of logistics that come into play. Car seats for one are very important to me. I knew we were going to be renting a van once we arrived, so I decided to take our own car seats on the plane with us. Finn had his own paid seat so I wouldn’t have to check any of the seats. Everyone was asking, “Why don’t you just check them with your luggage?” There are a few reasons for this, the number one is safety. Kids are much safer in a harnessed seat on the plane. The other reason was that airlines are notorious for not being so gentle with items. I have heard of car seats having a broken base, and I’ve seen things with my own eyes after working for an airline in the past, so checking my $300 car seats was just not an option for me. I had been looking at a special carrier made for car seats and travelling called the GoGo Babyz, but for over $100, I did not think it was a wise investment. Instead I went to a local luggage store and bought 2 rolling luggage racks from the clearance section for $7.99 each (regular $49.99). They worked great! Here’s a photo of me hauling 2 of the 3 carseats behind me outside the Bangor International Airport.

We had a great flight direct flight from Bangor, ME to Sanford (Orlando) FL on Allegiant Air. This is a newer airline servicing Bangor with great flight prices, especially booking a few days in advance. The staff in Bangor were really accommodating to our large group. (Lets hope the return goes as smoothly)

Finn was awake for the first part of the flight and just loved looking out the window, his seat was set-up rear facing so needed to be placed by the window, so he loved the view.

Liam and Ciaran happily sat in their seats for the most part, they were fairly easy to install, Liam was in his Sunshine Kids Radian which folds (the flight attendants that that was just great!), Ciaran was in his Britax Marathon. The only hitch was that I forgot to flip the seatbelt buckle over to make it easy to unbuckle. I panicked for a moment when we landed, that I was never going to get the seat unbuckled!

The girls sat directly in front of me, and drew pictures and read magazines. Here’s a shot of them i

We arrived into Sanford and picked up our rental cars, I love how they do it down here! You check in at the counter, then it’s a u-pick lot. They’ll tell you what rows you can pick from and you choose your vehicle. I choose a white Grand Caravan with the Flexfuel option (E85 ethanol blend). The van only has about 4500 miles on it, so I think it’s still in the “breaking-in phase”. The jury is still out whether I like it or not.

We stopped for supper before heading to our resort community called Windsor Palms in Kissimmee. We rented a 3bd/3ba townhouse for the week, in this little gated community about 3 miles from Disney’s main gates. Here’s a shot of the exterior. It has it own little private pool, and another large one on site.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 15th, 2008 at 10:46 am and is filed under Family Travels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.