We are on a family mission to complete a 5355km long road trip in just 17 days. Yesterday we picked up the rental car, a Toyota Sienna!

After we prepared the car with Emily her seat and necessary additions for entertainment, an iPad mount! And an powered cooler for cold drinks we started our first part of the road trip to Bradford just beyond the border from New York State and Pennsylvania.

We left at 3:30 and Emily slept in 15 minutes later for about 40 minutes, the drive went very smooth over the 407, a toll road. But as soon as we left the toll road we hit traffic on the Queen Elizabeth Way, not much we could do about it, but it was only a 15 minute delay.

From there we drove straight to the border to the United States of America. Here we encountered a longer delay, 10 minutes to learn that our last US entry stamps were to old and that we needed to go inside for a picture, finger prints and to pay 12 USD. Not a big problem if it wasn’t for the hour long wait…we all were annoyed and irritated while there is no system in place to see if it’s your turn already or not.

After a quick restroom stop we were in New York State, State #2 of the trip. Soon the TomTom app on our phones told us that the traffic around Buffalo was all gone and it should take us only 1:34 hours to get to our first hotel.

But not even 15 minutes into the USA Emily wanted to go to the restroom again, we literally drove in the middle of nowhere and the first restroom we found was a porta potty, normally not a big problem but this one wasn’t cleaned in this decade…we continued our search and only a couple 100 meter away we found a restaurant/bar/community centre/everything else a community of 20 houses needs.

After the quick stop and go we drove to our hotel without stopping, the hotel is in Bradford Pennsylvania which is the State #3!

Emily was happy that she could go to bed and at 8:30 it was all lights out. At 8:32 she asked if I could sleep with her in the big bed and so I head a challenging night of sleep and I’m awake at 5am, at least I got roughly 8 hours of sleep, Emily and Mama are both still dreaming softly!

Today we’ve got one of the longer drove ahead of us with 308 Miles towards Washington DC!

Last May we where on the Disney Dream cruising in the Bahamas. We loved it a lot and as you might remember we booked a placeholder on board, this means you get a discount on a future cruise next 2-years. Before we got home from our last vacation we found a very nice cruise on for later this year.

After a couple of weeks we booked the 7-Night Halloween on the High Seas Western Caribbean Cruise from Port Canaveral and we will celebrate Halloween on board! And today it’s just 8 weeks until we are sailing away for an itinerary taking us to Cozumel in Mexico, Falmouth in Jamaica, Georgetown on Grand Cayman in Cayman Islands and not to forget Castaway Cay!

We’ll be cruising on the Disney Fantasy, the sister ship from the Disney Dream. Funny enough this is not the first time we will see this cruise ship as we were on a city trip in New York the day the Fantasy for its christening. The first picture we took from the top of the Empire State Building while it was sailing in to port. The second picture we took a couple of days later when it was actually docked.

But before we sail away we fly to Orlando from Pearson a day before to stay in a Walt Disney World Resort for the first time ever. After we land we will take the Magical Express to Port Orleans French Quarter. Here we will stay one night till the Disney Cruise Line bus will pick us up and drive is to the port to embark the Fantasy. After we disembark we’ll be taking a the Disney Cruise Line bus back to the Airport where we’ll be renting a car from SIXT for the last part of this vacation.

This time we did not rent a villa but a townhouse in Windsor Hills a gated community very close to Walt Disney Resort. The house has a private pool and the resort itself has a lot of interesting amenities including a huge zero entrance pool, that’s what Emily likes a pool she can just walk in…

We can’t wait to get back to the magic of Disney and see how much the experience with Emily is different this time.