Traveling with Twins: Tips for Traveling to Walt Disney World

by Pixie Dusted Diva

A few years ago when I became pregnant with twins, our lives were turned upside down. Every aspects of our lives including how we vacation. We had our first Disney Cruise vacation booked that I had to cancel as Disney Cruise Line has strict rules about traveling. Once you reach your 24th week of pregnancy, Disney will not allow you to board their ship even if your doctor has authorized you to travel. So even though they weren’t born yet our vacations had changed! I also thought about all the articles I could share with our readers about traveling to Disney while pregnant with twins and traveling to Walt Disney World with the twins at different ages. Fast forward to now, the twins will be two and I haven’t shared any articles with you of our adventures! Such is life, as a Mom of four I focus more on keeping this blog going so you have something to read every day and am thankful for the awesome team of writers I have to assist me. You’ve seen many videos of the twins on Diva’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram if you’ve followed along for the past years and even me traveling to Walt Disney World while pregnant with twins! I do have lots of tips to share, so I’ve decided I need to make time to share those with our readers. I belong to a variety of Facebook groups and find the same questions are asked so I’m sure we have other twin or multiple Moms out there.

When To Take The First Trip

This question is the same if you were taking a single baby, it’s when you feel most comfortable. With both my girls I took them towards the end of my maternity leave, so they were close to three months old. Taking a baby to Disney is actually pretty easy in my eyes. Of course, the more children you have the more difficult it makes it. We decided we would wait to take the twins a little longer as I did have a four year old and eight year old at the time. We also had taken a trip during April vacation for Spring Break when I was about 26 weeks pregnant. The twins first trip was in November, and they were born the end of June so they were almost 5 months old. We do fly to Walt Disney World and learned you can not have two lap children in one row when flying. So you must separate and sit in two separate rows. Luckily, whenever we travel to Walt Disney World we recruit additional help and it’s usually one adult per child for us. We have taken additional trips when the twins were 1, 17 months, and 22 months. Yes, four trips before the age of 2! You would be surprised the number of rides infant can ride. Anything without a height requirement you can take the babies on, and for those rides with a height requirement you can use Rider Swap.

Packing Tips

For our first trip I decided I was going to ship items ahead of time to the resort, which I figured out make my life easier. You can read my article here about shipping packages ahead to a WDW Resort. At this point, Amazon Prime Now was not the thing everyone was using so I shipped a box of diapers from Amazon ahead of arrival and an Amazon Prime Pantry box with all our toiletries and baby needs. I was charged $5 for each of those packages on our room account for holding them for us prior to arrival. Now we use Amazon Prime Now, and I bring the other items with me. We generally try to pack for six of us in three large suitcases. For my carry ons, I pack one bag strictly as a diaper bag with diapers, wipes, change of clothes, formula, and a cooler bag with premade bottles. When they were this little I brought a small can of formula, or the small one bottle size travel packs of Similac. TSA did not question any of the items for the baby, but they are always thoroughly checked. I pack everything baby related (formula) in a gallon zip lock bag so I am able to pull it out easily to be checked. The bottles are always tested with strips, but I’ve always been able to bring them through no problem. As the twins grew for our next few trips (we took three more trips before two) my carry on changed a bit to include snacks for them. I continued to pack in the gallon zip lock bag to keep security easy! My other carry on doubles as a purse, with my wallet, ipad, camera etc as my husband doesn’t do a carry on. My girls are responsible for bringing back packs for carryons of their own.

Strollers

The first trip when the twins were only four months, we brought the infant carrier buckets with us along with our frame stroller. We gate checked the two infant bucket carriers and the frame stroller. We also brought another single stroller for my four year old. We have a bag for that stroller and check it with our luggage as JetBlue let’s you check strollers for free. We use the Magical Express luggage tags, so the next time we would see that stroller would be with our luggage. We knew our plans for the day and knew we didn’t need that stroller otherwise we would have gate checked it, but we were trying to minimize the items we used in the airport. Remembering the twins are still little, we did pack our Baby Bjorn for the week but while we were at meals we knew the babies were too small for high chairs so that is why we brought the buckets. This stroller does not have a rain cover like we are used to for our single stroller, so we did pack extra ponchos just in case to cover the babies and the stroller. Our goal though was to not get it wet all week! Note if you do bring the bucket infant carriers the Magical Express does not let you use them on the bus, as no car seats are allowed on the bus. The driver will make you take the babies our and put them under the bus.

Our next three trips we used our City Mini double stroller, that we have a rain cover for. If you do not want to bring your double stroller there is an approved list of vendors who can deliver directly to your Walt Disney World hotel. Beauty and the Beast Diva did a review of Kingdom Strollers here. We prefer to bring our own stroller as we use it in the airport.

Sleeping Arrangements

We are fortunate to be DVC members, as we were going from a family of four to six and even though the twins are considered infants down the road we would outgrow the largest standard Disney room limit of 5. I still remember there was a trip we packed the rock n play, believe me it fits in the suitcase taken apart. I have one twin who hates to sleep in the pack n play and needs to be secluded to sleep. You know how hard it is to try and fit two pack n plays in Port Orleans Riverside, with suitcases and a double stroller? Thankfully, that’s where my parents came into play, they had their own room and we divide and conquer! Being Disney Vacation Club members, we book a 2 bedroom deluxe villa from now on. There is plenty of room for everyone! Although, we have found ourselves sticking a pack n play in an odd area so that we can still be in the living room when the twins go to bed. That’s third bathroom in Kidani that is huge comes in handy! When you stay at a value or moderate resort at Walt Disney World you are able to request two pack n plays, however all Disney Deluxe hotels will have cribs. They are metal hotel cribs so depending which level hotel you stay at will determine which accommodation you will get. Some DVC villas have a pack n play in the closet already, but you can request a crib instead. I always note on our reservation we need two cribs, but people don’t understand two infants, two cribs and think it’s a mistake, but one time they were already set up in our room for us (Yea Kidani Cast Members!)

These are just general tips I have for traveling with twins to Walt Disney World, continue to follow the blog for more trips as I plan to write more now! As I mentioned we’ve now taken four trips with the twins before the age of two, while they’ve been completely free! I’d love to share with you some tips and tricks for traveling with them. We’ve learned the ins and outs of the rider swap program Disney offers, which is now going to change and go paperless on our magic bands. Disney Magic Diva will get all those details on her upcoming trip in July. We are big fans of the Disney Dining Plan, where I book many character meals so my older girls can meet characters, we can cool off while enjoying a nice meal where the food is served instantly and the twins can eat for free!