Well, Saturday will be our first flight (DEN-MCO) with our 3 month-old twin boys. I've spent a number of hours trying to plan out how this all going to work - however any comments or thoughts are welcome. Flight is on United, I'm a million miler so that makes both myself and my wife Gold (still painful to not be 1K after 10 straight years).
We're doing a Disney Cruise - not that I particularly wanted Disney - but we just need to get out of town and Disney appears to be the only cruise line with a 3 month age minimum (others are 6 months).
Both the outbound and inbound flights are on A319s. I understand that these have changing tables in one of the lavatories, so at least that's a plus.
I'll update this post afterwards with our actual experiences. As I mentioned, any comments or thoughts that could be helpful would be greatly appreciated.
Seats
We decided to try this trip with both boys as lap children. I'm of course completely second guessing this decision, and probably should have bought at least one seat. We're in the bulkhead on the outbound with aisle and window (middle is still open) - but I'm guessing that with the reduced width of the bulkhead seats the option of "requesting" that we keep the middle seat free for a car seat is out of the equation. We'll see how this goes - and then adjust future travel.
Inbound we have a middle and window in E+, so we'll just have to deal with that.
I haven't really found any good opinions (either pro or con) on using a Baby Bjorn on the plane. From what I've found it sounds like you can't have them in the Bjorn during take-off and landing, but that it shouldn't be a problem during flight. I'm thinking we'll use the Bjorns to allow some freedom of movement during flight. Plus, they should help during boarding / security.
Upgrades
First off let me state that I have absolutely no expectation of upgrades. However, I will not turn them down if we get them.
What's interesting to me is that, despite what I've read in other threads, I don't have an option on United.com to use a confirmed upgrade for these flights. We did put the lap children in on the original reservation (which I understand you don't have to do), so I'm guessing that the presence of the lap children makes that option unavailable. I'm curious to see what happens at the 48 hour mark, and will update accordingly (as there most definitely is UDU availability).
Boarding
So the good news is that, as Gold, we'll get on nice and early. A far cry from the 1K days on legacy United where I could almost assure myself that I was getting on first.
As anyone with twins will tell you - strollers are a dilemma. Especially during the infant stage where they can't sit in a seat and need the car seats. We bought the Baby Jogger City Select specifically for this trip. The City Select is a front/back double, however it's "stadium seating" so its nowhere near as long as a standard front/back double. In fact, it's only about 6 inches longer than the Bugaboo Donkey side/side. The primary driver with the City Select was that it folds up nice and tight for a double. We thought about the Maclaren Techno, but we did want to take the car seats (and not check them as normal baggage) so that wouldn't work.
I'm anticipating that the fun will start once we reach the end of the jetbridge. I can easily see how boarding with one kid will work, but two infants is going to be a challenge. Especially when you consider that I've got travel bags for the stroller and the car seats, so it will probably take me a good 5 minutes to get everything broken down and put in bags. I'm debating leaving the stroller, boarding with both infants, leaving them both with my wife, and then swimming upstream back out of the plane to deal with the stroller.
Security
This is where I start to get nervous. I'm in the "TSA is worthless" camp, so I fully realize that I'm going to have to check my normal security bad attitude at the door on this trip.
I'm hoping that I can just wheel the stroller / car-seat combo through security for a manual inspection without having to completely break it down. I realize that this may be a pipe-dream, so I'm preparing for the worst. The worst involves the following:
- load all our carry-ons on the belt w/ kids in stroller
- take kids out of stroller and put in Baby Bjorns - now I've got one stuck to my chest
- break-down stroller put on belt
- walk through metal detector with baby in the Bjorn (either self-selecting out of the AIT or opting-out)
- Reverse process airside
Of course if I opt-out they are going to have to deal with me and the baby, so I'm hoping for a nice dirty diaper about that time. There's no way I'm exposing my children to the untested radiation of TSA's favorite pointless security exercise (sorry, a bit of that bad attitude bled through).
Arrival
We're spending a night in a hotel on both sides of the cruise, the last thing I wanted to do with infants was risk any sort of delay. Rather than take my chances with cabs, two car seats, and two adults (plus luggage) I booked ground transportation (an SUV). We booked all 4 transfers (airport -> hotel, hotel -> cruise round trips) through the same company.
Supplies
Found a company through the Disney Cruise site (and on some other message boards) called Babies Travel Lite. You can order everything you need for your trip, and they deliver to the ship, where hopefully it will be waiting for you on arrival. We're taking supplies for 3 days which should cover the 32 hours between leaving home and boarding the ship with room to spare.