I just found a reasonable airline fare for our trip in June, so I am considering flying instead of driving. There is a catch...we will have to stay over an extra night and depart very early on a Sunday morning to save about 4 hundred dollars.

My questions are:

1) Will we still be able to get our boarding passes for the flight at the resort?

2) How early will we have to get our bags to the front desk?

Since the flight is at 7:50 am, I figure we will leave the resort at about 4:50 am. (Yikes!) I'm a little worried about how the system works at such an ungodly hour!

We used the ME in 2005 and had no problems whatsoever, but our flight home was at 7 PM, not AM!!

Any experiences anyone has to share would be greatly appreciated!

DME will run, just as it did before.

HOWEVER,
Resort Airline check in will not be available to you (I think they open at 6) - so you'll have to do the check in at the airport. This is no different than people who fly on a non-participating airline do it now.

At that early of an hour you will not have any delays going through airport security which is good.

UsBurchs actually just posted that her parents stayed at the hotel inside MCO. That might be an option as well for you so you do not have to wake up at 3AM. If you stay at the hotel at MCO you would probably have to leave your room some where around 6:50.

Were also going in June and going back home at 7:10 am. Leaving the resort at 4am. The resort airlines check in opens at 5:00am. Or it did last year.

RAC opens at 5 am with check-in for flights 3-12 hours before. so the first eligible flight for RAC is 8 am. however, these hours coincide with traffic at the airport. you shouldn't have much of a problem checking bags at 7:30 in the morning