Kiddo was sleeping in a pack n play. We were planning on waiting until she was 2, but suddenly at 19 months her sleep went to shit. She's always been a very good sleeper. I try not to talk about it too much for fear other parents will kill us with their murderous "that must be nice" or "wonder what that's like" looks. She just suddenly started sleeping like a newborn.
After about 3 weeks of trying the everything we got a big kid bed. We got the Kura bed from Ikea and bought a side rail from amazon. For the first few days she kinda resisted, but got tons more sleep. Day 2 she slept on the floor all night (lol). After day 3 she went back to sleeping really well.
She does get out of bed. We only leave stuffed animals, a small pillow, and blankets in there. She's definitely my child cause this kid neeeests! she has her favorite stuffed animals and gets them just so. She loves to flop onto them and curl up with her blankets.
Also, this kid is already practicing hiding stuff, I swear. She has some favorite hard toys that she tries to hide on occasion. I found them stuffed in the pocket of a soft book at the bottom of her toy box. She'd been playing with them just an hour before and was very distraut when I found them. I was like "OMG. I found our daughter's stash..."