Month: April 2018

My Fantasmic Package

by mkingdon, posted in Walt Disney World

In the hurly burly of the last few weeks the act of planning has been a casualty to my lack of free time. This shall not stand.

You may remember, no, you will remember as the contents of this blog are of course your top priority and every syllable uttered is burned into your consciousness every week, that I wanted to book the Fantasmic Dinner Package at Hollywood Studios. See, I said you would remember!

At the time of ADRness those packages were not available on the app/web site so I just booked a meal at the Brown Derby instead. We knew we wanted to eat there anyway, as clearly we have more money than sense.

During a recent five second break from the daily madness this came to mind and I fired up the web site to see if this oversight from Disney had been corrected and if my multi-million dollar law suit for my emotional distress had been replied to. One of those had been addressed and I was now able to secure our seats in the amphitheatre. I know deep down that we probably don’t need to reserve seats in this manner but a few factors means it made sense (to me).

  1. It is Labor (for a country which starts with a U, I don’t know why they insist on omitting them from words that need them) Day on this day in question.
  2. We have a toddler with us and standing in a queue for 60 to 90 minutes may not be the best experience of the trip
  3. The package costs no more than just dining at the Brown Derby.

The Labor Day thing is an odd one. Any public holiday usually sees me making plans to being in a different state or continent to the theme parks. Those days like New Year’s Eve or Thanksgiving, when the parks shut due to hitting capacity are the few of the year when I wouldn’t automatically rather be in them. Louise especially does not do well in a packed theme park. Those nights when we have had to go to Magic Kingdom to see Wishes and a parade as it was our last night were always a struggle for Louise.

Anywho, a little bit of research about Labor Day reassured me sufficiently to allow us to attempt a park on that day. Several blogs and vlogs are of the opinion that Labor Day is not on the same scale as other public holidays, as it is just the one day, and historically crowd levels have been normal, if not a little quieter than usual. What could possibly go wrong?

So, on the off-chance that those blogs are wrong (not something you will ever find here my friends!) and Louise is close to murdering someone, specifically some fat bald bloke with a rucksack, we know we have a lovely meal booked and a seat in Fantasmic without waiting. Add in out three Fastpasses and a couple of shows and that should do the trick.

All of that could of course be totally irrelevant due to our track record with this Fantasmic Dinner Package. My memory is probably playing tricks on me, but it feels like every time we have booked this thing at vast expense the show has been cancelled due to rain. Now I could find out if that is the case quite easily by reading all of my trip reports but who wants to do that? In fact why don’t you all do that this week and report back to me next Sunday?

In other news I am ill. This is not Vitamin D related, this is a proper manly, visible, and understandable illness that I can wear like a badge of honour. I feel dreadful, can’t sleep, can’t really function and there are even signs that my appetite is slightly diminished. The latter being a real cause for national concern. It is just man flu of course and the odds are I will pull through but let’s not take that for granted.

Last night we had Freddie over for a few hours whilst Rebecca and Tom went to the cinema. Being infected and infectious sadly I couldn’t be too hands on but it is always lovely to have him around.

I shall leave you now to tend to my illness. I had a long to do list for today so let’s see if I can medicate myself sufficiently to get any of it done.

Till the next time….

Summer Lovin’

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

I love the summer. I only hope that next year it falls on a weekend.

I have blogged previously about my aversion to winter. As well as being at times sad in a not groovy kind of way (I am down with the kids and all their lingo), I do believe that I have a case of SAD, (seasonal affective disorder) the thing which makes you all grumpy and down when the sun goes away.

The last couple of days of decent weather reminded me yet again that I and pretty much all of the country are different in the sunsheeeeine, as Mr Gallagher may put it. Even Bean, our nut job of a cocker spaniel is a big fan. When the weather is warm we leave the back door open and she can be found outside lying in the sun.

All of this may make some sense, but only some, of my love of Florida. It’s called the sunsheeeeine (I’ll stop now) state after all. It’s not something I’ve made up. I have been under the doctor recently. That sounds a bit odd, but you know what I mean. I have felt a bit crap for ages and yet as many tests have confirmed, I apparently have absolutely nothing wrong with me. So this is just how you feel at my age? Eight hundred and four blood tests can’t be wrong!

However, after my last visit I have been declared deficient. That won’t be a surprise, but that deficiency is not in intelligence (not officially anyway), charm or good looks, but hey you knew that right, but instead, in Vitamin D. I have to take the stuff, having had it prescribed. What that really means is that the doctor says I must get more Vitamin D, which means I need more exposure to the sun and ergo, the doctor says I need to go to Florida more.

Sadly, that isn’t something the over stretched, under funded and short-staffed NHS (a bit more politics, but hey my wife’s a nurse, so don’t @ me as the kids might say) can afford, but it is official, my poor efforts so far in spending as much time (and money) there as possible have been frankly, poor and I must do better.

So knowing that my country and climate are making me ill, and with it being some 128 days until I land in some better stuff, what is to be done? Clearly the UK has shot its bolt weather wise for this year as I sit here looking at some rain, and I have unavoidable incidentals like the mortgage, food and other nonsense to use my meagre earnings on so perhaps I need to buy one of those sun lamps that my Mum had in the seventies?

My only option seems to be to start a petition to have my incurable disease addressed on the NHS. Me living in Florida for around nine months of the year looks to be the only way to address this crisis. I can tolerate the UK from say June to the end of August, which will be a blessing to the UK tax payer and a sacrifice I am willing to make. Naturally, all of my family will need to be funded too as I will need their help and support to get me to all the theme parks and restaurants. The risk of me being “a bit tired” when all alone is not one that I wish to burden the conscience of the medial profession with. I am caring and compassionate in that way.

The light at the end of the tunnel for the NHS is that by living in Florida for most of the year I shall die nice and early from an obesity related disease and to keep costs to a minimum I shall have my ashes strewn outside the nearest Applebees during one of their happy hours so that those attending can pop in and get a lovely meal and a couple of cocktails at minimum expense.

So happy Autumn. That paddling pool you bought on Wednesday can go in the shed now until next year and you can pat yourself on the back that you only invested in a couple of disposable barbecues rather than that £2500 gas powered thing you keep promising yourself.

Feel free to write to your local MP to highlight my struggle.

Till the next time…..

The Painful Tooth

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

It’s not like me to complain.

Chloe Side Eye GIF

I did however have the misfortune to visit the dentist last week. I blame several traumatic experiences in my youth with a vindictive bastard of a dentist called Mr Stephens. He was the physical embodiment of loving your job. He was the Katie Hopkins of dentistry, intentionally causing upset and pain to earn a living.

I can still smell the gas he used to put me under to remove a huge molar. I was out cold but I imagine scenes of him with his knee on my chest wrenching the suspect tooth from my bleeding gums.

Steve Martin GIF

See, I’m not a fan of dentistry. Now, being all grown up, I’m not allowed to be afraid of the dentist. I should instead be afraid of more mature themes like paying the mortgage, the endless and unstoppable tide of time which ravages my body and pushes me continually closer to the grave and heartburn.

For the past few years I have seen a kind, understanding and patient dentist. There was an unspoken understanding that I was petrified of her. I never told her of my childhood experiences but she must have seen the fear in my eyes early in our relationship and she was always gentle with me. She saw me through the dark days of root canal work a few years ago without me passing out or punching her and for that she should be awarded whatever dentistry medals exist.

Recently she has been inconsiderate enough to get pregnant and she is using that as some sort of excuse to not look after my ageing teeth. When I arrived for my latest check up a few weeks ago a young lad popped his head into the waiting room to call me through. I thought it was nice that they were letting the work experience lad get involved.

As I settled into the chair, being reclined to an uncomfortable angle where they can see all your bogies, I was struck with the realisation that this teenager was tooling up to touch my teeth. As the customary sweat began to pool in areas we shall not mention, he began to chat to his equally youthful mate who was handing him stuff as he did unmentionable things to my mouth.

I know it is a cliché that as you get older you think policeman look younger. The trouble is, thanks to the Tories, I haven’t seen a policeman since sometime around 2010 (bit of politics…this may go viral) so my mind was struggling to process how this dentist, some years younger than the underwear I had on was going to cause me enormous pain in exchange for lots of money.

He didn’t of course. That was just the check up, but I did need to return for a couple of fillings and some work on the area I had root canal on a few years back. He also quoted me for work that cost about the same as a small family car, but I declined most of that as it was non life threatening and I value my money more than vanity.

The fillings went fine to be honest. There was no pain, just that uncomfortable noise and vibration that goes all the way down to your toes. However, this week I returned for the big job.

As I took my place in the chair he asked if everything was OK with his work on my last visit and did I have any questions.

“Yes, is this going to hurt?”

He smiled, thinking I was joking. When he realised I wasn’t he gave me his best sympathetic smile but crucially gave no promises. From the first injection which lasted three and half weeks and was more painful than childbirth (I know it was…I’ve seen two births and they were mild in comparison) to the frankly unnecessary amount of drilling he did, it hurt. I was in the chair for roughly two and half years and when I eventually staggered, sweaty, groggy and a little tearful out to reception, to book in for more fun next week, I wasn’t really sure what had happened or how I was going to operate the car to get to work.

Because the work isn’t yet complete, my mouth is in a state of flux, with crucial bits missing. He was just laying the foundations for future misery. Those missing bits are to be fitted on Tuesday. My mouth has felt very weird and awful all week and strangely I can’t wait to go back and get them added. I think (please God let it be true) that the awful drilly painful bits are done and the next visit will just be restorative.

Once complete I than have the joy of handing over hundreds of pounds. There are fetish web sites (I have been led to believe) that cost their customers less than I shall be paying for being hurt in this manner.

So, how was your week?

Till the next time….

My Poor Sack

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

It’s fine. Really…don’t worry about it….I spend many minutes making my blog look all different and nobody makes a comment.

Image result for it's fine cry gif

Moving on…

For a four day one, last week did its best impression of a twelve day one, or was that just me? As much as I was all upbeat last week about being on the home straight of the countdown to our holiday, sometime during the endless monotony and despair of my working week, the unavoidable, and seemingly unending road to that particular event hit me like a car driven by a Geordie TV presenter. (Too soon?)

If I’m not careful this post could easily set off down mid-life crisis boulevard so I shall apply the hand brake to that train of thought, un-mix my metaphors and head in a different direction.

My West Wing addiction has continued, with season two now completed. When’s the new series out? Due to watching that, I have to confess that I was the one person in the UK who didn’t watch the Saturday Takeaway thing last night. I didn’t watch it last year either. It’s a bit weird I suppose for someone like me with such an obsession with the place, but I feel upset and offended by it. I don’t want people to know about Florida thank you very much. If the secret gets out I’ll be waiting an extra ten minutes for every ride. Stop, advertising it on prime time TV!

In a small yet potentially vital planning move, I made a strategic purchase last week. As part of the preparation for Freddie’s first time, I have assumed that there will be times when the bangs and crashes of WDW will be a little too much for a ten month old, especially if he’s having a kip. With that in mind, he now owns his very own set of noise cancelling headphones. The fireworks of an evening at the various parks are likely to upset a sleeping toddler so we’re hoping we can just slip these on and he’ll be oblivious.

They will also be getting a first live trial at Rebecca’s birthday party in a few weeks to defend his ears from the face melting awesomeness of Mustard.

There are some other milestones on the horizon but as nice as it is for them to arrive, they are things like paying the balance on the villa next month. Things get a little more exciting as we hit the summer and we need to get the theme park tickets sorted so that we are primed and ready for the securing of FastPasses. It is then, and only then that I can start to think about considering the plan done. There is always the chance that an unavailable FastPass may mean some juggling of days. The laminator will be idle until then. Of course, as soon as Freddie’s passport turns up, we will be ESTAing too.

I should also share with you some troubling news that I have kept hidden from you for almost a year now. Ryan is not in good health. If you don’t know who or what Ryan is, this next section will be very confusing to you.

He is currently resting in the spare room with a busted zip. I blame myself. I tried to get too much into him and for a sack of his years, it was all a bit much and it broke him.

There are two schools of thought in play.

  1. He’s had a good run and now, with a new generation of the family in tow, it could be a good time to introduce a new sack, Ryan’s daughter if you will, to our trips.
  2. We shall rebuild him.

I am hopeful that the second option will be possible. I need to seek out someone with the necessary skills to remove and replace the busted zipper and make him whole again. The girls are a big fan of option two, and were genuinely upset that Ryan may have travelled for the last time. I hope they feel the same way about me in years to come when my metaphorical zipper gets busted.

Should anyone be an expert in these matters and be willing to handle this delicate operation then do get in touch!

Till the next time…. Discount Disney Tickets

Birthdays and Books

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

Welcome to the shiny and new looking blog. A lick of paint and a shifting around of the furniture was overdue so here we are, looking all different.

From time to time, I do wonder what I’m doing with this blog. When I look around the internet at the Disney “blogging community” I seem to be doing pretty much everything wrong. It would appear that I should be an early thirties Mum of at least three kids with names like Gunner and Zeke and my profile should proclaim that I am a social media strategist, which I think means you use Instagram and have more than 100 followers.

Anyway, I do what I do, writing the same stuff for the same loyal folks and it’s all good. It seems I am missing the opportunity to “monetize” my blog and allow it to fund my lavish lifestyle, but all of that sounds like a load of work that I don’t have time for.

I clearly shouldn’t go looking at what other folks are up to with their blogs, it’s just a distraction. I’ve never really considered myself a Disney blogger in the sense that most seem to, as they don’t drone on about everyday stuff in the glorious way in which I can and do!

Speaking of funding my lavish lifestyle, Facebook memories reminded this week that it is now five years since I self-published my first lot of trip reports.

Book Image
Mkingdon’s Tales of Family, Food and Florida

It launched in a blaze of typos and spelling mistakes but God bless you, many of you bought it, promoted it and gave lovely feedback. Though some members of the Disney forum community may never believe it, the intention was not to make money from that exercise. You will notice that I have not retired to a beach front Florida location yet.

The idea at the time was to do a few things…

  1. Save my trip reports somewhere a little more permanent than a forum site on the internet that I had no control over
  2. Learn how to self-publish a book as I had been toying with the idea of writing a novel and I needed to know how hard/easy it would be to get that self-published. I did eventually write that novel, All This and More, so you should buy it immediately.
  3. Be discovered by someone willing to fund my permanent residence in WDW and write about it for loads of money.

As Meatloaf once said, two out of three ain’t bad.

Anyway, if you bought it, thank you. The fact that is has nearly eighty reviews, almost all of which are five stars, is both incredible and very much appreciated.

Elsewhere in my Facebook memories, it showed what I already knew. I have always been slimmer and younger than I am right at this moment, but also that this time of year is a cavalcade of family birthdays. My nephew George, my niece Sarah and of course Louise all have a birthday over the course of two days in late March.

We went out for a lovely meal on Wednesday to celebrate Louise’s. It was our first meal out with Freddie and he was great. He enthralled the waiting staff, played and laughed his way through the entire thing. This augers well for the many dining experiences planned for Florida later in the year.

I have been off work this week and it’s been glorious. I have done very little indeed and therefore it qualifies as glorious. I took the very deliberate decision to do as little as possible and force myself to relax. I do find that hard to be honest. My type A, get stuff done mentality is my enemy. I constantly battle my brain’s need to feel as if I have “done stuff” before I am allowed to do nothing. Doing nothing of course has included a tip run, some tidying, some admin tasks I’ve been putting off and walking the dogs, but beyond that I have been using the couch and streaming services in equal measure.

I have watched all of The Looming Towers on Amazon Prime, which was excellent and much better than I was expecting, and having had my “Whitehouse drama” taste buds whetted, I sought out the original in the form of The West Wing and I devoured Season 1 in a few days. Season 2 is going much the same way.

With Easter upon us, and Happy Chocolate Day to you all by the way, you never know, the weather may be turning , the nights getting lighter, and in terms of what is most important, we are entering the home straight in the run up to our holiday. It’s roughly twelve months since our last trip so by the time we go in August it will be exactly far too long between trips and I think we are all feeling it. Rebecca, having not been with us last time, is suffering more than most as I think this is the longest period in her life that she hasn’t set foot on WDW property.

Right, I’m waffling now, a symptom of me not planning out my blog posts, which is something else I’m not getting right. Next week, there will be a “haul post” where I walk you through everything I got from Asda in the big shop. This will be linked to my Pinterest, YouTube channel and Friends Reunited account. Please, click, share, follow, subscribe etc etc.

Oh, that reminds me. During last week I saw a news article telling of some waste of oxygen YouTube “star” who was arrested at WDW. Sigh, this intentionally provocative, self promoting, desperate for views and clicks shite is everything that is wrong with social media and YouTube specifically. There’s some belting content to be watched on there, but these types need to be stripped of their smartphones, broadband and human rights until they learn their lesson.

Till the next time…..