Another week goes by, and as time tends to, so does another year. We had a birthday this week as Emily turned 24. Believe me she is struggling to come to terms with how that happened as much as you may be. At some point I’ll let her into the secret that no matter what age you actually are you never really feel like a proper grown up and everyone is just busking it and doing their best to get by.
We all enjoyed her cake, made expertly by Rebecca, who is developing a real skill for this sort of thing.
Freddie had some for brunch minutes after arriving with it.
As you may know from previous Julys, Oli shares Emily’s birthday and the big daft bugger is now a mature 8 year old with fading tolerance for the not very mature Bean. It gets to us all.
We had a family takeaway curry on Friday evening to commemorate the day and over ordered so spectacularly that our fridge still contains Naan bread and some curry. That is never a bad thing.
Onto matters of planning. Surely there can be nothing left to plan? The issue is that most folks have a lengthy countdown to these trips, and with planning being interesting, fun and a way to make trip seem closer (assuming you are wired in the appropriate way, and I am), over time you end up adding stuff and planning bits and pieces because of all of the above. However, with just the 30 days to go until departure, this week I excelled myself and conducted an act of planning genius so cunning that I can’t tell you what it is. It is more cunning than Mr McCunning, the teacher of cunning at Cunning Town School for foxes who wish to be more cunning.
There’s a few reasons I can’t tell you. One of them is that I know for a fact that Bob Iger reads my blog every week and if he realised the brilliance of my act he wouldn’t know whether to sue me or hire me, and I can’t take the risk he’ll choose the wrong option.
Other reasons include the fact that whilst it absolutely does not break any rules, if everyone did it, then Disney would probably put things in place to stop it or at least make it more difficult. Also, now that I have bragged about my brilliance I want to wait and see if it comes off before admitting to what it is so I don’t look (more) stupid. All I will say is that it has been an issue I have been wrestling with for a while and all of a sudden during last week inspiration came to me. I quickly made the relevant arrangements and felt pretty smug, if not smug or confident enough to tell you about it.
If you never hear of this again, you will know which way it went. If it works I will probably admit to it in the trip report and then you can all tell me you all do it anyway and everyone knows about it and I am in no way clever or special.
Loins are being girded right now, ready for the FastPass thing to start on Tuesday. As we are off site scum, I will need to try every day for two weeks to secure the passes we want for each day 30 days hence. Day one is usually fairly stress free as Magic Kingdom is our park of choice and there’s typically a good enough selection of rides and attractions to get decent FastPasses. The thinking is to secure Mine Train if we can, something like Haunted Mansion and then a ride ideal for Freddie. We may ride Peter Pan but only with a FastPass. It always seems to have at least a forty minute wait and we won’t be doing that.
The FastPass pressure will really be on for the days we are at Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios to get those rides everybody wants. Stay tuned for me trying to put a positive spin on getting FastPasses for the bird show at DAK and the car park at DHS.
Ryan has now been rescued from his cupboard where he rests between trips. All relevant documents, tickets and anything trip related such as the digital camera I only ever use in WDW, are being randomly stuffed into him. A tactical repack of Ryan will happen close to departure so that things are to hand in the order I will need them during the journey. This is in no way sad.
The next major milestone will come post pay day on Wednesday when I will sit weeping, looking at the dollar rate for a few hours before realising I have no choice but to order some anyway. As cunning as I am, I have yet to find a way to rig the currency markets for my own benefit as your Rees Moggs tend to. I spit on your Brexit. Anything which make my holidays more expensive, by definition, cannot be a good thing.
And on that political bombshell, I shall return to my Sunday and wish you well for yours….
Till the next time…..
Mkingdon's Blog 
Happy Birthday Emily! And I cannot wait to see the cunning plan! Good luck with the FP. We are on site in Sept/Oct and it seems strange that we have already done ours but you go first. The tier system at HS is what gets you, we are going to have to go in and out to get our favourite rides but at least we can do work hours( on holiday!!) and go in for those 6am starts! 😩😂
Yes HS is going to be interesting for sure 😁🙄