Month: November 2021

Unvarying Misery

by mkingdon, posted in Walt Disney World

Shit got real last week, with planning stepping up several notches. Well, I say planning, it was more holiday admin that needed doing.

I booked our tests on Friday. Yes, irony alert, my impeccable timing knows no bounds. They came to about £43 each for the fit to fly video one and the day two return to the UK test. Both are lateral flow and of course events have conspired to see those being irrelevant for the return leg now, and we await the US’s changes in response to this variant, as they may well insist on PCR for arrivals too, but more on that later. Our pre-flight tests are booked for New Year’s Day. My paranoia around positive results has not abated. I am pleased to see that tests these days seem to only involve a nasal invasion as I only have to look at the swab to start gagging. Avoiding putting long foreign objects in my mouth is a life rule I like to stick to.

I have downloaded the Verifly app as advised by Aer Lingus and as soon as my vaccine certificate covers our departure date I will start filling stuff in. I am actually due my booster in early December so I will hopefully be completely Teflon to any and all diseases that may come my way. If it and wearing a mask on the plane can stop me picking up the usual stinking cold I have got on the last few trips I will be happy.

I did some painful things too, like paying the balance on the villa, paying for the hire car and securing our Universal tickets, also known as everyone’s Christmas presents. I went for the cheapest option available which was a 2 day ticket, but limited to one park per day. The only thing that prevents us doing is the train journey between parks and for the hundreds of pounds difference in price, we can watch it on YouTube.

I downloaded the Universal Resort app, where my tickets are now resting digitally, ready for use. Upon doing so I noticed you could make dining reservations for restaurants there, most importantly City Walk, so we now have a lovely booking for Cowfish on our first night there at 8pm. With just two days in these parks they will be full on theme park commando affairs, so eating at 8pm, just as the park closes is the only acceptable time.

I still haven’t seen a definitive answer on those 3 day tests for Freddie. I’m pretty sure nobody checks them, but whether you can take an NHS freebie or have to buy one in a pharmacy there, it makes little difference. At least there’s no video consultation involved.

I also filled out our passenger info on the Aer Lingus site. I was amazed to find I hadn’t already, but maybe I did but it got lost in one of the 17 re-bookings I had to do.

Of course, as mentioned above the Universe spotted all this activity and financial outlay and delivered a threatening COVID variant that could well derail the whole trip and maybe all international travel again, but hey, let’s not worry about that right now. That would be nice, but by now you know that isn’t my style. I did not take the news well that PCR tests were now required, hours after booking and paying for lateral flows. Beyond that of course if things don’t go well over the next few weeks, and let’s be honest when has it during this pandemic, my fear is the trip will be impossible again. You may have noticed that today’s post was a little later than has been the case recently and that was because I had to nip to hospital to have my bottom lip surgically restored to a more natural position. I have been in a sulk and a strop since around tea time yesterday.

So yes, it’s been a busy old week on the holiday front, and the metaphorical kick in the balls yesterday’s changes delivered were comically timed after I had finally started to give myself permission to believe that we may actually go. I see the cosmos waited though until I had undertaken maximum financial exposure before allowing all this shit to kick off. I don’t have a persecution complex, I am just persecuted.

I do have to say that if our plans do get scuppered by some COVID related shite, then we’ll give up. It won’t be practical for Rebecca to travel any later into her pregnancy and Louise will find it impossible to get time off beyond January for quite some time. We’ll be looking at mid to late 2023 for any plans to be a reality at that point.

If travel to the US is suspended again, it won’t be pretty around these parts. I’m just putting out an early warning!

We have also planned another trip, tomorrow, over to Cheshire Oaks. Louise tells me we need some new luggage and not only that, buying it online and saving petrol and about three hours driving would be a folly beyond comprehension, so off we will go. Whilst there I will take the chance to procure some hoodies. Yes, I know I have some already and most are only a decade or so old, but what the heck, I deserve it. Looking at photos right now in Orlando, it seems there may be a lot of chilly nights so a couple of good quality hoodies will be essential. Emily is cold in Florida in August so she may have to buy extra luggage space on the plane for the amount of layers she will need to take. Now you see, even that shopping trip seems a bit futile. I am deflated and demoralised by the whole thing. Again.

If I allow the grown up in me to speak up, it would say that the likely outcome here is that the only change to our plans will be having to fork out for a PCR test for our return to the UK test, and most likely the same for the fit to fly as I expect the US to follow suit, on top of the money already pissed away on the lateral flow version. In the scheme of things, that’s not too bad, but if you look up all the times I have said “in the scheme of things that cost isn’t too bad” I could have bought a second home.

My inner child, which is currently writing most of this post is screaming Verruca Salt style that the Universe hates me, it’s all really unfair and if this trip gets cancelled I will be in a tantrum for about six months. It’s all about balance.

On a serious note, if we cannot go, the thought of no WDW for at least another 18 months, and all that uninterrupted work instead, well, I can’t tell you how that makes me feel. I suppose I just tried.

So you find me not in a good place today. All I can do is sit and wait, again, with thousands of pounds dangling by a thread, not knowing, even this close to the trip whether we will actually go. As many of you will have experienced, it has just drained all the joy out of the now, almost two year build up.

You can return next week for more positive vibes and mature takes on life threatening pandemics that are inconveniencing my holiday planning.

Till the next time……

Lament and Lamination

by mkingdon, posted in Walt Disney World

With the week just ended, the plan, whilst not quite laminated, is pretty much complete. I am happy with it. I lament the fact that the plan is not perfect, but they never are, as the fact that other people insist on being there at the same time and stealing our desired eating times means that to secure some of our choices we are having to eat at odd times. We shall somehow cope.

I think I left you last week in our Universal break, where we plan to eat at Cowfish on night one and Teak on night two, and I was waiting for those days to pass to try and secure the last few WDW ADRs.

I was majestically successful with Via Napoli, if you consider eating dinner at 3.55pm a success. Similarly, Sanaa was bagged with the minor sacrifice of only being able to eat at 9.10pm. That, I think is our latest dining time of the trip and staying awake long enough may be a challenge for those of us pregnant, under 5 or middle aged and overweight. We will endure.

The last day (in Magic Kingdom of course) is always a tricky one. You want to go out with some sort of culinary bang, but also want to spend as long as possible in the park and the two things can be mutually exclusive. I considered just letting it all hang free and we would scavenge as best we could from snacks and counter service, but the compulsion to plan overtook me and I booked something.

I am very happy with the result. I decided to go for Steakhouse 71 at the Contemporary, for lunch. It’s a stroke of genius, well, as close as I come to one. We get to nip out of the park when it will theoretically be at its busiest, try a new eatery within a resort that is always worth a visit and a look around and finally, and let’s face it, most importantly, there is this….

I know the whole concept of booking meals 60 days in advance will be bizarre to some not au fait with the whole WDW thing, but I also know what dessert I will be having.

With that done, we will back in Magic Kingdom by early afternoon, ready to weep through the final few hours. Then when we become hungry again just a few short hours later, we can unleash the snacks.

So overall, I am pleased with the plan. Let’s be honest, after all this time I am just happy to have one at all. There are some ADRs I couldn’t get but that has just meant us trying new places or revisiting some old favourites and it’s all good.

To avoid anyone ploughing through the entire plan again here is a list of all the places we plan to eat.

  • Whispering Canyon
  • The Cheesecake Factory
  • Bahama Breeze
  • 50’s Prime Time
  • Hash House A Go Go
  • Miller’s Ale House
  • Rainforest Café
  • Jungle Skipper Canteen
  • Cowfish
  • Teak Neighbourhood Grill
  • Olive Garden
  • Via Napoli
  • Ford’s Garage
  • Sanaa
  • Steakhouse 71

I’ve put on half a stone just typing that out.

I am still waiting for definitive news on the day 3 test Freddie needs in the States. It is looking like they are unsupervised and based on an honour system so we should be able to take a free NHS lateral flow test and just make sure he is negative. I can’t see anybody checking on these as folks fly home, but we’ll find that out this week I guess as those who went out on the 8th start to return.

My paranoia about one of us testing positive before we fly grows by the day. The irony of getting so close and then producing a positive test would be unimaginable. It is made worse by the fact that we will be taking those tests on New Year’s Eve so if the worst happens, trying to contact insurance companies, airlines and any bugger else will be a nightmare as the two days after that are holidays. Best not to think about it. Yeah, right.

It may be a form of trauma caused by the trip denials and delays of the last couple of years but I still can’t fully believe we will go. I just have this awful fear something is going to happen between now and then. Unfounded I imagine, but unsurprising based on recent history.

The other planning decision we made this week was to do airport parking rather than a taxi. There were two main reasons for this. Firstly I couldn’t get any bloody taxi firm to get back to me with a price and confirmation they were available and secondly having done the airport parking thing recently for Gran Canaria, we preferred it. So that is all booked now. It removes one small worry about taxis turning up at either end of the trip.

With our trip happening right after Christmas our decorations are going up a bit earlier than usual, as they will be down again before we leave. It does appear that we bought the incorrect house as our tree does not fit anywhere. Don’t get me wrong, the new house is bigger than the old one, it just has lower ceilings and odd shapes, being an old Farmhouse, so we spent a good deal of this weekend trying to find a solution. Moving house again is not one of them. The expense of buying another tree is equally unacceptable.

As we get close to departure now, with just four weeks left at work, Freddie was measured a few days ago. In his new trainers he is a fraction under 44 inches. This means there is very little he can’t get on and the stuff he can’t I don’t think we’d want him riding anyway. It’s good to know he will be able to enjoy most things, unlike his Mum who will be sat outside the majority of rides watching Ryan! There will be other trips!

Till the next time…..

Kungaloosh!

by mkingdon, posted in Walt Disney World

Thanks for all the nice messages about last week’s good news. It was nice to be able to finally share that with everyone and hopefully put behind us what has been a fraught number of months. I know Rebecca and Tom would want me to thank everyone who wished them well.

It is only now can you fully appreciate the level of planning skills I have had to deploy to cope with that lovely news and a global pandemic when trying to get us on this bloody holiday!

On the subject of lovely news, at the other end of the life spectrum, last Sunday we held a small get together to mark Louise’s Mum’s 90th birthday. After almost two years of lockdowns I think she loved seeing all the friends and family we had gathered together and the left over party food that’s been in our fridge all week has done nothing for my pre WDW diet.

I have been nuts deep in work this week, but I have managed to find sufficient time to be equally deep in ADR getting. Results have been mixed. I reported last week that we could not get O’hana, but Whispering Canyon was a worthy alternative. On the positive side (despite a few of you telling me Prime Time was now crap!) I did manage to get us in there on one of our Hollywood Studios days. Hopefully the experience will be somewhere close to our memory of previous visits.

I was less successful on other days, having to sub in Rainforest Café for Yak and Yeti at the Animal Kingdom. I know what we are in for there, and I’m not expecting life changing food, but the theming and experience should go down well with the four year old in our group. I will try to get into Yak and Yeti on another day at AK. If not we will try a walk up, such is our fondness for the place.

For the 10th of January (in what other context would planning your eating 60 days in advance be normal?), when we are in Magic Kingdom, I again tried O’hana for dinner but there was more sign of my fringe than an opening there so we moved to plan B. In the spirit of trying something new I booked us in at the Skipper’s Canteen Jungle Cruise place. That is almost definitely not its correct title but it is one of those places that I will never get the real name right for. We have had to go for a mid afternoon time slot but if there’s one thing we can do, it is eat whenever required to.

I haven’t read any reviews and I’ve only had a cursory glance at the menu, but at the point I read this, the booking was confirmed.

Kungaloosh!
An African-inspired Chocolate Cake with Caramelized Bananas served with Cashew-Caramel Ice Cream topped with Coffee Dust

I do suspect our party size is making ADRs harder to come by. We could try and book separate ADRs for a four and a two I suppose but the faff of that is off putting. I imagine eateries are geared up for more normal parties of two and four as standard table configurations.

We had a break for a few days in terms of securing ADRs as the next two days of the trip are at Universal and then I have some off site stuff planned in. Next I need to secure our usual spot at Via Napoli on the 14th of January. That has quickly become one of our firm favourites. That will pretty much see the plan complete from a dining perspective, with just Sanaa on our minds for our first day at Coronado Springs. I intend to have a three course meal, each of which will be the bread service.

I have our last day in Magic Kingdom currently with no eating plans and that’s always a tricky one, as we want to spend as long as possible in the park. We have in previous years “nipped out” to an off site eatery and we do need to find a spot for Romano’s Macaroni Grill if we can but I may succumb to somewhere in the park, even if it is counter service just to give us maximum “bottom lip” time on our final day.

Away from food, nothing seems to be any clearer with regard to some of the testing required. I watched the first flights leave for Orlando last week, and over the next few weeks we should start to hear what those with unvaccinated children did for their 3-5 day test in the US. My gut feel is that you sign the attestation form to say you will test them and isolate them if positive and nobody checks that you actually did. The question I currently have is whether you can just take a free NHS lateral flow test from home and use that or whether for some inexplicable reason you need to buy one instead.

Last week at work we went live with a major project that had taken many months to deliver and that seems trivial when compared to the logistics of getting on holiday to WDW right now.

Rebecca and Tom went for their 12 week scan on Thursday (I think). All is well, the baby had hiccups during the scan and Rebecca is starting to feel movement now, so everything is looking positive. She is due her 20 week scan on our first full day in Orlando so that has had to be pushed back until the day after we get back. Whatever is in there quite rightly already has a WDW trip as a higher priority than being scanned to find out whether they are a boy or a girl. He/She will have been on two holidays by the time they arrive and that somehow sets the tone nicely for what lies ahead I hope. If you look closely below I’m sure I can see some Mickey ears being worn.

Then to end the week, we’ve spent a lovely weekend entertaining some friends of ours from Yorkshire who we haven’t seen in too long and it’s been lovely catching up and eating lots together. They are Disney experts and DVC owners so it’s always nice to have fellow Disney folks to chat to.

Imagine getting me ranting about Genie, COVID and price increases in person rather than in a blog you can just stop reading! Poor Steve and Di.

Till the next time…….

Room For One More?

by mkingdon, posted in Walt Disney World

Let’s start this week with the best news. Rebecca and Tom are expecting again. Here is not the place for the detail but as happened with Freddie they have been on a bumpy journey to get to this point, but with everything crossed, their new addition will be very much welcomed into the world next May.

They have been on this journey with scant regard for how it has impacted my planning and multiple rearranging of dates but I suppose some things take precedence even over our WDW trips! Rebecca will be around 20 weeks when we go, so hopefully that small window of trip availability, found with some definite threading the eye of a needle skills, will be the best it can be for her. Fingers crossed, she will be in that sweet spot of being over the sickness but not too far along to find getting around a problem.

If you could not let Bob Chapek know the news please, as he would no doubt be wanting us to buy another park ticket for the upcoming addition. It’s lovely to bring you such good news.

I took last week’s post as something of a wake up call. Clearly, looking at the plan in the state it was in, I had been phoning it in, as they say. I’m sure many of you thought the same and were too polite to say and a couple of readers said it. Sometimes you need that kick up the backside.

When you get a comment asking why there is no Teak Neighbourhood Grill on your current plan you know its time for an intervention. Usually our visit to Teak is planned in just before we book flights. The situation was grave.

I did not waste time and that very evening last Sunday I pulled my socks up, fired up the plan and made some progress. I gave some proper thought to how the days would flow, what eateries would work best in that flow and added a good number of restaurants to the days when, like some kind of mad man, I had no plans for dinner.

I won’t re-run the whole plan again, nobody wants that, but added now are the likes of 50’s Prime Time Café for one of our DHS days (ADRs permitting of course). This is a place we haven’t done for (I’m guessing) well over a decade and for Tom and Freddie it will be a first time. I feel it is my duty to give them the classic experiences like this, right?

Off site, I have added a trip to Miller’s Ale House. Again, we’ve not been for years and it is one of those solid, no frills, reliable off-site eateries that will make a change from the likes of Applebees and The Outback which have lost our custom due to their lack of or absence of veggie options, which is a shame. Teak of course is now in there too, for dinner on our second day at Universal, as it is up in that neck of the woods and it’ll save a forty minute drive up from the villa.

Outside of eating, I am sitting back and watching the horror show of rumour and misinformation that is the testing requirements for entry to the US. Nearly every post and article seems to contradict the last and for that reason alone I am glad not be heading out any time real soon. Hopefully by the time our turn comes things will be clearer and we will have tales from folks who have been and done it.

As we stand today, as far as I can decipher, for us with both jabs, it is a video supervised or in person test three days before we fly and then the lateral flow within 2 days of getting home. For Freddie, who cannot be vaxxed, he has to do the pre-flight test three days before we fly, then as far as I can make out, is then supposed to do a test within 3-5 days of arriving in the US and then the one 2 days after getting home. Or is that not required for young children? I can’t remember.

That test in the US is the one that seems to be causing all the confusion. Is it mandatory or is it “recommended” as some places say? Is it a lateral flow that you can do unsupervised or do you need a “proper” one done at some pharmacy etc? If anyone has a definitive answer please do share, but I suppose we will find out soon enough when folks start flying tomorrow. I’m not seeing any process for recording that test taken in the US, so if it isn’t being checked then surely it has to be a lateral flow and only recommended?

I’ve also seen snippets of the attestation form that is required to be completed. It looks longer than the documents I signed to move house. Ah well, it is what it is…..

As the trip is becoming increasingly real, I have done other stuff. When we went to Gran Canaria I of course took Ryan with us. Turns out he functions equally well in Spanish. That meant dumping out of him all the US stuff temporarily. One such item was out US Sat Nav. We bought this in 2011 (I think) when we did a trip down to the Keys/Naples/Vero and I didn’t fancy using the force to find things. It has been the best $80 I have spent on US soil. We have used it on every trip since, which only recently brought to mind why no hire car in that time has ever had Sat Nav in it. It could not be, could it, that the hire companies want to upsell us to take a Sat Nav at extra cost?

Anyway, I figured that at least once a decade I should update the maps on this thing. There have been so many road changes around WDW in that time that we stand a fair chance of ending up face to face with a Gator in a lake following the roads that used to be there back in 2011. A little while spent mauling around on the internet and I had the relevant gubbins from Garmin installed. There was a slight false start as it turns out that ten year’s worth of maps was more memory than the device had and I had to invest a few quid in a Micro SD card to go in it. With that installed it took just two hours to get all the right roads in place and it is now safely tucked inside Ryan again, ready for the off.

You know of course with that done, this year’s car will have built in Sat Nav, right?

Later in the week, ADR time happened, for our first day anyway. It’s been so long since “the plan” was first crafted that I cannot remember why we had O’hana as a target on that first day, but I bet it was related to Bread Pudding. Anyway, of course O’hana didn’t make one appearance on our list of choices when I fired up the app to select our dinner plans (it’s tea, but I’ll be posh).

With that plan scuppered, I offered up a few alternatives in the WhatsApp family chat and it took about six seconds for everyone to make their choice from…

The Plaza

Crystal Palace

Whispering Canyon

Can you guess? Yes, we’ll be boarding a boat over to Wilderness Lodge to experience the fun and games there. It is and always has been a firm favourite with us so it was no surprise.

Whether we make it back into the park afterwards will be determined by our tiredness levels and whether we can still walk with full bellies. That first day is always hard to predict, especially for a four year old.

The plan doesn’t require another ADR for a few days, when I will be trying to secure the 50’s Prime Time so I am readying myself for more disappointment.

If I had the ear of the folks who build the app n stuff for Disney I would suggest that it could be more user friendly. Sometimes they way it works is fine, when I just want to see every restaurant that is available on a date and time, but often I know I want a certain restaurant or two, and it would be great to be able to ask the app to show you all the times (if any) those places could accommodate your party, rather than having to keep changing the time and/or date in the vain hope it may come up in the list. I am available for paid consultancy should anyone from WDW be reading this.

It feels odd and very welcome to be back into some form of normal planning routine nonetheless.

So we’ve passed the 60 day countdown marker now and we head into the final straight with only growing cases and deaths forcing a new lockdown to thwart us. What could possibly go wrong?

Till the next time…….