We awoke full of expectations of more crap weather, and a few minutes of watching the TV confirmed this to be the case. Bugger.
We slowly got ourselves ready and headed down for some breakfast. With no real clue what to do today, I booked an ADR for Beaches & Cream at 2.30, thinking we may do some resort hopping if all else fails.
The view from the restaurant was not a pleasing one.
It became clear to us during breakfast, based on what could be seen through that window and what the weather apps were telling us, that it would probably be too wet to be doing any sort of “hopping” or generally just being outside at all, so we changed plans and decided to head to Mall at Millenia to be indoors as much as possible. Crucially it also had a Cheesecake Factory.
We left the hotel at 10.45 and undertook a slow, wet, and frankly slightly dangerous drive up the I4. We parked up, got wet on the walk-in, and wandered a few shops before deciding that was more than enough shopping for now and it was time to eat. You know where we went.
It will not shock you to hear that we ordered Nachos.
Having had breakfast not that long ago that was the extent of our efforts. We are not animals.
We resumed the wandering of shops and Louise had pinched my hoody as she was a bit chilly. So we went to American Eagle and I bought myself a new one for $75. This frivolous spending can only happen when on holiday.
With enough dollars spent now, we walked back to the car and drove to Disney Springs, headed for the cinema.
The rain at this point was biblical.
I take these photos so I can find the car when we return, but I share them anyway.
There was not a great deal of choice, film-wise, but in the end, we opted for the new Di Caprio film, Killers Of The Flower Moon. I knew little about it other than it was three and a half hours long. We were pretty full but I did manage to fit in a bag of choccy snacks……three and half hours is a long time!
The film was good but could have been a fair bit shorter and easier on the ass.
We emerged at 6.30 and guess what, it was pouring down still. We drove back to the hotel and got ready for our evening with Yeeha Bob at Port Orleans.
We were picked up by a Lyft at 7.45 knowing this was already too late to secure a good seat. We arrived ten minutes later and found that to be true. We had to loiter for a while until a couple vacated a couch just outside the main bar area. They knew we were waiting for their seat and the arse husband therefore spent about ten minutes examining his bill, for what who knows, before, slowly and finally getting up. I really dislike people sometimes.
We had one drink in this location before someone left a table in the main area and Louise pounced whilst I settled up.
That was an Espresso Martini, but probably the least impressive of the trip.
This was much better.
I had moved on to Chocolate Martinis as I am not a real man and cannot drink proper alcohol.
After a good few drinks we were peckish so ordered some bar food. I think it was some sort of Spinach dip and Tots.
At some point towards the end of the evening, just after a round of drinks had arrived, I put some of my not inconsiderable weight on my end of the table and it tipped up, launching Louise’s full glass of red wine all over me.
Many napkins were needed and I now had pink trainers and a soggy hoody…you know the one I spent $75 on earlier. Our server replaced the drink for free of course, despite my clumsy ineptitude. Maybe their tables are known to be faulty?
Anyway, we left at midnight in another Lyft, and hey, it was still raining.
We do seem to have been cursed with some very average weather on recent trips. Our stay at Daytona in May and now these first few days on this trip have all been very unFloridian. If anyone knows where I can submit my compensation claims that would be handy.
Trying not to sulk too much after waking at 6am and suspecting that once again the weather would not be conducive to the pool we had some breakfast. Like the proper Brits we are we did take up positions by the pool for a little while, of course being the only folks out there as it was very grey and drizzly.
We admitted defeat and headed back to the room and made other plans. Those plans involved food, drink, and ten-pin bowling.
It had been many minutes since breakfast so first, we planned to get some lunch at Disney Springs. We caught our first of very many Lyfts over to the Spings as I was planning to have a drink or two. These things were amazingly efficient, abundant, and affordable. They were a great success for all of our trip.
We were deposited at the Lyft drop-off place near the Earl of Sandwich and we walked in the general direction of Splitsville looking for somewhere suitable for food.
Another tree…
On a whim, we decided upon Wolfgang Puck’s mainly as were walking past it.
It was pretty quiet so we were seated immediately. Keeping it light, as we had dinner plans, I just had a sandwich!!
and Louise a salad…
Louise had a wine and I had a draft beer.
Our server was excellent earning himself a good tip, taking the bill to $95 in total.
It was raining hard as we left so we made our way to Splitsville via as many shops as possible. Yes of course we had forgotten to bring the umbrella we acquired at great expense yesterday.
We booked in and were told there would be a 20-minute wait. At first, we thought the entire place had just these lanes….
But we soon realised most lanes were upstairs and this was a private party area. It was currently hosting some corporate do so it was all chinos, false smiles, and male bravado.
After about ten minutes we were taken upstairs to our lane and we ordered more wine for Louise and I had a beer flight.
This activity was all about fun, in the absence of the sun, but it is still important to record the fact that I won by a country mile despite not having played for over a decade.
Once were done we made our way back to the Lyft area and went back to the hotel. We had a drink in the hotel bar, noticing that it was still raining really hard, but not caring as much as we did before we started drinking.
I spent about twenty minutes trying to order this Ily Stitch doll for Louise’s friend online, but the Target website refused my every attempt as I was a bloody foreigner.
We went up to the room for showers. I read whilst Louise used the hair dryer for an inexplicable amount of time.
At 7.45 we were in another Lyft heading back to the Springs. The Drury Plaza is very close so I would say on average a Lyft there cost us about $10 with a tip.
We walked to The Boathouse, our eatery for tonight and it was, yep, you guessed it, raining hard still. This time we had the brolly though. The Boathouse was very busy so we had a wait for around 20 minutes after checking in. We sheltered in the shop next door until we were called, shortly after I went back to the podium to check, as I never trust these text messages to UK numbers in the US.
We were seated on a high table, which was just about fine for two fifty-somethings who had been afternoon drinking and after only a few minutes we ascended the stools and looked at the menu.
We declined an appetiser and instead enjoyed the bread rolls.
We then pushed the boat out (pun intended) on two Filet Mignons at silly expense. We added Truffle Fries and Asparagus as our sides.
I had, and this is going to be a theme throughout this trip, an Espresso Martini.
I think I had at least two and Louise had a similar amount of wine. We had a bottle of water (not your tap nonsense) and I had a diet Coke as well.
All of this is to prepare you (I was not prepared, probably due to the drink) for the size of the bill at $295. The steaks at $67 each plus the drinks were mainly to blame but it still hurt a bit and this would be by some distance our most expensive meal of the trip.
Regardless, we thoroughly enjoyed the food and the experience.
As we emerged, the rain had almost gone and things were a bit quieter.
We strolled back to the Lyft area and summoned a driver who arrived within what was to be the customary 2-3 minutes and we were back at the hotel for 11. Sleep was not hard to find.
If you’ve ever wondered what to do in Orlando when your plans to sunbathe are torpedoed by UK-style weather, stick around!
We both slept OK but were of course awake around 5am. A quick look at some weather apps and out of the window confirmed that the weather today was going to be crap, so the plan was to go to Disney Springs and hopefully get all the gift shopping we always leave to the last minute done nice and early.
Once the hour was more reasonable we headed down to the free breakfast buffet. It is very decent for a freebie and served us well all holiday.
It was proper grim outside.
It was better than this looked. The buffet included breads, bagels, cereals, fruit, a waffle station and a full hot buffet.
We finished around 8am and by 8.30 we were headed for Disney Springs where of course bugger all would be open yet. Indeed Lime Garage, our usual choice, was not open and we had to park in Orange. We then had to hang around for a bit at security until 9am until we were let in, but only after Louise got pulled by security. In front of us was a wedding party, planning to get wed somewhere at Disney Springs and the security checks they were going through may have lasted longer than their marriage. They had boxes of all sorts of stuff that had to be gone through one by one.
Once inside, it was understandably quiet at this time.
We wandered down to House of Blues….
and around the back of it, along the waterfront.
It was lovely just to be here and wander about having the place pretty much to ourselves. I don’t think we had ever walked down this bit of the Springs by the water and we just soaked up the view for quite a while. We slowly made our way down to the other end of the Springs to kill time until most of the stores opened at 10am.
We were sending the girls endless photos, whether they wanted them or not!
We timed it perfectly to arrive at World of Disney at 9.59 and the doors opened literally as we arrived.
As we did all the CMs were lined up clapping us in.
We bought a gift for Emily and a pen for Louise’s job (honestly!). It was an extra wide, chubby pen as clearly she is very used to how that sort of thing feels in her hand.
We continued to wander all the usual stores, such as Trend D and the Coop, dodging the now heavy rain. We invested in a brolly. I’d been asked by a blog reader to look out for a specific calendar and on this, our first try of many, it was sold out!
We were also on a mission to find an Ily Stitch doll for a friend of Louise’s (no, I’d never heard of them either) and World of Disney didn’t have any of those either! Not the most fruitful shopping expedition.
We had a sit down in the covered bit near Chicken George and Facetimed Rebecca for a bit.
Having not much else to do, we drove to Target to see if they had one of these dolls, but of course, they did not. We picked up some bits and that may sound like a quick thing to do, but as you may know, any trip to Target is measured in days. With that done we headed back to the hotel as I had a call of nature to attend to.
It was mid-afternoon by now and we were both knackered so decided to have a nap and relax for a bit. This inevitably turned into a good few hours of not doing a lot and we were so tired that we decided just to grab a Pizza Hut pizza from the shop in the hotel for tea and watch some telly. The weather was still very grim and was not encouraging us to go out anywhere.
Bedtime was embarrassingly early.
We do better than today from here on in, I promise.
Well, here we are again folks. Even in the heady days of the Dibb when I used to write good trip reports I could never be accused of each one being unique. I was recycling jokes and content before recycling was enforced by your council. Now, with more trips recently than hair growth I am afraid you are in for some serious deja vu.
Knowing what we got up to I can assure you this report will be briefer than others, with no park activity to report, so in effect, most days will be a couple of shots around the pool (photos, not drinks) and then a restaurant at night, so if you’re up for that, welcome along.
We had a really good time by the way. I know I say this every time, but I cannot remember ever feeling so sad about coming home and not wanting to, so much so that we didn’t, for a few extra days but more on that later.
The title of this trip may not become clear until a few days into the report, but
a) it doesn’t matter,
b) thinking up titles for essentially the same holiday is hard, give me a break and
d) what happened to c) and
c) ah there it is.
So things kicked off in the usual fashion with a 5am alarm that we were both awake before. With showers, a half-drunk cup of coffee and some time sorting the dogs out, the cases were closed and loaded into the car.
I popped into Emily’s room to say goodbye and grabbed what I thought was her foot to wake her up. Imagine her boyfriend’s horror of being woken up by me grabbing his foot! After a slightly awkward goodbye after that, we were off.
I’m all for these winter holidays but it seems the penance for escaping the crappy UK weather is that the drive to the airport must be undertaken in monsoon conditions. To be fair there was an officially named storm in progress, but the drive was a headache-inducing one with huge levels of concentration as I was determined not to die and miss my holiday.
We got to T2 at 6.55, had to go up six levels in the T2 West Multi-Storey before finding a spot and were soon stood in what was a ten-minute queue to check-in.
As soon as we approached the desk and handed our passports over, the baggage belt broke down. Of course. So we stood staring at the check-in lady for a while until, thankfully it started up again and we could get rid of our bags.
Security was better than usual, and we were soon through to “the bit where you get some food”. The airport was incredibly busy for reasons I could not fathom.
Anyway, like the creatures of habit we are, we headed to San Carlo and only had a five-minute wait for a table.
I had my usual. The Full Works sandwich.
Louise had what I believe to be Eggs Benedict, expertly captured here.
After all these years, I had recently discovered that via some app that I have access to thanks to my bank account I can get into airport lounges (they were all fully booked by the time I found out) and I get some discounts at the airport. One of them was a 15% discount here.
Redeeming it took longer than eating the food, but we got there in the end. I tipped 15% so that was all worth it wasn’t it. £39 in total.
We had a very brief stroll through Duty-Free before picking up holiday read in the bookshop.
Louise then Facetimed Rebecca and Dougie whilst I queued for fifteen minutes for a poo. I told you the airport was busy.
We headed to the gate, which involved the usual half-marathon distance stroll. Gate A6, and being at the very back we boarded as our row was called to avoid having to wait for everyone to put their bags up to walk to the back of the plane.
I was selected for a random security check which involved swabbing a lot of things and taking my shoes off.
As ever, the ticketed departure time was a greater fiction than the book I had just bought and we didn’t take off until 11.25, just under an hour later than advertised.
It was a windy and bumpy ascent but much of the storm from earlier had now thankfully vanished.
Once we were up, Louise discovered her TV was broken. Luckily the centre seats to our right were empty so I moved across to those so she could use mine.
Drinks and pretzels arrived first at 12.12. The film choice was poor, mainly as it hasn’t changed for a while, so we didn’t watch too much. Being on the last row, we were the last to get food so our choice was beef or chickpea curry. The former for me…
And the latter for Louise, with no photo as I was sitting across the aisle at this point.
But you can see a blurry photo of my bun instead.
I watched three episodes of Friends and then played some of the games for a while. All of a sudden we were over New York and only a couple of hours out from Orlando.
I was, as always seems to be the case, inexplicably hungry. The pastry thing handed out as a snack was inhaled and I continued to watch “stand in the aisle guy” a few rows down the plane.
All flight, he had, as his name suggests, stood in the aisle, including every possible moment before take-off. He was “erect” again before the bong to announce seat belts could be undone had finished bonging.
The cabin crew must have had to ask him to get out the f…. I mean to, please move to one side about a dozen times.
He was still standing up as we started to descend at 2.40pm. I moved back to my original seat for landing as my considerable weight in the wrong seat could be catastrophic for the pilot.
Louise bought some perfume from duty-free for £50. I have expelled more liquid from a sneeze than turned up in the bottle.
It was overcast and bumpy as we touched down, but, we were home.
I do prefer Terminal C. Getting your cases first is better and avoiding that ludicrous trek/double bag drop thing is always good. It does however mean you do not get the Buddy Dyer talk on the monorail. We were last to the carousel and ironically last to get our cases too. This meant a ten-minute wait at immigration before being processed incredibly quickly by a cast member from Orange is the New Black who was only slightly terrifying.
Down to Level 2 for the car and I had booked with Alamo and managed to secure a “Get out of jail free card” in the form of a straight-to-the-garage pass. I took some small delight in walking past “stand in the aisle guy” as he queued at the car hire desks.
After figuring out where Alamo lives in Terminal C we were shown the vast array of Compact SUVs on offer….all six of them. Three already had folks crawling over them so pickings were slim and we ended up with a very average Nissan Rogue, but it did the job for the few times we would use it.
The sat nav took us to the hotel a weird way I had never seen before. We went through a few tolls and I had decided that getting a Visitor Toll Pass thing was simply not worth the trek over to Terminal A, especially as we had no plans to drive anywhere involving a toll once at the hotel. As we got to the release barrier at Alamo the lady there told us that all their cars now have toll pass set up and you just get charged for what you use, plus (and there’s always a plus isn’t there) a $5 per day activation fee.
That was good enough for us as we were only going to hit tolls going to and from the airport.
Check-in at the hotel was painless and very quick. The free parking perk, which I seemed to get by booking with Travel Republic was a big saver as it was usually $25 a day. With that and all the other perks at this hotel is really is a great choice. I’ll probably wang on about that later. Right now I’m tired from the flight!
We were given room 1841 so we needed the lift up to the 18th floor. One of the lifts was being fixed by the maintenance guy, so every time we pushed the button, that lift opened, revealing him on his knees fixing stuff. We did that about four times in total before he’d finished and we could get in a lift.
The room was lovely.
Is there a better feeling than the “just got to my room in Orlando” feeling? Almost certainly, but it was still a lovely moment.
The view would be fantastic once the weather behaved itself but more on that later.
I unpacked in under sixty seconds and after a brief rest we were out in the car heading for food. We were Sickies bound on the 192 and the traffic was absolutely dire. It took about forty minutes but luckily the journey would be very much worth it.
The experience did not start off as well as it could as us and a few others were stood waiting at the podium area with no staff to be seen for five minutes but once we were seated all was well.
Now, granted we were high on the “we’ve just arrived” dopamine but we loved this meal.
To start we had the Fried Pickles. To be honest these were one of the main reasons we had come.
These things were simply one of the tastiest things we had ever eaten.
The menu is huge. It was easy for Louise as where there are Nachos, she will be eating them, but in the end, the server was there, pen in hand and I had to take a stab at something. I chose, wisely it turned out, the Chowzilla.
It deserves two photos….again, one of the most tasty things to enter my gob.
The nachos…
As those nachos were officially an appetiser, they appeared at the table much sooner than my dish, which was a minor inconvenience. We asked our server when mine might arrive and she apologised saying her manager had brought out the nachos in error. It was absolutely fine and we did not in any way moan about it.
She removed the nachos from the bill! So I just added that back onto her tip as she had been great.
I simply couldn’t finish my Chowzilla despite really wanting to and all in all, it was $100.
It only took fifteen minutes to get back to the hotel, which shows how crap the traffic was earlier. We got some water from the hotel shop, read for ten minutes, and fell asleep to allow all those calories to do their work.
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