Emily is home. She arrived back in the UK on Friday morning. If it is possible to experience the end of a WDW trip sadness by proxy, I did on Thursday watching their last day unfold in the WhatsApp group.
Knowing what an incredible time they had just made me genuinely sad for them that it was ending. Some spice was added to the end of their trip with Hurricane Helene’s arrival, and her impact coincided almost exactly with their flight departure. Thankfully for them and Orlando, she stayed off the coast but some of the scenes from the west coast of Florida were heartbreaking.
Having stayed at Siesta Key a few years ago, this was a shocking sight.
Orlando again seemed to miss the worst of things and we have every appendage crossed that nothing forms in the coming weeks to impact our trip. How selfish does that sound when thousands of folks lost their homes a few days ago?
You may already know this, but for anyone with Florida plans that may involve hurricane season, I have long followed Denis Phillips who gives incredibly regular, sensible and accurate updates whenever anything is heading to Florida. If you don’t already, he’s worth following to avoid trying to get info from all kinds of sources when it matters.
Anyway, within 12 hours of touching down on UK soil, Emily had done the sensible thing and booked again for next year. They will be going back with another couple, more first-timers, and it will be Emily’s 30th next year so it all made sense that a trip would be taken to mark that occasion.
They are staying at the All Stars again, but have to go in August as one of the other couple is a teacher, so flight costs will be horrific and with the hotel and tickets in the bag, their quest will be to source a flight for less than a family car.
I have two weeks (and one day) left at work before we go and, as ever, I am more than ready for it. It has been a hectic and demanding time at work and I feel pretty burnt out, despite having had a lovely holiday back in May. Louise feels the same but she’s a nurse so she deserves to much more than the desk-based, work-from-home most of the time Nancy boy I am.
I purchased some dollars last week, well, I loaded my Caxton card with some and was delighted to get a rate of 1.31. That delight is relative to the recent years of atrocious rates of course and I’d be much more delighted with the 1.5s or 1.6s that were the norm for so many years.
Rebecca’s ankle is improving rapidly, with the boot now mostly off and a lot of mobility back which is great news. She did have to return to A&E last week to have her elbow checked out as it was getting more and more painful and less useful with each passing day. Thankfully, again no broken bones just ligament damage and bruising causing the pain.
The decision was taken last week to cancel Halloween Horror Nights by Rebecca and Tom. Emily’s experience and comments on my blogs and other vlogs and blogs just made the whole expense and effort not seem worthwhile. They will find another evening to have some kid-free time I’m sure.
Hopefully, Louise and I can do similar and find an evening where we can do Jellyrolls. We really enjoyed the several nights we spent there last November on our park-free solo trip staying at Drury Plaza. We must do that trip again sometime.
It goes without saying that as we approach another trip I am desperately trying to trim a few pounds so I only come back as fat as I normally am. With every passing year it seems to get harder and at some point, I am just going to have to put up with being chunky and adorable. I’m a handful of pounds down from my heaviest, so if I can follow that with another handful or so in the next two weeks I may have myself some runway to eat what I like for a couple of weeks. My metabolism is a cruel mistress.
Two more of these posts before departure. You can get excited about that if nothing else.
The “highlight” of this week was a stomach-churning panic on Wednesday afternoon with a tearful phone call whilst I was at work (Rebecca was the one in tears, but if I’m at work there’s always a chance I am too) saying she had just fallen down some steps and broken her ankle!
I left the meeting I was in the middle of without explanation and flew homeward. Tom had got home to her first, so we arranged to meet at the hospital so I could take the boys home while they were seen in A&E.
When I looked at her ankle, I was sure it was broken. While waiting for them to arrive at A&E, I had already done some extensive googling on whether you could fly with a broken limb. It seemed to be the case that you could, but of course, doing WDW with a broken ankle would not be ideal.
A few hours later they returned home with the news that it was not actually broken, but there was severe tendon/ligament damage. She was in a boot and on crutches but relieved.
Of course, there is the small matter of managing everyday life on one leg with two young kids for the next few weeks but at least the holiday was not badly affected!
Just 24 hours later the huge swelling was much reduced so we are very hopeful she will be ambulatory by the time we fly. It was around this time that all the other injuries she had picked up all over her body started to hurt with the pain in her ankle subsiding a little. It was a heck of a fall.
The other daughter continues to have the best time ever over in Orlando. We receive a steady stream of food and drink pictures which is always welcome and not quite as painful as it might be if we were not headed there very soon. I feel very conflicted that I never want their trip to end as I know how much they are loving it, but it has to if ours is ever to get here.
Emily wept uncontrollably at Fantasmic as did most of us just watching the video she sent. There is something about that finale music in that show that just gets me.
On Wednesday they did Halloween Horror Nights and were, to be honest, a little underwhelmed, mainly due to the huge wait times for everything. Only one house was done as every house had wait times of well over an hour and even the food trucks had similar queues.
They made the most of it by attending the show, scare zones, and riding the rides, which did have low wait times. It seems you need Express, but the cost for that is huge/frankly ridiculous so now Rebecca and Tom are considering whether to bother or not on our trip as with the tickets and Express for those few hours would cost close to £500. That is tough to justify and seems a mad way to operate the event.
Why not double the cost of the entry ticket but sell half as many so those going can actually do some of the things they want to?
Amongst other things, they’ve also done Beaches & Cream, a load more walking and are generally living their best lives. Feedback from Mikey the first-timer is that he is blown away, already addicted and plans for next year are being hatched.
In my own planning, I have picked up the remaining reservations in and around Universal that I was looking for. The first at Toothsome on the night Rebecca and Tom are/were planning to do HHN. I’ve booked the meal for us all just in case they decide not to go and I can always amend it if they do go after all. If they don’t we’ll just have a night at City Walk.
The others are Cowfish and on our day in IOA I have booked us into Mythos. Despite me seeming to remember it has a very good reputation I think we have only ever done it once. It being within the park makes it handy, with us not having to come all the way out to City Walk to eat. We are booked at 5.30pm, so should we wish to do more in the park after that, we don’t have walk all that way back in.
I ticked off another milestone yesterday, getting a work event out of the way that always looks better in the rearview mirror. Three weeks left at work now. I’m hunkering down for the final push.
I have very little to report on our trip this week as work has been stupidly intense and I’ve been down south for most of the week having to actually pretend I know what I’m doing.
Instead, I can share some stuff on Emily’s trip that started last Thursday. She flew Aer Lingus taking just under nine hours. She may be just short of 30 but yes I did spend a good amount of time in my hotel room tracking her flight until it landed.
After some kerfuffle with her Revolut card not working they took a Lyft from MCO to the All Stars in what was incredible heat.
They are delighted with their room, which is right by the bus stop and pool.
Friday was a special day being her boyfriend’s first ever experience of WDW and let’s just summarise things by saying he was absolutely blown away with the scale, quality and magic of it all.
Magic Kingdom was very quiet all day with the longest wait being 25 minutes for Haunted Mansion. They rope-dropped Tron and were one of the first to ride.
They had one of those special days with everything just going perfectly it seems.
Breakfast was from Sleepy Hollow..
Tiana was ridden, ticking off another first for them both.
After a stop at the Poly for some drinks on the beach, when Mikey nearly cried at the loveliness of it all they headed out to Olive Garden for tea.
22,000 steps, lots of rides and lovely food all made for a day that could not have gone any better they say.
The next day, yesterday, was Typhoon Lagoon and then Sickies for tea but I don’t have any photos or details of that yet as they are still asleep. 🙂
After almost a year of planning and counting down I am just so delighted that things have been so perfect so far. Living vicariously through Emily’s trip will hopefully cushion the blow of not being there for the next fortnight as I battle through the tribulations of working for a living.
In news closer to home, Louise is currently suffering from a perforated and infected ear drum which is incredibly painful. She is on the relevant meds of course, but let’s hope that doesn’t cause her any serious issues when we fly in 30 days. As someone who suffered very badly with ear pain on almost every flight when I was younger, I know just how unbearable that can be.
This bonus pseudo-trip report is your lot for this week. Depending on what Emily posts in the group chat in the coming days there may be some more next week!
Thanks for all the interest and feedback on the “big plan” post last week. As much as I really appreciate those who persisted with the non-Disney content I have been posting, it’s clear from the views and visitor numbers last week that most of you really have more interest in WDW, which I am totally on board with!
For those who asked about Emily’s trip, if you want to follow along with her, your best bet would be to follow her on Instagram here. She will without doubt be posting there throughout. She leaves on Thursday. She also does some blogging if you wanted to follow that too.
I was due to take her to the airport but as it often does, work has gotten in the way of things I want to do, insisting I am down south on that day, so she has a friend taking her instead. Sure she’s 29, sure she’s been to WDW countless times, sure she lived there, but there is still some low level of worry when waving your offspring off to travel that distance.
After all the fun and games of the planning, based on having secured everything with low deposits, we are now at the stage where the pain hits and to quote a WDW vlogger, “and now it’s time to pay the price”.
I have just paid off all the balances, including the theme park tickets, villa and car. I’m not gonna lie, parting with that level of pound notes hurts no matter what the reason. Still, of all things I could spend money on this is one of the better ones. On the plus side, it’s a real sign that this trip is almost here.
It may shock you to learn that nothing has changed in the plan since last week. We are probably getting too close now for that to happen. In a couple of weeks, I have two meals to book at Citywalk (they only seem to offer slots a month in advance). Those will be Toothsome and Cowfish.
I still have low-level anxiety/PTSD from our more recent WDW trips as the state of the parks in terms of crowds, wait times and general post-pandemic recovery are fresh in my mind. I don’t know if this is reality but the park activity I see on social media seems to vary between “there is literally only me in this theme park today” to “do not even try to enter Orlando as it is full”.
With a better “FastPass” system in place, I am hoping things will be better. We are also visiting outside of any UK school holidays and when I look at the various crowd-level tools online most seem to be scoring most of our time there around the 6 out of 10 mark with slightly busier times predicted towards the end of our trip as we get close to Halloween (the day itself, not the season which starts in early August at WDW of course).
With lower crowd levels the quandary of course is should I book the multi-pass thing three days in advance (being off-site scum) or wait and see how the park looks that morning? I suspect I shall play it safe and book it for our first MK day to remove any stress/waiting on that special first day and then see how it goes. The natural exception to that, I think, will be Hollywood Studios, and I’ll probably cave and book the multi-pass for that park without hesitation, having had horrifying experiences there on the last couple of trips.
For anyone who has been and done it with the new system, I would be keen to hear feedback and experiences of the new thing.
I am girding my loins now for the final push at work. I’ve got a daunting couple of weeks with many things in the diary that I would rather not do (I refer you to the section above about these trips costing a lot of money to understand why I have to do them), but if my many years on this spinning rock have taught me anything it is that I will always be fatter than I want to be and everything passes. Typically even the most horrifying things in your future are survivable.
I am being over dramatic as my “things” are just a couple of days at Head Office next week and then a work conference/event the weekend after. I am not pulling babies from burning buildings but imposter syndrome is a bugger.
This time next week it’ll be a month until we go and just another milestone on the countdown ticked off. Of course, that just means I have five weeks to lose four stone. Seems doable?
With all that sunbathing nonsense out of the way, let’s get down to the serious business of getting ready for a holiday I think we can all understand and get behind.
We are just 44 days away from our Orlando theme park bonanza folks and whilst you’ve all been snoozing/trudging through endless blogs about sand and food, I’ve been busy planning our October trip.
There’s a lot to get through and rather than be sensible and eek that content out over the next few weeks, I’ll no doubt just shoot my shot this week and worry about next week when I’m staring at the blank page in a week’s time.
The first thing to report is that whilst we were all “at” Delray Beach, once again, Bob Iger has taken on board my feedback from this blog and scrapped Genie+. Good lad Bob, but you missed the bit about not charging for this stuff on top of the sky-high theme park tickets, but we’ll take a win where we can get it.
I approve of the change in general but of course, it came with some baggage.
Why does it cost money?
Why are off-site guests penalised? (I know the answer and I only care as we’ll be off-site this time)
Why are International visitors massively penalised unless you spend enough time reading WDW internet content to come across the fairly simple workaround? The workaround of setting the country of your address in the app to the US is so easily preventable that I strongly suspect Disney has left that in intentionally to mitigate a problem they couldn’t solve properly. (Isn’t the issue something about card payments for non-US folks?) My day job involves developing stuff for online products and it smells of a handy “oops we didn’t realise that was possible”. I applaud it.
Being weeks behind the release of this change I won’t go on about it anymore as I’m sure every angle has already been covered. I look forward to being able to secure some rides before we arrive in the parks again.
Moving on to our personal plan, one of the first things I did after getting home from our Delray trip was upgrade to Premium. I think it was about £150 each to do so and having experienced the economy seats, we were keen not to again, especially with two small kids who we will definitely want to go to sleep on the way back. The slightly enhanced room in Premium will be worth that investment and, much to my surprise (I am blissfully unaware lots of the time) until Rebecca told me, that entitles us to Lounge access and a free breakfast at Manchester airport so we’ve already made some of the £150 each back. Add the same sort of thing on the return journey and we’ll be close to a profit.
I’m under no illusions that we’ll be lying down in some sort of Business Class bed-seat, as we sat just behind the magic curtain of Premium on our last trip with TUI and could see the forbidden fruits clearly, but we’ll take the larger seat, slightly better food, more luggage allowance and hopefully getting our cases off more quickly.
This past week has been ADR time and as ever, the success has not been as complete as I may have liked. Overall though, I’ve done OK. Of course, I had sworn that we would eat off-site almost all the time and I have then caved and made more ADRs than I first intended, but we will still be dining off-site a fair bit.
With a two-year-old with us, all dining plans live and die with him, so there are a fair few early meal slots booked and only the odd late one, where that was the only availability, which will be in the lap of the toddler Gods.
To once again demonstrate my masterful planning skills, with the plan pretty much locked and loaded, including our ADRs, a last-minute decision to add in a trip to Universal just last week may have flummoxed other less awesome planners, but no. A ten-minute conversation with Rebecca, whilst staring at the plan, along with some swift internet interrogation saw us expertly evaluate options and then move stuff around with minimal disruption, ADR cancellation or pain. If only I were this good at my day job.
So let’s take a trot through our plans, shall we? I will say that after a few trips where we have not done a great deal and bored you to death with beaches and pools, this trip is hard-core, jam-packed and will probably kill us. Being (even if I say so myself) an elite-level WDW trip planner I recognise and embrace this and should we need to amend stuff on the hoof due to exhaustion and/or killing each other with our bare hands, then I shall rise to that challenge with ease. This is nobody’s first rodeo and we go into the plan with eyes wide open and loins girded.
Day One
As you now know we fly Premium out of Manchester with TUI on October 15th. Airport parking has been secured (which is getting a bit pricey these days I must say) and we are scheduled to be wheels up at 11.25 so we should be in the air at around 1pm if things go to form.
We arrive in Melbourne mid-afternoon and have a suitable vehicle awaiting us courtesy of Discount Florida Car Hire again. An unwelcome but necessary 90 minutes in the car should see us pull up outside our favourite villa on Amelia Downs Trail in Kissimmee and we shall unpack, do a shop and eat no doubt. The boys will be in the pool if they are still awake I’m sure.
Day Two
It goes without saying that this is a Magic Kingdom day. Who knows what time Dougie might be awake so it could be a short or long one. Eating wise, we have gone for an old favourite and a regular tactic on our first park day in Whispering Canyon Cafe at 5.20, as it seems these days that all the shenanigans and fun are back after their suspension for the pandemic and for Tom’s benefit they still offer unlimited refills on milkshakes so he intends to bankrupt them. I suspect we’ll be done at that point and will head home.
Day Three
A rest day but with a twist. On recent theme park trips, we have done Typhoon Lagoon on day two which works really well, offering rest for the oldies and slides and stuff for the youngsters. We will eat off-site that evening at Sickies on the 192.
Day Four
Unusually it is Animal Kingdom today. Typically we would visit the parks in the correct order, which is the order in which they opened, and today would be Epcot, but for reasons I cannot now remember we will be at DAK, for what might be our one and only day here. The second day had to be sacrificed recently to squeeze the two Universal parks in.
Day Five
A rest day, and we plan to spend it at the villa and most likely at the large resort pool on offer. We may go for a sit-down breakfast at a new place I have seen online called @The Diner. Then we will do our best to be hungry again for dinner at The Cheesecake Factory at LBV.
Day Six
Ah Epcot, there you are. This will be our Future World day and after some skilful manoeuvres on my part with ADR bookings, I managed to secure us the “hen’s teeth” booking of Space 220 for lunch. Freddie is incredibly keen to go here so that was pleasing.
Then in the evening Rebecca and Tom will activate their built-in babysitters and allow us to watch the boys whilst they head up to experience Halloween Horror Nights at Universal. We will probably drive us all up there and drop them off and then Louise and I will eat with the boys on City Walk, maybe Toothsome. Rebecca and Tom will get a Lyft back home when they are done.
Day Seven
Hollywood Studios, our nemesis from recent trips, delivering THE worst theme park experience from a “getting on things” perspective consistently, driven by the recently deceased Genie+ nonsense. We hope things will be better now. Knowing from past experiences that whenever we want to do Fantasmic it will be rained off, we have taken the earliest opportunity possible to book a Fantasmic Dining Package, choosing the SciFi Diner for lunch.
Day Eight
A much-needed pool day again. We may again avail ourselves of a sit-down breakfast and possibly return to a real favourite of ours in Hash House A Go Go. Then after some serious lying down in the sun, we shall visit The Outback and I will without doubt have a large steak. It takes some real skills to make yourself hungry enough to dine out twice in one day but it is a challenge we intend to rise to.
Day Nine
We head to Universal and a one-night stay at Royal Pacific to get the Front Of Line access. We shall get there as early as possible, check in and head over to IOA first (I think). With this being very fresh into the plan, there are no firm dining plans for that evening but City Walk is our lobster so that will get firmed up shortly.
Day Ten
Universal Studios of course. And should stamina and timings permit, then we will return to Teak Neighbourhood Grill for dinner. It’s been a while since we dined here. I think our last visit was on the trip amid all the Covid restrictions and the experience wasn’t perfect. The menu looks great and hopefully, everything is back as it should be with the service so it’s definitely worth another try.
Day Eleven
Epcot again today with a likely focus on World Showcase. A huge stroke of fortune came our way in the shape of the Eat To The Beat concert series. A few months ago when the lineup was announced it was the usual mix of the odd famous person or band amidst a load of artists we at least had no idea about. Anyway, it turned out that during our trip, Hanson would be performing. We saw them recently supporting Busted and have liked them ever since the one song everyone knows them for back in the 90’s. So I have booked lunch at Garden Grill as part of the Eat To The Beat package which secures us a seat in their 5.30 show.
I wanted to get us into Beaches and Cream for our evening meal and did so but the only slot available by the time I’d sorted the Garden Grill booking was at 9.15pm. We will just see how everyone is doing by that time and play it by ear. I think leaving Epcot in the early evening for a Boardwalk stroll will be on the cards either way. There’s a Banana Bread Espresso Martini at The Boardwalk Bellevue Lounge that I have my eye on.
Day Twelve
Day two at Hollywood Studios and lunch is to be at the Rodeo Roundup place in Toy Story Land.
Thanks to Disney Food Blog for that photo
Nothing is booked for tea/dinner so we may head off-site and try to help the budget by going to Olive Garden. If energy permits, then we might head to Disney Springs for a stroll and with a following wind, one of the Espresso Martinis from Wine Bar George.
Day Thirteen
With one day left on our three-day Universal tickets, we will use that up today at Volcano Bay. A first for Louise and I and I suspect this will be a welcome break from the parks and a chance to rest up a little bit for those who want to.
Dinner is pencilled in for Cowfish at City Walk.
Day Fourteen
The emotional last full day and of course that means Magic Kingdom for the farewell lap of honour. Having, much to our surprise, thoroughly enjoyed our unplanned visit there on our last trip to the parks, I have booked us in at The Liberty Tree for a 5.40pm ADR.
Fireworks and tears will be experienced as we leave the park for the final time.
Day Fifteen
The usual mix of packing, a visit to Disney Springs, some food, perhaps at The Polite Pig and then the longer-than-usual drive back to the airport. We don’t fly until 7pm so that should work out OK.
So there you have it. It’s a humdinger and no doubt some of that won’t happen, but he who dares wins. As ever, the thinking is that despite the last few decades telling me otherwise, who knows if and when any of us may get to return.
In other news, Emily and her boyfriend go to WDW on September 12th for a long-awaited trip they booked well before we booked ours. It is Mikey’s first visit and they are both ridiculously excited. They are staying at the All-Stars and flying Aer Lingus. I can’t wait to hear all about it. You can’t beat a first-time visit, especially when an experienced guide is with you to show you the ropes.
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