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.
Till the next time…….
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