Category: mkingdon

Freddie, Food and Fevers

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

2018 rumbles on in its glorious miserableness, evidenced last week with Louise being ill. Not just a bit unwell, bit properly rotten. I think it was that horrible chest infection/flu that seems to be spreading around the country. She of course could not work. Most people run the risk of making their colleagues ill. Louise of course runs the risk of infecting dozens of already poorly and vulnerable patients too.

To add further pain to her week, she coughed so hard at one point that she put her back out and had to call the doctor from the living room floor unable to move. Fun and games.  A few days of complete rest later and she is starting to feel human again and the best news is that so far I have managed to avoid contamination. Or maybe I haven’t, and I do actually have this infection but as my pain and illness tolerance is that much higher I just haven’t noticed?

With Louise being so ill, our house has been a no go zone for young Freddie all week which wasn’t great. We’ve had to keep up to date with his daily transformations via the media of socials, until he was brought round last night. We’d missed him and in just a week he seems to have doubled in size and started driving.

Here he is chilling at the grandparent’s pad.

So we spent last night listening to him chatter, making him laugh and the grown ups watched a YouTube video where someone tasted all thirteen freak shakes at Toothsome. What? That’s a normal Saturday night isn’t it? We need this research so we can have our milk shake choice made by the time we get there, to save us spending an hour staring at the menu. For the record, I think I’m going for the peanut butter based one…but, that may change before we get there.

We also spent a large amount of time on the new Voodoo Doughnut at City Walk’s menu trying to decide which we would have. I don’t think anyone will have the brass neck to order this one out loud…

Rebecca and Emily were a little delicate as they had a night out on Friday. They were reliving the fringe years with a Paramore concert. They dined at Infamous Diner beforehand partaking in lovely looking burgers and, judging by their snapchats, too many cocktails. This probably explained the then endless stream of snapchats which just showed them jumping up and down and screaming lyrics out to EMO songs. Good times.

That reminds me, My God what a food filled week this has been, as on Thursday Emily and I went on our team night out. It was meant to be our xmas meal, but for several reasons got pushed back. We went for a huge Chinese and Emily created another hangover due to downing double Disaronno and Cokes at an alarming rate. The amount of food was both tremendous and tremendously worrying for our future health. If there’s a better dish that doesn’t involve Dougnuhts and burgers than crispy duck then I’d like to hear about it.

With work continuing to be hectic, no wonder I’m tired.

With Louise edging towards normal health levels and no nights out planned for next week, apart from a Mustard rehearsal on Tuesday, some recovery may be possible in the week to come.

I have stuff to do now so must leave you. Apologies for the brevity, but quality over quantity is better. Achieving neither as I have done requires some special skills indeed.

Till the next time….

Shutter Shock

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

Turns out it isn’t August yet. That’s disappointing to be honest. Having booked flights last week, I think I have waited long enough now and we should be on our way.

From the comments on last week’s post it would appear I have booked us onto “Dibber’s row” on our flight. Having not used the Dibb forums for a good few years I have to say I’m not too sure what that’s all about but I’m guessing it means you have to have a three-hour debate with the person behind you about whether you can recline your seat or not.

You see, it’s comments like that which will lead to the admin of It’s Orlando Time banning me from my own blog.

Rather than jetting off to Florida the past week has been spent at work, and it has been an unusually shite one. There’s little point in going into why here as it won’t make any sense and nobody cares as you all have your own work based woes going on, but just know, it’s been pants.

To top off that week nicely, I got back from a Mustard gig at about 1am on Saturday morning and our less than one year old roller shutter through which we drive the cars to park them up at the back of the house broke. So I sat there, with a car full of gear, tired and hungry looking at the thing sitting there half way up or down. There’s no way to look at that as you would with half a glass of something in a positive way. It was just broken as was my spirit. I wrestled with it for a bit, no doubt waking the neighbours until admitting defeat and carrying my gear in the long way through the gate.

So we had one car trapped outside (mine) and one inside (Louise’s). I had to wake Louise up to tell her that before she went to work in the morning she would have to transfer all her nursing gear into my car and take that. She was delighted.

The man who can fix this was contacted. He needs some parts to fix it which he won’t have until Monday so we are a one car family until then. Luckily I have had nowhere I needed to be whilst Louise has been out working all weekend. I did manage to get the thing to go all the way down, the speed at which it did wasn’t a good sign to be honest, but at least we’re secure at the back of the house until he fettles it.

If ever there was a symbol of my working week that was it.

Having worked most of Saturday too, overseeing some changes being made over the weekend, this incessant moaning you are currently reading through is absolutely justified and you’ll just have to suck it up.

We’ve gone a whole week without changing the plan or adding any further eateries. Emily and I have had a brief discussion about sacrificing the 50’s Prime Time Cafe as we are also doing Whispering Canyon, which is, in our opinion the better of those types of dining experiences.

Credit: Disney Tourist Blog

It may be replaced by one of the new things which seem to be opening at Disney Springs on a daily basis, we’ll see.

Right, as all I’m doing is moaning, it is time to draw this car crash of a post to an end and tend to my bottom lip.

Till the next time….

Pretty Fly For A Tight Guy

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

What better way to start my 2018 blogging than with news of Florida related vast expense?

I have kept an eye on flights for a month or so now, with no real intention to buy unless the price seemed too good to be true and unlikely to fall further. I did see my arse at times as both Thomas Cook and Virgin seemed to be heading significantly north of £600 as notified by my Kayak alerts, but I held my nerve and told myself all would be well.

So with Louise out during the day on New Year’s Eve I found myself at a loose end. In the afternoon, I fired up the laptop and Emily and I demolished a selection box whilst going over our day by day plan with a fine tooth comb. We had a quick look at the busy day guides and realised that our trip could be summarised as, every park will be busy the first week as it is Labor (sic) day and quieter after that so we gave up trying to reconstruct the plan based on that and went with our gut instincts.

With Freddie in tow, I do realise that all planning will be subject to change, and going with flows will be the order of the trip so I’m not too worried about which park will be on which day. He may only be ten months old at the time, but he will be (quite rightly) dictating our movements.

What I do care about is where we are eating so we spent a good amount of time re-jigging some of those plans and that is now pretty much as planned as it can be until we can book the few ADRs we need. Having said that, new restaurants keep opening which lure us into changes. The Edison being the latest one to tempt us to change the plan.

Anywho, later that day it came to mind that I should perhaps have a quick look at flight prices. I did a Skyscanner/Kayak thing and noted a price with Virgin of just over £500. Now, either Branson was drunk or my laptop had been set to show prices in some weird currency. I tried to go to the Virgin Atlantic site and do a test run of a booking to see how they would double that price before I got to check out, but for some reason their website won’t let you book online if you have an infant in your party.

So I looked at the third-party options listed on Skyscanner. I discounted a few I’d never heard of as their reviews were as good as Trump’s approval rating, but decided to give Netflights a go, as I’d heard of them and indeed even booked with them previously.

They do let you book online with an infant in the party and the price held true. So, on the basis that any price around the £500 mark for direct flights in August (granted, late August this time) was unlikely to be bettered, I shot my bolt.

I did realise that I had not reserved any seats and that would be extra. Once I got the eticket details through from Netflights I went to the Virgin site to see which fellow passengers I would be inflicting a ten month old on for nine hours. As much as I tried to pay them money for knowing where we’ll be sitting, the web site was having none of it. I kept getting one of those ever so helpful error messages that web sites give so often.

“Something went wrong. You can try again or whatever.” was how it went I think. So I gave up. I was glad in a way as by sleeping on it my subconscious Florida brain kicked in and brought to mind “the bubble”. Now we hardly ever fly Virgin. I think we have done so just once in all these years which goes to show –

a) How tight I am

b) How they are pretty much always more expensive than other options

but I have heard and seen lots of talk of the bubble. With a bit of research and watching a couple of vlogs about it (Hi Guys!) it seemed this would suit us well. If we’re going to do economy (and we are, I’m not made of money), then being in that less populated, quieter space would mean we will be inflicting all that screaming on fewer people. I don’t mean Freddie by the way. Louise tends to get a bit vocal when scared. She’s not a good flyer.

So despite it being New Years day by this time, some poor soul was working in the Virgin call centre and I had to actually ring up and speak to someone. This is no way to conduct business in 2018!

Hilary (I think it was) was very helpful and explained that the system did seem to be glitchy, so much so that she could see two payments had been taken from me already from my attempts the previous day online and the seats were allocated.

A good dose of hold music later it was all sorted, a refund for the second payment was processed and I could now see our seats reserved online. For anyone flying on VS75 on the 29th of August, come say hello.

The plan was for Rebecca, Tom and Emily to be on row 80. Three pairs of hands will be needed for those really big smelly nappies! Louise of course has to have the window seat so that we don’t crash, so we will be in row 79 with one of us off our tits on red wine and Diazepam.

A couple of days after booking, our party grew and that spare seat in row 79 was filled. A new character will be introduced to the Mkingdon cast for 2018.

To cut a long story short, a friend of Emily, who is a boy (but not her boyfriend) was added to the party. He also works with Louise and recently attended an Anne Summers party with Louise, Emily and Rebecca! If he can survive that then he should be fine. He’s never been to WDW before and to be frank has no clue about what to expect or that the holiday will be shared in an overly detailed trip report to at least three readers.

Say hello to Mikey everyone. He knows not what he has let himself in for.

There’s no getting away from the fact that a nine-hour flight with an infant is going to be hard work, but if Freddie continues to behave as he has in his first couple of months then it shouldn’t be too bad.

So, by the time I’d paid for our seats it was around £570 each (apart from Freddie who was a very reasonable £9 pre taxes), which is a price I’m happy with and one I don’t think will go down between now and August. At least we now know we’re sorted, have seats in the more peaceful bubble and can really start to plan.

If anyone does spot the same flights for less between now and and August you can keep that information to yourself!

Till the next time….


Premature Celebrations

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

Happy New Years Eve. We did our going out last night in an attempt to avoid crowds, vast expense and knob heads. Think of it as being at the park for rope drop to get on Toy Story Mania. Such premature celebrations mean we can be safely positioned on our couch when the dogs go beserk at all the fireworks at midnight tonight. I am really looking forward to that.

Louise, Emily and I went for a lovely Chinese. Not that this recommendation will be much use to either of my readers who live miles away, but if anyone else stumbles across this, Tung Fong in Worsley is excellent. I think the name translates to Fat Bastard.

In trying to keep my hand in for trip report writing in about 240 days, I took some food photos.

My lack of practice is displayed there, with half of my lemon chicken being in my belly before the camera captured it. What is more amazing than how full I was on the drive home was the fact that I woke up hungry this morning.

Aside from the madness of going out on New Year’s Eve my biggest issue with it is the concept of new starts, new diets, resolutions and all that stuff. Sure, I need to lose some weight and I will, as I’m ready to, but the immediate switch of all the adverts from food excess to gyms, weight watchers and fitness DVDs drives me up the wall.

I’m not too big on lengthy reviews of the last year either. This is mainly as I struggle to remember what happened, but my summary of last year is this. Freddie’s arrival was a huge and monumental highlight. We had a great holiday in April and Mustard have gone from strength to strength during the last year.

Pretty much everything else seems to have been a great big hairy ball sack of never ending stress, drama, worry and shite. Now, I recognise that this isn’t 100% true. I’m quite good at not remembering or recognising the stuff we are blessed with. We’re all healthy, housed and here after all, but 2017 has seen some of the worst, darkest and most testing times that my little family unit has ever been through. I probably say that every year, but this year it is less melodramatic than usual. We’ve been through some really deep shit this year.

Standard caveat time –

I know many folks, including both of my readers will have been through worse. Indeed to remind me of this fact, my Dad has spent the last few days in hospital following a planned procedure. I will not include the details of what he has been subjected to, as it will make your eyes water, but safe to say that it has been a traumatic end to the year for him.

Our Christmas was a bit strange as, apart from Christmas Day, Louise has worked every day. That has been rubbish if I’m honest. mainly for her of course, but it hasn’t felt too much like Christmas due to that. The day itself was lovely, with Freddie getting lots of presents he has no concept of, and the meal going pretty smoothly. I got some great presents this year. Louise got me one of those fandangled Virtual Reality things for my PS4. It is weird! It is very immersive and a bit discombobulating but great fun.

I got some delightful Dunhill smellies from Rebecca and Tom, which was handy as my Sex Panther had run out some time ago.

Louise also got me some Sauvage as I must remind her so much of that bloke in the advert…

Either that, or getting two lots of after shave just means I smell and they are staging an intervention.

Emily got me a new camera. Clearly she is being paid for too much if she can afford to spoil me in this manner. It is a belter and I can only hope it will finally allow me to capture at least one firework photo that isn’t blurry nonsense.

So now, with the tree in our front room looking tired and droopy, representing quite nicely that feeling of Christmas ending, and everyone’s bloated excess, thoughts turn towards the return to work, the fear that none of my work clothes will still fit and the realisation that I haven’t missed it at all. I also know that at some point in the coming days we have to undecorate the tree and somehow wrestle it outside, in the process spreading pine needles to every corner of the house where we will still be finding them in August.

At the ending of a year, I do need to thank everyone who has read any of this stuff over the last 12 months. I’ll be honest and say it amazes me that you still do and I am very grateful for every one of you. Some weeks, these posts are easy to do and others not, which I would imagine also relates to the reading of them, so many thanks for your perseverance and loyalty through the bad and above average content. From me and everyone in the Mkingdon family, I hope your 2018 is everything you want it to be and if at all possible it involves a chunk of time in Florida if that is your wish.

Till the next time….

Panic! At the Tesco

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

Well done, we’re nearly there. The countdown to Christmas that started on the 1st of November is almost over. You may now only need to see that John Lewis ad another half a dozen times before they start thinking of the next one.

The fact that is it Christmas Eve, and yes I can confirm it is actually Sunday, means that this will be a short one as there are a million things to do as is, I’m sure, the case for both my readers.

We are now in those dangerous last few hours when panic sets in and Louise heads out to Tesco on some kamikaze mission to buy something, anything before they shut. Having agreed upon and the then totally ignored the original budget, now we are in dangerous territory of panic purchasing, and I always breathe a sigh of relief when those shop doors close for the end of the day on Christmas Eve. The fact that we don’t have Glace Cherries will not make a material difference to our celebrations.

This year may be different as Louise has just got home from her work’s do. She stayed over despite the hotel being about seven minutes from our front door, so with any luck a near terminal hangover will present any further last-minute damage to the girl’s inheritance. She has just gone back to bed, hopefully until Tesco is closed. As an aisde, I am yet to understand why there is passion fruit in our fruit bowl but I am sure it is part of some master plan to which I am not yet privy.

I’ve had two very late nights due to Mustard engagements. Friday was a corporate do in centre of Manchester which meant a bed time approaching 3am and last night a more civilised affair in a local hostelry seeing me in bed just before 2am. I was awake after five hours sleep this morning so today should be fun as we battle to get the house ready for our guests, who are us, the girls, Tom, Freddie and Louise’s Mum who see the house in a right state on a very regular basis.

I am sad to report that I had to break my duck yesterday and physically enter a shop. Despite my best efforts, I was unable to secure any Hollandaise sauce from our online supermarket shop for our traditional Eggs Benedict on Christmas morning. This meant enduring about forty-five seconds in our local Co-Op before escaping the retail madness. That’ll do until next year.

As well as the cleaning and tidying today we must also undertake another traditional task and that is the making of the Eggnog. We’ve done this for a good few years now and despite whisked eggs, milk, sugar and rum not sounding the best combo, sprinkle some cinnamon on it and all is well. The same can be said for almost anything though right? It is the most calorific-ally filled thing since Rick Waller but worth it so we can emulate the Griswolds, as let’s face it, Clark is my spirit animal especially on our trips overseas. Look out for social media updates later of the preparation of this liquid master peice.

Speaking of which (seamless segue-way), earlier in the week whilst watching a TV show that probably involved Kirstie Allsop making decorations out of belly button fluff and the tears of immigrants, I was messaged by a former colleague who is currently out in Florida. I think I can claim some responsibility for his now impressive Florida obsession and he plans correctly and generally does it in a way of which I approve. Having said that, the reason for his message was that he was changing the plan. I put that to one side and read further.

He needed somewhere to eat in his new plan that was around I Drive as they were at Universal, his wife was craving a salad after many days of stodge and he wanted a good steak. Now, I won’t tell you all the options that fell from my brain within seconds of that because you’ll all have your own views and they’ll be wrong. Suffice to say that I was able to begin typing immediately and offer four alternatives. I could have gone on but didn’t want to make the choice too hard!

You would probably be able to guess that Teak was one of them. I’m sure they do salad, right? Anyway, they ended up going to Texas De Brazil and it seems they enjoyed it very much as I was sent photographic evidence of their food comas. His wife was able to fill up at the salad bar (rookie mistake) whilst the endless swords of meat (I’ve watched that film on pay per view whilst away with work) satisfied the cravings for steak.

It’s always nice to share the knowledge and experience built up over all these trips. It almost made up for my jealousy of them being there when I’m not!

Enough already….it’s time to get the house ready for festivities and of course begin eating. From everyone here in the world of Mkingdon, we wish you a Christmas that brings you everything you want and need and of course some good presents too.

Till the next time…..

Jolly Jedis

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

Only one of the Christmas dos I talked of last week actually happened. The work one, which is a small intimate affair with just my team, had to be postponed due to the illness of one of the team. We’re only a small, yet (of course) highly effective, group and rather than go ahead without one of us we all decided to do it in January when everyone could be there.

My waistline was grateful. I don’t typically go to the office wide do, which also happened last week. Call me a Grinch or Scrooge if you like but, I spend far too much time with these buggers for 52 weeks of the year. Unless compelled to do so, I’d rather take the chance to not be at something work related. This is why we do a smaller meal based event for my immediate team, as it’s a chance to get together away from our desks and we do genuinely get on so there’s no hardship involved. As I organise it, it won’t be a surprise to discover it is entirely food based with a token couple of drinks beforehand.

So that is something to mess with all of our January diets and we all may need to do a couple more Davina McCall DVD workouts to make up for it.

The one that did go ahead was the Mustard one. Being hardcore rock n roll legends, I cannot go into the finer detail of what actually happened. Whether I had four or even five alcoholic drinks I cannot recall. Once you get to that level of excess, things become a little hazy. We had a lovely curry, lots of chat and then ended the night watching a live band in a venue we play at regularly. That’s a bit like going to watch someone write some emails and attend a couple of meetings on your work’s do. It was good to see another band in action as we seldom get the chance as we are mostly gigging at those times and it was even nicer to be able to leave when they finished without having to pack up any gear.

Yesterday was all about the Christmas shopping. Louise told me it was really hard work and I commend her for it. I do not go into actual shops during the month of December and I have made my contribution to the process this morning by making a list and making some online purchases. Like some sort of masochistic shopping machine she has set off again for town armed with an inadequate budget and a disregard for financial responsibility. I am afraid.

Later yesterday we went to see The Last Jedi.

I of course will not reveal anything that could be classed as a spoiler. I enjoyed it. Making a new Star Wars film is the ultimate definition of a hard act to follow. The previous films, especially the original three, mean so much to so many that I applaud any film maker brave enough to take these new ones on. I would say that it will withstand two or three watches to take everything in and jog your own memories of what has happened in forty years of film. Yep, the first came out forty years ago and I can still remember being sat in the ABC in Bolton and being astounded at the sound level as the two space ships came into view over our heads in the opening scene.

You can relive it here and if the hairs on the back of your neck don’t stand up when the music starts we can’t be friends.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHfLyMAHrQE

As ever, I was astounded by the number of people who had to leave the film for a wee within the first half hour. Firstly, don’t you people plan ahead and have that pre-film wee? Secondly, you’ve just paid a tenner to watch a film, cross your bloody legs, think of dry things and be an adult. It also mildly annoys me that many people were sat in the middle of rows but I appreciate this may be more my problem than theirs.

In more positive news, we still have the same Christmas tree as last week. I’m beginning to think this one might be the one, but it’s too early to say for certain.

I have three days left at work officially. With some largish projects coming to a head I suspect I shall be delving back into that joyous world over the festive period but at least I can do that from the comfort of my sofa/bed/food coma. Mustard have two big Xmas gigs next week too which I’m looking forward to. It’s never too early to book us for your 2018 do (we are the Park Hampers of bands) so get in touch for prices and availability! You know it makes sense.

So I’ll see you back here next week for the last blog before the big day. Having told ourselves it made no sense to spend loads of money on presents for Freddie as he has no clue what Christmas is, we have of course, spent loads of money on presents for Freddie. I suspect Rebecca isn’t quite ready for the harsh reality of her no longer being the child who comes downstairs to a huge pile of presents. Such is the circle of life.

I hope your shopping and preparation is going well and if you could send all your gifts for me nice and early so that my poor postman isn’t having to deliver them all in one go. Thanks!

Till the next time…..

A Tale Of Two Trees

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

Like my middle-aged paunch, Christmas has crept up on us without us really noticing. I have one full week left at work, which includes our team night out and our band night out, so that paunch will be getting a little paunchier by the end of it.

It was only five minutes ago that I was sneering at folks on social media for daring to mention the word and now mild panic is setting in that we’ve bought nothing and we’re only on our second Christmas tree.

Yes, you read that right. Having ordered a fake one from The White Company for the price of a small family car, as “it was perfect and would last us years” it arrived early last week and much time was spent decorating it. Twenty four hours later, Louise had declared that it was not satisfactory and it had to go. So it was stripped, boxed up and sent back and in its place now stands a seven-foot real one atop a three-foot pile of needles.

We’ve done well so far to only lose one decoration to the jaws of Bean, we can only hope it can go the distance to the big day. If it doesn’t then Bean may not either!

On Friday night, Louise and the girls went to an Anne Summers party hosted by one of Louise’s fellow nurses. Emily and Rebecca were quite worried about attending such an event with their mother, fearing it may scar them for life, and it is probably for the best that I don’t know what went on aside from the few Snapchats the girls posted. I took them there (and picked them up) which was quite a nice throwback to the “driving years” when my main role in life was to transport them around the planet.

It has been quite some time since it was the four of us in the car driving somewhere and it was in a strange way very nice. The night involved a fair amount of alcohol and with Rebecca not having drunk for a year and Emily being, let’s be frank, a huge lightweight when it comes to drinking, Saturday was pretty much a right off for both of them. Of course, I should also congratulate Tom for coping on his own with Freddie for the first time too whilst Rebecca was out.

At the moment, our Disney plans have assumed a position on the back burner of my priority cooker. This happens at times during a long countdown I’ve found. Beyond the occasional glance at flights, I haven’t given it much thought really. Well, I always give it thought, as in, it helps to get me through the two-hour commutes that I have been enduring over the last few weeks, but I haven’t really thought about it from a planning perspective.

I do need to find time to go over the plan in detail again, to firm up the day by day activities. I suspect my usual routine of doing the parks in the order we always do may need some attention as we have to factor in the day we will be at Mickey’s Not So Scary and the days that the running of that may impact on our potential planned visits to the Magic Kingdom. I also need to run the busy day guide against our plans. I don’t usually use these in any meaningful way, but it’s always wise to make sure there are no obvious clangers being dropped which can easily be avoided.

I have a suspicion that much of my well laid plan may be cast aside once we’re boots on the ground with young Freddie with us. Our activities will of course have to consider his needs and moods so there may be a bit of going with flows.

As some of you may have seen, I did a Facebook live on the Mkingdon Facebook page when Rebecca, Tom and Freddie popped round during last week. At such a young age he changes so much in the few days between visits and it’s just fascinating to see that happening. He’s had a cold recently which has been fun for Rebecca and Tom, but other than that he’s doing brilliantly, as are they.

He is photographed and videoed more than The Kardashians, which is only right, as he is more intelligent and newsworthy than all of them put together. I fear for the amount of coverage he will get during his first tour of Disney. He’ll never have another first time, so it may just be easier to do one long Facebook live for the whole two weeks!

I have big plans for the rest of the day and they are to rest my ageing tired body. With my taxi duties on Friday and another Mustard gig last night I have had two late nights and my middle-aged frame is protesting this morning. Louise is going out shopping for her outfit for her Christmas party so I intend to be best friends with the couch, watch some football and I have a song to learn for a Mustard rehearsal tomorrow. Next week’s blog may just be me moaning about how tired I am as this coming week, I have to work of course, but I have a rehearsal on Monday night, my team night out on Tuesday (huge Chinese meal and a few drinkies) and then our band Christmas night out on Friday (huge Indian meal and a few drinkies). I’m beginning to understand now quite how that middle-aged paunch happened.

Till the next time…..


Discount Disney Tickets


Stripping – A Beginner’s Guide

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

I have sensed the anticipation and excitement building for a few weeks now. Everyone is talking about it and so I can deny you no longer. Here, after two weeks of tangible yearning, is the photo of our new fireplace that I promised you. I was inundated with a request to share this so here you go….

Exciting stuff for sure. Last week the decorator came and re-decorated the front room. It was a true dilemma, as my natural tightness was fighting with my absolute hatred of wall papering, but sense prevailed and every penny spent on my not having to do it was worthwhile.

In under two days he had stripped all the old paper off, glossed everything that should be glossed and re-papered. For me that would have been a two to three weekend job and a real threat to my will to live. It helps when you have the right tools of course. He had some instrument of medieval torture to strip the walls with which had a blade so sharp he needed no steamer or much elbow grease. He just applied a little water, wielded his diamond edged blade of death and not only did the wallpaper surrender itself with ease, it had the good grace to leave the old lining paper on the walls too. The pathetic stripping tool we own is pitiful in comparison and it takes several days in steam room like conditions to get a few strips off the wall.

When it came to the actual papering he had a pasting machine. Who knew these things existed? He just passed the paper through it on some roller thing and it applied a perfect layer of paste in about three seconds. No wonder I’ve been crap at decorating. I just don’t have the right equipment!

He’s done a great job, better than I could ever have of course, so it is money well spent.

Having just spent a couple of hours at a garden centre, crammed full of Christmas shoppers decorations, I would struggle to put most of the latter into that same category. We bought a few things, mainly some new lights for our tree as last year’s new lights will be in a ball somewhere in the cellar. With a few extra bits for Louise’s colour scheme this year we left with our financial health relatively unscathed. Having looked at a few items which we thought were nice only to find we’d need to sell the house or a kidney to have them, we decided to try elsewhere.

Being a Grandad has clearly changed my life immediately, as spending Sundays in garden centres is my destiny and I embrace it. I have ordered my cardigan and slacks and my Honda Civic is due to arrive any day now.

I had a night off from gigging last night, and it was nice not to have to load all the gear into the car in the rain (it always rains when I do that) for a change, so we had a look for a decent film to watch. Now, we have several streaming services at our disposal, with literally thousands of films to choose from. Nothing jumped out that we haven’t already seen, so we (well, it was Louise’s choice) decided to invest a fiver to buy a film from the Virgin Movies thingy. That film was a Tom Cruise film, which usually promises an hour and a half of turn your brain off entertainment and action. In this case….not so much.

We watched The Mummy. It was incredibly poor.

Bobbins

Before I get to the “plot” it was most confusing that the woman out of Peaky Blinders used more accents than a french person spelling lots of words with Es in them. British, a bit of American, a touch of Irish and many more. Perhaps she was demonstrating her vast range of dialects for future projects.

The plot was wafer thing, been done to death, not least by all the previous Mummy films and I fell asleep for about half an hour which did not prevent me from understanding what happened. Spoiler alert, The Mummy is defeated, Tom gets the girl and the comedic sidekick makes some very poor jokes just before the titles roll.  Poor Tom, very poor. Must do better. By the way, you owe me a fiver and about ninety minutes of my life back.

The most worrying thing about it was that the ending pretty much guaranteed their plans to make this into one of those franchise things, with multiple sequels being a distinct possibility. Having done so earlier this week, I can assure you that I really would prefer to watch paint dry.

Right, I have stuff to do, Emily is sat watching Hercules for the gabillionth time and at some point the dogs need walking.

Till the next time…..


No, I’m A Celebrity….

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

Right, you had a week off from Freddie photos last week, so you know what that means.

Having slept for what seems like 90% of his life so far, he is indeed living the dream. As you can see from the above photo, his eyes are open more now and he is starting to take notice of his surroundings.

Tom has gone back to work after his paternity leave and Rebecca has managed her first week alone with him. Louise has been off work, so she has helped out a little, mainly ferrying her off to relatives to show him off.

As things are today, he has already been introduced to the world of filters too.

After his first few days of health worries he’s bounced back nicely, putting on weight in a way which proves he is indeed my Grandson and also now parting with stuff into his nappy that is a mix of chicken Korma and nuclear accident. Rebecca feels the need to share those with us via group chat on a regular basis.

The countdown to Freddie’s first Christmas is officially underway. I’m a Celeb is on, every advert is a festive one and most scarily Louise has started shopping. Speaking of I’m a Celeb, they way it is going, it is only a matter of time until I’m on it due to the fact that I once met Sonia and Big Fun at ITV’s Telethon in the 80’s. Oh, I have also spoken to Gemma Atkinson in the ladies toilets in a Manchester hotel. I’m expecting the call from Ant or Dec within hours.

Oh, and I also worked with the cousin of Howard Donald (Take That bloke) at the NatWest in Manchester in the 90’s…..at this rate, I am more famous than half of the current camp mates. Thinking about it, a week or so ago I was walking the dogs and bumped into Sam Allardyce who lives close by and at Christmas most years my dog walking route takes me past the house of Danny from McFly’s parent’s house and he is often there.

I have other celebrity encounters and tales which frankly mean that I am more famous than Jamie Vardy’s wife. That, along with my 1100+ Twitter followers means that I will also be getting a book deal to publish a children’s story that somebody else actually wrote. However, when they trawl back through my tweets they will find content that is unacceptable and I shall be disgraced and thrown back into obscurity with only the Daily Star kiss and tell story about my Gemma Atkinson encounter to support me in my old age.

Such is celebrity life in this day and age. It’s a world where unexplained celebrities such as Gok Wan get famous for saying bangers a lot and then for some reason nobody can explain, starts to do cookery and people pay him money to do so. Similarly Kirstie Allsop falls into a TV career about houses and then rinses the general public every year with books and TV programmes about making paper chains and decorations out of used tissues and spit.

Keep your eye out for which minor celeb spent the first half of 2017 putting weight on so that they could then lose it before recording their fitness DVD. You too can lose all your weight. All you need is to do it full-time with your own personal trainer and dietary consultant. Or give them £15 for their DVD which you’ll find a drawer long after their fifteen minutes has passed.

Whilst I’m ranting, there’s a special place in hell for the talent vacuums that exist within The Only Way Is Chelsea Island.

Well, that came from nowhere didn’t it. A few minutes ago when I sat staring at the blank page I had no clue that I would be spewing onto the page in such a manner. I’ll probably feel better for it.

Enjoy your Sundays folks. I’m off for a lie down with a wet flannel.

Till the next time…..


Diary Of A Flabby Kid

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

As life tends to be, last week has been a glorious mixture of loveliness and joy in the 8lb shape of young Freddie and brutal, bruising shite from other stuff that isn’t for the blog. I think in reaction to the latter, I reached out, as is often the case, to the distant promise of our next Florida adventure for some solace. That took the form of my first serious glance at flights for next August.

I checked them out last when we were picking our dates and booking the villa and despite everything the world is doing to destroy itself, the prices haven’t changed that much. Thomas Cook still seem to be the likely recipient of my hard-earned, as Virgin, as ever, in my experience seem to be asking me to buy the plane rather than hire a seat for a few hours.

For the first time we are in the position of our dates being fixed now with the villa booked, but to be fair they were anyway due to various work commitments, so I know I am at the mercy of the search results as to what we will pay. We’re probably not going to book until January or February unless some price miracle happens before that, but I shall be a slave to Kayak and Skyscanner in the mean time. The losing of myself in holiday planning for a few moments helped and as I have often done over the years in times of stress, upset and objection to everyday life, I brought up our villa’s website and had a walk around. Don’t judge me!

One of the bits of last week that was not too pleasant was saying goodbye to one of our cats. Now, I have never been the biggest fan or lover of cats, even our own, but this is never a nice thing to do. She’d been ill on and off for some time and over the last few weeks it had become increasingly clear that all wasn’t well. She was very thin and that was because every time she ate she immediately threw it up again.

Louise had the unenviable task of taking her to the vets and it was the kindest thing to do to let her go.

I will add that the fees involved for the vet to give her that injection and deal with her afterwards are absolute robbery. It wasn’t our prime concern at the time and I’m sure they know that.

In other, mundane every day news, we had a new fireplace fitted. *THIS* is the stuff you come to the blog for I know. Since we moved into the house we’ve had a very naff early nineties fireplace that never worked and looked totally out-of-place in our very old house. It has taken us this long to replace it as we’ve had more pressing matters such as holidays to have (as well as doing the kitchen, bathroom and a million other things). We are on a programme of updates and improvements before our next trip and that was the latest part. Now we need to redecorate our front room. The amount of horror that this filled me with drove me to seek out a professional to save me from it. He comes next Monday and will have it stripped, the paintwork redone and the papering done in 2-3 days when it may have cost me every weekend between now and Christmas, along with my will to live.

I shall share a photo of said fireplace once that’s done as it currently sits on a bare chimney breast as we stripped the wallpaper from that before it was fitted. How will you be able to live with that level of anticipation?

Continuing with the diary element of my ever so exciting existence, last night, Mustard were gigging. We started working for a local agent about a year ago and most of their gigs are in Phoenix Nights places. It is alive and well and exactly as that programme shows it. It hasn’t changed at all. Louise did the club circuit twenty years ago and some of the clubs I am now playing with Mustard are the same ones Louise and I went to back then. The same artiste photos are up in the dressing rooms and the same bingo, open the box and play your cards right have to be avoided between our first and second spot. However, they are lovely places to play with genuine people who take great pride in their clubs and do their utmost to make it a nice place to be for all concerned.

Last night’s gig was only possible due to Louise. Having packed up my car and driven forty minutes to the venue, I immediately realised that I had forgotten a box of stuff that was crucial to our PA working. So I had to phone Louise and ask her to bring it over. I put it down to a stressful week and me being stupid.

In the spirit of rock n roll I got home after the gig at around one in the morning and had four crumpets. Not a euphemism. Now, the rest of the day will be spent doing as little as possible.

Till the next time….

Full Of Freddie

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

I promise that I will try not to become a grand chlild bore each week bombarding you with nothing but Freddie stuff.  However, this week is not the time for that. It’s felt like a long week, and a tough one for Rebecca and Tom as Freddie was in hospital for pretty much all of it.

He wasn’t feeding too well and was generally taking a while to recover from the trauma that is birth. Frustrated at wanting him home and at the same time worried that he’d be OK, after probably the longest week in the world, Rebecca and Tom were finally able to bring him home on Friday. They were a little naughty and just turned up at our house with him out of the blue having told us earlier that day that they hadn’t heard anything about him coming home.

With him being in special care until this point I hadn’t been able to hold him so this was a special moment which I celebrated by growing an extra chin.

So putting that week of stress and worry behind them, he was taken home so that his parents could then start a whole new phase of stress and worry about important things such as poo, eating and sleeping, which sounds like one of my normal weeks.

That new phase of stress and worry for Rebecca and Tom, I shall needlessly point out, will never end!

There have been lots of gifts and stuff purchased for the new family unit. One thing I gave them was something I wish we had been lucky enough to have. It is free but yet priceless. I set up a YouTube channel for Freddie. I know he won’t be vlogging for a while (if at all) of course, but the idea is that it is somewhere to put as many videos as possible of him, so when his Mum & Dad become middle-aged nostalgia machines they will be able to look back at any given point in his life and watch it all over again.

To make this easier we also got them a vlogging camera. Now, I have no idea if that channel will be made public, that’s up to his parents, but that isn’t the point. Our memories of the kids are scattered across photo albums, trip reports (thankfully) and other stuff crammed into drawers. With technology as it is, this won’t be the case for young Freddie.

So we’re all getting used to our new life with another member of the family in place. Even Rebecca said it felt surreal and unreal but within a very short period of time it will feel like he’s always been here I’m sure. We are all absolutely smitten with him and when you look at these photos, you will probably see why. I say that with not one hint of grand parent bias of course!

He’s a sleeper so far, which is a blessing. He’s already doing six hours or so through the night in between feeds. That’s better than I do! That all may change over time, but it sounds very much like Emily who we had to prod whilst asleep to make sure she was still alive. Nothing has changed there to be honest and if left to her own devices would only wake to be fed and then go back to sleep.

So with very few apologies there ends an entire post dedicated to having a Freddie. It may happen again but I will try not to be the online equivalent of that bloke who keeps showing you the photos of his grand kids in his wallet. Maybe….

Till the next time….

Ready Freddie Go

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

The subject of this week’s blog will come as no surprise. Let me start by thanking everyone who sent their congratulations and lovely thoughts when I posted Freddie’s photo on Facebook earlier this week.

I’m going to try and talk you through the events of the last week but if I’m honest my head is a bit scrambled and I’ll probably get bits wrong. It’s been a heck of a week for all sorts of reasons, not least becoming a Grandad!!

At the start of the week we knew it was likely that he would be coming soon. Rebecca was being monitored daily as she was having a few health issues herself. The main one was Strep B, which I’d never heard of but there was a risk it could be passed on to Freddie so a plan was hatched to kick-start things sooner rather than later.

By Wednesday Rebecca was in hospital knowing that she wouldn’t be going home until he arrived. It took some time and a lot of drugs to start her labour and as much as that was tough for her and Tom, trying to carry on with every day life knowing what was going on and what Rebecca was going through was tricky.

By the end of the working day on Thursday it was clear that he would soon be with us and sure enough at 9.16 that evening he made his entrance at a healthy 7lbs and 14oz. His first few minutes were a little worrying for Rebecca and Tom as he wasn’t doing a great deal when he first popped out and the delivery room soon filled with literally dozens of medical folks all doing their thing to sort him out.

Thankfully all was well but he spent his first night in the intensive care unit just to make sure. He was then quickly moved to special care where he still will be until (fingers crossed) tomorrow when he goes home. He was on a drip for a while just making sure he had no infections but over the next couple of days he’s made steady progress, coming off that and starting to feed etc. The biggest landmark so far was when Rebecca was allowed to dress him. That first outfit had been planned for a long time!

So on Friday we made the trip up to the hospital to meet him. We were all excited and eager to get there which made Louise’s insistence on stopping at several shops to buy a balloon not at all frustrating, making the twenty-minute trip to the hospital last over an hour!

Rebecca was obviously tired but thankfully safe and sound which was a relief after months of privately being terrified about her going through labour. Because they had to speed up her labour dramatically for Freddie’s benefit they put her on some very strong drugs to take her contractions to warp speed. She was told she wouldn’t be able to cope with the pain levels that would bring so they said they would give her an epidural. Unfortunately, they struggled to get that done and it took two hours to administer it during which she was in inhuman amounts of pain. I am a bit glad I didn’t know that until after the event. She has some impressive bruising for her troubles.

We are all incredibly proud of her and also proud of Tom and thankful for supporting her through labour and the last nine months which have not been easy for Rebecca.

One by one, as only two were allowed into the unit at a time, Rebecca took us in to meet him.

With him being in the special care unit in a glass case of emotion it wasn’t possible to hold him, we have that treat to come later today, but it was amazing to have him hold onto my finger and for us to say hello.

Thankfully, after not too long, over the weekend, he was able to be held by his Mum and Dad.

Rebecca was discharged yesterday and if all goes to plan they should be able to bring Freddie home tomorrow but we’re not sure yet.

It all feels a bit surreal at the moment. I’m sure that will change once he’s home and normal life can begin and I can’t wait. The next generation begins, and I’m sure it will be an adventure for all but mostly Rebecca and Tom. There’s a huge sense of relief all round that he’s finally here and everyone is fit and healthy. Here’s to a new chapter signalled by his arrival.

I have to go and get ready now as I have a date with my Grandson during which I’ll hold him for the first time. I shall be starting the Disney indoctrination by talking him through the plan for his first trip!

Till the next time….


Best of Orlando

Disney Beef

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

Well, my illness of which I do not speak has taken all of last week to go away. I still hack up the odd lung now and we’re two weeks from the start of the illness of which I do not speak. See, I told you I was ill, or I would have if I spoke about it.

If you’ve been reading here for a while you will have noticed that I have slipped in the odd reference to me being banned from a certain Facebook Disney group. I won’t name it, but I’ll bet most of you can guess which one. I have the distinction of being banned despite never having posted in it. It’s a source of regular amusement for me. From time to time the online Disney community can be a right set of dicks it seems. I don’t aim that at the admin of that Facebook group. It’s their group and they can be as stupid as they wish with their rules, it is more of a general comment.

My online echo chamber, from a Disney perspective is made up of what I see to be exclusively nice folks that I first “met” on The Dibb and then from my trip reports, blogging etc. Anyone who thought I was a dick has long since fallen by the way side and everyone I interact with are without exception, lovely, supportive and a joy to have around. There’s a hardcore of Disney folks, most I have never met, that now make up part of my feeds on almost all the social medias. We have met a few of them too and they have been without exception lovely folks.

At the time when I was writing trip reports on The Dibb and they were quite popular I came across a very small taste of what these higher profile vloggers and bloggers seem to get from time to time. People suspected I was cashing in and making heaps of cash and making veiled comments about the fact that trip reports should be free for others to get information from etc etc. They always were (and still are) online, I did the books for a few reasons…

  • Everyone told me I should
  • I was planning to write a novel and wanted to learn how to self-publish etc
  • They are a great way to preserve our memories should The Dibb ever explode.

Anyway, I wasn’t making money, I don’t from my blog, but perceptions are everything and sometimes a little jealousy/resentment can happen to anyone, even when in my case it absolutely wasn’t needed or justified as I’m just not that good at it.

(Oh, by the way….go and buy one of my books!) 🙂

Anywho, this week I saw The Trackers having some beef on Twitter. For those of you who don’t know, and it won’t be many, The Trackers are a very popular couple who vlog every day. They’ve become a success because their videos are good. It’s a simple concept but there you go. They come over well on camera, do good content and aren’t dicks. In the land of YouTube they are a rare oasis in the sea of over exuberant follower addicts with their hauls, giveaways and overly enthusiastic false demeanour. My twitter timeline is awash every day with follow suggestions for “Hey, we’re Ben and Kate (made up names) a couple from Random Town, England and we vlog our WDW trips and share the magic”, and they have about 17 followers. Just my opinion but most YouTubers aren’t bearable to watch for me, but The Trackers get it right I think. For those who love vlogging that of course is fine and it’s none of my business, but it’s just an example of the huge numbers out there doing it and how well those like The Trackers do to stand out.

YouTube is a jungle and I know very little about it, but outside of the Disney community the big vloggers all now seem to have a book deal, some a record deal and all in all have found some way to monetise their followers. Fair play to them. It beats working for a living and I know I couldn’t do it.

So back to this beef. I couldn’t get to the bottom of it from the tweets I saw but someone on Twitter has it in for them. They seem to be upset about them getting paid for some content/videos and/or being invited to special stuff and maybe even getting certain activities or accommodation funded. I don’t get it really. It’s the obvious result of them having almost 300,000 subscribers, most of whom like Disney stuff. I’m not sure what they are expected to do really. Turn down invites to stuff that will make great content for their channel? Refuse any sort of monetary compensation and/or not take any money from ads on their videos. That’s how YouTube is funded, they are creating content folks want to watch so I don’t see the issue.

It may be a green eyed monster for sure. Like anything, once something gets popular it is hard for it to stay the same. They will get shitty comments on some videos, they will get trolls, they will get people who resent them for all sorts of reasons. The effort they must have put it in to get to this point is unimaginable. I’ve had this blog since 2009 and it reaches a good number of people, but the effort, expense and commitment to “breakthrough” is beyond me. It isn’t that important to me and I don’t have the time and maybe the ability.

So if you are trolling The Trackers or anyone else making something of themselves, have a word with yourself. They aren’t perfect human beings and exposing your life as they do on a daily basis must be exhausting. Sure they could stop, but they clearly enjoy it and I’m sure it’s nice to have the attention they do and be stopped in the parks for photos. That even used to happen to us every now and again and it is a lovely feeling.

Now, having written all of that as the protector of things vlogger/blogger, what does grind my gears is when I see WDW themselves posting stuff about some random Mummy blogger writing about a freebie trip they have been given. That to me is different, mainly because they didn’t ask me ( 🙂  ) but also because that is a bit blatant for my liking. If anything it makes me less likely to be booking a WDW holiday. Now of course, that doesn’t mean I won’t, but it irks me a bit. Am I a hypocrite? Almost certainly…. Anyway, you can troll me in the comments to let me know!

Till the next time….


Holiday Travel Deals


Standard home 300x250

The Cold War

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

Probably only because of the amount of lunacy going on in the world right now, somehow, news of my dreadful illness last week was not covered by main stream media. Sad!

At the back-end of last week I had a sniffle and felt a bit rough. I soldiered on admirably, not even abandoning my trek to Marlow. I know, I know, not everyone is made of the right stuff like this. As this week started, Monday saw an escalation of illness not seen since Oliver Reed’s liver in the 70’s. I was in work on Monday but that evening my condition quickly deteriorated into a life threatening state and it was clear I would be going nowhere near work on Tuesday. I haven’t had a day off work with illness for years, so to end up having to take the rest of the week off only shows how sorry you should be feeling for me.

So this week has been a bit of a wipe out and I have felt terrible. This was so far beyond “having a cold” that I waved to that cold as I raced past it on the road to whatever illness I invented, such was its ferocity. I have produced so much snot from my body that I can only imagine that I am made up of 90% snot and 10% fat.

Anyway, never one to labour the point of my illness, I won’t go on about it. I’m starting to feel human again now although yesterday I went to do some food shopping and almost passed out next to the milk. So it is therefore very important that I don’t do much today so that I may return to work tomorrow and rescue the business which has obviously been struggling without my contribution for a few days. I also seem to have passed it on to Emily. I can only hope that her version is not as life threatening or she isn’t as big a baby as I am.

As I said, I’m not one to go on about things like this….

Thanks to everyone for your tips and advice last week. It shows that no matter how many times you go to WDW you can never know it all. I have added several notes to the spreadsheet to check some things out and added other things to do, such as a tip to phone ahead to Keke’s as they get really busy. Nice work folks!

I know a lot about how *we* do WDW of course, but there is always lots more to learn from the experience of others.

I now have even more places I want us to eat at that I cannot fit into the plan. Toojay’s and Olivia’s were suggested and I have seen The Wave on a few trip reports/blogs and really fancy that too. I need a longer holiday or a bigger appetite.

The other key tip I need to run the plan through is the busy day guide, so thanks to those who reminded that this is a good idea. That isn’t an exact science of course but it will do no harm just to make sure we’re avoiding the worst of the crowds.

Anywho, back in the real world, Rebecca reached the 37 week mark yesterday. So I guess from this point on, Freddie can appear at any time. I know Rebecca would be delighted should he choose to come a little early. She is not enjoying the whole pregnancy thing. I suspect a lot of this is down to the discomfort she is in, but knowing Rebecca, it’s also more than a little related to her impatience to meet him and start being a mum.

Her hospital bags are packed, the house is fully prepped and both her and Tom are like kids on Christmas Eve.

So apologies for a blog that is a bit of a wash out. It reflects how my week has gone and I can only hope that my health and the content here improves in the coming week. Thankfully my malaise has coincided with a couple of weeks off from Mustard gigging due to band member holidays and on that note I did promise you some photos from our glamorous photoshoot didn’t I?

Well, you can see them on our Facebook page and should your mouse wander over to the Like option whilst there then that’s probably for the best isn’t it?

Till the next time….



Discount Attraction Tickets

Pouting and Parties

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

It’s been an eclectic week as they go. Last Sunday was great fun. We did a band photo shoot with James Lloyd. I have to say I wasn’t looking forward to it before hand. The thought of being photographed in normal life isn’t one of my favourite things, so having to do it for promotional purposes, in broad daylight, in the middle of the Northern Quarter was a bit daunting. For those who don’t know the Northern Quarter is the world capital of converse, beards and thick rimmed glasses. It is a super cool area of Manchester with great restaurants and more hipsters than you can shake an avocado at.

To the enormous credit of James he did a great job of putting us at ease and it wasn’t long until we were laughing a lot and hopefully getting a decent photo or two. Now, it may surprise you to learn that we aren’t the prettiest band around, so James really had his work cut out.

We haven’t seen the results as yet. Photoshopping that many chins out of each photo really does take some time, but here’s one we’ve had as a taster.

Thanks to James and I’ll share a few more for your merriment as we get them back.

The week just gone was another busy one. Work was an inconvenient and unwelcome dominant presence, including a trip to Marlow. The traffic both ways was absolutely shocking and Friday was a bit of a blur after arriving home late on Thursday with a life threatening cold.

Saturday was all about Rebecca and Tom’s Baby Shower. To their enormous credit, having only decided to throw one a few weeks ago, they worked really hard to secure a venue, catering, DJ (me, using Mustard’s PA) and a million little details to have the room looking a lot nicer than it did when we first turned up in the afternoon.

Drinks were had, Bolton’s famous and finest, Carr’s Pasties were consumed and kids slid across the dance floor on their knees and chased each other until they were balls of dripping sweat. So a traditional family do in a function room.

On the subject of parties, I also want to wish a happy 25th anniversary to our friends Steve and Di. They had their celebration yesterday, and because I’m an idiot and can’t read or manage a calendar, we were unable to attend. We know you will have had a great time and we are so sorry we couldn’t be there.

So Rebecca has just a few weeks to go now. She’s had enough of being pregnant, but to be honest that has been the case for about 30 weeks now. It is weird to think that in the next thirty days or so Freddie will be here. The poor little soul has no idea that he already has a holiday planned for him.

Speaking of which, last week’s post caused me another planning conundrum. Morag and Nathalie threw a spanner into my works with their comment that we should try Keke’s Breakfast Cafe.

Knowing what the result would be, like a fool, I looked at the web site and read the menu and about thirty seconds later, I knew I had to find a slot in the spreadsheet for it…..and I did.

Some highlights of that menu for you….

Banana Split Waffle
Banana, pineapple, fresh strawberries in glaze, chocolate fudge syrup & pecans 9.99

Banana-Chocolate Chip Pancakes
Bananas and Hershey’s® milk chocolate chips cooked in the pancakes 8.49

Turtle Stuffed French Toast
Pecans, caramel, chocolate and cream cheese topped with powdered sugar 9.99

So, as you can see, I had no choice. So now, on one of our days, we do Keke’s for breakfast and Cowfish for dinner. Pray for us.

After all of that varied madness over the last few days, today will be filled with as little as possible especially after the very tiring effort of writing these few hundred words.

By the way if you are going to suggest any Orlando eateries that I will have to fit into my plan I love and hate you in equal measure. So be mindful of the pain you may cause…

Till the next time……


A Peak At Planning

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

Right, let’s get the stuff you aren’t so bothered about out-of-the-way. I wrote a chapter this week. I appreciate that is not in the same prolific league as James Patterson, but with everything going on in my daily life that is a step forward and hopefully a catalyst for more. What I really need if I’m honest, is a good chunk of time to re-read what I’ve written to date and then do the book plan. I know that I have everything in my head somewhere, I just need to formalise it into some sort of structure, decide on the outcome of the book (no spoilers here) and that should enable me to write more freely once I know where I’m going.

I feel better about the whole thing now that I’ve broken the ice again.

Sadly, that huge investment of time did not leave me much (any) time for the planning of WDW stuff. All my plans start in the same format and always have. As soon as I know our dates I create a simple template of those dates in Excel with blanks to fill in…

There are some givens that go in before anything else happens…like the travel days and the fact that we’ll be in Magic Kingdom on the first and last day.

Then, I make a list of all the eateries we want to do. I appreciate that this may seem strange to some, but the importance of the food on our Florida trips cannot be over estimated. The challenge with this list is fitting in all the places we have fallen in love with and want to do again, whilst also trying all the new places that I’ve heard good things about. For this trip, with Tom being a first timer it has more of a greatest hits vibe as we want to take him to all of our favourites….and it looked like this…

Next, I try to allocate one of those dining choices to a day on the plan, bearing in mind how I want the theme park days to flow. Over the years we seem to have established a routine as to how we tackle the parks. We of course start with Magic Kingdom as this is the law, we then do Epcot, Hollywood Studios and finally Animal Kingdom. I suspect that this being the order in which they opened was not an accident to my subliminal planner self.

Of course, tradition dictates that our first meal on arrival day is The Outback at Formosa Gardens if at all possible, so that goes in first and the rest follow like this….

For this trip, due to the touring party make up, it’s a WDW only affair so there are many more rest days than there may have been for an adults only trip. This means we can have two days in each park and if needed do extra visits on the afternoon of rest days. It makes for an easier planning experience. However, it doesn’t solve the issue you can see at the bottom of the plan. Where on earth do I put Sanaa? We may have to just eat more on some days! I do have a gap for dinner on our first day. I’m reluctant to put anything in there that we need an ADR for as there is no way to know how young Freddie will be adjusting to the time difference and long flight so we may need to be flexible. I know Rebecca would just be happy with some corn dog bites from Casey’s.

On that note, we are going to try something new on our last day in Magic Kingdom. I have it down as a snack day. We’re going to take the opportunity to eat all the stuff available in and around the parks as snacks and counter service, such as the stuff at Casey’s and a couple of things we’ve never had in all these years, a turkey leg and a dole whip. Funnel cake may also be on the agenda.

So this is where I’m at right now.The only other piece of the jigsaw tentatively in place is the intention to do MNSSHP on Wednesday the 4th of September. Having had glowing reports from all last week, it looks like we have no choice but to do it and much of the advice centred around not doing it too early after it starts and not to do it on a weekend.

What happens now? Well, over the coming weeks and months I shall tinker and mess about with the finer details. At some point I typically transfer it onto the Vacation Planner tool on The Dibb. I don’t use the forums over there any more but that tool is useful. It is helpful as somewhere to record all your booking references, ADRs (Advanced Dining Reservations), flight details and that jazz.

What is bound to happen over the coming months is that I will come across some new dining experience that I desperately want to do and I shall wrestle with what to drop out of the plan….or of course there’s always the option of extending our stay! The latter won’t be a viable option this time due to the work/holiday restrictions of Louise and Tom so something will have to give should that be the case. I have already made the heart breaking decision to take Romano’s out of the plan and replace it with The Cheesecake Factory.

So there you go, this post turned unintentionally into a look at how I actually plan. I’m sure everyone has similar yet different methods. Let me know how you go about it so that I may shamelessly steal your great ideas.

Now, I must leave you as I’m off to a photo shoot this afternoon with Mustard. No, really, I am.

Till the next time….
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Scary Stuff

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

Well what do you know, it’s October. At this rate we’ll be heading to the airport in about ten minutes. Speaking of which my niece and her fiancée have done exactly that this morning as they head to WDW for their long-awaited holiday.

Have a great time Sarah and Tom!

However, not one moment of last week was spent planning due to the great inconvenience of having to work. Now, when I say there was no planning, that only means that I didn’t at any point sit down in front of a spreadsheet and the internet and formally plan stuff to do. Of course. subconscious planning happens at all times. For example, in the middle of some very tedious work related stuff, it popped into my head that Sanaa wasn’t currently on our plan. This is a grave issue. We love Sanaa, specifically the bread service, but as it stands there is simply no room for it unless we sacrifice something else.

To be honest my thinking is that for Tom’s first time and with a small child at the table, Whispering Canyon and 50’s Prime Time feel more relevant and suitable. There will other times for Sanaa.

Even though we will be flying out in August, as WDW tend to do, by the time we get there Halloween will be in full swing. We are very used to the parks transforming into an autumnal pumpkin fest towards the end of our previous August holidays. In the past we’ve been pretty much on our last day when this happens, but next year we’ll be just arriving. As such, I suspect MNSSHP will be happening. For anyone not in the WDW nutter club, that stands for Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party. We’ve never done this so it makes sense that we take the chance to do so.

mnsshp

Being in about three thousand WDW related groups on Facebook means that I am bound to get some mixed reviews of this event. For anyone who has done it, would you say it is worthwhile? My gut feel is yes for two main reasons.

  1. In all these years we never have.
  2. It will at least stop us having to leave the park early.

The tickets this year seem to start at around $74 each. That seems OK to be honest. In fact, in candy alone, Tom will break us even in the first hour.

If we go, then I don’t know if we’ll dress up. Again, any feedback on whether that is worth it or not would be welcome.

This time last week I said I had 20,000 words of the second book done. Well, this week I have a few less. Still that’s progress. I found about half an hour to open it and read some of it. This resulted in me editing out some words. So in this case I suppose less really is more. Having not looked at it for so long it was weird. It was like reading something that somebody else had written.

So not the most productive of weeks, outside of the stuff I am actually paid to do.

Louise is working again this weekend. It really isn’t fair. That means I have to do all the washing and tidying up. It really is rather inconsiderate of her. She knows I’m always a bit tired after gigging and Crumpsall lies in tatters this morning after Mustard blew it to pieces last night. She can make it up to me when she gets home later after eight days at work.

Right, I have to go, Liverpool are on TV shortly…erm, I mean I have lots of housework to do.

Till the next time…..


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Much A Blog About Nothing

by mkingdon, posted in All This And More, mkingdon

The week just gone was bereft of any WDW planning. With so little time before we go this is very remiss of me. I should be able to pull it back, but that’s because I’ve been a few times and I know what I’m doing. I don’t suggest any newbies attempt this reckless approach to their Florida holiday.

That tardiness was in no small part down to series 3 (or season if I aspire to the American culture) of Narcos. The first two seasons were excellent and centred on Pablo Escabar, or Emilio Estaban if you’re Louise. Spoiler alert – He dies at the end of season two, which meant that I was a little worried that the next season may suffer. If anything it was better. It centres this time on the Cali Cartel and it was gripping from start to finish. If you haven’t seen it, stop reading right now and go and binge watch all three.

The world of Mustard is also keeping me nice and busy. We’re back from a summer break and into a solid period of gigging now, along with rehearsing a good chunk of new stuff. Our next session to reinvent the world of music is tomorrow when we’ll be improving several classics and sending our versions to the original artists to show them how it’s done.

Over the summer we did mange to record some stuff in the studio (hark at me all Dark Side Of The Moon).

The intention was to create a short promo video to show to potential clients. So should you have any wedding, function or party band requirements then you know where I am!

Last night saw us blowing minds in Burnley. On the evidence of a couple of the audience members, there wasn’t that much to work with. Still, we went down very well which always makes it enjoyable.

You see some odd behaviour in some of the places we play. Last night’s highlight was one “excitable” chap who seemed obsessed with being on the stage with us. I tip my hat to Graham our singer who diplomatically and non violently encouraged him off again about a dozen times. This chap’s other obsession was shaking hands with each member of the band. That’s lovely, however he insisted on doing this mid-song. Most of the time we need both hands to be doing what we’re doing but he didn’t seem able to work this one out. Bless him.

So after such a night of gigging Sundays tend to be a restful affair. I suspect our hand shaking friend from last night may well be needing a little more resting than I.

In other creative news, about a thousand years ago I self published a novel. Several people even read it (thank you) and I am currently about 20,000 words into another. To be honest, I have been 20,000 words in for well over a year and haven’t looked at it in ages. Time to do so has been in short supply. I am calling myself out for this piss poorness in an attempt to get me back into it. Now, roughly 19,000 words of those are likely to be absolute crap, but unless I make the effort to open the bloody thing and crack on, nobody will ever know.

Encouraging me to get this done may not be in your best interest as if it ever gets done I’ll be bugging you all to read it.

So there we go, a half decent job of blogging about nothing. Watch and learn aspiring social media wannabees!

Till the next time….

Living La Villa Loca…..

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

I know that at times it is hard to tell me apart from rock Gods like Jon Bon Jovi. We look so alike that this is understandable. However, one major difference is how feel right now. Mustard were out gigging last night after a few weeks off for our summer holidays (that I didn’t have!).

Getting to bed at 2am after a full on night of hard rocking, fierce funking and more importantly lugging several tonnes of equipment in and out of the venue, my body hates me. I don’t imagine Mr Bon Jovi is sat in his dressing gown in front of Sunday Brunch nursing a non alcoholic hangover. Middle age is a bitch.

Louise has been working all weekend and by the time she gets to the end of Monday she will have worked nine days straight. That is, frankly, a bit shit so if you are having your wounds dressed, injections given or wounds packed anywhere near us, be thankful to the kind soul who turns up to do it. They will be over worked and under paid.

So, as promised, let’s turn to the embryonic plans for Florida 2018. Whilst writing the last few posts of the last trippie, I was multi-tasking very impressively by giving brain space to our next visit. We should of course be waiting a bit until Freddie is older and can do things like go to Jellyrolls with us, but all in good time, for now, we’ll be the idiots with the 11 month old on the plane.

Another strong reason not to wait is that our future son-in-law Tom has never been to WDW and as a lot of you will appreciate, taking a first timer is a joy and a pleasure. He is already, quite rightly, giddy with excitement. Of course, despite a good amount of internet research and us boring him to death about everything on offer, until a first timer goes there can be little appreciation of what will be encountered.

The rides and attractions are of course something he is looking forward to, but, like someone destined to become part of our family, he LOVES his food. Unlike me, Tom turns that love into muscle at the gym, so he’s a big lad but in a positive way…

His appetite is astounding and this is coming from me who could eat himself to death in one sitting. So the food on offer is a major focus for him. That’s handy of course as you know my planning starts with where we’ll be eating every day. He and Rebecca have already spent a good amount of time studying the menus of our planned eateries and in some cases pre-selecting his dining choices. I think he’s in for a good time.

But I get ahead of myself. I should give you an outline of the plan as it stands. Well, the first thing to say is that we shall not be making the mistake of not having enough time at WDW this time. With two first timers in tow, ALL we are doing is Disney. Recognising of course what a different trip this will be with a very young child in the party, there seemed very little point in attempting Universal at the hefty expense of an on site stay and other thrill ride heavy parks like Busch similarly made little sense.

Taking in to account the size and make up of our party, on-site accommodation didn’t really make sense. After our last visit, frankly we’d want to be staying at the Beach Club or similar and two weeks in multiple rooms just becomes very, very expensive. Along with that, for Rebecca, Tom and Freddie especially two weeks crammed into one room would be tough, so we (I) decided we’d be doing a villa.

Now, selecting a villa is a double-edged sword. It is lovely to be scouring the internet for that perfect place of course, as it means you know you are returning. The downside is that there is so much choice that a few hours in you get villa blindness. They all start to look the same. However, we (I) had very specific requirements. In previous visits compromises have been made, mainly due to budget, which haven’t really detracted from the trip, but niggled at me from time to time.

Our needs were –

Location – Suspecting we’ll be doing partial days in the parks with Freddie in tow, being close to WDW was a must. Knowing that every villa in Florida says they are fifteen minutes from Disney, I ignored those claims and used my local knowledge. The villa had to be in or around the Formosa Gardens area. Villas here are so close to Animal Kingdom you can smell the elephant dung.

Pool size – Rest days will be plentiful and vital so we wanted a lager than average pool and lanai. This meant going for a villa a bit larger than we actually needed. It should not be overlooked, and be south-facing to satisfy Louise’s sun hunger.

We needed two master suites.

Beyond those, I was just looking for villas that caught my eye. Things I look out for are poor quality photos and/or photos clearly taken a long time ago, suggesting the villa may not be quite as nice now as it once was.

It took a while, but eventually I found one that ticked all the boxes. I was delighted that it is situated on Emerald Island. We have never stayed there, but have driven past those dolphins many times whilst staying in the area.

The fact that this development is literally round the corner from our favourite arrival day dining tradition of The Outback is just the cherry on top of a nice cake.

The villa itself is called Simba’s Pride.

Click the picture to see details of the villa…..

A deposit is paid, which means we are definitely going. That feels good.

Flights won’t be booked for a while. I’ve never not booked the flights first, but with Freddie still being in Rebecca right now, there was no choice. Well, we could have waited to book the villa, but where’s the fun in that?

The main part of the planning now will be learning how to do WDW with a youngster under one. There’s a lot I don’t know about that.

The only other thing which has already been planned is the restaurant list. That includes some places you HAVE to take first timers to, such as Whispering Canyon and 50’s Prime Time.

The bad news is that between now and the 29th of August 2018, yes, I forgot to mention when we were going, you will be subjected to every tweak, development and booking. The timing of the trip is a mix of impatience and various work related challenges and commitments. We *could* have gone in a more off-peak time, but that would mean waiting longer. Flying out at the time should be OK as most folks limited to school holidays will be coming to the end of their trips and of course the US schools will already be back.

Irma has of course reminded us that this is very much hurricane season so we can only hope we continue our lucky streak in that regard.

So, enough for now. There will be time aplenty to blog about this in future for which I apologise.

Till the next time….


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Irma God!

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

Florida is in my thoughts more often than it isn’t. Usually, that involves me wishing I was there. Right now that isn’t the case due to the horror that is Irma which is bearing down on my favourite destination.

We have been there at this time of year, hurricane season, a lot. We’ve been very, very lucky and (touches wood) have never been impacted by more than an impressive storm. In 2004 we missed hurricane Charley by a few hours, arriving just after it had hit and we saw very clear evidence of its power at our resort (Cypress Pointe) and on the golf course we played with many of the villas around the course being without their pool covers.

Again riding our luck we were the last flight out of Sanford at the end of that holiday as the airport closed for another incoming hurricane.

As you can see, the damage from Charley that we saw was relatively minor (ignore the wrong dates from my camera!). Having said that a quick google search tells me that 15 people died in Charley and it cost $16 billion to repair all the damage. I guess Orlando has typically escaped major damage in the past as it is very central but to see parks closing shows how serious Irma could be.

You’ll probably know that the weather in Florida can be an obsession. There is a weather report on TV every sixteen seconds with all sorts of analysis of every weather front. For us, none of the nasty stuff that was being tracked during our time there ever turned into anything of note. They either broke up or veered out to sea. We’ve had some serious rain at times but nothing on a scale that could be as bad as Irma looks. I just hope that the ever present weather obsession doesn’t make folks complacent that Irma will also prove to be less than predicted.

Irma looks so different. Its track has looked like going right through Florida for days and there seems to have been no last-minute deviation or reprieve.

It can only be hoped that the incredible damage seen by the islands already hit by Irma isn’t replicated in Florida. Having been to the Keys, I really fear for them down there. The buildings, beautiful as they are, just don’t look strong enough to withstand a hurricane of this magnitude.

This seemingly very active hurricane season is especially interesting to me as we will be in Florida this time next year. It has made us think, what would we do in such circumstances. Of course an interrupted holiday is nothing compared to what residents may be facing but we can only hope, for our own selfish reasons, that this year isn’t repeated next year.

It seems wrong to start waffling on about our plans for next year with all this in mind so I’ll save that for a later post. I’ll just say that our dates are sorted, a villa booked and a plan forming which ONLY involves Disney.

So I send my thoughts to anyone in Florida right now, resident or visitor and hope that this passes with the best possible result for all.

Next week hopefully, this can be a less sombre place and I can begin to bore you with every tiny detail of a holiday you won’t be going on or probably care about. It’s what I do!

Thanks to everyone for your comments last week. It was nice to chat with you all and hopefully there’s more of that to come. My throw away comment about killing this blog with fire was tongue in cheek. I wasn’t fishing for pleas to keep blogging but I thank you for your kind words and encouragement all the same. You are stuck with this nonsense for the foreseeable I’m afraid.

Till the next time….