I struck out solo leaving Louise in bed and got myself a coffee and a muffin and then secured beds by main pool. It was busy and the pickings were slim.
Louise didn’t know where I was so went to our usual spot on the beach and messaged me. I joined her there as there was zero breeze by the pool and we stayed on the beach every day from here on in.
Volleyball happened with the male competitiveness growing. We were in mild danger of stray balls a few times which is never nice.
Lunch time came around and we shared a club sandwich and chips. It was delicious.
I read for most of the afternoon and volleyball and ice cream happened again. We stayed on the beach till 6.
This little chap hung around with us all day.
After showers etc we were out around 8. There was a half hour wait for a table at The Patio which was the Mexican restaurant. We waited with a drink in the sports bar. In there were the most scouse family on the planet. The bar staff did a better job than us of understanding them.
I had Tortilla soup and the beef.
Pork belly and lamb for Louise.
We went a bit mad and ordered 2 tequila shots from the premium tequila trolley. Louise assured me it was fanstastic. Having never had tequila before I couldn’t comment.
Once we’d eaten we wandered to the theatre but there was no show tonight. Back to the lobby bar instead for drinks. Bed at 11.30.
A more civilised awakening time today thankfully. I left Louise in the room and made the effort to secure us some beds around a pool as we fancied a change from the beach today. I took the opportunity to do a full resort stroll too.
It took me a long while to choose two beds that might give Louise the sun and me the shade and they turned out to be more in Louise’s favour.
This was the quiet pool.
We lazed and spent a good amount of time in the water as the sun was pretty brutal.
We had a raccoon sighting which would be a common occurrence.
We had a drink or two and then Lunch by the pool. Nachos and burrito.
The next beds to us which had been empty yet reserved all day had a lovely couple from California arrive. We chatted for a bit. They asked what “Europe” thought of what was happening in the US so we gave them our view and explained why we were in Mexico and not Orlando. They explained that despite being US citizens from birth they now felt the need to carry their passports everywhere as they were not white. That bit hit home.
At some point the Spa folks came round touting for business. We declined but Louise still got a head massage.
Then ice cream man came around with his cart.
We moved to one of the other pools around 4.30 for the last hour for reasons I can’t remember.
Back to the room at 5.45. Showers etc.
We made our way down to the main pool to check out the Mexican show and buffet that was on.
We decided against it and walked to the Mexican restaurant. Alas it was closed. We found out they close it when the Mexican show is on as if you want Mexican food you can get it there.
Several steps later and we were at the Asian restaurant.
With a twenty minute wait for a table we walked several more steps to the Sports bar to wait. Espresso martini for me and a mescal and wine for Louise.
The food was excellent. Spring roll chicken satay to start.
Sweet and sour and mixed teppanyaki for mains.
We wandered back to the lobby bar and watched a harpist. After he had finished we had a wander around the resort and sat by the main pool for a bit getting feasted on by biting things.
Back to the lobby bar again. I went back to our room to deal with a pressing issue. Luckily our room was steps from the bar!!
I briefly joined Louise again but it was bed time and sleep was welcome.
Rather than the buffet breakfast we headed to the Coffee shop around 7. Coffee and a Danish each.
Mexico appears to have bigger lizards than Florida.
We loved seeing these guys almost every day too.
This will get repetitive really quickly as we headed to the beach again but for variety we chose some beds a little closer to the shore. That’s when we realised that all this seaweed could produce the odd waft of an unpleasant smell.
With no breakfast to speak of we were hungry nice and early so we walked up to the Sea Side Grill restaurant by the pool at 11.45.
I had the Toast Trio, a trip to the salad bar and Fish Tacos. I would never normally order that but when it’s “free” I get a little more daring.
Louise had a goat’s cheese stuffed chicken thing.
Beer for me and a Margarita for Louise.
Back to the beach again. We considered doing a pool for the afternoon but there were no beds with shade available which is a non-negotiable for me.
Reading and resting followed.
Towards the end of the day I went for a stroll up the beach then we went back to the room around 5.25.
Once there we went into the swim up pool for the first time. Our turn down service person came and made our room all delightful and ready for the evening and honestly this ritual became a real highlight of the trip.
We didn’t make it out for dinner till 8.30. Bordeaux was our choice tonight. French of course.
French onion and cauliflower soup for starters.
But only after our bousches had been amused.
Small but lovely.
Steak for us both.
That was fruit tart thing and these, well you know what they are…
We stopped at the lobby bar for one drink and watched the band.
Awake at 3.30, which was nice. Dozed and doomscrolled till 6ish. Showers and got ready.
Once 7am hit we were first in line for the market cafe for buffet. It had a seriously vast array of choices.
Just the one plate as my body is a temple.
We walked down to the beach passed some shy fish…well they weren’t shy just coy.
The beach was pretty much empty at this early hour so we easily got beds but to be honest that would be the case all holiday regardless of time, on the beach at least.
We just relaxed and half slept for a while, with some reading thrown in.
At 11am and 4pm every day the staff organised a volleyball game that I did not take part in once. We watched it though and over the days it would get ever more competitive.
That cloud makes it look like I have a white tuft of hair. If only.
At some point we went for swim and got a drink from the swim up bar. A margarita for Louise and I had an Iceberg which involved beer and some form of alcohol slush.
Back to the beach. More doing nothing.
We had noticed immediately that there was a seaweed issue. Mainly as the hotel had a team of workers, a JCB and two trucks carting it away. It’s a seasonal thing and couldn’t be helped but at least our resort was shifting it. Others up the beach not so much.
We had a small pizza from the pizza oven between us around 13.30. It was lovely.
More volleyball watching at 4.
We were both tired today with the travel and jet lag so we didn’t do a lot. That didn’t change over the holiday so maybe those were just excuses today.
We went back to the room for showers around 5pm and a lie down which was different to lying down in the beach of course.
Out at 7. I stopped at reception to change some larger dollar bills into smaller ones for tipping.
We ate at the Italian, Portifino.
Espresso Martini for me and wine for Louise.
We started with the first two items on the menu which were a Caprese and a meat thing.
Parm chicken for me and lasagne for Louise.
We were full but shared a tiramisu.
We paid the bill….oh no, there was no need but we left a tip. We made it back to the lobby bar for one drink before having to give up at 10. Knackered.
We are back from Mexico! Whilst I did say prior to departure that there wouldn’t be a full blown trip report (and that is very much still the case) I will share some photos and information on what we did.
Most days we don’t do a lot so this will be mostly food related but hey what’s new.
Before we left I was unaware of Tajin. This changed early in the trip with my first strawberry margarita. It then became a consistent theme of our trip hence the title.
If you don’t want to plough through the detail of what is to come and just want a TL/DR summary of the trip, we loved it.
The resort, Secrets Akumal, was incredible. We would recommend and return for sure.
Anyway, using minimal notes and a few photos here we go.
Day one July 2nd
It was a painless journey to the airport and check in was a breeze.
Security was very quiet and we headed to the lounge at 8.15 courtesy of our TUI Premium tickets . I had two plates of brekkie.
Adhering to airport traditions at least for holidays where I don’t need to drive at the other end we had some free alcohol. Our first attempt was very crap draft alcohol. Beer for me and Prosecco for Louise. They were undrinkable so I went back and got two bottles of Carlsberg instead.
Louise had forgotten her reading glasses so we went to Boots to get some temporary ones and general flight stuff.
Gate A6 at 10.30. One of the last to board. Fizz was served as we sat down. We were of course 20 minutes late taking off.
I was so tired. I had felt stressed and unready in the lead up to the trip so this tiredness was probably a work hangover. My body gave in and all I could do was sleep.
Louise watched films. The food was Ok but I didn’t eat much.
When I woke up I watched the Better Man film and enjoyed it.
It’s a bit blurry and it was probably my tired stressed state of mind but that cloud looked like a dog.
The flight was 9.5 hours. Upon landing there was no gate available so we had a 20 minute wait on the tarmac.
Immigration not too busy. Baggage claim slow and chaotic. Then we had to go through the weird x-ray customs thing as I believe they were checking for vapes and e-cigarettes which we were told were not allowed to be taken into Mexico.
It was hard to find our taxi rep but we got there eventually but needed one taxi to take us to another terminal to get our proper transfer taxi.
The transfer was just over an hour and felt like a high speed car chase. I was messaging folks back home from the back seat and felt car sick so had to stop and concentrate on not ruining the taxi.
Check in was a dream. We were seated with a concierge who sorted everything. There was lovely champers whilst we did all the paperwork.
We were escorted to room 8105. It was a huge beautiful room. We unpacked and then Louise passed out and went to sleep.
I had a brief wander around the resort but it was so hot. I was soon back to the room and asleep by 9.
Well, as punishment for daring to go on holiday, last week at work was one of the worst I’ve experienced in all the decades I’ve been sucking this shit up to pay the bills. Just two more similar days to go before I can pretend to not think about it for two weeks.
I can feel the stress coursing through my body and my neck and shoulders feel like I’ve done something that is very bad for your neck and shoulders.
All that meant that yesterday was also stupidly busy as I had to do some work that has to be finished before I go and I’m in meetings for every hour God sends from the start of Monday to the end of Tuesday and then start to try and prep the stuff I prep for the holiday. That meant printing off the stuff we might need (I’ve been over cautious as this isn’t our familiar journey) and can I say, how is it that in 2025 AI can do your job for you but we still can’t build printers that print? I also filled the rucksack, which won’t be Ryan for this trip. Louise says he’s too scruffy to go a resort like ours and I gave in as his role is solely for US based trips. Instead I’m taking son of Ryan, the brand new exact replica Louse bought me a few years ago.
Filling the rucksack is faffy, ranging from the essential passports and docs to the relevant phone and watch chargers, camera, kindle, painkillers, money and credit cards etc.
What I also learned this week was trying to order some US dollars in specific denominations appears to be impossible. I tried a load of websites and nobody gives you the option to request smaller bills (these dollars are only for tipping folks) so in the end I had to go old school and rock up the local post office and ask them to give me the smallest they had. They were still mostly too big.
With Louise out working I was also in charge of doing multiple washer loads, mainly of the dog’s bedding, and our bedding despite the fact that our house sitter is Emily, who lives here. I waited in for a delivery for Louise, which I “missed” as when it arrived, the chap rang the bell and then seemingly sprinted to his van and drove away by the time I walked the thirty steps from the couch to the front door.
Then I had to do some mowing up on the field as the grass was getting ridiculous despite me attacking it with a strimmer for the past week and I had to at least cut some walking paths in it for when Emily walks them whilst we are away.
I took delivery of an obscene amount of pet food for the dogs and cats and then nipped to the supermarket to get enough food to feed us until Tuesday and then I made tea.
It was a busy Saturday and today is looking similar. I’ve done some more work this morning, wrote this clap trap and then I have to go to a shop to collect an order Louise clicked last night and then go and see my Mum.
Anyway, as it always does, time will pass, I’ll get through work and we’ll be off soon enough. I’ll probably share some stuff on the Mkingdon Facebook page whilst away so do what you need to do if you want those. A day by day trip report is unlikely as it would be (more) boring than a US trip and I almost certainly won’t have time to write it, but I will of course share thoughts, highlights and food in some way.
Cheer up. Just two more of these things and you get a couple of weeks off from them being inflicted on you.
Yes the holiday is so close now I can almost smell it, literally. I don’t know if it’s only me but when the warm weather hits there’s a certain smell that I get that just evokes holiday. I used to think it was sun cream or Florida but I get it here too. It’s either that or I’m having a stroke.
Ahead of me are seven more work days and they feel like a marathon right now but this is always the way.
Other than wishing my life away it’s been another week of being busy at work and none of that is worth documenting here but at least I didn’t have to go anywhere and sleep in a strange bed.
Yesterday I did leave the country as we had a gig in Wales. Denbigh to be exact. It was a wedding at an unnecessarily rural location. The last four miles, yes, four miles involved a single lane country road that did nothing for the blood pressure. It was, as you might expect a lovely location when we got there and we were surrounded by alpacas, peacocks and most importantly freshly baked pizza.
They were a good crowd and the dance floor was full from start to finish which is always lovely. I don’t know if it’s some sort of Welsh tradition but we witnessed our first ever conga to AC/DC.
That clip is quite short as I started filming before very quickly realising that I had to play in about nine seconds.
Being a fair distance away it was a late night and necessitated a lie in this morning. With Louise working and Woody away in Liverpool with Emily it’s just me and Bean today taking it easy. All I’ve done so far today is clean the kitchen, do the recycling, had the big shop delivered, got all my band gear out of the car and packed it away and had some toast. I suspect all international rock stars have similar mornings after a gig in Denbigh.
Speaking of the dogs Emily recently created these lovely pics of the dogs using some AI magic and I love them. So I’ll leave you with those.
My recent tour of the UK continued last week with a couple of days in Marlow doing things considerably less fun than playing bass to people. Work required my presence and so 450 miles of driving, a night in a Travelodge and two days of meetings made up most of my week, as I was off on Monday.
I think/hope that might be it for travels until after my next proper travels to Mexico but with a couple of weeks still to go, who knows. Work is a bit like that at the moment.
My night away did afford me an expenses paid meal at a place called the Giggling Squid in Marlow which was very nice, even if the main course I chose snuck up on me with its spice. A wander down by the Thames on a summer evening did beat more recent trips of staring at a concrete tower block in London with a Tesco meal deal, but I’d still rather be at home.
My pre-holiday prep is complete with two deliveries this week. Louise has “toiletries” to procure, mainly sun cream, but it’s almost time to get the cases out. I am unusually anxious about the trip as I lack my normal levels of certainty of what is to come. Louise’s uncertainty was I suspect none existent until Friday’s Air India crash and now all of her long held fears around flying are re-surfacing.
Any last minute buying will need to be done outside of the next two weekends as she has somehow been rota-ed to work both of them. I’m at the stage now where I am scouring my work diary and counting how many really crappy things I have to endure before we go. Anyone else do that?
Aside from the mundane details of how I’ve passed the last seven days, today is Father’s Day which has been weird for me for the last couple of years of course. I think about my Dad a lot, but I suppose today is the a day when that is bound to happen more than it might normally.
I still don’t think I have fully accepted that I’ll never see him again. It’s very weird and for reasons I don’t understand I regularly play back those last few hours we spent with him in the hospital before he died. I somehow feel like I did it wrong or could have spent those more wisely even though he didn’t really know we were there.
Anyway, I love you Dad, and I miss you every day. It’s a cliché but if you’ve still got one, try to appreciate them as when they’ve gone and you think you can’t even remember their voice, you start to panic a bit and feel like you’re letting them down. Enjoy your Father’s Day and here’s mine as he would probably like to be remembered.
Another week with a half baked post. I’m currently in the back of a van heading back from a festival/gig up in Scotland. This rock n roll lifestyle is getting out of control.
As typing is difficult in these circumstances I’ll just share some photos of the very scenic journey up to Dunoon and the journey so far back where we played at a Harley Owner’s Group event.
That bed was not built for a man of my width.
The gig itself went very well which is always nice. It’ll be a good few hours before I’m back home so forgive the poor posting and enjoy your weeks.
Another four day week leaves me wondering why we splurge them all at this time of year. I suppose it gives us all a chance to enjoy the lovely weather, unless, like last week, we reverted to mid winter up in the frozen north anyway.
With four weeks to go until our holiday our minds have turned to preparing a bit, and at least thinking about what we need to take from a clothes perspective as our needs will be different to a Florida trip to some extent.
I already actually wrote down in words my trouser buying experience a few weeks ago, so believe me when I say I shall also detail other irrelevant and uninteresting details about my wardrobe.
I did a “try on” yesterday, digging out the summer stuff that hasn’t seen the light of day since our last trip. I have a lot of holiday clothes. That may not to be too surprising I suppose, but having managed to drop a few pounds in my usual pre-hols preparation I do have slightly more options than otherwise I might.
So thankfully my need to go out and do any actual shopping is limited to stuff I can buy online like some shoes, a new cap and some socks. Yes, I am actually spending time writing this stuff down on the internet.
Louise enjoys the madness of a real shop so her buying started this week with a couple of dresses and some shorts.
The rest of the week was of course dominated by work as it always is. However, there was a mild drama on Friday afternoon. I was, as ever, on a Teams call with the doors open as the temperatures had recovered to at least double figures and the dogs were pottering about in the garden. All of a sudden I heard Woody yelp in pain and he came running to the door feeling very sorry for himself. It took a few minutes for him to stop crying and I got him inside and up onto the couch in the conservatory where he literally flaked out.
He was worryingly limp and his eyes glazed over. For a few minutes I was genuinely worried about him. I comforted him for a bit until he started to come round and after half an hour or so he was up and about again.
He’s been fine since so whether he was stung or stood on something, we have no idea. There was no sign of any damage and he wasn’t paying particular attention to any part of his body so it was a mystery. He took himself upstairs to his proper bed for an hour or so and then seemed to be fully recovered. We went out for a decent walk yesterday and he was absolutely fine. It was all a bit strange.
He’s now gone over to Liverpool with Emily to spend the rest of the weekend there at Mikey’s where as you can see he struggles to settle!
Emily’s prep for her August WDW and Universal trip continues. They have booked Mickey’s Not So Scary and have what looks like an action packed and fun plan.
They are taking some first timers with them who of course are listening to almost all of Emily’s advice. However, she did share some shocking news this week. Apparently the newbie couple have bought new trainers for the trip but are refusing to wear them until they get there despite Emily’s advice and pleadings to wear them in. Is this the most rookie of rookie mistakes for a WDW newcomer? It’ll end in tears.
Sorry there has been no time today for a post even though you are now reading one.
I’ve been out at a music festival with my band mates. Not to worry I thought, I will take some photos and videos of the day to post instead. Then I forgot as things are always hectic when getting set up and ready to play in the very short time afforded for such things.
All I managed was this brief backstage clip ….
We just did half an hour of 80s tunes and it went pretty well. It was a charity festival for Cancer charities. The weather could have been kinder of course but it was dry if a little windy and chilly as bank holidays tend to be.
Now I’m planted on the couch watching Liverpool and waiting for them to lift the Premier League trophy. Add to that not being in work tomorrow and I’ve had worse Sundays.
So apologies for the size and quality of this micro blog and enjoy your Monday off if you get one.
The main thing of note to share from the past few days was our gig last night, which was our first public outing as the Neon Vortex, our 80s tribute band.
We had rehearsed on Wednesday and felt completely unready for public performance, mainly due to a lack of rehearsal time due to our collective busy lives. Anyway, that fear drove us all to do enough homework before last night for it to go off almost mistake free.
It was pleasing to see this new show go down so well with the audience and hopefully things can only get better from here on in.
Earlier in the week something a bit odd happened. I started to get alerts that my blog was getting large volumes of traffic. Now, those days are long gone so it felt weird and certainly unexpected and I wondered if someone had uncovered my secret scandalous life of drug abuse and crime, but no. After a bit of digging into the stats and the source of the traffic almost all of it was coming from Facebook but in Germany.
Of course I have legions of readers all over the world as you would expect but the sheer volume was off the scale of even the height of my relevance and readership.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, mainly as I stopped researching it as soon as I figured it out, it would appear that I am not the only one who can’t type kingdom. A typo decades ago on The Dis saw me create a username of mkingdon rather than mkingdom and here we are. Still, it made buying the domain cheaper and easier.
At some point during last week something happened in German politics which saw a group or party get banned or something and they were called Kingdom of Germany. I have no idea how, but it seemed folks searching for that somehow then led them to click through to my blog.
I can only chuckle at the bizarre and surreal experience my new German visitors had when trying to make sense of the absolute trivial nonsense I pump out here when they were looking for some insightful information on whatever these Kingdom folks said, did or had done to them.
I only hope they used Google translate on my posts to see what it was all about and suffered whatever Google made of my drivel. If any of my German friends have stuck around, literally all I can say to you is Ich mochte ein stuck shwarzwalderkirschtorte bitte.
Two years of German study in the mid 80s has not gone to waste.
Ironically, one of the songs we did last night was Nena’s “classic” Neunundneunzig Luft Ballon. We did however take the easy option and do the English version. It’s spooky how different themes collide or at least how I can desperately mash them together in an attempt to churn out a few hundred words every week.
At this point doing these posts is solely driven by my “completion complex” (not a euphemism). I’ve been posting nearly every week since 2009 and every cell in my body rejects the idea of stopping now, and of course once I pop my clogs, all this inane crap will be a fitting testament to my time on the planet. Take from that what you will.
In an unpleasant and unwanted turn of events last week I was once again in London.
I’m not really saying I want another pandemic to obliterate travel for work and in person meetings but it was a silver lining in the heaviest of clouds.
I left on Tuesday afternoon on an uncomfortably packed train from Piccadilly and arrived in my “digs” that evening not too far from the Gherkin (not a euphemism).
I doubt that anybody’s company’s travel budget affords them luxury but a London Travelodge is never going to evoke memories of the Yacht Club. I settled into the room desperately trying not to think of everyone else who had slept in that bed and I took in the view.
I was not expecting a glorious vista with herds of wildebeest but perhaps the odd London landmark would have been nice.
With a Tesco Express meal deal secured I returned to the room for an evening of freeview telly and an early night.
The work itself was nothing I wish to recall. It was bad enough going through it once and I escaped the capital around 5pm on Thursday thankfully being able to secure a train an hour earlier than the one I had booked so I got home around 8.30, tired and all Londoned out for the foreseeable. The parking fee at Manchester Piccadilly for those three days will be given our finance folks heartburn for a while I’m sure.
I was very happy (relatively speaking) to be back at my desk at home for work on Friday. Sure it was an unacceptable day of back to back Teams calls but at least I didn’t have to wear proper pants.
Saturday saw me gigging with Mustard down in Knutsford at a 4×4 car festival thing.
Our first outdoor gig of the year, albeit within a marquee. Luckily it was a dry sunny day but as we crept into darkness the temperature dropped and my already average playing skills were tested as I started to lose all feeling in my fingers.
It has been nice to see the sun recently and experience some hint of warmth as the weather improves. I am so tired of being cold. It makes me look forward to our July Mexico trip where we can hopefully forget all the coldness for a couple of weeks and instead moan about it being too hot.
Thankfully next week has no requirement for me to be anywhere for work so it will just be the standard level of horror. Can’t wait.
It’s Bank Holiday season. Damn these pesky four day weeks preventing me from spending all the time I’d like to at work! Since we last spoke it’s been a proper busy time and it whizzed by in extra fast fashion as it was broken up by a visit to London for work. I’m never a fan of work involving leaving my house but it’s becoming more of a thing in recent times as things change at work and it all gets busier.
It was fairly painless as work trips go with a 8am train out from Manchester and a 4.15pm train back out of London with a 3 hour meeting in the middle. So just the 13 hours end to end journey.
Despite the horrific Wi-Fi on the train I even managed to get a little bit of work done on both legs of the journey.
The rest of the work weeks have followed the recent pattern of absolute chaos, back to back meetings all day every day and the feeling at the end of each day that I’ve been run over by a train with a brain that can barely remember how to eat my tea.
There was more travel and leaving the house last weekend too as Louise and I went to see Calamity Jane in Liverpool, which was a recent birthday present from Emily for Louise.
It was funny to watch the show as a million years ago both Louise and I “starred” in a local production of this show. Well, Louise starred as Calamity Jane and I had a slightly less vital role as Joe the bartender, but I feel I added my own unique take to the character.
The lead role was taken by Carrie Hope Fletcher, who you may know is the sister of Tom Fletcher from McFly, both huge Disney fans and regular visitors to WDW. I’m sure both of them read this blog religiously of course as every Disney fan on the planet tends to.
We arrived in Liverpool nice and early and of course immediately had some food. We stumbled across an eatery called Smoke and Dough and were glad we did. It was an unlimited meat platter kind of deal.
They had me at assorted breads.
The main platter was very nice and we could not take advantage of the ability to order any more.
Following our meal, still with time to kill we took the opportunity of being in Liverpool One to do some holiday shopping.
I have secured my holiday slacks. I confirmed my middle aged middle class status but procuring four pairs of summer trousers from M&S. That blew my usual clothes budget for the year.
The day after I was busy mowing and choring around the house and then had to enjoy watching Liverpool secure the league title. All of that was the reason for no post last week. There was just no time. I hope you coped and suspect you didn’t notice.
This week just gone saw a Mustard rehearsal as we enter a busy band time over the next few weeks and of course there were more manic days at work. One day did include a working lunch with a supplier down in Knutsford. The weather was proper summery and we ate outside, lightly toasting my glorious dome.
Tune in next week for, time permitting, more tales of this jet set lifestyle.
Usually, about now, in the standard cycle of our endless Disney trips, I would be elbow deep in all kinds of planning activities. Assuming a summer trip, once we start to see daffodils and daylight beyond tea time it normally feels like a proper sea change in daily life, everything looks literally and figuratively brighter and I undergo self imposed and unnecessary stress about where we might eat in a few months.
Do I miss it, with our plans not involving the US this year? A bit, yes. One of the big benefits of a holiday that takes more than the action of booking it is the continuing dopamine hit of doing the bits of planning that are the milestones in the countdown.
With us heading for Mexico and an all inclusive experience I have nothing to do other than ensure I have the appropriate attire for our activities that might even fit me. On Friday, not being allowed to work, I found myself in the unusual setting of a retail location and did cast my eye over some suitable long trousers for the posher restaurants at the resort which insist on such. After about twenty minutes of pushing things around racks I left with a pack of socks and nothing related to the holiday.
There’s plenty of time yet and I as ever I hold onto the hope that I will lose fourteen stone “in a daaaaay” before July and any wardrobe additions now would be wasted. Socks however, will fit me whatever shape my body is in.
Conversely, not having to keep up to date on all the happenings at our destination to understand what attractions might be closed and what format and price this week’s FastPass system may take is liberating. I’m not saying we’ll make a habit of it but this relaxed approach to going away to relax is definitely a change and in some ways welcome, especially with work being stupidly mad at the moment.
I am even thankful that our chosen resort does not operate a reservation system for their restaurants. I am an animal of extremes! The absolute extent of my pre-holiday activity has been watching the resort post on Instagram.
I really don’t want to wait four years before returning to the US so let’s hope something happens over there to return things to something approaching normality. It may just be my soft lefty liberal echo chamber on social media but I am seeing lots of articles detailing large downturns in tourism to the US. It’s a real shame that ordinary folks in the relevant industries will be affected, unless of course they voted for him, then not so much. Maybe the downturn in numbers will see some keener prices for flights and more offers from Disney and the like, but I suspect any downturn from the UK market won’t be significant enough to make that much of a difference.
So as we enter the season of bank holidays, allegedly higher temperatures (although nobody seems to have told the weather up North), power washing your flagging and unavoidably visiting DIY shops and garden centres I find myself with nothing holiday related to do. It’s different, but I’m not too sure whether that is good or bad different. I am absolutely looking forward to our change of pace and plans, mostly because I am just sick to death of being cold!
I’ll just have to spend the next few months browsing lightweight chinos online I suppose and call that holiday planning.
Another week whizzes by. Work for me was full-on in terms of hours spent, complex stuff to deal with, and having to spend an unwelcome amount of time physically in the office. Insult to injury, indeed. I’ve said it endless times before, but I will say it again: How I did that commute five days a week for decades is beyond me.
There was also a team-building night at Junk Yard Golf in Manchester, followed by a curry. Whilst always grateful to the company for spending money on stuff like that and actually enjoying it to some extent once I’m there, they are not essential for me to want to work somewhere.
Still, I came joint first at the golf and enjoyed the food, so I should probably stop moaning about it and show some gratitude.
Louise has had less fun this week. Having worked last weekend and a good number of days on the trot, she had all this week off and had lots of plans.
Instead, she’s been pretty ill, and we ended up in A&E on Friday evening after her GP sent her there to hopefully get sorted.
Fearing a couple of days in the waiting room, we did OK. She was triaged within an hour and then was given an appointment with a doctor a couple of hours later, so we were able to go home, get some food, and go back at the required time. Another hour or so and we’d seen the doctor and were on the way home with Louise reassured it was probably nothing too serious.
She did have to go back on Saturday to pick up the prescribed painkillers and other drugs as the pharmacy didn’t have them in stock, and they gave her an IOU. Ironicall,y that took longer than the previous evening as she was given duff info about the opening times and spent several hours wandering the hospital, filling out forms, and generally waiting around just to get her hands on the all-important meds.
Hopefully, with those secured, her recovery will be swift. She certainly feels better today than yesterday.
Emily has been away from home doing some house and dog sitting for a friend who has gone on holiday to Italy. This is Pablo.
If this kind of work funded trips to Disney, I think she would happily do it full-time.
I’m still a little concerned for her August Florida trip as the US continues its rapid descent into anarchy and chaos. I know I have, without doubt, over-thought and over-egged potential issues for tourists to the Sunshine State, but it’s clear I’m not the only one, as stats are starting to emerge from the US of sharp declines in tourism this year. Hopefully, that just results in smaller queues and the same trouble-free experience as we are all used to.
It doesn’t feel like this level and rate of chaos can be sustained for four years but what do I know. Often, very little indeed.
Sunday again. Another post to come up with when it was only about six and a half minutes since the last one. Clichés are clichés for a reason and the one about time going by too quickly once you are of a certain age certainly rings true.
At least that brings July closer more quickly and our two weeks away from the work routine and for me a break from ” can you see my screen”, “jumping on a call” and “circling back” to things I didn’t want to deal with the first time round. I’m not doing anything manual or even important but at times it really does burn you out.
For Louise, it’ll be a break from things much more gruesome, somber and depressing of course, but that has never stopped me bemoaning my comfortable office based first world problems.
Aside from work taking up far too high a percentage of last week than I’d like, we also took delivery of the previously teased band video for Mustard. Yeah, another bloody video to inflict upon you. It’s the first with our new singer and we’re pretty pleased with the results. Do not fear, I shall only put you through the short one-minute version. If you want to see the full six-minute marathon you can seek it out.
This weekend has been an uneventful one as Louise is working both days. It has just been me and Bean, our elderly cocker spaniel, as Woody, the sausage dog, has gone with Emily to her boyfriend’s in Liverpool where he has been barking at anything and anyone daring to invade his space as is his way.
Emily often takes him off for weekend adventures and for such a little thing, you wouldn’t believe how much calmer the house is when he’s not around.
Bean. bless her, is getting on a bit now. She’s lost a few teeth and is going a bit grey around the edges but she’s still pretty sprightly and long may that continue. She loves the one-on-one attention when Woody is out of the way too.
My plans for today are not very expansive. I have a few songs to learn for a band rehearsal this evening and a football match to watch, which as a Liverpool fan is equal parts exciting and terrifying in equal measure at the moment, as I want to believe we’re going to win the league but daren’t allow myself to just yet. Bean and I will venture out for a wander at some point too.
In other news, I have seen a fair bit of content online about Epic Universe. Well, to be accurate, I have seen the exact same footage from about a dozen vloggers. I have to admit to being pretty ignorant about the whole thing at this point, having no parks in our foreseeable future. The bits I have seen look impressive, even if I don’t know exactly who some of the characters are. I’m sure we’ll make plans to go at some point, although, if I understand it correctly, the Express thing you get from on-site stays do not apply here which makes it a little less appealing. Once the initial crowds (50% of which seem to be content creators) die away, it’ll be on our list, I’m sure.
If anyone goes in the near future I’d love to hear your take of course.
I shall go and do my chores, learn my songs, walk my dog, and watch my football. Enjoy your Sundays.
There’s some cosmic irony to us all losing an hour’s sleep on Mother’s Day. As if it commemorates the plight of most mothers to never properly sleep ever again. Here’s wishing all mums a lovely day and we’ll be taking mine out for tea later as tradition dictates.
Don’t worry, I can’t do another post this week about the relatively simple decision and task of changing our holiday plans. All we have left to do now is wait, anticipate and turn up at the airport which is a pretty different experience to your typical Florida trip as we all know. Oh wait, there is an app I may need to download at some point that gives me vital information about the resort so I need to make plans to reserve several minutes to do that.
I am still getting drip-fed small crumbs of planning activity for Emily’s trip, though. They are doing the full Disney and Universal experience, so there’s a lot to think about. With a couple of first-timers tagging along, Emily feels the familiar pressure of being the planner, organiser, and expert for everyone.
We were never planning to do any parks had we stuck with Florida, so I had taken my eye off any park-related news since our last trip. It seems there will be a lot of stuff closed when she goes, which is less than ideal. Stuff like Big Thunder is down for lengthy refurb, It’s Tough To Be A Bug is no more, Buzz I think is going down for a massive upgrade, Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer’s Island are gone, Astro Orbiter is not back until “late summer”, Hall Of Presidents is down, (hopefully for at least another four years) Test Track is still down, and I even think the Walt Disney Railroad is closed. I’m sure there are more than I’ve mentioned, too.
One positive, certainly for Emily, is the re-opening of Voyage Of The Little Mermaid. It will be called The Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure. That has been sorely missed.
Whilst it’s of course unavoidable, having so much unavailable at once is not ideal even for a regular visitor, but for first-timers who may or may not ever return, it’s a bit of a body blow. That’s without even thinking about the whole question of value for money for your now very expensive park ticket.
They will of course have a great time regardless but it seems WDW is in another massive period of change and regeneration which is good to see I suppose. Not all change in the parks turns out well (are you listening Stitch’s Great Escape?) but it is inevitable.
Speaking of change. Some things never do. I often document the constant parade of tradespeople wandering around our house fixing stuff. If you remember back far enough we had a leaky shower about a year ago that only got finally resolved about a month back when we had to rip the whole base out and fit a new one having exhausted all other options.
Shortly afterwards, the shower in our en suite started playing up, so our plumber, once he’d returned from his round-the-world cruise, which we had funded, popped back to sort that. We’d also spotted, due to us being freezing cold every night, that a couple of radiators downstairs were only getting warm across a three-inch slither at the top, and they needed replacing. So he came to do all that on the same day a couple of weeks ago.
All was well, we were warmer and they even looked nicer as we’d moved from the standard white things to the anthracite column ones to better suit the period of the house.
Anyway, yesterday I made a rare visit to our downstairs loo which is in a room we don’t use that often. As I opened the door and walked in there was an unusual and unwelcome squelch. I looked behind me to see perfect footprints in the carpet.
Panic set in as this was the same room which suffered badly from all our roofing woes a couple of years ago so I was initially desperately looking upwards for signs of water ingress. With nothing to see my attention turned to other sources of water and I soon discovered that the pipe leading into the new readiator was leaking pretty badly.
An hour of trying to vax up the water from the carpet and fruitlessly tinerking with a spanner and some connections on the radiator saw little difference and I resorted to piling towels near the source of the leak and trying to get hold of our plumber. Being 5pm on a Saturday I was not hopeful.
To his enormous credit, he was with us within the hour, made what turned out to be some simple adjustments, fixed the issue and left us dry again and with no charge for his services. I may gold plate him. Perhaps that was a perk of our titanium reward card recognising our levels of spend with him in recent times?
Anyway, today I shall be vaxxing furiously again, trying to turn the sponge on our floor back into a carpet.
Of course, you will know that upon discovering the issue, seeing the state of the carpet and becoming instantly furstrated at my inability to fix the problem, I was in a right strop threatening to either move or torch the house to the ground. Turns out that may have been another slight over reaction as ten minutes of a spanner in the right hands was all that was needed, aside from maybe a new carpet if it cannot be saved.
There’s a lesson there somewhere that I absolutely will not learn.
A week on from making the decision to change our holiday destination and it still feels like we made the right call. We’ve watched a lot of content about our new destination and we’re both excited about the trip now.
Our decision seemed to get endorsed a little during the week with the UK updating the travel advice for the US, albeit, just to be extra careful with your paperwork but I suspect those things aren’t done lightly.
I absolutely understand the sentiment that I see in many WDW Facebook groups that nothing has really changed, and lots of folks will, of course, still go ahead as planned, and I’m sure they will be fine. I think if we’d been at the peak of our (my) WDW obsession we would have made the same call.
I’m really hopeful that is the case, mainly because Emily is going in August and has no plans to change that. As worried as I may be about that, as Louise pointed out, she’s 30 in July and has been a gabillion times so I’m probably more concerned than I should be.
They are traveling with another couple who are first-timers and they have already had the lecture about how to behave at immigration. It always does depend on the agent you get as to how much interaction you could have but these days, with tales of them taking your phone to look for anti-Trump content, this is not the year to mess about it seems. If that was the case I would not make it past baggage reclaim.
Anyway, this year, for us, it didn’t feel right and let’s face it, we’re overdue a change in holiday destination so we’ve made the change and feel comfy with that decision.
Whilst it is very likely that those going to WDW will benefit from the Disney bubble effect and will not notice very much difference from any other year, it’s clear something is going on in the US that does not look great. Fingers crossed it results in nothing too nasty. We do very much want to return to our usual holiday destination and would rather not have to wait until the current administration is no more.
Since changing our booking, we’ve watched a couple of resort tours of Secrets Akumal on YouTube, and we’re delighted with our choice. It’s a bit posh, and one slightly annoying thing (the firstest of first-world problems) is that for many of the restaurants there, a slightly more formal dress code than I would normally like on holiday exists. This means that I shall have to wear long trousers on some evenings. Indeed, it means I shall have to acquire some long trousers suitable for warmer nights. There has never been the need to cover my knees of an evening in Florida and Mexico shall be denied the thrill of my legs after dark.
One thing that we are especially pleased with is the range and variety of cuisines from the restaurants at the resort. There are nine different eateries, including Italian, Mexican, French, Asian and your more general stuff. An additional plus is that there is no need to book a table, which seems odd for someone like me to say when I am usually online at 7am 90 days before a dining experience making sure we bag a table. But this is a different kind of trip and having to try and secure slots to eat that are not a buffet on a lie-down and do-nothing trip is one of the things that had put us off all all-inclusive trips previously.
From all the stuff we’ve watched the place never looks packed, there are sunbeds available with nobody up at 6am throwing towels down and you can walk up to any restaurant and be accommodated. Let’s hope it turns out that way.
The sunbed reservation thing is actively prevented it seems, with the staff insisting that even if you have beds and are going elsewhere for more than an hour or so, you take your stuff with you to allow others to use the beds.
Whilst everyone will of course make their own call on whether to travel or not, already it seems there has been a significant downturn in tourism to the US. Canada seems to be the main reason for this up until now. It’ll be interesting to see what all this costs the US in the end and you again have to wonder why the President would undertake anything to damage their own economy intentionally.
Whilst he will be OK of course due to the numerous ways in which his term will enrich him, it’s the folks who work in tourism who will be hit, hopefully resulting in fewer votes for his party in future, should there be any future elections!
Over dramatic? Probably. All I will say is that we’ve started re-watching the Handmaid’s Tale in preparation for the final season which should be out soon. Whilst we’ve always loved it, on this second time of watching there are elements more akin to documentary than drama.
And on that bombshell, I shall leave you to your Sundays.
Nobody will be more relieved than both of my readers to learn that a decision has been made for our July trip.
Yesterday we spent a good deal of time chatting about what we should do and it changed a lot during the day. Our first bit of thinking saw us considering sticking with Florida but having a completely non Disney adjacent trip and heading off down the coast, hopefully taking in Delray again and even getting as far as Key West.
I spent a while looking at options for that but soon discovered that with a flight in and out of Orlando, getting down to Key West and back up again in 14 days would mean a silly number of hotel hops and a lot of driving and in the end we discounted that as too much like hard work.
I even looked at internal flights to get us back up to Orlando from Key West on our last day but logisitically it was getting a bit silly and risky if that flight got delayed or cancelled too late in the day for us to drive up.
We then spent the afternoon looking at non US options, including places like the Dominican Republic and Mexico. We saw a few really nice top end hotels that we could do for the same budget as we had planned for Orlando and eventually stumbled across what has turned out to be our choice.
I have spent a couple of hours this morning contacting Virgin to cancel the flight and sucking up the associated fees and then going through everything else we had booked and cancelling or amending that. That included –
Airport Parking
Airport Lounge
Car Hire
Hotel
That took a while.
So America won’t be getting our hard earned and it feels like a subtle middle finger to the idiot in the Whitehouse to instead be giving them to Mexico.
We are going to Secrets Akumal, in Riviera Maya Mexico which of course 24 hours ago I had never heard of. I’ll share this video about it as this channel was the one we watched to get a good enough feel for the place to decide we should book.
I’ve been very brave and booked the flights seperately as all the packges were extortionate and involved indirect flights. So I managed to find direct flights with TUI from Manchester just by moving our dates back by one day from the 1st to the 2nd of July. We’ve been able to upgrade to Premium for a total price that is less than the refund we’ll be getting from Virgin. It also means I don’t need to rebook any airport lounge access as we’ll get that being TUI premium.
I’ve yet to book the accomodation as I want to scour the internet for the best possible deal, but a look at the obvious places shows I can book it at a price that makes it a fair bit cheaper than any of the packages offering flight and accomodation.
I’ve even booked a private transfer from Cancun airport to the resort and back again. It’s been a busy morning.
I do feel a bit sad cancelling Florida if I am honest. It wasn’t helped that literally just after we’d agreed to make this change yesterday I flicked the TV on and found Jayne McDonald doing a programme on Channel 5 about Key West and all the places in Southern Florida we had considered earlier that day. Like some weird fever dream she ended the programme by inexplicably singing Kids in America by Kim Wilde which sort of snapped me out of it, but I couldn’t escape the gutteral yearnings to stick with our original booking.
But I suppose a change is a good as a rest and we are nothing if not overdue a change in destination. I think we have sort of decided that our next Florida trip will be one that takes in the South of the state, but not with an Orlando flight making it hard to manage.
So, rightly or wrongly we’ve bitten the bullet and I’m happy with the decision, mostly, as it does feel strange and sad not to be heading to our usual haunts.
If by any chance anyone has stayed at this place do let me know your thoughts unless it was rubbish and then probably don’t as I can’t take the stress of having to unpick another holiday. At least we now get to see just how realistic the Mexico pavilion in Epcot really is. It’ll be 100% accurate I would imagine, just as the UK one is!
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