Sticking In A Sloth?

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

There are recurring themes in my blogging, which is another way of saying that I probably write the same blog post roughly every six weeks. Today’s theme is that I don’t really have time to write a blog this week, but such is my tragic obsessive nature that I sit here writing a blog to let you know that I don’t have time to write one. As I type I can see the bits of paint on my hands that I haven’t quite got rid of after painting various things in the bathroom a few minutes ago. If a pre-Monday isn’t bad enough, you only have to add DIY to it to make it a whole lot worse.

Add to that we have guests coming for tea (poor people’s dinner) in the form of Louise’s Mum and Rebecca and Tom and I have to somehow cram in watching a football match and it’s a marvel I’m not having a nervous breakdown.

The entire weekend has been somewhat scuppered by a stupidly late night on Friday when I was out being a rock and roll demi-God with Mustard. We played a new venue in Rochdale and didn’t come off stage (yes, there was even a stage) until just after 1am. With packing up and driving home that was a 3am bed time and my aged ravaged body has been playing catch up ever since. I have a good sense now of what it feels like to live to be a hundred years old.

Last week was so busy that I didn’t do ANY holiday planning at all….oh no wait, that’s a lie. Emily and I had a text conversation (despite sitting across from each other at work) about something new we may be considering adding to our stupidly full plan. Wild Florida is in our thoughts, mainly as Emily is obsessed with sloths and they have a sloth encounter amongst many other things which look like a good day out.

We haven’t had time to say it is absolutely locked and loaded into our plan as it may just be an activity too far, but it does look good. If anyone has been I would really appreciate your views and experiences.

So with apologies for what is a very brief post today (the game is about to kick off!) I shall leave you to enjoy your Sunday.

Till the next time…..

Cram Packed Planning

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

Thanks for your votes and thoughts last week. For those interested, it seems we are a trusting bunch around these parts…

a-poll

How productive was your week? I had a good one and got lots done, despite being at work for far too much of it.

As soon as we booked our next trip I added calendar reminders to my work diary on the days we could book the ADRs we wanted. That way, nothing silly like work would make me forget to get those sorted asap. Last week saw three of those reminders pop up and I snaffled them all with great gusto. Who he is and why there was a magician at work I don’t know?

We’re only on Disney property for four nights, so four ADRs seems an awful lot for someone who keeps saying they will be eating off site mainly. Whichever idiot planned to only have four nights on site at WDW is now desperately trying to cram in all the stuff we need to do and it may not be pretty. For example, our only day in Epcot (which is at least a two-day park) is the day we leave Siesta Key and check in at the Beach Club. So half the day, or at least half the morning will be taken up traveling back and checking in etc, so we won’t get into the park until close to lunchtime I think. I am planning on setting fire to the Siesta Key rental in the early hours of that Saturday morning just to make sure we’re all up and out nice and early though.

To make matters worse one of our must do ADRs (Sanaa) had to be on that day, so we’ll need to leave the park in the late afternoon to allow getting ready time (seven minutes for me, a couple of hours for Louise) to get to our reservation in time. It’s an early one as I want us back into Epcot before 9pm to catch Reflections. That may seem tiring but hey, we’ve just done a week at the beach, so be prepared to use up all that saved energy in the next few days.

So with only a few hours for such a large park I was getting a little concerned. At Emily’s suggestion I checked to see if Epcot had Extra Magic Hours that night, with us being on-site superstars and all that but alas it did not. However, I did see that Epcot has EMH the very next night. Well, that works nicely as we are at Animal Kingdom that day, which closes early at 7pm. So once done there, having eaten at Yak and Yeti (an ADR success from this week) we can head back “home” to the Beach Club, and stroll on into Epcot for another couple of hours until 11pm. If our legs can carry us, heck, we can even do Jellyrolls after that if we want to. It’s on our doorstop!

Sure we have to be up nice and early the next day to get to Hollywood Studios for another twelve hour park day but we have a whole nine hours of sitting down to do on the plane home a few days later so it’s all good.

Our final ADR is becoming a little bit of a tradition. Trail’s End is a nice way to break up our final day which of course is always at Magic Kingdom. A lovely boat ride over to the campgrounds, an all you can eat buffet that will threaten to sink that same boat on the way back in to the park just as the sun sets. That’s always a favourite and magical time for me and I love the parks at that time.

In theory we could do a park on the day we fly home but usually we spend that shopping for all those gifts we saw on day two and said something like “we’re here for ages, we’ll get it later” and then have to panic and run around in the final hours trying to remember where we saw it. That and eating. Speaking of which, I posted a few weeks ago about the Toothsome place at City walk.  I’ve also posted recently about WDW and Universal being good for us tourists as they have to compete. Well, as if I knew what I was talking about, did anyone see the extreme milkshakes that are on the way at the new Planet Hollywood place?

Image credit to Inside the Magic
Image credit to Inside the Magic

Yes, one has a full slice of cake on top, what of it?

The problem now is of course, I have to shoe horn these buggers into my plan too. I’m not sure what will kill me first, the calories or the stress of planning.

Till the next time…..

What Would You Wish For?

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

Who’d want to be a Disney Imagineer eh? Well, me for a start. For location alone it’s in my all time top four dream jobs just behind millionaire, musician and best selling author. As good as the job seems they and in turn Disney will, in my view, always be between rocks and hard places when it comes to developing the rides and attractions. The challenge of keeping up with the noisy neighbours at Universal, introducing new stuff to keep folks coming back as well as retaining the magic and memories that everyone is so attached to is a delicate balance to maintain.

I will personally never forgive the Imagineers responsible for Stich’s Great Escape, but that’s one aberration in a long line of success.

This quandry was brought to mind this week when I saw a rumour posted into my Facebook timeline (thanks Val Ramsey!). The article suggested that Disney were testing a new fireworks show at the Magic Kingdom, postulating that this may be to replace Wishes.

Now, that is just a guess and is a million miles from confirmed. They could just be testing the fireworks for the Christmas stuff they do which will be starting soon, but a new fireworks show could make some sense.

  1. There is currently no night-time parade at MK and they need to announce one for when the Halloween and Christmas parades finish. A new set of fireworks could fit into that.
  2. Wishes has been around for a good while now and it could be due a refresh.

Now something like this is going to draw mixed reactions from the Disney faithful. For some, like Emily, their reaction is horror and instant mourning for something that hasn’t yet died. For Emily, Wishes is all she has known so perhaps the reluctance for change is understandable. For others of course there’s excitement and anticipation for what may be to come. I honesty can’t remember what came before Wishes but I know I will have seen it and as sad as it may be for Wishes to be retired, I do wonder what the next generation of fireworks show may look like. I’d expect Disney to up the ante though with technology now being available that wasn’t when Wishes came along.

There have also been rumours that Paint The Night will come to the Magic Kingdom so of course nobody really knows, unless you’re the boss at Magic Kingdom. I guess we’ll find out soon enough. Some folks have even been bold enough to suggest that there will not be a replacement parade at all. Claims that cost cutting will be at the root of this drastic action. Personally, I cannot see that at all. The Magic Kingdom and parades are synonymous, and I just can’t contemplate that Disney would be so silly as to break that tradition.

Whatever happens I’m confident enough to trust that Disney will get it right. The nighttime activities at MK are a show piece event and they have to maintain a standard so that it will mesmerise and entertain their audience, as well of course, making sure it makes a good proportion of them cry, or maybe that’s just Emily?

In twenty years or so, when some other idiot is blogging about Disney changing whatever does or doesn’t come next, there will be a similarly split reaction I’m sure and I just hope I’m still going there to see whatever it is.

So, time for your thoughts, what do you want Disney to do?

Till the next time…..

What Are You Eating Next April?

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

Our holiday started today. I know that the countdown flew by and I didn’t celebrate the single digit dance and all that, but that’s because of course we aren’t really at that stage. But, crucially today I booked our first ADR. I now know where I’ll be eating dinner on the 14th of April 2017.

Earlier today I booted up the My Disney Experience app and did the deed. It is so easy these days to organise stuff like this and I’m all for it. If there is ever an option to do something online, I’m all over it, so Disney’s move into web and app based bookings suits me completely.

However, there is a very small part of me which misses the butterflies in the stomach feeling of calling Disney to make your reservations. Stood in a dank and dreary Bolton, talking to some ray of sunshine in Florida somehow always seemed to cheer me up. The hold music alone had the power to transport my mind to happier and sunnier places but then talking to a Cast Member who couldn’t pronounce my name and wished me a magical day was a special treat to behold.

Anyway, the booking I made for Friday the 14th of April 2017 at 8:15pm was at ‘Ohanas. It’s been a long, long time since we ate there. The beauty of chronicling all our trips over the years is that I know exactly when it was…

image085

Yep, I know for sure that it wasn’t the 1/3/2002 as it says on that photo. That was caused by me replacing the batteries in my digital camera and all the dates being reset. So every photo from that holiday has the wrong date on it. Sigh….The actual date of our last dinner there was Saturday the 16th of August 2003.  The girls would have been eight and six at the time and I also know we ate at 6.30pm. I knew there would be at least one good reason for writing up every single trip in ludicrous detail.

Here is my detailed and thought through review of the whole experience…

Our server was very good and very friendly to the kids, who of course won’t shut up at home, but become mute when other people talk to them.

The starters were lovely, and like the pig I am, I ate far too much of them so I was full by the time the meat arrived. The girls had a hot dog as they are really cosmopolitan and exotic.

Louise had a back scratcher cocktail from the bar, and I had a lovely Diet Coke! 

The meal was very nice indeed. I think maybe we were a little tired at this point and didn’t get the most out of it. $75 was fair enough I thought as Louise’s drink was $8! 

We submitted to exhaustion at 8.00 and we drove home and were all in bed for 9.15.

I suspect we’ll be paying a little more than $75 this time around, down to Brexit and the fact that Emily can now also drink those cocktails. Crazyness!

So one ADR down and not may more to go. Our on-site dining experiences are select and few and far between. To be honest the motivation for booking ‘Ohana was Emily spotting this dessert on some blog or other…

Image credit Touringplans.com
Image credit Touringplans.com

It is Banana Bread Pudding and it will be in my belly on April the 14th. What will you be eating then?

We just have ADRs for Sanaa and Trail’s End to add on for later in our trip and the rest of our eating will be done off site, in my comfy shorts.

I did have a mild panic this week after reading some stuff on the internet about Easter being insanely busy. Not that we can change it now, as it was hard enough to do that once. I think on reflection that we should be OK. The first five days we are there is the start of the traditional Easter school holidays but we have Front of Line and five days to get around two parks so that should be fine. Then we spend a week away from Orlando at Siesta Key and only head back to the parks as everyone else (hopefully) travels back home for the start of school.

Even if the parks at WDW are very busy we’ll just FastPass the stuff we absolutely want to do and if we can’t do the odd ride, well, we’ve done them all before of course, and if you ask me when, I could probably look that up too! We can always go and drink cocktails somewhere instead!!

Till the next time……

Tonight Matthew, I’m Going To Be a Whinger….

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

It has been a music filled week, with a band rehearsal on Monday, a trip to a gig on Tuesday and a gig of our own on Friday. I have indeed had the music in me this week.

The gig we watched on Tuesday was Level 42 at the Lowry and it was superb. I know they won’t be everyone’s cup of tea but the level of musicianship is incredible. Louise came to see them for the first time ever and was impressed with the quality of the whole thing. Before the gig we also had an all you can eat Chinese buffet so it would take a pretty horrendous gig to bring me down from that high to be honest, but there was no danger of that.

If you fancy a watch of what we saw here’s a song from the night. Not my video by the way so thank you to whoever filmed it and put it up on You Tube.

The gig of our own on Friday was our first with our new singer and just to make that transition more interesting we have changed the majority of the set too. The venue wasn’t quite as grand as The Lowry in which we enjoyed Level 42, but any performance with a load of new stuff to think about reminds you what the colour of adrenaline is.

It went well. Very well in fact, considering it was a first time through that set so we were pleased.

The other thing which seems to have dominated my thoughts was of course Hurricane Matthew. Naturally, most of my social media feeds are dominated by Florida content so it was inevitable that I would see a lot about it. With the current state of the UK, living overseas has been even more appealing recently and of course my first destination of choice would be the sunshine state. Aside from the recent threat of Trump getting elected there aren’t many things which have ever put me off living in the US and specifically Florida, but the threat of these severe weather events is one.

We have been incredibly lucky over the years considering that we’ve nearly always holidayed in peak hurricane season. Sure, we’ve had some rain and the odd impressive storm but our timing has been impeccable in avoiding anything major. I do remember missing Charlie by one day and turning up at Cypress Pointe to see a chuck of it not where it should be. In fact during that trip we saw one of the most impressive and scary storms we’ve ever had in Florida. I think it might have been that same year that we were also the last flight out of the airport before it was closed due to an incoming hurricane/tropical storm.

You don’t mess with this stuff!

With this in mind I was dismayed at various points last week to see lots of questions and more worryingly moans going on in the lead up to Matthew arriving about what I would politely call first world problems. Nobody has to tell me how important these holidays are and how much time effort and money goes into them but when an entire coast is being evacuated the fact that you’re going to miss your Be Our Guest reservation doesn’t register on anyone’s give-a-shit-ometer. Complaining that it was going to be hard to entertain two small kids during the curfew or not getting a refund for your Not So Scary ticket immediately are other examples which make you a knob.

I have to be careful here as the last time I mentioned a mild opinion on these Facebook groups about Orlando and WDW, I was promptly banned from one of them for having thoughts on my own blog that *might* have been about that one group, despite me never having posted in it. The internet is an odd place sometimes. Typically when any internet forum or group gets to a critical mass the moderators can have a tough time keeping their fingers away from the ban button. After this post I may find myself losing my broadband provider and eligibility for an ESTA for offering my own opinion on my own blog about no Facebook group in particular.

As I say, I do understand how gutting it can be to spend all that time planning and saving, having almost each moment planned in fine detail only to have some world event or force of nature spoil things. When shit goes down on the scale we saw last week, I’m afraid you suck it up, count your blessings and move on.

It was good to see Matthew move off the coast a little and give most parts of Florida an easier time than predicted but there has still been some horrendous damage and even deaths in Florida which is just awful. I can’t even begin to comment on the horrors seen in Haiti. Those poor people…..

So if you pissed and moaned anywhere about anything other than serious damage to your property or injury to a loved on, then shame on you. If I haven’t been banned from all of the internet for daring to have an opinion and still have access to my own blog next week I hope for cheerier stuff to blog about.

It’s great to see Florida almost back to normal since and if you’re over there I hope you can pick up your lives. holidays and anything else that was put on hold for a while.

Till the next time…..

Roy, Joy and a Significant Birthday

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

What were you doing forty-five years ago? Somewhere on former swamp land in Florida a significant event was happening which would affect mine and a lot of your lives in a way which nobody could have predicted.

A quiet, proud man stood next to a five foot tall mouse and declared the Magic Kingdom open for business to delight, entertain and enchant visitors from all over the world. At about the same time I was probably only concerned with where my next meal was coming from and soiling myself on a regular basis. In both cases, not much has changed.

Many words have been written I’m sure to commemorate the 45th birthday of what is now Walt Disney World Resort, so I’m not sure I have much to add other than my personal thoughts and reflections. The place holds a large part of my heart and a significant chunk of my earnings and I suspect that will always be the case. Looking at the crowds there yesterday, as much as I love it, I’m not sure I would have liked to have been there to be honest, but I celebrate the event in my own way nonetheless.

I have documented many times that my love affair with the place started way back in 1980 when hair was long, shorts were short and we had no idea what we are doing.

Magic Kingdom 1980
And so it begins….

The fact that I am holding a park map demonstrates our rookie status during that first visit. It’s crazy now to think that the place had only been open for nine years then. My memory may be playing tricks on me but I think at that time Epcot Center was under construction, but we didn’t know what that meant at the time.

Since that first time I have been more times than I can remember and loved every single visit. I’ve tried and failed on many occasions to try to capture my feelings about the place and what it means to me and my family so I’m not going to try again now. Nostalgia, outstanding service, the weather, the food and down right great family entertainment with endless experiences are some of the words I might use if I were trying, but I’m not so I won’t.

Having not been on it’s hallowed ground for over twelve months now the pain and longing is real and something doesn’t feel quite right if I’m honest. It’s like not seeing one of your family for a long time I suppose. A few years ago we were lucky enough to do the Keys to the Kingdom Tour, which I would recommend to anyone with an interest in and/or a love for the place. I won’t do any spoilers about the content, other than to say that it gave me an absolute respect and admiration for a chap called Disney, and it wasn’t Walt.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Walt was a visionary, an inspiration and the absolute driving force behind what is now a mammoth empire. I can watch the film about his life in One Man’s Dream endlessly, but the person that came out of that tour with my ever lasting admiration was Roy Disney, his brother. Not only did he look after Walt in their early years but he was the chap who made Walt’s dreams and plans into a reality. He was the money man, somehow raising the funds needed for Walt’s visions time and time again. He was the steady Eddie who did the boring practical stuff that Walt did not have the time or skills to do.

When Walt passed away, sadly before the Florida project was complete, it was Roy, who despite his grief and own poor health took on the whole project, called the place Walt Disney World, and stood next to Walt’s creation on the 1st of October 1971 and declared it open. He did not like that limelight and it took an enormous effort to do that. It wasn’t that long after the Florida project was complete in December of that year that Roy passed away. It was as if he kept himself going just long enough to see his brother’s ultimate dream come true.

Thanks Roy!
Thanks Roy!

If it were half as catchy, in my view it should be called Walt and Roy Disney’s Resort, or the Disney Brother’s Resort, but it isn’t and I think it says a lot about Roy that he ensured it carried his brother’s name as it does.

So today I tip my hat to Roy as without him, this thing which takes up far too much of my money and thoughts would not be what it is. It may not exist at all. I hope he and his brother are looking down and loving the legacy of joy and happiness their combined efforts continue to give to millions of people.

Till the next time….

Tired & Toothsome.

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

Is it possible to have a duvet day from your own blog? I’m a bit tired today as yesterday was my company’s annual kick off event. It’s where we all get together at a poshish venue to talk about some business stuff and then have a meal and a drinkie. These days it has to be a heck of a hotel as there are 1,000 employees now and of course this year Emily came to her first one since joining the ranks a few months ago.

It’s always a busy time leading up to it, preparing presentations and videos for the day so it’s always a nice relief to have to have it done. We have driven back up from Birmingham this morning, only stopping to get Emily her hangover reducing McDonalds.

As we grow in size and struggle to find venues large enough to house us, I will of course be suggesting that we all go to those conference venues that will definitely be big enough…you know like the Swan and Dolphin at WDW. I am not too hopeful that the already enormous budget for these things would stretch to that.

There are a lot of us though…

kick-off

 

Although I didn’t really drink, today I have that “lost voice” feeling after hours of shouting above very loud music and having managed about three hours sleep in an unfamiliar bed with crap pillows, I am feeling it to be honest. I’m not cut out for these late nights and galavanting at my advanced years.

In more important news, we are now within one month of being able to make ADRs for our time at The Beach Club. It is these small milestones that help to fool me into thinking this holiday is going to actually happen. It seems so far away. We only have a couple of reservations we want to make but you know that feeling of pressure as the time comes near, hoping you can secure that meal upon which your day and maybe entire plan depend upon? No? Just me…OK.

I see that the Toothsome place at Universal officially opened this week too, after a few weeks of soft opening. This is good as it means they will be very proficient in making those calorific creations before we arrive. I want my coronary thrombosis to be caused by food of the highest quality.

This opening is a great example of why Universal and Disney are good for each other. Well, they are good for us punters. You could see how someone might have to choose between doing Beaches & Cream for their ice cream related death sentence or this new place. Indeed, we have sacrificed Beaches from our plan as we definitely want to try Toothsome and now just can’t squeeze Beaches in. As we’ve done it a few times, it was an easy choice. So when one of Universal or Disney open a new thing, it keeps the other on their toes. How will Disney respond?

Now, whether you get your milk shake off of Disney or Universal is no big deal, but, on a larger scale, you could argue that Disney not getting the Potter park franchise a few years ago caused them to up their game and they came back big with the Star Wars purchase and the plan to basically reinvent Hollywood Studios based on that (and Pixar). Avatar Land at Animal Kingdom may make little sense today with the film almost forgotten, but with more films in the barrel, let’s hope that pans our for them. The Star Wars franchise looks a good bet to compete with the Potter stuff at Universal, as there are many, many new films planned and of course for now there seems little chance of new Harry Potter films. In theory, younger kids of the next few years will see Star Wars as more current and relevant with new films coming out every couple of years. Universal no doubt have something up their sleeve too.

So in this way, us customers get fantastic, cutting edge attractions from both as they compete for our dollar. Our only issue is how the hell do we fit it all in? Well, I for one obsess about my planning for months on end and bore my blog readers with every thought and detail. You?

 

Till the next time…..

Hair Today…..

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

There has been very little in the way of Disney thinking and planning this week. Work has been stupidly hectic. I can never say there has been no holiday thinking and planning as even when at my busiest my subconscious is working on things without my knowledge. I will be processing that thing I saw, that restaurant I heard about or that refurb news that came out and somehow applying that to my plans.

Anyway, it was all subconscious last week and remarkably the plan has not been touched or changed since the addition of The Cheesecake Factory.

A lovely thing happened this week though. One of my daughters proved, as they tend to do on a regular basis, that they are nicer people than I.  For years now Emily has had very long hair. Clearly it’s something she has inherited from me. Fancying a change she decided to get rid of a lot of it, but in doing so, decided to donate it to The Little Princess Trust, who provide real hair wigs to boys and girls across the UK and Ireland that have sadly lost their own hair through cancer treatment.

emily-long-hair

As you can see there was a lot to go at and she had around thirteen inches lopped off to send to the charity. This still left her with shoulder length hair, which frankly is just showing off and is absolutely not fair.

emily-short-hair

She’s had long hair for such a long time that there was a fear it would be a mentally scarring experience but she says she feels much better for it and it may help her to look a little more like her 21 years…..or maybe not! 🙂

It’s stuff like this, along with when I watch Rebecca deal with small kids in such a warm, friendly and loving way that I can almost convince myself I had a hand in raising two humans who are the making the world a better place. They balance out my grumpy, selfish, curmudgeonly traits to some extent allowing me to remain that way with less guilt.

Rebecca and her boyfriend Tom had a week off work last week and drove down to Thorpe Park for a couple of days. Knowing they were driving that far, and with the newly passed Rebecca threatening to do most of the driving, did nothing for my stress levels, but as it turned out Tom drove whilst Rebecca snapchatted, so the worry was for naught.

They had a great time and returned to regale us with tales of many excellent rides. They got a great deal, with two day’s park tickets and a night in a hotel for £100! Sure, a hot dog was nearly £8, but that is to be expected.

It’s been a while since I gave you an update on my pop career, so you can have some now. We (Mustard) are deep in rehearsals for our return from a mini hiatus following the departure of our singer and the recruitment of another. It’s going very well and we can’t wait to get back at it. We have our first live outing with this line up next week with gigs lined up beyond that to the end of the year. As and when I get any video worthy of sharing I shall and you can marvel at my tight leather pants and nipple rings.

In other news, Louise and I have done series 2 of Narcos over the last week or so and loved it. We now know several rude words in Colombian so it was also educational. I recommend it if you are searching for your next binge watch bonanza. See, I told you last week had been busy!!

For now, I may just cast my eye over the holiday plan and see if anything has peculated from my subconscious. I’m sure there’s room for more food if I really try…

Till the next time……

Cheese? Cake?

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

It’s been an upsetting week. I was back at work and to make matters worse I had to spend a couple of days away from home down in Marlow. It’s a lovely place don’t get me wrong, but a 4am start and lots of driving on top of actually having to work as well, just don’t make for a restful week.

This is a mere bagatelle however when compared to the horrors of the first cold mornings and darker evenings when I haven’t had a summer holiday. The weather is yet to turn properly of course but there has been enough of a chill in the air, certainly this morning, to suggest what is on the way.

I think it is safe to say that both Louise and I are feeling the pain now and all the signs are that it is going to be a long winter…..sort of Game of Thrones style. Winter is indeed coming and not only have I not eaten hundreds of thousands of calories in the sunshine state, but the bright white trainer industry in the UK is suffering significantly as I have not invested in their wares as I normally would have. It’s a lose, lose scenario.

Still, our new floor, kitchen, windows and decorating look nice, so I feel much better.  -_-

The hardest blow this week however was delivered by text. Following on from my lengthy and detailed blog a couple of weeks ago detailing exactly how you should plan a holiday and at the same time demonstrating how you shouldn’t, if you have any sort of actual life, you will be familiar with my struggle to fit in all the activities meals we want to into the short time we are there. I have already added a couple of extra places which is going to mean eating when we’re not hungry, but on Friday Emily sent me this image.

cheesecake

That my friends is the counter at The Cheesecake Factory. Why was I so upset about receiving this picture? Well, I couldn’t fit it into our plan and I wanted to…a lot. Emily and I discussed at more length than any rational human beings should how we might force it into our plan and bellies but we couldn’t come up with anything that I thought could work without us spending the holiday like this…

again!

I did not admit defeat. Oh no, you don’t get a body like mine by throwing in the towel just because you’re already planning to eat more meals than a small town in just over two weeks.

If the image of all those cheesecakes isn’t enough of an explanation as to why it must be done, then you check out their full menu here.  There are two, yes two full pages of their menu dedicated to cheesecake…and I make no apologies for sharing all of them here….

ORIGINAL
The One that Started it All!
Our Famous Creamy Cheesecake with a Graham Cracker Crust and Sour Cream Topping
FRESH STRAWBERRY
The Original Topped with Glazed Fresh Strawberries. Our Most Popular Flavor for over 35 Years!
CHOCOLATE HAZELNUT CRUNCH CHEESECAKE
Chocolate Hazelnut Cheesecake Topped with Hazelnut Crunch and Nutella®
SALTED CARAMEL CHEESECAKE
Caramel Cheesecake and Creamy Caramel Mousse on a Blonde Brownie all Topped with Salted Caramel
TOASTED MARSHMALLOW S’MORES GALORE™
Hershey’s® Cheesecake Topped with Housemade Marshmallow and Honey Maid® Graham Crackers
®
DREAM EXTREME CHEESECAKE
Creamy Cheesecake Layered with Oreo® Cookies, Topped with Oreo® Cookie Mousse and Chocolate Icing
LEMON MERINGUE CHEESECAKE
Lemon Cream Cheesecake Topped with Layers of Lemon Mousse and Meringue
ADAM’S PEANUT BUTTER CUP FUDGE RIPPLE
Creamy Cheesecake Swirled with Caramel, Peanut Butter, Butterfinger
®
and Reese’s
®
Peanut Butter Cups
GODIVA®
CHOCOLATE CHEESECAKE
Flourless Godiva® Chocolate Cake, Topped with Godiva® Chocolate Cheesecake and Chocolate Mousse
ULTIMATE RED VELVET CAKE CHEESECAKE™
Layers of Red Velvet Cake and Cheesecake Covered in Cream Cheese Frosting. Finished with White Chocolate
REESE’S® PEANUT BUTTER CHOCOLATE CAKE CHEESECAKE
Reese’s
® Peanut Butter Cups in Our Original Cheesecake with Layers of Delicious Fudge Cake and Caramel
30th ANNIVERSARY CHOCOLATE CAKE CHEESECAKE
Layers of Our Original Cheesecake, Fudge Cake and Chocolate Truffle Cream
DULCE DE LECHE CARAMEL CHEESECAKE
Caramel Cheesecake Topped with Caramel Mousse and Almond Brickle on a Vanilla Crust
WHITE CHOCOLATE RASPBERRY TRUFFLE®
Creamy Cheesecake Swirled with White Chocolate and Raspberry
CHRIS’ OUTRAGEOUS CHEESECAKE™
Chocolate Chip Coconut Cheesecake with Layers of Chocolate Cake, Brownie and Coconut Pecan Frosting
MANGO KEY LIME CHEESECAKE
Topped with Mango Mousse on a Vanilla Coconut Macaroon Crust
FRESH BANANA CREAM CHEESECAKE
Banana Cream Cheesecake Topped with Bavarian Cream and Fresh Sliced Banana
WHITE CHOCOLATE CARAMEL MACADAMIA NUT CHEESECAKE
White Chocolate Chunk Cheesecake Swirled with Macadamia Nuts and Caramel on a Blonde Brownie Crust
LEMON RASPBERRY CREAM CHEESECAKE
Raspberry-Vanilla Cake, Creamy Lemon Cheesecake, Raspberry Lady Fingers and Lemon Mousse
TIRAMISU CHEESECAKE
Our Wonderful Cheesecake and Tiramisu Combined into one Amazing Dessert!
CHOCOLATE MOUSSE CHEESECAKE
Silky Chocolate Cheesecake Topped with a Layer of Belgian Chocolate Mousse
VANILLA BEAN CHEESECAKE
Creamy Vanilla Bean Cheesecake, Topped with Vanilla Mousse and Whipped Cream
CHOCOLATE TUXEDO CREAM® CHEESECAKE
Layers of Our Fudge Cake, Chocolate Cheesecake, Vanilla Mascarpone Mousse and Chocolate
KAHLUA® COCOA COFFEE CHEESECAKE
A Rich Brownie, Topped with Kahlua® Cheesecake, Creamy Chocolate Mousse and Chocolate Ganache

HERSHEY’S®
CHOCOLATE BAR CHEESECAKE
Hershey’s® Cheesecake Between Moist Chocolate Cake with Creamy Chocolate Frosting and Chocolate Chips
CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE-DOUGH CHEESECAKE
Creamy Cheesecake Loaded with Our Chocolate Chip Cookie-Dough and Walnuts
DUTCH APPLE CARAMEL STREUSEL
Our Original Cheesecake, Baked Apples, Caramel and Brown Sugar Cinnamon Walnut Streusel
KEY LIME CHEESECAKE
Key Lime Pie in a Cheesecake! Deliciously Tart and Creamy on a Vanilla Crumb Crust
LOW CARB CHEESECAKE
Smooth and Creamy with a Graham-Walnut Crust
LOW CARB CHEESECAKE WITH STRAWBERRIES
Graham-Walnut Crust with Fresh Strawberries and Whipped Cream
CARAMEL PECAN TURTLE CHEESECAKE
Pecan Brownie and Caramel-Fudge Swirl Cheesecake, Topped with Caramel Turtle Pecans and Chocolate
SNICKERS®
BAR CHUNKS AND CHEESECAKE
Creamy Cheesecake Topped with Snickers® Bar, Fudge and Caramel
CRAIG’S CRAZY CARROT CAKE CHEESECAKE
Carrot Cake and Cheesecake Swirled Together, Topped with Cream Cheese Icing and Roasted Almonds
CHERRY CHEESECAKE
A Classic! The Original Topped with Cherry Preserves
PUMPKIN & PUMPKIN PECAN
World Famous! Available From September
Cheesecake from 6.95 to 7.95
A La Mode 1.95 Extra with Hot Fudge 1.95 Extra

It will take me until next April to choose which one (or two) I will have.

You may realise whilst looking at the link to their full menu how I have solved this tricky problem. You didn’t doubt for one second that I would find a way did you? Yes, there is a Cheesecake Factory close to Siesta Key. Our time in Orlando may be short but this will not keep me from life threatening amounts of calories. We are saved, and it now sits proudly in the plan like the ticking time bomb those calories will become within my fast hardening arteries.

I’m calling that a successful week after all!

Till the next time…

Gaston Toys With My Emulsions

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

That plan that I outlined last week in all its gloriously detailed sadness…..well, it won’t surprise you to learn it has changed a little. That’s a good thing though. It isn’t yet at the “laminated” stage and the tweaks I’ve made were a direct result of some great information and suggestions following last week’s post.

I shall now re-type the whole thing including those changes….no, don’t worry, I’ll spare you that.  To summarise the tweaks, I have somehow managed to fit in another meal, on the day we move from Universal to Siesta Key. Once we have checked out we will breakfast at Hash House a Go Go (thanks Alison). The menu looks awesome and as we can’t check in until mid afternoon we can indulge in a huge breakfast and maybe do a spot of shopping before driving out to the coast.

I also got a couple of suggestions for eateries close to Siesta Key (Thanks Dawn) which we will try to get to too. Another tip was to go to the Outback on Kirkman Road on our first night, rather than I Drive, as it will be closer to Universal (Thanks Ian)…so that’s been tweaked…in fact just read the comments from last week to see all the great info I was given. Thanks to everyone for your input, it is very much appreciated.

I also juggled our Sanaa meal to another day. With just four days to do four parks at WDW, it will take some particularly cunning planing to make sure we get to do the stuff we want to without killing everyone with exhaustion. Originally we were doing Sanaa on our Animal Kingdom day, like this….

Day Fourteen

 Hangovers permitting, an earlyish start to get to Animal Kingdom and hopefully we will have enough stamina to make it all the way to the new night-time stuff too. Either way, Louise, Emily and I will all want to ride Everest in the dark.

 We always seem to end up having lunch at Yak & Yeti, hopefully leaving enough room for a late dinner at Sanaa, ADR permitting. The bread starter thing is a thing of beauty and delight.

 

but that might have proved tricky as we want to stay at DAK to see the new Jungle Book thing at night and ride Everest in the dark. So now, Sanaa will be done on the first night at WDW instead, when we will be arriving from Siesta Key, doing some Epcot Fastpasses and checking in. The idea is to get to Orlando some time around 10.30am, do some rides till late afternoon, shower and change before a 6.30pm ish ADR at Sanaa before heading back to Epcot for ROE followed by Jellyrolls. Clockwork, right?

I did have Beaches & Cream down for dinner that Epcot day night, but that is now on the “if we get chance list”. We’ve done it a lot over the years and we may just have to pop in for an ice cream whilst we are staying at the Beach Club. These are tough calls I’m making here.

Our Animal Kingdom day will probably see us do a large later lunch at Yak & Yeti, or even dinner…we love it there and it means we don’t need to leave the park.

I’ve had time to percolate these things as I have been off this week. It was my birthday, there was some decorating to do and I just needed not to be working for a few days after a very busy period. Usually, or at least more often than not in recent years, I am not in the UK for my birthday. It has just worked that way as we had to travel in the school holidays, and the last two weeks of August were (I think) the quietest in the parks with the US schools back in session.

Fortunately though, this year we are not in Florida. Our decision was particularly prescient as those poor unfortunate souls unlucky enough to be in the happiest place on earth are all getting wet and stuff with a couple of storms over Orlando. I have kept a casual eye on Gaston and Hermine and as far as I can make out, there’s hopefully no major damage or danger going on, just a lot of rain (apologies if there was any of the former, I’m not fully up to speed) so that would clearly have ruined our whole trip wouldn’t it? It’s best we didn’t go…..right? Right!

Instead, I have worked my nuts off for two days straight finishing off the decorating of our dining room that Louise had already spent many days on. Our dining room isn’t that big but I seem to have glossed the equivalent of the surface area of the moon. Never under-estimate how much white crap you have in one of your rooms….it goes on forever!!! As for the emulsion involved….suffice to say I am an emulsional wreck.

So in summary, the plan is tweaked, we are “lucky” not to have to endure Florida at the moment as it is a bit wet and my body is broken from decorating.

Till the next time….

Blow By Blow….

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

Now that all the changes and faffing are done (hopefully) and the dust has settled on all the re-arranging of stuff for our next holiday, I thought I’d share our my (weirdly over thought and scarily detailed) plans with you for our trip even though it’s not until next April. Yes, I know that’s a long way away, but sharing this stuff makes the trip seem closer and reality a little further away, plus, with your combined expertise and knowledge, dear reader, you can point out any glaring errors or omissions. Your opinions are more than welcome, as long as I agree with them, otherwise you’ll just get yourself banned!!  That’s how the internet works, right?

This is all still pretty loose. Well, when I say loose, I of course know where we are eating most days and which parks we’ll be in for the Orlando time, but loose as in each second is not yet accounted for. It is bound to change a few times between now and departure date as I see and remember stuff we have to do….

Day One

We fly out of Manchester courtesy of Mr Branson at around 12.45. I have yet to experience a flight that actually left the ground at the time advertised so let’s say we’ll be airborne sometime in the early afternoon. Once home, myself Louise and Emily will drop off Nana and Grandad at the Holiday Inn Across from Universal (official title, not a description) and head off to check in at the Royal Pacific Resort. Once checked in and short pants adorned we shall collect some grandparents and head out to the Outback. It’s become a tradition that this is our eatery of choice for this first night. It became so as we stayed around Formosa Gardens for quite a few years in a row and it was convenient. A few Bloomin’ Onions and Cheesey Fries later and it’s become a must do.

With us staying quite some distance from Formosa of course, I’ve substituted it for one on I Drive, trusting that the quality will remain regardless of location. With full bellies we shall retire to a fitful sleep, ready for the early rising which is of course inevitable.

Day Two

With us no doubt being awake before it gets light we shall make best use of this by using the early hours access to the Potter stuff. With the grandparents “off site” they may have to wait at City Walk with a coffee until the muggles are admitted. We have five days here so at some point they’ll be able to do the Potter stuff they are allowed to go on. Heart conditions permitting!

Dinner is planned at Cowfish on City Walk. We tried this for the first time on our last trip and it was excellent. I intend to repeat my choice from that trip too with a

The Cowfish Has Offically Left The Building (A.K.A. The Hunka, Hunka)

Full-pound beef burger, creamy peanut butter, fried bananas, applewood bacon, brioche bun. Choice of side. (Make it a SINGLE HUNKA LOVE, half-pound beef burger for $13)

I will not be making use of the $13 option!

Day Three

Today is the tired day. The journey, the early morning wake up and a day in a theme park mean that this is always down as a rest day for us. We shall spend it by the pool at RPR but we shall make the effort to get across to the new Toothsome Chocolate Factory for lunch, which may just be made up of milk shake and pie. We are on holiday!

Dinner is pencilled in for Celebration. We usually do the Market Street Cafe but I have been warned that a change of ownership has not gone well so we may look elsewhere in Celebration. The main thing we want to do is meet Otis again, who we bumped into and fell in love with last year.

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Should time and energy allow we may pop to Disney Springs for a look and a wander (but no spending, unless it’s food).

Day Four

Refreshed and revitalised we shall tackle Universal Studios today. A train ride across to IOA may come into play should we be done early before heading off for dinner at the Teak Neighbourhood Grill. It’s very much a favourite of ours and we’re much closer to it than we normally are so it cannot be missed.

Day Five

It’s our last full day at Universal so we shall mop up any stuff we haven’t done or want to do again, no doubt with a bit more pooling too. The plan for dinner is a Disney one and assuming the ADR Gods are smiling upon us when the time comes, O’hana is the plan. We haven’t been since the girls were very small and that was for a breakfast. We did dinner there back in 2003 I think, so I think we’re due a visit.

Day Six

Our first move and it sees us pack up and head for the beach. We check into Siesta Key, here…
final siesta

and relax. We plan to do the beach, food and some cocktails and beer over the next week. Should we, by any chance get bored of days here…

We always have the option of popping to Busch Gardens for a bit of theme park action.

Day Seven

Beach! Food and alcohol for dinner.

Day Eight

Beach! Food and alcohol for dinner.

Day Nine

A radical change today as golf is on the plan for me and my Dad as we leave the ladies to do the beach. The two courses currently contending for our custom are Rosedale Golf Club and Palms at Forest Lakes. Whichever presents the lesser chance of me losing a dozen golf balls in water will get the nod.  I have planned to drive out for dinner to the nearest Applebees. Again, a firm fave and we don’t have time to fit it in during our Orlando time.

Day Ten

Beach! Food and alcohol for dinner.

Day Eleven

Beach! Again, a drive out for dinner to the local Olive Garden. A perennial treat for us. Nothing fancy, just great food, great value and Emily’s favourite Lasagne on the planet. The bread sticks and salad are as addictive as crack cocaine ( I would imagine!).

Day Twelve

Beach! Food and alcohol for dinner.

Day Thirteen

We leave Siesta Key and head back to Orlando. The plan says Epcot from whatever time we get there and at some point we will check into All Star Sports (Nana and Grandad) and Beach Club (the rest of us) for our final few days and whistle stop tour of the Disney parks. We’ve done the resting, now some proper theme park days!

Dinner is tentatively planned for Beaches & Cream and the night will be spent watching some duelling pianos at Jellyrolls.

Day Fourteen

Hangovers permitting, an earlyish start to get to Animal Kingdom and hopefully we will have enough stamina to make it all the way to the new night-time stuff too. Either way, Louise, Emily and I will all want to ride Everest in the dark.

We always seem to end up having lunch at Yak & Yeti, hopefully leaving enough room for a late dinner at Sanaa, ADR permitting. The bread starter thing is a thing of beauty and delight.

Day Fifteen

Hollywood Studios today for another park day. I’m hopeful of catching Fantasmic so it could be a long day and we may pop out late afternoon to eat at Bahama Breeze before heading back into the park for the show.

Day Sixteen

Where else, but Magic Kingdom to end the holiday. It isn’t everyone’s favourite but it’s the symbol of everything Disney and my tradition is to fight back the tears as we walk out of the park for the last time each trip. Emily does less well at the fighting part!

Dinner may very well be at the end of the boat trip across to Fort Wilderness at Trail’s End, which is too becoming something of a habit/tradition, but we’ll see how the day goes.

Day Seventeen

We have a full day in Orlando as our flight isn’t until around 8pm so I would imagine we’ll be doing our normal last-minute shopping at Disney Springs for gifts, souvenirs and those last few thousand calories before heading off to the airport, long pants and an enormous sulk.

As things change, I shall keep you updated of course!

Till the next time……

Plastering and Pining

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

Events have conspired to make this past week a toughy.

We are, as I have mentioned before, undergoing some home improvements. This week has seen us getting plastered. Of course, that’s a messy thing and my oft mentioned dislike for disruption and mess has been in full effect. This work is also a blatant reminder of where a lot of our cash has been going recently, when it really should have been going on practical, sensible things like getting us across the Atlantic to Florida.

When we made these plans earlier this year, involving getting some stuff done to the house this summer and planning a trip early next year seemed OK, even manageable and it certainly demonstrated much more common sense than we have in the past decade or more.

Now, however, with my social media feeds full of people on holiday, the weather resembling November and my house like a building site, the irresponsible child in me is screaming that I should be on some roller coaster somewhere with pancakes in my belly.

Work has been extremely busy too, but to add to my longing for our usual American adventure, that’s because a member of my team is currently away, yes, on holiday. He isn’t in the US, but it is Canada which is close enough for me to put that into the same bucket of stuff that I shall keep to remind me never to be so bloody sensible ever again.

April seems a long way away.

Pining for Siesta Key…..

Our dose of US sun normally girds our loins sufficiently to get us through the grim, dark, cold and miserable UK winter. We shall have to take it on this year without that in our tanks and I fear for us. I also fear for you lot as you’ll see this manifest itself in a series of whinging, bleak and self pitying blogs. What do you mean you’re used to it?

On the subject of social media feeds and them being filled with Orlando stuff, of course that’s my own fault. Your social media content is of your own doing (mostly) and mine of course are made up of folks with similar obsessive interests in Florida. I joined a few of those Facebook Orlando groups some time ago, but never really contribute to be honest. They feel too big and impersonal and just a a diluted version of all that was good about the Disney forums most of us used back in their heyday. Plus, there’s some right crap on there too 🙂

From questions that make my toes curl, to people who make me want to scream “Stop doing Orlando wrong!!” at my phone, to what seems to have become a stream of “blogs” or “trip reports”, I feel that these groups aren’t for me, other than to keep my eye on any news /updates I need to be aware of. Call me old fashioned, but jotting down a couple of paragraphs around a few photos from your phone isn’t a trip report. It’s fine to do that of course, it’s nothing to do with me after all, and it will still be nice to look back on of course, but for us old school Orlando folk a trip report involves a lot more effort than that. Endless notes, extensive photographs, details of everything, some of which nobody wants to know about and more words than anybody in their right mind would ever want to wade through (and no singing!!). THAT’s a trip report. These Facebook things are just status updates, valid all the same, and each to their own, but let’s not use the wrong term for them eh? There’s another example of my up and down relationship with Facebook!

Hmm, not sure where that rant/trip report snobbery/Disney forum nostalgia came from….perhaps I need a holiday? Maybe that or a new Disney forum we can all use that somehow is protected from cock wombles and trouble makers? I’m not volunteering by the way, but if you find one let me know?

Till the next time…..

A Capital Weekend

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

This is a first. I’m on the train back from London blogging from my phone. The typos will be numerous….

We’ve just had a lovely and at times very emotional weekend in the capital celebrating Emily’s recent 21st. We decided to take her to watch Les Miserables in the West End. It’s a show she has been listening to for as long as she can remember. She used to pretend to be Cosette and do the Castle in the Cloud number in our front room at a very young age.

When they made the film version it became an obsession and she watched it more times than I can count.

So our journey began yesterday with the 9.23 out of Manchester and quite possibly the worst breakfast from one of those food court thingies at Piccadilly. I had forgotten I’d upgraded us to first class on the way down so that expense and experience were not necessary after all. We made use of the free coffee at least as we sped South.

We Ubered to the Holiday Inn in Mayfair for less than the tube would have cost us and we were able to check in early and dump our stuff in the room.

We had a wander across to Buckingham Palace and as you do we bought our 21 year old daughter a stuffed corgi from the shop over the road.


We then wandered aimlessly for a bit through the parks nearby and ended up in Trafalgar Square. After a bit of a sit down we wandered into the National Gallery for some culture. That lasted about ten minutes before Louise’s face told me we’d had enough of that.


We walked back to the hotel enjoying the history and architecture (hark at me, ten minutes in a gallery and I’m John Humphreys) whilst Louise moaned about her aching feet. Those dolly shoes were no match for mine and Emily’s trainers!!

Showers baths and resting happened before another Uber down to Shaftesbury Avenue. With the myriad of top class dining options at her disposal Emily had chosen to eat at the Rainforest Cafe.

We were seated quickly after I had used all my powers of persuasion to have the bartender serve Emily some alcohol. Nachos to share as an appetiser before the mains arrived.


We were stuffed and all of my dessert intentions were cast aside as my belt rebelled against my stomach.

With a few beers, wines and multiple cocktails it was £130ish. Pricey but good fun and it was for a special occasion.

We then made our way down to the theatre.


At this point Emily was shaking with excitement. After ordering our interval drinks we made our way to Row C. Well done to whoever secured those gems!!


Emily started crying somewhere in the opening number and was a gibbering wreck for most of the show until the end. The emotional peaks were the end of the first act which is a proper goosebumps and lump in the throat thing and of course the finale which if it doesn’t get you right in the feels you need to seek medical help. The theatre is surprisingly small as was the cast but the noise they generate is incredible. 

Wonderful music, singing and staging led to us being on our feet cheering as they took their bows. We were so close that a few of the cast could see Emily in bits, make up down her face as they took the deserved standing ovation!

We strolled back to the hotel with the tears still flowing and as we had a nightcap in the hotel bar she still could not gather herself. Rest assured she loved it….a lot.

Sunday morning was a lazy one with brunch in a nearby eatery with terrible service and decent food followed by a look around the shops before getting on the train.


It’s been a dear do of course but an experience Emily will never forget and therefore of course money well spent.

I’m now going back to concentrating on not throwing up as I’m travelling backwards at high speed with blurry countryside to my right. Ugh.

Till the next time….

Sent from my iPhone.

Bait and Switch

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

Despite me boring you all to tears with the blow by blow account of my planning adventures (and I had, believe it or not, edited out a lot of stuff) following last week’s update there were still some twists and turns to go.

The final link in the chain that did not want to get sorted was our Siesta Key booking. I consider myself fairly experienced in this DIY holiday malarkey but even I was stunned and shocked at some of the stuff I have come across.

I had spent a good deal of time on sites like HomeAway, VRBO and even Trip Advisor looking at and enquiring about properties. As I have said before, Siesta Key has very few hotels and even fewer within striking distance of the beach and village so it was always going to be a private rental.

Now, call me old-fashioned but when you see something online that gives you a price once you enter the required information, in this case, dates and number of people, you would expect that to be the price you were going to pay. There are rules about this stuff…believe me, I do it for a living.

However on more than one occasion, including the property I linked to last week, the web site offering that property at a given price then only gave me the option to Enquire Now, despite showing me a detailed breakdown of the costs involved. I waited longer than was ideal for a response and I then got quite a terse reply telling me that the costs would actually be about 30% higher than shown on the web site I had seen the property on. This wasn’t the only time it happened during my planning travels and they typically then tend to send you a link to a different website, managed directly by them where these new prices are shown.

These websites tend to look like something a teenager built in 2003 and haven’t been touched since. They offer no online booking facilities and do indeed give these new prices the tetchy owner is claiming to be correct. I honestly felt guilty for –

a) having insulted them by daring to want to book their property at the (originally) advertised price

b) querying why the price had risen by a good few hundred dollars

It won’t surprise you to know that I walked away from that particular deal without further discussion. I believe the term I’m looking for here is bait and switch.

Anyway, later that night, using a site I had heard much of but had never used, I found a suitable property on AirBnB. Crucially I was able to book there and then at the advertised price and things such as the cancellation terms etc were also clearly shown.

So, after what seems an endless search, seventeen false starts and more stress than it should have caused, here is where we will be staying in Siesta Key.

final siesta

It is a little bit further away from our ideal location than I might have liked, but the more realistic price and extra space clinched it. It is literally steps from the beach and a ten minute walk to the main street of the village where all the food and stuff is. I also remembered a chat I had with a blog reader (Thanks Mark) months ago when I first mentioned Siesta Key about free taxis operating on the island, so if needed we will use those if the walk is just too much our sun soaked bodies.

Finally, surely now, we are all sorted. I have marked the calendar with important dates about the booking of dining and fastpass stuff and I can now start to fill in each day with some plans. You’ll know by now that this starts with our eatery of choice for the day and we work backwards from there. There was a minor crisis when I realised that we simply didn’t have enough days in Orlando to get all our favourites in but I think I’ve resolved that by finding some of the chain restaurants we love, such as Olive Garden and Applebees close to Siesta Key, which frees up a couple of meals for our limited time in Orlando.

With Mum and Dad now coming along, thoughts turn to maybe fitting in a game of golf with my Dad and again that is likely to be somewhere close to Siesta Key as our Orlando time is too precious.

The basis of the plan currently involves the likes of Teak, Cowfish, Market Street Cafe (Celebration), Bahama Breeze, O’hana, Sanaa, Outback, Olive Garden, Applebees and Beaches & Cream. We also somehow have to fit in the new Toothsome Chocolate Factory place at Universal…

Credit to Insidethemagic.net for the image…..

Image credit to themeparktrader.com

I don’t know about you but that’s made me hungry so I’m off to eat something….

Till the next time…..

Everything’s Changing….But Planning Isn’t a Pain.

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

I had three days off work this week. I had booked them to do some decorating following our recent builder visit. However, the plasterer who needs to get our walls ready for that decorating seems to be a relative of Ronnie Biggs (ask your Dad) and has thus far not materialised.

You can imagine how upset I was not being able to decorate. Instead, those three days flew by in a whirl of nothingness. I am honestly struggling to remember anything I did during that time. I’ll take that as a good sign.

What I have had to do recently is completely re-engineer our holiday. For reasons I won’t trouble you with, we had to move the dates of our trip from March until April next year and this took a fair amount of my planning expertise to execute. Half way through that re-engineering our party size grew a little too.

This trip started out as just Louise and I, planning to indulge in the beach and endless nights at Jellyrolls. Then Emily confirmed she would allow me to pay for her to come with us shortly afterwards, which didn’t change much at all and finally, as I was in the middle of moving stuff to the new dates a tipsy conversation between Louise and my parents resulted in them coming along too.

This was a real test of my planning skills and Florida knowledge. We had pushed the boat out accommodation wise. It was pricey enough when we booked all this pre-Brexit vote, but now with the dollar rate being shite, the costs were just out of the question for a retired couple.

So, I deployed ninja like planning skills to make this work.

So we are now going on April 10th, with Virgin. For the first five nights we are at Royal Pacific Resort and I have got Mum and Dad into the Holiday Inn Across From Universal Orlando. Honestly, that is what it is called. The idea is I can nip over to pick them up or Uber can do the honours. They won’t have Front of Line of course but it matters little as the big rides never interested my Mum and my Dad is recognising that at almost 80 and with heart trouble, endlessly riding the Hulk isn’t the best of ideas!

Then we head off to Siesta Key for a week. Luckily I had free cancellation on our booking there so I cancelled our property there and I have now booked a three bed place instead for us all. That sounds simple enough but there have been a few false starts and it feels like 27 changes of plan with regards to our stay there. Hopefully, now we are locked and loaded here.

This video includes our property and a few others, but it is just nice to look at Siesta Key!

It is safe to say I know Siesta Key as well as it is possible to know anywhere without actually visiting it.

For our last few nights we were booked into The Swan. Alas, it was not available for our new dates so we were looking at other on site options. Again, we had free cancellation so that was not a problem. For years we have vowed to stay within walking distance to Jellyrolls to do it without me drinking Diet Coke and after flirting with other, cheaper options such as Old Key West, and sacrificing that dream, I bit the bullet and the extra cost and went for the Beach Club. Of course, once my Mum and Dad were coming the silly costs for that were not an option with the $ rate now at less than 1.3 so a plan was hatched.

They will stay at the All Star Sports at a price so low that for a few seconds I considered doing the same and saving a small fortune. I have resisted. You live but once. They can bus, Uber or be picked up from there as it is just ten minutes from us.

So thinking about it, those three days off were not spent decorating. Instead they were spent buried deep in accommodation web sites conjuring up options so complex the CIA have recruited me into their Cyber Ops team. (Guess who watched Jason Bourne last night!)

Despite the extra hassle of rearranging all of this, it has meant that I have had two bites at the planning cherry and as a good few of you will appreciate, that is a big part of the fun of these trips.

Right time to go. We are off to meet Jakki, Steve, Aodhan and Naimh (long term Disney/Dibb friends that we usually meet in WDW) for some ten pin bowling and food (seperately) as they staying in Manchester.

Till the next time…..

A Little Less 21 Candles….

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

I often see posts on Facebook where parents are wondering where the time went before telling everyone that their child is now whatever age they are. I’ve done similar many times I’m sure.

The perception is that you blink and then somehow find your kids are no longer kids, you are three stone heavier and persistently feel the need to nap. Just me? OK.

I think I know where the time goes. It passes at the same rate whether you are doing something you hate or something you love, it’s just that you just tend to block out the former and so your memory recalls only a percentage of all the days, minutes and seconds you’ve spent with your kids. It’s a bit like childbirth. Lord knows I was mentally scarred by the pain of horror of it all the first time around. How Rebecca came to be I don’t know, as after all that sitting around and waiting for Emily to pop out, you would have thought it had put me off for life!

This time perception confusion is just one of life’s mysteries, like why I’m still paying the mobile phone bills for my daughters every month even though they are 19 and 21!

Yes, Emily turns 21 next week and we have been out this weekend to celebrate that with some of the family. As usual, a Williams celebration involved food, and probably more than was healthy or necessary. The main benefit of this milestone is that she’ll be able to come to Jellyrolls with us when we go on holiday next year! This is great news as up until now we’ve had to leave the kids outside with of bottle of pop and a rape alarm.

I think she will need to carry ID well into her forties though as she has never looked her age. This burden will become easier to tolerate as she gets older I’m sure.

It is only natural for me to treat any meal out as an excuse to pretend I’m doing a trip report and take pictures of everyone and more importantly their food. For anyone localish we went to the Retreat in Adlington and it was lovely.

Here are Rebecca and Tom doing a good job of being cheerful even though food has not yet arrived.

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Emily and her Nana…..

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Food at last, this was Emily’s Beef Nachos appetiser (yes I said appetiser, what of it?)
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Louise and I had Halloumi Fritters, but I believe there is an over the counter cream for that….

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Tom, quite rightly ordered using the “which dish is the biggest” method and went for an appetiser of “Meat Platter”. He also had half of Rebecca’s garlic bread and finished off Emily’s nachos.

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Most of us had the Jack Daniels Bourbon Beef Skewer, which is not a euphemism.

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A few cocktails later….

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I am clearly out of practice as I’d started my dark chocolate cheesecake before remembering to take a photo…

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Emily had Creme Brulee, which I finished off.

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Once we were back home the inevitable Disney themed cake was set on fire with twenty-one candles.

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Emily’s birthday is not actually till Tuesday and she shares it with Oli. Look how happy he is about it!IMG_0168

Emily with her Grandma who is clearly off her nut on champagne and frosting.

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Emily picked up quite a few of her presents last night with a couple to come on Tuesday no doubt. Her main present from us is a trip to London in a couple of weeks to watch Les Miserables in the West End. She may never stop crying!

Happy Birthday Pud. Here come the usual collection of photos that will embarrass you…..

dad scruch nose

Taken yesterday

WDW 2013

chip n dale

emily nose pierce

Emily prom 2

Girls good food

Till the next time…….

Ain’t That The Tooth?

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

Years ago, when the girls were at school and we still did things like put them to bed, I remember many an evening sat on the foot of one of their beds listening to them fret about some upcoming event at school that they were not looking forward to. At the time it wasn’t appropriate for me to then spend an hour telling them about all the stuff I had coming up that I didn’t fancy either and instead I would do my best to reassure them that everything would be OK. I would tell them that worrying about this stuff would do no good and once whatever they were dreading had happened they would no doubt realise that it wasn’t actually as bad as they imagined and they would wonder why they worried so much in the first place.

These days of course my advice is seldom asked for, yet I still cast it, like bread onto a pond without ducks whilst they feign interest and resist the urge to roll their eyes and shrug their shoulders.

Last week’s blog was filled with me whining about my impending dental treatment and I have to admit that I spent a good deal of time with it on my mind. It was casting an ugly shadow over what was already looking like a crap week as we were having the house taken apart to improve it. I did not, it probably won’t surprise you, follow the golden advice outlined above that I used to impart to the girls.

As they always do, Tuesday rolled around and I made my way to the dentist feeling less than enthusiastic. Once in the waiting room I was having to do breathing exercises to prevent some sort of cardiac mishap before I was called into THE CHAIR. I assumed the position, put on the protective orange Roy Orbison glasses and paper bib and girded my loins for an abundance of pain.

“I’ll just take a quick X-Ray to see what we’re dealing with” said my dentist before leaving the room to expose me to dangerous amounts of gamma rays just like David Banner.

“Don’t make me petrified, you wouldn’t like me when I’m petrified!” I replied.

She retired to somewhere behind me to look at said X-Ray and after a couple of tuts and a sigh asked me to join her there. I stumbled across the room, confused by the out of focus orange blur everything had become to look at an image of what I assumed were my teeth.

To cut a long story short, she wasn’t happy to proceed with what she had planned as I had a shorter than expected root. Insult to injury sprang to mind, but sensing the chance to leave the place minus any pain or financial exploitation I did. The plan is to “wait and see” and review it all again in six months. I have several options at that point it seems, none of which cost less than a grand unless I have things extracted. I pray then to God of dentistry that whatever glue she used to stick my implant back in is like that Ultra No Nails stuff they sell in B&Q.

If not, well, faced with those potential costs, I think this is a good look…

You may wonder, as have I since, why she did not take that X-Ray when I went to have my implant stuck back in and she told me what the longer term solution was. My short root was, after all, of her doing when I endured the horrors of root canal work “under” her. Had she X-Rayed me back then it would have saved me many hours of fretful nonsense and it would have removed the need for you poor souls to listen to me whine about it.

Anyway, not only have I avoided something I was dreading,  but I have proved once for all that I know best, my advice is gold dust and I should be heeded and obeyed at all times….girls……are you listening?  Girls?! Oh never mind.

As Ying to that Yang however, the pain of the disruption to the house has been very real. Every evening has been spent moving all our furniture from one room to another, stripping wallpaper and generally not being able to relax. We’re not 100% finished but things are almost back to normal and I am telling myself the worst is over. That’s a lie of course as now we have to re-decorate the living and dining rooms. My lack of interest in such a task is only matched by my lack of prowess to do it well.

So having learned a great lesson this week about how worrying doesn’t help, things are rarely as bad as you imagine them and I am a big nancy when it comes to a dental visit, the only thing left for me to do is to create some inspirational message about all of this, add it to some suitably inspiring stock photograph and launch it at Facebook for everyone to like, share, comment on and then do exactly the opposite when they have shit to deal with.

fretting meme

Till the next time…..

Builder Me Up Buttercup

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

We’re busy today so this won’t take long to read.  We have impending building work about to take place in the World of Williams and so today we are clearing out two cupboards that are about to be removed.  You may relate to the fact that over the years these have become a dumping ground for all that stuff you think you have to keep but haven’t used or looked at this stuff since you crammed into that cupboard all those years ago.

It’s been a morning of mixed emotions as we throw away a lot of the crap in there along with lots of sighing at old school photos of the girls, drawings they did and a clay cow one of them made which has clearly been exposed to radiation. This picture is one of my favourites….

drawing

I hate the process of having work done to the house. Disruption does not sit well with me so the coming week or so will not be a comfortable one for me. We’re having a wooden floor through the dining and living room along with the removal of said cupboards, which currently sit in the alcoves either side of our dining room fireplace, which is also about to bite the dust. Louise is a big fan of the phrase less is more and so renovations tend to take the form of removing stuff and making things simpler.

So we have spent all morning cramming the stuff we “really” want to keep into other already full cupboards around the house. We need a bigger house or less stuff…or maybe both.

Speaking of removing stuff. One day last week I was minding my own business eating my lunch when disaster struck. Mid plum, I thought I felt the plum stone floating around in my mouth. Upon removing it, I felt as sick as you will when reading this, to discover it was my “implant” that I had fitted into one of my tooth holes when I endured root canal work a couple of years ago. In deep shock, my mind raced at the pain and expense this would inevitably lead to. I called the dentist immediately to get an appointment.

I had to wait until the following morning, with what felt like a hole this size in my mouth.

Eating was tricky and I didn’t sleep too well as I am a massive coward when it comes to the dentist. Thank Mr Stevens, my childhood dentist, who took pleasure from pain.

Thankfully, my dentist was able to glue that thing back in fairly easily but of course, life is never that simple. It needs a more long-term solution involving procedures that make my toes curl and my wallet weep. I am back there on Tuesday to have things like rods fitted and a crown added, which spookily costs what a real crown does. The fun doesn’t end there. Nope, this is a two visit procedure, so the misery and anticipation stretch out for weeks.

I am in no way feeling nervous about it……..

So if you had to dream up a really crappy week for me, you would have the builders in my house and my mouth at the same time. Still at least I get to go to work too!!  I can’t wait.

Till the next time…..

My Work Here Isn’t Done

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

Well, I don’t care how you voted, the past week has been a shambles and an embarrassment to the country. What a depressing state of affairs that those who are supposed to be in charge of shit have just confirmed that they are in fact a set of self-serving cockwombles.

Our current reality makes The Thick Of It look like an episode of Panorama. Although I would like to unleash a real life Malcolm Tucker around Westminster to sort a few of these expenses cheating, personal agenda obsessed , out of touch with reality shit gibbons out.

As for the football. I have previous experience of being Hodgsoned as I am a Liverpool supporter. Never have I experienced a more tepid, expectation lowering, confidence sapping charlatan as good old Roy. The showing of the England team at the Euros was just the shot in the arm the country needed after such a harrowing and worrying week. Thanks!

Anywho, whilst the Western world crumbled around us, last week brought us some good news.  Rebecca passed her driving test!

rebecca driving test

It is to her credit that she did so in torrential rain and terrible driving conditions. Her teacher had no time for such conditions being used as an excuse for not taking the promotional photo for Facebook, hence Rebecca’s vain attempts to protect her “do” with her hood in the photo!

This passing of the test is good news for several reasons. She’s been at it a while, through no fault of her own. She had to change teachers half way through which set her back a bit, and then took a break from lessons for a few months for reasons I wont bother you with and at one stage was specialising in failing her theory test by one mark.

Anyway, on her second attempt she passed and is now trying to comprehend that she never has to do that again and is free to go out and drive whenever she likes, once she has sold some internal organs to enable her to be insured on a car.

It feels like a landmark for Louise and I too. It’s one of the final commitments we feel as parents in setting the girls up with the right life skills. This is now added to the list of all the other major developmental and life landmarks, such as –

  • Breathing
  • Eating
  • Sleeping (although Rebecca took longer to master this than driving by about three years!)
  • Not going to the toilet in their clothes
  • Getting them into the right nursery, primary school, secondary school….
  • Riding a bike
  • Attempting to learn about seventeen different musical instruments only then to decide they weren’t that bothered really
  • Their first discos
  • First roller coasters
  • GCSEs
  • A Levels
  • Proms
  • Jobs
  • etc etc etc

It’s funny that as you come up to each of these landmarks they are seen as tasks and challenges to get through and as soon as they are behind you, you feel better for it. This tends to prevent you from appreciating and enjoying the landmark for what it is.

At the risk of sounding all poncy and introspective, these things are the destination, not just the journey. You tend to rush at them, driven by the fear that your children will be slower, worse, or in some other way lesser to those other kids we all know who have parents that have all their shit together. They only feed their kids organic pulses, spend three hours every night doing homework and wholesome activities and restrict them to ten minutes a week online.

Well, we were typically too tired for all that and we bumbled our way through parenthood, I suspect, like most do, allowing Lizzy McGuire and That’s So Raven to be a fairly large part of their childhoods, happy to get to the next weekend and another half arsed attempt at a lie in. Constantly being the parents who discovered at 10pm the night before that they needed something for school the next day that was definitely unobtainable at 10pm the night before, we had times when we felt like terrible parents for letting them down.  In that blur of their early years, through unending tiredness, attempts to build some sort of career and still be something resembling a parent we were hopefully somewhere above average.

With them both able to drive it feels like we must be coming to the end of that list now. Once we’ve tucked away a wedding a piece, maybe some kids, their first houses, a bit of baby sitting and interfering in how they bring their kids up we should be…wait….oh crap, this stuff never ends does it??

Till the next time…..

Man With A Plan

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

Last week felt like a long one didn’t it? Or was that just me? It may not have helped that I had a life threatening cold for most of it. It’s always surprising to rediscover just how bloody awful you can feel with just a cold.

As I sat in the office sniffing and coughing up vital organs, all I could hear around me was colleagues doing the same thing. The first day of summer seems to have brought with it a plague that is sweeping through the nation. Apart from fighting off a deadly virus last week was fairly quiet. Oh apart from the political infrastructure collapsing, friends and family turning on each other and Facebook becoming a more dangerous battle ground than Afghanistan.

I’ve never done politics here and won’t start now but by Christ what a mess we seem to have found ourselves in. Good luck to those now charged with sorting it all out.

Whilst the voting was going on we had a band rehearsal. We are pretty much reinventing our whole set as we find ourselves having to replace a member of the band. It’s a gentle and amicable hand over so we’re taking the opportunity to make some big changes to the songs we do as they have been largely the same for some time now. It’s good fun learning new stuff, although when you are musically barely competent as I am, the main panic when someone suggests a song to do is the fear that you won’t be capable of playing it. Although the only thing worse than that is when you have learned a song and then it’s discovered that we need to do it in a different key and then my tiny brain has to move everything I just learned to new places on the fret board. I envy those with real musical ability!

This weekend I have been employed as a Disney planner. Naturally, as this was for Rebecca and Tom, there was no fee involved. They had thought of holidaying somewhere exotic and beachy, such as Bali, but with some more thought and of course encouragement from me, they have moved their plans to Florida. It made perfect sense (to me anyway) as their requirements were sun, stuff to do, great food in large quantities and a flight time under double figures.

Tom is an eater of epic ability. He has never been to Florida and I suspect he may never return to the UK as it is surely his spiritual home. Due to their age, hiring a car becomes expensive so I have suggested an on-site package, with Magical Express at a value resort. Between Disney buses and Uber they can get where they want to get to for a lot less than the very high surcharges hire car companies tend to charge for those under 25.

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The free memory maker now included in these packages is quite handy when travelling as a couple, otherwise you struggle to get photos of the two of you together.  However, the dining plan offer has never really appealed to me and I have passed that prejudice on in my advice. Rebecca wants to take Tom to the places we have always loved such as Applebees, Teak, Olive Garden, Bahama Breeze etc and so the restriction of always eating on site wouldn’t really suit them.

Anyway, their planning is in early stages and they may change destination entirely, but again it seems the pulling power of the Sunshine State is strong, especially if you ask me for holiday advice!!

On the subject of the plans for Louise and I in March, I haven’t done a great deal more than pencil in a rough sketch of the theme park days and of course where to eat on those days. Most of our trip is beach based so the planning requirements are less demanding. There’ll be more to do once the ADR window opens up in September and then FP+ in January. Hopefully the dollar rate will rally between now and then, but my breath is not held.

So it seems my use as Taxi Dad is not what it was, but I still come in handy when it comes to holiday planning. I think that’s not a bad deal!

Till the next time…..