Sure, another Florida trip could easily be seen as decadence or financial stupidity. It wouldn’t be the first or last time that’s the case but as if to cement the glorious correctness of our decision, this week it has rained 99.99999% of the time.
I do not play well with bad weather and cold dark nights, so the thought of getting away to some sun and warmth has sat well with me this week, as each day crawled endlessly by at a glacial speed, inching me towards a welcome break, and I don’t mean the motorway services. Work really did outdo itself on the shitshow front as a finale week.
My usual prep started late but is pretty much complete now. With no park plans, the prep is easier, but Ryan has been readied, essential items procured and the passports checked.
Huge sums have been spent on pet food to arm Emily with the tools she will need to keep our zoo alive and kitchen fitters have been tempted back to our house to also give her a kitchen that works fully. I guess it is now 99% complete with just a few snags to sort out next Tuesday.
Here are some before and after pics. Our new dining table isn’t ready yet. It is being hewn from precious metals and the rarest woods known to man by blind Tibetan monks, using diamond-tipped chisels of pure gold. I don’t know if any of that is true, I’m just guessing it must be based on the price. Clearly, I was not involved in that buying decision.
There isn’t a huge difference between the two, and these were taken immediately after the workmen left so there’s still some cleaning, tidying, and “settling in” to do but you get the idea. We have extra cupboards, a different colour of units, new worktops, a new sink, and a fancy Quooker tap. We also took out the monolithic extractor fan thing above the island which somehow immediately made the room seem bigger. Indeed, the main aim was to make the room lighter as it can get a bit gloomy in there, with it being encased in two-foot thick stone walls and in the North of England!
Anyway, we are off tomorrow. I haven’t been able to check in online and will have to do it the old-fashioned way at the airport. This is because when I was adding the Advanced Passenger Info a few weeks ago, an error happened and it turns out that some idiot put Louise’s date of birth in wrong at the time of booking. It’s not that I don’t know it, there was just some issue with the scrolling picker thing and it landed on the 27th and not the 28th.
So Aer Lingus had to manually update that and warned me it would mean I would need to check in at the airport. Sigh.
As the main focus of the trip is going to be food (which is not very different from any previous trip tbh) here’s a summary of the places we plan to eat at.
Sanaa
The Boathouse
Il Mulino
Hard Rock Cafe
Romanos
Cheesecake Factory
Antojitos
The Edison
I am hoping to fit in one or two other new places if possible.
I have struggled endlessly to carve off a few pounds over the last few weeks, as I do before most trips and of course, I will have added those back on by the time we land in Orlando. This may be just me, but isn’t travel day the most calorific day outside of December 25th? With multiple meals across two time zones, plus snacks, fancy coffees, and the relaxing of pre-holiday restrictions, it is a gut-busting bonanza. My body’s ability to put on weight really is a thing of wonder.
Anyway, lots to do today so I must be off. As ever, I will post sporadically on the Mkingdon Facebook page whilst we are away so give that a follow if you don’t already should you care enough.
As I fired up WordPress to write this week’s post, I instinctively reached for my trip report note-taking book. What do you mean you don’t have one of those?
For inexplicable reasons, I am currently using one bought on The Disney Wish for more money than I care to confess.
However, I find myself in the unusual position of not having any such notes to write from. We have been fortunate/irresponsible enough of late that I have had many trips to write up and having to go free form this week is all a bit alien.
I know many of you may be thinking I’ll be telling you about the next trip we have booked in this post. I’d hate to be so predictable.
Well, a few months ago we were discussing when we may get away again and the need for a short winter break somewhere warm. So yes, in November Louise and I are heading off for a 10-day sunshine break that will definitely not involve WDW parks!
It’s trickier than you might imagine finding somewhere to go that will be warm at that time of year that doesn’t involve a stupidly long flight for just 10 days away and doesn’t cost the earth.
Many hours were spent on the internet, researching and planning, dismissing the obvious Mediterranean spots as the temperatures were just too low and unreliable in November. The Caribbean was pricey, as of course were far-flung spots that we can only really dream of affording such as The Maldives.
Eventually, it looked like Egypt would be the winner and specifically Sharm El Sheik. I knew nothing about the place but gradually got to know the lay of the land and almost every detail of every hotel in our price range. I won’t admit to how much time I invested on Google Street View “wandering” the local area. Once you are a holiday-obsessed planner there is no turning back regardless of the destination. It seemed to have all we needed.
• Hot weather • All-inclusive resort • Some nightlife suitable for two tired 50-somethings
Louise would have liked to see the Pyramids but we quickly discovered they were a 5-hour drive away!
A hotel was pretty much decided upon and much time was spent obsessing over the reviews and the 1% of them that were not great, naturally ignoring the 99% that were.
This is the thing when going somewhere unfamiliar, especially on All Inclusive, as if something isn’t right you are stuck there for the duration. Due to this uncertainty, my finger continued to hover over the “Book” button rather than commit, terrified of throwing a chunk of cash at something we may have to endure rather than enjoy.
Anyway, Louise and I chatted and we went ahead and booked.
We’ll be arriving in Florida on November 13th.
Look, it was Louise’s fault. We discussed the Egypt thing and the risk of it being not all we may wish for, especially the food and potentially getting bored of the same menu every night and having to go out and eat in unknown places. At this point, Louise suggested Las Vegas, and that was the slippery slope to Florida as we were already in the right country at that point. Vegas was too far, and too expensive for what was a short winter break and that led me to pitch the idea of Florida. I wouldn’t class myself as a natural salesperson, although, inexplicably, I did support the family as one many years ago. The pitching was not too arduous before agreement was reached.
Bear with me. What we wanted was nice weather, great food, and guaranteed quality of resort and restaurants. We had no need (or real desire to be honest) to venture near any theme parks, we could just sit by a pool and then at night choose from limitless eateries, many of which we knew would be excellent. There is also suitable nightlife for us in the shape of Jellyrolls, Yeeha Bob, City Walk, Disney Springs, etc and we know where everything is. It took all the risk and worry out of what is intended to be a relaxing respite from the winter back home.
See, it made perfect sense.
Cost-wise, it would be no different from the Egypt option we were looking at. It is out of any school holiday period which keeps costs down and cheapo flights are booked in Economy with Aer Lingus. A sensible car, (and car hire prices seem to be settling finally as we got a Compact SUV for £380 for 10 days), and hotel-wise we have been very practical and pragmatic, avoiding Disney resorts despite our love of all things Yacht and Beach Club.
After a decent amount of research, I decided on the Drury Plaza Hotel near Disney Springs.
This was for a few reasons.
• Location – We can walk to Disney Springs and it is central to anywhere we may want to drive to. • Price – It was very reasonable, especially as the price has no add-ons like resort fees and your room cost includes a free buffet breakfast and a form of happy hour in the evening where you get three free drinks per guest and some complimentary food (I suspect we won’t use the latter too much). • Reviews – Almost all good across the board and the place is pretty new so everything should be in good condition.
So I apologise for the predictability of this post. We really did try to go somewhere else, honest! I can honestly say I have no desire to go to a WDW park on this trip. However, should we encounter a chillier day or two and not be able to sunbathe by the pool, we may go to Bush Gardens for the first time in years or even Sea World, who knows, but they don’t count!
With perfect timing for this week’s post, our ADR window opened last week and I have booked our first at Sanaa on the evening of our first full day. There is no distance too great for that bread service.
There won’t be too many ADRs made as we love so many off-site places, but we may try a few new eateries at Disney Springs with it being walkable from our hotel. If anyone has any “must-dos” there I’m all ears.
With another trip done and written up, what the hell do I write about now? Hmmm…
Well, I like to plan, you know that, and I am fairly good at it, but where I find myself now, with the perfect synchronisation of the end of my latest trip report last Sunday, leaving just one Sunday free for a blog post to confess to you all that we are going again, was pure luck.
Yep, we fly out to Orlando again on Tuesday. We booked in late February and timing it perfectly, as far as these Sunday ramblings go, I unconsciously left myself the perfect one-week window to allow you all to collectively eye-roll at the news.
We really didn’t mean to go. I don’t mean that I fell over and landed on my keyboard, pressing several “Book It” buttons all at once. It was less accidental than that, but not by much.
As we returned from the trip you’ve just read about we had some tentative, back-of-the-mind intentions to maybe go on holiday, maybe to Orlando, maybe not, just Louise and I, around September time, but there was no planning going on.
For those who actually read this stuff and pay attention, you may remember that Rebecca, Tom and the boys had booked to go this April, but for boring real-world reasons, they had to postpone/cancel that trip. Well, we got chatting and the idea of all going together (alas Emily had used all her holiday entitlement on other trips with her boyfriend) at some point came up. Initially, as we often do we looked at non-US destinations. As ever, we inevitably drifted back to Florida due to its familiarity and the guarantee of it suiting us and particularly the boys.
We started looking for Florida trips at the end of August into September and spent many minutes laughing at the prices. When did the prices for school holidays become so ludicrous? We went for years at the end of August and we were skint! Hmm, maybe that’s why we were skint.
We then started to work our way back through the summer, trying to find dates that would work for everyone. To cut a very long story short, we had limited options and it ended up being May.
To be honest, May was probably too early for us, and certainly too early for Louise and another trip to WDW, but the carrot of being able to go with Rebecca, Tom and the boys and to see Freddie and Dougie experience Florida overcame all sticks easily.
The compromise was that Louise insisted that we spend a week at a beach. This kicked off the most complex trip I have ever organised, as a week at the beach wouldn’t suit a five-year-old and one-year-old, so I began the process of planning multiple itineraries within one holiday.
Flight-wise, the lowest cost was the order of the day, so Aer Lingus won this time and we are all in economy on the 16th of May. As we have a lap sitter in our party in Dougie, I was unable to book our seats online, but their WhatsApp service was excellent and that was sorted in minutes.
The basic plan was to get a villa for most of the stay, but Louise and I would go off to the beach for a week, with Rebecca and the crew joining us there for a night or two, before they would return to Orlando for theme parking. Alas, our favourite villa was not available for our dates, so we chose what we hope is the next best thing from Airbnb.
In a strange and not to be repeated turn of events Louise chose our accommodation at the beach. I had wanted to go to Vero but hens have more teeth than they had availability, so we opted for a previous destination in Daytona, and Louise did five minutes of searching and informed me we would be staying at the Hard Rock there. Rebecca, Tom and the boys would join us for a couple of days at the beach and then return to Orlando and the villa.
Then, to finish off the trip, and to use up the three-day park passes still owed to us by Hurricane Ian, we booked to stay at our usual place, Royal Pacific at Universal.
I secured us a mini-van and would later return to the issue of how Louise and I would get back from Daytona to Orlando as Rebecca and Tom would be taking our main car back to Orlando with them.
It was about a week after sorting all this, (which I have massively over-simplified above by the way, please show some respect for my planning skills), that Louise and I chatted and thought we should invite my Mum along. Clearly, the complexity of the trip was not sufficient to test my planning expertise.
Mum took a little convincing, unsure about undertaking her first trip without my Dad, but was soon on board when we asked her what Dad would have said! It’s been a while since she has been to Florida and for her and let’s face it for all of us, who knows when that trip might be your last. They are physically demanding so making hay in the sunshine is important.
So I then went about adding Mum to the flight and messaging Aer Lingus to change all our seats again from two sets of three to a four and two, booking her a room at Daytona (she will come with us to the beach) and finally adding her onto our room at Royal Pacific. We will share for the few nights we are there to avoid huge expense.
Park tickets and then of course park reservations were bought and made for all.
One of the most complex issues now presented itself. The car.
With seven people now on the trip and with car seats and strollers and oodles of luggage, the standard seven-seater van we had reserved would not cut the mustard. With every seat taken, there was just no way we would fit all that into the thing. That kicked off a ridiculous amount of time looking at alternatives, some of which would involve me getting my HGV licence, but the answer was presented by Rebecca, who suggested I look at what car we got the last time we had 7 people on the trip.
Finally, I found a use for my obsessive trip reporting and went back to that trip and found the make and model of what we had. On that trip, we also had a stroller and all that goes with a small child so we could be fairly sure it would all fit.
Of course, none of the main car hire sites listed this 8-seater Toyota Sienna, so I reached out to Andy at Discount Florida Car Hire, who I had booked with and explained our predicament. He was incredibly helpful and located one and secured it for us via Dollar. What an 80’s pop duo are doing in the hire car business I do not know.
Hopefully, we are all sorted now as I didn’t fancy driving a 12 or 15-seater thing, especially as Tom would be driving it around for a week during his first time driving in Florida.
I have even booked the three beachgoers a car for a few days in Daytona, crucially giving us a means by which we can drive back to Orlando. For our first two days in Daytona, we will all be together with Rebecca, Tom and the boys then driving back to Orlando at the end of day two, after watching the baseball, which we have always enjoyed in the past. Once the three of us are done with Daytona a few days later, we will drive back to Orlando, drop our hire car at the WDW car centre and have Tom pick us up before heading to check in at Universal.
So, I think that’s everything?? Still with me? Complicated isn’t it?
If anyone still has any appetite whatsoever for another bloody trip report, and even I barely do, I’ll be back here in June popping another one out. I can only apologise.
As ever, the Mkingdon Facebook page is your source of any live updates during the trip and I’ll see you back here in June if you can stomach any more of the same old guff.
This will be brief. We have so much to do that I can’t be spending too much time papping on here. As things stand, with mere hours until our flight leaves, we are going. That could change of course.
Mary was in very poor health on Thursday evening and we thought we may not be going, and for the sake of our mental health, I guess we have to stay in that frame of mind until we are airborne.
The home she will be in is absolutely equipped with everything and everyone needed for any eventuality, so it’s just a case of her remaining fit enough for us to take her in and us getting on the plane. I appreciate that might sound a little odd, but we need this break.
We’ll be dropping her off early this afternoon and have booked about six removal trucks to do so. She’s taking a fair bit of kit with her.
The last week at work has been a constant stream of meetings that I had to drag myself through. I feel like there are a million things I haven’t done, and that I am bound to forget to do something crucial like check-in for the flight online. Someone remind me!
On Thursday I went to the Post Office to grab a few dollars in cash. The least said about the exchange rate the better. It was borderline offensive.
So the plan for the rest of today is to take Mary in, stay with her for a few hours to make sure she is settled, and then meet Tom, Rebecca and the boys for some tea so we can say our goodbyes, before coming home so Louise can hoover the ceilings and re-pave the front drive, as is the tradition if we leave the country for two weeks. It is going to be a busy pre-holiday day.
Emily and her boyfriend Mikey are house and pet-sitting. With the zoo that we have this is a full-time job so please wish them good luck. With two dogs, three cats and a number of rats that I have lost track of they may have to sleep in shifts.
As ever I will be sharing stuff during our trip on the Mkingdon Facebook page so if you haven’t “Liked” that already, what on earth are you thinking? Go ahead and do that so you can see pictures of a lot of food. On our return, I will be doing some blogging around the trip of course but I’m not sure two weeks of pools and food will make for the most interesting reading. We’ll see.
If all goes to plan, in a few hours (well, a good few) we’ll be enjoying views like this, so keep your fingers crossed for us, please.
Image pinched from disneytouristblog.com
I have been watching my emails like a hawk for Aer Lingus emails, paranoid they are going to cancel the flight. I even checked availability on the Virgin flights tomorrow in case we end up in the lurch and need an alternative. As of yesterday, there were some seats left. Crazy, right?
I am reluctant to say it but it looks like we may actually be going, but I stand ready to be corrected on that.
So enough waffle, there are things to do and flights to check in to.
Another day, another destiny, this never ending road to Kissimmee…
We move our trip another time, if we can’t go I’ll lose my mind,
One date more….
The time is early afternoon, the day last Wednesday. I’m at work, attending to things that don’t really matter, but somehow demand all my attention and time when somewhere in my “socials” I see the news.
Aer Lingus had cancelled all their Manchester flights up to the 30th of September. Well, that was just rude.
I’ll be honest. There was a period of around half an hour where I just sat and stared at my keyboard genuinely not knowing what to do. I mean, that is often the case with work related matters but seldom with holiday stuff.
Staring down the barrel of a fifth set of dates, the wind was well and truly out of my sails. I pissed about on the Virgin Atlantic website laughing out loud at their prices for our dates. I really, really did not want to have to pick up and move everything again, but switching airlines was clearly not an option.
We were moving. Again.
I think coming to that conclusion was the catalyst and kick up the arse I needed to spring into action. As much as I had cursed Aer Lingus for their out of the blue decision, when I phoned them, settling in for a few hours on hold, their automated message told me I could change my flights on their website. Virgin, take note. Also, Virgin, any time you want to give me my refund for the flights you cancelled over two months ago, that would be lovely. We are at the “our dog ate your refund” stage of excuses now. It’s bordering on fraud at this point.
The ability to move my own flights was excellent and allowed me to manipulate a series of dates to find the set that suited us best. I was resolute in my desire not to spend another bloody penny on this trip that never is, so my main criteria was getting flights for the same money.
It took some fiddling but I managed it. We had to sacrifice a day off the trip so it’s 16 days now, not 17, but to be honest the extra length of the trip was in honour of my 50th celebrations which seem so long ago now that it kinda feels right to sacrifice that specialness.
So with the flights moved, it was onto everything else. Our new dates are the 3rd of October to the 18th of October. We’ve been in October once before back in 1999, so we know it well.
I once again saluted the flexible nature of Travel Republic and Discount Florida Car Hire, who have made all this pissing about a lot easier. Alas, Hard Rock is not available for our new dates so we have defaulted to the Royal Pacific, as we have in the past, so no great hardship there.
I am getting incredibly efficient and effective at this now. Within about an hour I had cancelled/rebooked/moved almost everything I could. Two elements remained outstanding.
Vero. Borrowing DVC points via a broker is probably not the wisest move in a pandemic as it seems we are likely to lose that cash now. Unless borders are still closed on August 20th, we won’t be able to get a credit note for our bookings. It stinks and I probably won’t use this company again, but it is what it is.
Park tickets. The ones we bought, sometime in the late 90’s it now feels like, were set to expire at the end of September. My Dad’s tickets which at this point were somewhere in the postal system having only ordered them a few days ago may also have had a similar end date. An email to Floridatix was replied to a few hours later and it seems our dates had been extended and certainly for the ones I had in my grubby mits, I was able to book new park reservations for our new dates. Yesterday, my Dad’s tickets turned up and they are all park reservationed up now too.
I am very much over all this now. We just need to go on holiday.
I am refusing to let myself believe these dates will happen. I daren’t. Florida it seems is charging back to normality at lightning pace as we lurch back into more lockdown having pissed away all the benefits of the vaccine programme. These are just the latest set of dates in the diary. When we are sat on the plane, wheels up, I may let myself think we’re going.
Trying to fill my glass at least half way, if we go on these dates the 50th celebrations for Magic Kingdom will have started. I am telling myself that WDW will for all intents and purposes be back to normal by then and there will be lots of new things specifically for that anniversary that we may not have seen otherwise.
It will be Halloween. I mean, it’s Halloween in WDW from August, but you know what I mean. I don’t think we’ll do the Boo Bash thing as it seems pricey for what you get and I suppose we could try and do Halloween Horror Nights at Universal but it isn’t suitable for Freddie and Emily may well pass out with fear if we subject her to that. The weather will be slightly less hurricaney and we’ll be safely back in the UK before the half term crowds are unleashed on the US from the UK.
Last week brought all the usual speculation and reading between the lines on when travel may be allowed. Fauci was interviewed and seemed to suggest September and it makes you wonder if the airlines have been given some form of heads up to that effect that may have informed Aer Lingus’ decision?
Other rumours are that it will be late July/early August. From a UK perspective Johnson has seemingly painted himself into a corner, saying that July 19th is a “terminus” day and if that is the case there can be little wiggle room not to allow leisure travel at that point. The balance to that logic is that he also said we’d break the back of it in 12 weeks in late Spring 2020 so there is that plus an entire back catalogue of lies, incompetence and failure.
There are even leaks and rumours that double jabbed folks will be relatively unrestricted in terms of the faff required to fly etc. Nobody knows and if anyone thinks the clowns we have running the show have any sort of masterplan then I can’t help you. Literally every case of Covid we have in this country is the one that was allowed in from India by not adding them to the red list at the same time as Bangladesh and Pakistan. I know I piss and moan about governmental incompetence a lot but it makes me angry. Of course they are screwing our holidays up but think of all the businesses that had recruited and planned to open on June 21st. It’s gross negligence.
So as much I enjoy planning these trips, the ratio of five lots of planning to zero actual trips is not one I can get on board with. I am weary of it all and just want any form of certainty at this point.
Away from moaning about governmental incompetence and travel uncertainty, I will end today’s post with a Happy Father’s Day to my Dad and all those who assume that role in any form.
From my perspective it is the best job in the world interspersed with occasional horror but it’s the only job I’ve ever had that I never wanted to change.
Join me here next week for more head in hands incredulity linked to the simple act of booking a holiday and going on it.
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