ESTA Bank Holiday

Having had glorious (relatively speaking) weather all week whilst working, the bank holiday weekend brings with it a November style climate and I sit looking out at sideways rain and people walking past dressed like the folks who used to get involved in the back lot tour at MGM in the boat scene.

Some cliches are cliches for a reason. As another example, yesterday I did some painting…yep the bedroom again. This time it was only a few minutes of a job, following my Dad helping me (code for I stood watching) fill a couple of last bits. Oh and of course I went to the tip. I am the living embodiment of a British bank holiday weekend in flabby form.

We’re 93 days out from our trip and the need to change the flabby part of the above becomes more pressing. Louise recently invested in an exercise bike and I have already worked up a real sweat with it. But since assembling it I haven’t been near it to be honest. I have made plans to do so of course, by buying the cable that was missing from the spare room’s TV so that I can watch it whilst peddling. That is half the battle surely? Now, it is all set up and ready to go I am literally shedding the pounds already, right?

My relationship with exercise is sort of hate, hate with a side portion of guilt. I have started walking every lunchtime at work again with the winter weather possibly behind us. It’s only half an hour or so but add that to the half hour of walking the dogs after work and that makes a whole hour of me doing stuff I’d rather not, but it is for the greater good I guess.

During last week Emily introduced me to a new You Tube thing that has some good stuff for those who are obsessed with food. The channel is called Delish and whilst a lot of the content is less interesting to me, being recipes and such, they do have a good few that are right up my street.  I particularly enjoyed the ones where they eat the entire menu at the likes of IHOP, Cheesecake Factory and Applebees.

There are also some good ones involving all the snacks at Magic Kingdom, Universal and Disneyland. For a rainy bank holiday weekend, it’s ideal. Tell them I sent you.

The first one I saw was a good one. It involved the many snacks and of course alcoholic drinks at World Showcase. Enoy.

The fact that this one blog post goes from exercise bikes to life threatening amounts of food so easily sort of sums up my life quite well.

My new passport arrived at the start of the week. Despite them saying it would take three weeks, it took three and a half days. Clearly nobody is travelling anywhere these days. Having wept over the horrific ageing shown in the respective photos again, I then went off to the ESTA site to update mine and Louise’s with our new passport details.

You probably all knew this, but that isn’t possible. Even though we all got new ESTAs last year and should have had them last for two years, upon trying to edit mine, I saw that it expired alongside my old passport in a few days. So I had to bite the bullet and the $28 and apply for brand new ones for the two of us. I always forget the level of detail these buggers ask for and it took longer than I thought it would. I should at some point log back on and make sure we have moved from Pending to Approved.

Here’s a question for someone who knows their stuff. Am I able to update our US accommodation details on the ESTAs for those who don’t have new passports? I mean, I could go to the website and try but that would mean me going getting Emily’s passport from her bedroom in the attic and that’s not happening right now. This is the equivalent of those who post questions like “My child only turned three four years ago, can I pretend they are three and not pay for park tickets?” on all those WDW Facebook groups. They are of course one click away from Google but hey.

My guilt just forced me to Google that and I think the answer is no, you don’t need to/can’t update your US address but if you know better, hit me up, as the youngsters say.

Enjoy the bank holiday Monday if you get one. You might need a cagoule.

Till the next time……

Endless ESTAs

It’s been a tough old week. Sure it was only four days long, but having had a busy weekend, I started it running at around 3% of my battery, with no hope of recharging until Saturday.

We’ve been eating buffet food for most of the week, so it’s not been all bad. I think I will have to admit defeat now and throw away what’s left before it becomes a health hazard.

I took advantage of the bank holiday Monday by applying for all of our ESTAs. I was convinced that most of them were still valid, but I was wrong. Only Emily has one that will cover our next trip so I completed six applications in one sitting and I was done by sometime on Wednesday. Is it me or have those forms got a whole lot more complex in recent years? I think I gave fewer personal details on my last mortgage application. I’m old enough to remember trying to fill in green forms on the tray table on the plane whilst Colin from Barnsley in front of you reclined his seat half way through.

As expected, we initially got the pending message for all of them but when I checked the next day we had all been approved for travel. That’s a good thing as I would hate to have to leave anyone behind.

I had no need to apply for ESTAs yet of course. Someone more sensible than I may have waited until a few weeks before we travel to have the two-year period cover as many trips as possible. Call me stupid, but doing ESTAs feels like a bank holiday task and completing the forms just made the trip feel a little closer. Sometimes, you just need that, right? Plus, should Freddie’s criminal record be a problem and he be denied entry we wouldn’t have much time to do anything about it.

At a tenner each, I am happy to sacrifice the few months we may lose for that peace of mind, and who is to say we will always go at the same time of year over the next two years. We are no longer shackled by the cruel mistress of the school term. The peninsula of Florida is our oyster whenever our hearts desire…and we can afford it….and can get time of work….and find someone to mind the dogs…but other than that…whenever we like.

I also had my first look at theme park tickets last week. It is nice and simple this time as we are only doing the Disney thing, so the 14 day ultimate is all we need. It seems they are around £360 each at the moment. As we will be on Disney property pretty much every day of the trip that’s about £30 a day. That’s less than the Alton Towers daily rate, so I feel comfy with that price. Offer me a ticket for Reflections Of Earth for £30 and I’d be likely to throw my money at you before you increased the price, so getting everything else thrown in as well seems decent. It appears that this price also includes the Memory Maker. We had that on the last trip and failed to use it at all. I don’t know why that was, but my guess is that I felt it would delay our movements by a vital few seconds having to wait for the official photographer to snap  and scan us and I preferred to do my usual snap and move technique.

It probably increased the number of rides we managed to get on by around zero. Having said that we only did four days in WDW on the last trip so I’ll blame that instead.

That recharging I suggested I was in need of at the start of this post still hasn’t happened. Louise has been working all weekend so all the lovely household tasks have fallen to me, whilst she selfishly has fun tending to Bolton’s sick, including a long overdue tip run. Then, last night, young Freddie stayed with us. That’s always lovely but there’s a reason most people have babies in their younger years. I’m shattered.

He’s been a little star though. He slept from 10.30 until after 9am and he’s since had some breakfast, a bath and is now flat out again. Life at six months old is something we all aspire to.

We treated Freddie to a bit of Eurovision last night. It was the usual mix of insanity, mediocrity and dross, but I don’t know if you spotted Tim Tracker representing Albania?

A strange career development but fair play to him! Maybe that’s what he means by paying the price?

Till the next time…..