Tag: MNSSHP

The Dodging Dorian Tour 2019 – Day Twelve

by mkingdon, posted in The Dodging Dorian Tour 2019

I know all of you are hoping that I awoke this morning feeling much better, having fought off whatever super virus I had contracted. I didn’t. Never mind. As the very good song goes, we go on.

If this were a Hollywood movie, right about now, teams of men in hazmat suits would be rappelling down the outside of the villa before smashing through my bedroom window to escort me to some secret isolation facility for intrusive examinations. As it wasn’t, I swallowed a handful of pills, blew my schnoz (not a euphemism) and braced myself for the day ahead.

With a Dorian shaped hole meaning the plan made little sense this deep into the holiday, today we faced another sort of non-park day. Madness.

We did have stuff planned though, starting with a character breakfast at Chef Mickey’s and ending with MNSHHP. Last night I had told/pleaded with Louise that we needed to leave the villa by 9.40. That of course meant that I was pacing the lounge like some caged tiger listening to the never-ending sound of the hairdryer coming from upstairs at 9.55. Admittedly, it’s been some time since I used such a device, but it did seem more time than was necessary for Louise’s amount of hair.

This resulted in an aggressive drive to the Contemporary and a mild sulk from the handsome, yet slightly portly driver. We arrived at 10.30 which was far too close to the 10.40 ADR for my liking. Despite that I self-parked of course and we made our way in across the car park and into the hotel reception. This resort has never been high on my list of places I really wanted to stay. There’s nothing wrong with it of course, there are just other resorts I like more. That does not take away from the impressive size and styling in the foyer.

There was a disappointing queue to check in which was not appreciated by my rumbling tummy. It took about ten minutes to get checked in and seated in the waiting area.

Freddie took charge of the buzzer thing and we took a seat. Even at such a young age, see how he sports the “where’s my bloody breakfast” expression like a pro.

After about another ten minutes we were buzzed and seated, right at the back of the restaurant overlooking this glorious vista.

Our server was upon us immediately filling our cups and glasses with appropriate liquids and explaining how the buffet works. That was a bit like explaining snow to Eskimos and clearly, she had no idea who she was dealing with. Somebody had to volunteer to wait at the table with Freddie. I don’t know who did that, as I was away filling my plate.

The selection here is enormous and eventually, we had all visited and filled our plates.

Just so you know, that was Tom’s (first) plate. You know by now that I would never contemplate such gluttony.

Personal highlights that I need to share with you were the Tater Tots, Eggs Benedict, the cheesy potatoes and my final flourish at the waffle station. That got a bit silly if I’m honest as my creation contained chocolate chips, butterscotch chips (no, I didn’t know they existed either), caramel sauce, syrup and a sprinkling of M&Ms.

With perfect timing, just as I was getting to the stage of passing out whilst fighting the meat sweats, the characters started to arrive. First up the big man himself.

The interactions were very good. It helped that we were tucked away a little bit and we got a good amount of time with each.

As you can see Freddie was getting more confident with the characters now and really enjoying meeting them.

We left at 12, and headed back to the villa for some of that resting stuff.

Having put a brave face on things over breakfast I crashed into illness and self-pity again whilst everyone else spent time in the pool. My plan stated we should be leaving the villa at around 4pm to get to Magic Kingdom for our Mickey’s Not So Scary party. As a sign of how ill I was, I didn’t pester anyone to get ready and just left things to nature so we ended up leaving at 5.45 instead, showing no regard for the FastPasses I had booked a month earlier for that 4pm slot.

Another doozy of a headache, no doubt brought on by the reservoirs of snot up my hooter was plaguing me again. I parked us up and we trammed into the park.

Freddie was the only one in our party to make the effort and wear a costume, although his Mum & Dad followed the theme.

Upon entering the park we got wristbanded for the event and made our way through the designated party area to get our candy bags and our first handful of sweets. I’d eaten those by the time we made our way around to Casey’s for some tea.

I didn’t document it but I have a vague memory of exchanging a less than loving exchange with Louise in the queue. I blame the illness and the fact that Louise was probably in the wrong.

It was busy, but we eventually got our selection of hot dogs and corn dog bites and amazingly found a table to sit at whilst being attacked by the killer ducks in that area. We ate our food admiring many of the excellent costumes so many guests had gone to the effort of making.

We made our way through Adventureland, bypassing Pirates which we had intended to ride as it had a 25-minute wait. Instead, we walked round to Splash which was a walk on.

Riding things you have done hundreds of times is always nicely enhanced in the twilight/darkness of night. As we made our way around Splash it went from twilight to full-on dark and it was lovely.

On that note, as we left the ride, the Haunted Mansion looked incredible. My photos don’t do it justice, but it’s all I have.

We entered the queue, with this being Freddie’s first time. As ever, any concerns we had about how he would react were unfounded.

Even the noise and pitch black of the stretching room did not phase him and he spent the entire ride dancing in his Doom Buggy. I had a buggy all to myself and I may, just may, have closed my eyes for a few seconds. Again, I was ill you know.

We watched the performers on the lawn for a few minutes and then made our way through Fantasyland, collecting more candy.

Having got nowhere near riding Mine Train with a FastPass at any other time during our trip, we headed there next. Louise opted to take Freddie for a wander whilst the rest of us waited the 20 minutes or so to board.

This is a belting ride. For the amount of space this takes up, it is definitely a bang for your buck. We only seem to ride this one in the dark too, which I’m sure enhances our experience. I did feel sorry for the lady in the same carriage as Tom, who was doing his level best to rock the thing until it tipped over.

The only downside to this ride tonight was, having invested all of $5 earlier on a hand sanitiser and clipped it to Ryan, I lost it, wrestling him out of the snug space by my feet on this ride. The sanitizer was a vain attempt to infect as few people as possible and of course, protect myself from further misery. There was no way I was wasting another $5. I had a budget to stick to.

We carried on down to the teacups ride, bought Freddie a light-up pumpkin necklace thing to add to his collection before he rode with Rebecca and Tom. I don’t have many rules on these trips, but me not riding the teacups is one of them. This all stems from a post-breakfast buffet ride in the early naughties that still gives me cold sweats to this day.

After riding Freddie was restroomed and changed and we waited near Dumbo. As they returned there were many smiles as they had managed to get Freddie onto Barnstormer. They just tried him against the measuring stick as they passed the entrance, got the green light and on they went. His first coaster and again he loved every second.

I got us all a drink and we walked to Main Street to watch the fireworks which were starting shortly. It was busy but we managed to find a decent spot without too much trouble, which I guess is one of the benefits of going to one of these limited numbers ticketed events.

I have, as ever, saved you from the 257 other photos I tried which were blurred, dark or downright crap!

When the fireworks ended, much of the gathered crowd moved away and we were able to make our way forward to the same corner we occupied last year to watch the upcoming show. Again, it was excellent.

The Sanderson sisters really are a highlight and if you can get to see them you really should,

By this time, Freddie was way past his bedtime so Rebecca, Tom and a very tired Louise headed for the car. Emily and I had important unfinished business so we stayed a little longer. Sure, there was a parade to watch but more importantly, Emily had her heart set on one of the Amuck cupcakes.

Image result for amuck cup cakes

Believe it or not, I wasn’t that hungry (I wasn’t feeling well you know), so I had just had a blueberry muffin when we had waited the Starbucks queue out to get them. As we did, the headless horseman rode past the shop so we knew the parade would not be far behind.

My muffin was excellent. It was moist and warm and lasted about seven seconds. A tale as old as time.

We made our way down to a spot we often use for the watching of parades, the steps of City Hall. We didn’t have long to wait at all.

I know the photo above is mainly of the chaps with the spades, but, my word, can we just address the elephant in the theme park. Those are some serious leggings. Amirite?

This parade cast member clearly spotted them too.

We could see the end of the parade coming around the hub and we decided to make a run for it, conscious that we had folks waiting in the car and it would be better to avoid the main rush of folks leaving the park.

We went home via a 7-11 for essentials like cold sore cream and Tylenol, only one of which was for me. A cold sore was probably the one affliction I wasn’t currently stricken with.

I was in bed by 12.45 and asleep before 12.46.

By the way, you may have missed the rare unicorn that is a mid-week blog post from me? If you did, and you want to hear about our next trip’s birth, then you can do so here….

A link to the post about our 2020 trip
Where There’s a Villa There’s A Way

Till the next time…….

Sanaaty is So Scary

by mkingdon, posted in Walt Disney World

37 days.

How can something feel so close and yet seem so far away at the same time? Over the years, I have to admit to getting very close a trip and not being ready. I don’t mean physically, as packing always gets done and plans get made. I mean mentally. Sometimes life is just so busy that I have struggled to get into the right mindset and it has taken a few days of the holiday to get into the right mode.

Well, I’m ready. This happened this week I think. This lovely bonus trip that was not going to happen is incredibly welcome, needed and almost upon us.

It may have been this holiday mode settling in that was responsible for my latest faux pas. All the things that we told ourselves about squeezing this trip in by cutting back on the more expensive things a trip can include lie in tatters. That’s harsh, we have restricted the number of ADRs but like some kind of Augutus Gloop of trip planning I couldn’t keep my fat fingers off another succulent looking morsel that came into my view this week.

To get the confession out of the way, I have booked Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party for us for the 8th of September. Some random blog about it came into one of my social media feeds during the week at a time when I had a few minutes for it to catch my eye. I read about some of the new things for this year, remembered how last year was one of the highlights of our trip and as all good financially irresponsible planners do, thought, sod it, and pressed the button.

It fell nicely into the plan on one of those days that I mentioned last week that had nothing concrete in it, so, clearly, it was my density.

Image result for you are my density george mcfly

My weakness was welcomed by my fellow travellers with all the enabling support an addict does not need. It’s like having Oliver Reed as your Alcoholics Anonymous mentor.

Rebecca is now planning and putting together Freddie’s costume. We won’t be dressing up, mainly because when we went last year the temperature was ridiculous and the idea of being in some cumbersome polyester number is too horrific to consider. I applaud those that do.

So that solved one of my outstanding planning issues, as that day now has a character breakfast at Chef Mickey’s mid-morning, and MNSSHP in the evening. Whilst updating “the plan” with these details, I did have a minor meltdown and panic. It suddenly dawned on me that my birthday plans had some potential issues.

This year it falls on a Saturday, and based on Emily’s experiences when working in World Showcase during Food & Wine, Saturdays are generally to be avoided as she always found them to be very busy and very full of drunken people staggering from booth to booth. Options were considered, but the amount of surgery required to the whole plan to accommodate any change that may properly solve this and not cause carnage to the rest of the trip was too severe. So, we decided to leave it as it is.

I consulted Touring Plans and saw that they rated that day a 4 out of 10. This reassured me a little, as I could see they were showing DHS at a 10 out of 10 for much of that week when Galaxy’s Edge opens. At the end of the day, we shall play it by ear. If we focus on Future World (what remains of it) during the day we should avoid most of the crowds coming for Food & Wine and then we can do our ADR at Via Napoli and then wander a hopefully quieter World Showcase in the evening before the fireworks. Simply put, if it does get too busy, we’ll do something else. You know me, I just go with the flow!

To show that I am not a total idiot, I did resist booking Sanaa. This, despite spending a little time browsing the menu this week, is an act of self restraint that I applaud myself for. We already have a list of off site favourites that we will never get through so it made no sense. Then again, their bread service is sufficient to abandon all sense of sanaaty (see what I did there?) so I am quite pleased with myself.

Yesterday I found myself nesting. This seems to happen as a trip gets close enough to touch. It’s a desire to get things in order before we go I guess. Like some pregnant mother about to deliver, when holiday mode gets me, I too have a burning desire to get things done. So a number of tasks that I have been gladly ignoring for months got done. Some grouting, random repairs around the house and sorting of our spare room took place. That spare room has been a disaster since we did our bedroom and that was finished in May. Don’t get me wrong it’s still far from show room standards but we can now see the floor!

So my readiness is there and in a week we will be in FastPass territory. That’s when shit gets real, as somebody who doesn’t mind swearing might say. Be prepared for my inevitable rants about Flights of Passage and Slinky Dog not being available for the entirety of our stay. It’s all part of the process.

Till the next time…….

Freddie’s First Florida Fiesta – Day Twelve 9th September 2018

by mkingdon, posted in Freddie's First Florida Fiesta

After all the moaning about being tired yesterday, it seemed our collective bodies now hated us as many of the group had spent the night awake and ill. Louise had a crappy cold and nobody in Rebecca and Tom’s room got any sleep as Freddie was up coughing all night.

We were a weary and sickly bunch this morning. The plan had us all down for a character breakfast at O’hana, and that, by jingo, would still be happening, but only after a count of survivors fit to travel. That came down to the hard-core of me, Emily and Mikey. I amended the ADR via the app and we set off for the Polynesian leaving everyone else to get themselves better for the MNSSHP party later.

This is a lovely resort, and of course, if somebody wants to gift me a stay at it, I’d be grateful but it doesn’t feature in my list of places I’d love to stay at. The villas look awesome out on the water but I think I would put Wilderness Lodge, Beach Club and (just to say we’d done it) the Grand Floridian above it on my list.

The queue to check in for our meal was the longest of our trip so far. What can people be talking about for so long to the poor patient cast member?

Once we had finally got to the desk and spent about twenty seconds checking in, we took a seat in the lobby for two minutes until we got our text to say the table was ready. Our seater, (is that a word?) in the short journey to our table had discovered where we were from, asked several questions about it and then described a summer she spent in Bury St Edmunds. I guess she does that a lot.

Once seated we were juiced up and served this delicious pineapple bread thing.

We destroyed that whilst waiting for our platter to arrive….

We all declared the waffles the pick of the platter but happily tucked away everything we had been brought plus selected seconds.

The timing of the meal was great. Character meals can be rudely interrupted by characters, but this morning, we were left in peace to eat and only as we were feeling so full we may be sick did some friends turn up.

Stitch was great fun and really demonstrated how character interaction should be done.

Vowing never to eat again (spoiler – we did), we strolled back to the car and drove back to the villa.

Everyone was resting up around the pool and Freddie was having a sleep making up for what he missed last night.

I had a quick dip and a read, but not at the same time.

Having missed out on the huge breakfast and having to have made do with whatever stuff we had in the villa for their breakfast, Rebecca and Tom were starving now and itching to get going. It was 3pm by the time everyone was ready and of course on the way we stopped at Walgreens. This time it was for cough medication for Freddie and to collect my one million point loyalty card reward.

We parked up in the Magic Kingdom car park and trammed it into the TTC. Freddie needed a quick change so we enjoyed the raging heat whilst waiting and, with no immediate rush to be on any ride, I allowed us to take the ferry instead of the monorail. This was mainly due to the fact that I could see the ferry sat waiting for guests and there was a queue on the ramp up to the monorail.

We set off on the short walk to the ferry and with about six steps remaining to the gate, the cast member shut it and said we’d have to wait for the next one. The four minutes we had to wait for the next one would of course, in my mind, ruin the whole day.

Still, I’ve waited in places with a worse view I’ll admit.

We were on board soon enough and ready to set sail.

Once in the park we were directed right just past Tony’s to an area where we would collect our wristbands and candy bags, who, I had mistakenly thought was a 70’s porn star.

We picked up our first lot of candy, sampling a couple of pieces as we headed to sort out the hunger issue properly at Casey’s with various shapes of hot dogs.

We ate outside, fed the ducks a bit and admired the costumes some folks had put a huge amount of effort into.

The first order of business was our Space Mountain FastPass so we headed over to Tomorrowland.

Sorting out the rider swap was a right pain in the arse here as the magic tablet they normally use was broken. The cast member had a huge group of folks gathered around her trying to sort things out and she was having to remember faces to allow folks to ride once the first part of groups had done so. It was almost a longer wait to do this than it was to do the standby.

Eventually we were seen and Rebecca and Tom rode first. It took quite a while, more so as the (I assume temporary) exit now is right around the back and it’s a fair old walk back to the entrance.

It was 5.50 by the time the second lot had ridden and restrooms were needed by some weaker members of the group. This meant that we missed our FastPass for Peter Pan which ended at 6, with the park closing then for the party. As penance for needing that wee Louise then watched a sleeping Freddie whilst the rest of us headed to the two mountains in Frontierland. They were both walk ons.

We had arranged to meet up with Ceara again this evening so we did this now before heading back to Louise who was in Liberty Square.

Next it was Haunted Mansion which I guess is a must do at the Halloween party. It was busy but Ceara worked her cast member magic and literally got us in the back door to avoid a twenty-five minute queue. Freddie needed changing and Mikey needed the loo so we rode without them.

I don’t know why but I thought that this chap had a very fetching hair cut.

As we exited there were some actors up on the lawn who were very entertaining.

We watched them for a little while before reuniting with the others and bagging some more candy in Fantasyland. We then took in Mickey’s Philharmagic and did some actual buying of some stuff in the shop at the exit.

It was raining quite hard at this point and we walked over to Small World hoping to ride and avoid the wet stuff. There was a fifteen minute queue but again Ceara had us whisked through to ride immediately. I did feel a bit guilty walking past the queue. We got some strange looks as of course there are no FastPasses during a party night so everyone was probably wondering what we were doing.

I figured over the years, I’ve paid Disney enough cash to warrant the odd bit of good fortune.

Having ridden this countless times, tonight we experienced a first. It broke a bit and the music stopped, as did our boat and we experienced it in silence for quite a while. Some may say that was a blessing. It extended our ride anyway which Freddie was happy about as he loved this one.

We were going to ride the Mine Train next but it was down due to the weather so Ariel was the alternative.

Another Freddie favourite.

Next, Rebecca and Tom took Freddie on Dumbo and the rest of wandered the huge shop nearby. Somehow I emerged with huge Rice Krispy treats and slushes for all which we all enjoyed before returning to the now functioning Mine Train.

Freddie was alseep again after all his riding exploits so Rebecca and Tom sat out with him whilst the rest of us rode. This is an excellent ride and very smooth. I think it feels better in the dark too.

We did another candy stop and then made our way to the castle for the 10.45 show featuring the Sanderson sisters. We found a place to stand in the crowds and waited.

We waited some more and it became clear, mainly due to it being announced several times, that the show was delayed due to the weather. It wasn’t raining now but the stage was wet and an army of folks were on it trying to dry it out.

Eventually they declared that the show couldn’t go ahead but the sisters did come out and they performed one song to avoid riots breaking out in the crowd.

We stayed where we were waiting for the parade.

We took the opportunity to take some pictures in front of the castle with the crowds now moving away to bag parade spots. This was one of those moments you can’t plan for. We literally had the area in front of the castle all to ourselves and it was lovely to let Freddie explore a bit and take too many photos.

The parade was excellent and we had a great view despite not staking one out.

After the parade, Freddie dropped off to sleep and knowing that the impending fireworks would wake him up, Rebecca and Tom decided to walk back to the car with him.

With a now dry stage the 12am Sanderson sisters show went ahead without a hitch. The three sisters really are excellent.

When the show finished we decided not to leave with the crowds and we hung back instead enjoying the castle.

After a while we started to make our way out through the shops, buying more stuff and by the time we got to the exit it really was getting late now.

We got the resort monorail and the tram back to the car at 1.15. We dropped Ceara off at her apartment and made it back to the villa at 2am. We were all beyond exhausted but I think everyone agreed that this party was a massive highlight of our trip. I don’t know it took us until now to do it, but it won’t be the last time for sure. I also have my eye on the Christmas party at some point!

Till the next time….

Scary Stuff

by mkingdon, posted in Walt Disney World

Before I begin, it’s only right that I share with you the results of my very scientific poll last week. For those who didn’t read that post…..get out…go on…if you aren’t here every week, begone, I hold no truck with part timers….ahem…

The poll was asking if the charges for parking your car at Disney resorts would make you reconsider staying on site. Turns out, for most it would…

I suspect there may be larger, more representative polling mechanisms than me asking my two readers, but it does seem that this new policy is causing folks to pause and consider their options. It’ll be interesting to see how it pans out. The entire Disney board, who read this blog every week, will no doubt be holding emergency meetings this week as a result of this.

On a journey that started in 1980 and has included more trips than I can remember (true story) it isn’t very often that I get to experience new Disney stuff on one of our Florida trips. Sure there are new eateries, and new rides along the way, but to do new stuff that we have never experienced before, we usually have to venture further afield.

The Keys, Daytona, Vero Beach, Naples, and Siesta Key have all featured in the quest to find new stuff and to make sure Louise tolerates us going to the same place all the time. We’ve loved them all by the way, and should time and money permit, we’d return to them all.

This week saw the booking of our Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party tickets. In all these years we have never done one of these party events and I am definitely looking forward to it. On our typical end of August trips, Halloween bursts out all over the Magic Kingdom on our last few days and with this holiday due to start a little later than normal, right at the end of August, we get the chance to do the party night.

With a complete disregard for my plan, Disney conspired to make life a little difficult. Despite the park hours saying that Magic Kingdom closed at 6.30 on the 6th of September, making me assume that we could safely bank on that being one of the dates for MNSSHP, it was not. Or at least there are no tickets available for that date right now. So, I had to do some swift emergency surgery to the plan, rejigging several days as if it were some trivial task. Should anyone less experienced than I attempt such a thing, disaster would surely ensue.

A future blog post will once again outline this new plan in graphic day by day detail. Try to manage your excitement and anticipation if you can.

To cut a medium length story short, we are now doing Not So Scary on the 9th of September and for reasons I won’t bore you with, it looks like we’ve had to cut Edison from our dining plans as a result. That was caused by a chain of events and a line of thinking that you wouldn’t believe even I were to explain it. In summary, it was either Edison or Olive Garden for the chop and as the latter’s Lasagne is Emily’s favourite food on the planet it was a short decision making process.

Somehow this change meant that we needed somewhere to eat a late lunch at on the day of MNSSHP, off-site, so we could go back to the villa to change as we didn’t want to turn up anywhere in our costumes before heading to Magic Kingdom for the party! So on the 9th we will be resting poolside for the morning and then around 2pm, venturing out to eat before going back to the villa to change into our elaborate costumes. It has been decided that this shall be Miller’s Ale House on the 192. We’ve done it once before and their wings and cheesy fries are excellent.

The double edged sword of doing new stuff like MNSSHP is that, yay, it’s all new and exciting, but, boo, I don’t know what I’m doing so much. So research is needed. Or I could just be lazy and ask you lovely folks the current question in my mind…and that is…

It rings a vague bell that there are rules around Halloween/character costumes, and adults cannot wear “proper” costumes, I assume for fear that some guests may mistake other guests for characters? I can see the risk as even out of costume I am constantly assumed to be Gaston, Prince Charming and/or Hercules. It’s a bother. So what can we wear? I see pictures of folks in “full costume” when I look online but it would be good to hear from some folks with personal experience and/or real knowledge unlike me!

Beyond my plan to recoup the price of the ticket in the amount of candy gathered, what other tips would you give to a first timer at Not So Scary?

For those of you who enjoy a Freddie photo. Here is a significant one, his first passport photo. I think he will be happy with that for the next few years!

Returning to normal life, I picked up my new (to me) car on Wednesday. I am probably the least petrol headed male in the UK, but still, it is always nice to get a new car and enjoy that smell for a few days at least. It has some groovy toys like a reversing camera, which I’m sure is handy if you are not a parking God like myself. It also has heated seats, which will definitely be useful and used as it seems winter has come for good and we are destined to live on single digit temperatures for the next 27 years. I have had a hot bottom for years and this will only enhance it. Steady ladies!

Today, Mustard begin their wedding season. The first of our wedding bookings for the year happens today and I’ll be there for most of the day and night. By the time you read this, we shall probably be setting up our gear, sound checking and then hanging about for a long time. The actual playing of songs is always a small part of the life of a function band. Without roadies and an entourage, it is very much a “Do it all ourselves” approach with the highlight being the pleasure of packing everything up, getting it into the car and then unloading it back into the house at some stupid time in the early hours. Safe to say, we do not do it for money!

Enjoy your Sundays.

Till the next time….

A Peak At Planning

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Till the next time….
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Scary Stuff

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

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

Have a great time Sarah and Tom!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Till the next time…..


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Hard Yards and Halloween

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

When it comes to the discipline of writing a weekly blog, then these post holiday times are the hard yards. Times are tough enough, but then Louise makes me do gardening for chunks of the weekend and that is the very definition of insult to injury. It is not a recipe for inspiring the creative juices for the creation of captivating blog content.

The holiday to which I refer feels a long time ago already and a full and busy week at work involving too many motorways and meetings has jolted me back into reality.

The good news is (well, it depends on your view point) is that I have made a start to the trip report. Before you get too carried away, I opened the Word document, typed the title and a paragraph of text before having to get back to real life. If anyone has some spare hours and a muse knocking about, I will accept either or both. The title of it shall be an obvious one, reflecting the changing state of our family situation, The Adults Only Tour 2015. Don’t worry there won’t be too much content with an 18 rating!!

Amongst the grim reality of the daily grind there have been very welcome glimpses of metaphorical sunshine from across the Atlantic. We have shared, mainly via Snapchat, Emily’s week, which didn’t start very well, with her being ill with a nasty cold, but ended with a visit to MNSSHP and then yesterday with her meeting popular vloggers Tim and Jen Tracker in Epcot. She had a lovely chat with them at the Food and Wine Festival which by all accounts has attracted more people to it than the population of a small country. Epcot is busy right now!

MNSSHP was affected by the persistent rain for pretty much all of the night, but Emily reported that the fireworks and parade were both superb

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We have Facetimed her a couple of times this weekend, which has been the first time we’ve been able to since we came home as she has been so busy. It’s lovely to speak to her of course and to confirm that she is eating and taking medication for her cold etc etc. Twenty years old or not, she cannot escape the parental instinct, even by being on the other side of the Atlantic.

This week has also seen Louise and I begin life in what I believe is called an empty nest. With Emily already having flown the nest, albeit temporarily, Rebecca and her boyfriend Tom now have their own place together which has been some time in the planning. This week they have pretty much now moved in. It’s a lovely place about ten minutes from us and they are obviously very excited about the whole thing. Rebecca is well into forging her way in the world with her recently acquired job and we’re really proud of her get up and go.

Mustard also resumed gigging last night with a great night at a local pub. It was good to get back to it after a summer break whilst we all holidayed and everyone seemed to have a good time. Louise took a short video, which isn’t the best sound quality, and it is sideways too, but here you go. If you follow this link to the Mustard Facebook page (and hey, why not Like it whilst you are there?) you can see it as the most recent post.

You are not allowed to phone in work tomorrow with a stiff neck as a result of watching that.

So my goals for the week to come are, to do no further gardening at all, to somehow find my mojo and get on with the trip report and to get through the working week quickly and painlessly before a double header of gigs next weekend.

Till the next time…..