If you thought last week’s post was a hot mess of confusion with absolutely no value, help or conclusions on when holidays may happen, you’d be right, but you ain’t seen nothing yet.
The only thing I am more sure of seven days later, is that my burning desire to be there is multiplying rapidly.
My twitter feed is a stream of contradictory thoughts and predictions which, tweet by tweet, see me swinging from “Where are the suitcases, I’m gonna pack” to “I’m burning my passport as nobody will ever travel internationally for leisure ever again”.
I still don’t think the 14th of June will happen though.
A week on post vaccination and I have seen no side effects beyond an arm that isn’t really sore, it just feels like I need to scratch it. If that isn’t a metaphor for my desire to be travelling to WDW I don’t know what is. I have been scratching that itch since 1980.
So with the unchangeable and unstoppable passing of time, Easter is nearly up on us and the clocks have gone forward, robbing us of an hour in bed, but delivering on the promise of lighter nights and maybe a summer. For some reason since moving in here I have been awake before 7am every day. I really hope that stops soon.
With those significant changes and events, let’s hope that my longed for step change in our collective fortunes comes soon after. Restrictions start to be lifted, more people get more jabs and hospital and death rates become something we don’t need to be looking at graphs of every day.
With the US going gangbusters on the vaccine, surely at some point this summer, Brits will be eating themselves to death in an Applebees or an Olive Garden in Orlando as God intended. One thing I need to share with you, linked to the topic of eating yourself to death, is a strange fascination I have developed for an email I get every day.
On our last trip we visited Perkins. It was an unplanned breakfast and was glorious. By using their free Wifi they had gained my email address and I figured getting the odd email was a fair price for using their internet. Well, I love it. I look forward to it every day, no doubt driven by my sad longing to be anywhere in Florida, but these emails are great and demonstrate the incredible value and quality you can get in these “lower end” eateries should you want or need to. Look at what they send me….
If $20 gets you all that I could be dead within a week. Honestly, whether you ever intend to eat there or not, sign up to their emails. It’s like a ray of sunshine into your inbox, but it will make you hungry.
On the subject of my waistline let us all hope for the existence of a definite trip soon. Lockdown has made it clear to me that the only things preventing me from appearing on My 600lb Life have been having to go into the office for work and knowing I had to keep my weight down in preparation for a WDW holiday. Without either, things are not good in the scales department right now and I need some form of carrot and stick to help me, although neither of those sound very tasty.
With my employer announcing a “hybrid” working policy this week, which is basically don’t take the piss and work from home all the time but broadly do what you want, I fear it may only be a holiday that is going to save me from buying a whole new set of clothes with size tags that begin with multiple X’s.
Away from Florida, and believe me I am aware that I am every single day, today is Louise’s birthday. Hopefully it will be the last family birthday where we can’t do what we want with who we want as it’s getting a bit tiresome now. I am not one to leave the buying of birthday gifts to the last minute, as you may imagine, but today I have been unable to give Louise hers. Why you ask?
Well, I ordered it in plenty of time. It is a present from myself, Emily and Rebecca and Tom so I had collective responsibility to get it here on time. It was due to arrive last Monday and after the time slot for delivery changing all day, just after 8pm I had a message that delivery was attempted at 8.01 and failed. Well, we were in. Where else can we go? A further attempt was scheduled for the day after.
This time it did arrive and luckily and unusually, before wrapping the thing I opened the packaging to have a look. Inside were two large boxes of washing powder. How lucky is Louise, I hear you cry. Well, this year as a change, I had not ordered her domestic cleaning products and I was shocked to see that had been sent. Clearly, some thieving rat had clocked what was in the box, had it away and swapped the contents.
I contacted the seller, and was given a returns label and a speedy refund. I re-ordered. When the delivery of that item followed the same pattern as the first, missing its original day and then arriving the day after, with obvious resealing having happened, I knew what I would find in the box. As an added surprise, this time it was washing powder and dog food.
Another return was arranged and it sits awaiting collection as did the last.
In the end, I have ordered another from a totally different company, but as this had taken us up until 6.30pm on Friday, it could not get here quickly enough and it may be Monday or Tuesday when it does. What a mess.
I can’t tell you what the thing is yet of course, as Louise doesn’t know, but it turns out they are more sought after than class A drugs. Let’s hope Louise actually likes the thing when it arrives.
Right, I am off to go and stare at Twitter a bit more and endure the rollercoaster of emotions caused by the varying rumours and predictions of when folks can travel for fun again.
Often, when there isn’t much to report on the WDW planning front I will regale you with “edge of your seat” updates on the exciting life that I lead. I will often look back on the week just gone and select just a smattering of highlights from the many to choose from.
I’d like to do that now, but I was in a meeting. Yep, all week. It was one of those weeks in which events conspired to see me busier than a busy thing from start to finish. It was not enjoyable. As is the way of the working world these days, many of those meetings were “virtual”, either via an online “thingy” or video conference. I checked the calendar and it is 2020 which makes me wonder why these things are still, at times, absolutely bobbins.
“Hi, who just joined?”
“Can you see my screen?”
“I think he’s joining now.”
“Sorry, can you go on mute, there’s a load of background noise!”
Round and round on this carousel we go, discussing things that, given a choice, we probably wouldn’t, over sub-standard audio, and often, whilst on mute, not really listening and instead waging war on the endless shite pouring into your inbox.
I’m not sure this is the pinnacle of civilisation envisioned by those phoenicians half way up Spaceship Earth. Recognising this, the weather Gods expressed their distaste for my woeful week and my Ark is coming along nicely.
Last night, Mustard were taking yet more steps along the showbiz highway in Earby. If you haven’t heard of Earby, don’t worry, the people who live there haven’t ether. It’s out in the hinterlands around Burnley and the weather on the drive to and from the gig was underwear threatening. Sideways torrential rain, gusting gales and heart stopping puddles of water on the motorway reminded me of one of those drives many of us have had along the I4 during a Florida thunderstorm when the wipers just won’t go fast enough. There are fingernail shaped dents in my steering wheel as concentration levels were high.
In other, non moany work related news, Rebecca’s wedding draws ever nearer. Louise took Rebecca for her hair trial yesterday and by all accounts it went very well. I’m not sure when my hair trial is, but I hope it’s soon.
It’s only two weeks until the hen do. They are off to Liverpool for the weekend and Emily, to her enormous credit has worked tirelessly to arrange a full programme of events and activities that they will all have to tackle from behind huge hangovers. This hen do has been a labour of love for Emily for many months and I’m sure it will be a huge success. I shall be spending that weekend in glorious peace and quiet, missing them all, surrounded by take away containers and the PS4.
Planning wise, there has been time for none of that. We are hurtling at surprising speed towards our ADR window. At the end of this month we can begin the process of determining where we are going to eat in several months time. All of those plans are already set as you know.
One thing I did find a few seconds to notice last week (so I can’t have been that busy after all, right?) was one email. On our last trip, I signed into the Perkins WiFi during our breakfast trip there. One of the conditions of that was, it seems, signing up to them spamming me every day with their promo emails.
That can be annoying and it’s easy enough to unsubscribe, but when they send you content like this, why would you.
I have thought of little else since receiving this email. Indeed it saw me through one particular conference call which ran for six hours. Sucks to be me right?
Day seven already, and despite the title of this trip report and the little bit of enforced last-minute plan changing, you may wonder, what’s with all this Dorian drama? Indeed.
During the last two days, the eleventy billion hours of TV coverage had told us that the long hoped for “right turn” had happened, and Dorian was off up the coast, with Floridian landfall now looking unlikely. Those on the coast would be affected but it seemed we would be missing the worst of it.
This had not stopped Disney going all health and safety on us and closing their parks at 2pm today. I was awake at 6am, looking for Dorian updates and for the latest thoughts from Denis Phillips on Facebook. He is the “go-to” meteorolo…….meeterol……met….weatherman and his updates had given a lot of clarity and calm in what might otherwise have been a stressful few days.
Like the mature rational grown-up I am, I was a little upset that this major weather event which had already devastated several islands in its wake and might yet still do similar to the coast of Florida had denied us of some park touring time, I went downstairs to the TV to see how bad today’s weather might actually be, feeling suitably proud of my selfish attitude. These latest weather reports would determine whether we ventured to a park until 2pm or not.
I had by this stage got about 27 different weather apps on my phone and I spent an overly long amount of time looking at each of those and watching several different weather folks, oddly all on the same channel, predict what would happen. It was amazing that one channel could employ thirty-six weather experts and have them all on at the same time.
All of the above were predicting some quite nasty rain this morning and after much deliberating, I decided to call it, and the parks were off for today. It would not be fun in torrential rain. Instead, we decided to go out for breakfast. If we can’t ride, we’ll eat.
I noted that I was particularly hungry this morning, which would be good news for whichever breakfast place we stumbled upon first. I did notice, with some concern, that as we got into the car, there was blistering sunshine and nothing but blue skies, but this, of course, would all change as predicted by the great and good of the TV. Right?
As we met with the 192 we spotted a Perkins and after a mildly dangerous and somewhat illegal U-Turn, we abandoned the van in the parking lot and made our way inside. Again, as I cast my eyes upwards, there was still no sign of the evil weather coming our way.
We were seated immediately and ordered coffees and juices. I was becoming a little obsessed with the weather at this point, wondering why outside did not look like this…..
I had blueberry pancakes….
Emily and Tom had some form of Eggs Benedict (I did write it down but I can’t read my own writing!)
Louise had this…
and Rebecca had the thing you can see at the end of the table which I have in my notes as “Not sure but something big”. It’s tricky keeping track of what everyone orders with a larger party!
The food improved my mood a little. Outside still looked like a typical Florida day and not mild Armageddon and I was developing a large sulk about it. All I could think was we were wasting the day and that I had made the wrong call to scrap our theme park plans. Its time likes these that the responsibility of being “the planner” lies heavy.
I paid the $85 bill and as it was still sunny we decided to go for it and head for the planned park for the day, Hollywood Studios. At this point, Lousie made that call as she couldn’t take another second of my man baby pouting. I doubt I have driven to a theme park more quickly in all these years. We parked in Mickey 312, trammed and had our sacks poked with a stick.
See, no hurricane!
It seemed that many other people had made the same wrong call that I did and had abandoned their plans.
Seeing such low crowd levels, now would be the time to head for the newly opened Galaxy’s Edge. Join us, as we enter for the first time….
It was clear that most of the people who had made it into the park today were also headed for this area…..
but it was still fairly light in terms of crowds.
It’s always a special time experiencing something for the first time in a park, and luckily when that’s a theme park you don’t get arrested. That’s especially true with something as significant as this. We soaked up the incredible theming for a while, wandered about and got our bearings.
Like a literal tractor beam, we were pulled to the Falcon and were all blown away by the detail, size and scale of the thing….
Did I mention that the theming was impressive?
Full of excitement, anticipation and pancakes, most of us joined the 70-minute queue for Smuggler’s Run. Louise volunteered to stay with Freddie.
Emily was overjoyed to be wearing her spirit jersey, selected to protect her from the air con chills of our breakfast restaurant and not to sweat 12 pounds off her in a raging hot theme park. Another victim of my poor decision making. We all must suffer for the cause from time to time. Tom was bravely sporting his unusual hairy neck.
It didn’t feel like over an hour of waiting to be honest. We were, of course, taking in all the new stuff and admiring what an incredible job had been done.
You will have to excuse the large numbers of photos here, I was a little over-excited.
You can tell it’s a new ride when you feel the need to take photos of the queue.
Even I’m not sure why I took this one….
Once you get into the holding area just before you ride, the theming is eerily identical to the scenes from the films. It’s excellent.
We were allocated our roles and were then just seconds away from riding. I was a little giddy.
The ride itself flashed by in an instant and I cannot remember too much about it. There is so much going on that it will take many more rides before it all sinks in. It is very enjoyable, incredibly well put together and a stunning addition to the park.
I’m sure the last hour had seemed a little longer for Louise and Freddie so we hurried out to meet them now. It was still gloriously hot, dry and incredibly un-hurricane like. We were about ten minutes away from our reservation at Oga’s Cantina. We’d booked this on the M60 some weeks ago, after seeing reservations being released, with little to no clue as to what it was. We were about to find out.
There was a queue and the cast members would wander up and down it shouting out names when they were ready to take you in. We didn’t wait long.
The theming is great. We did wonder why they hadn’t made it much more like the actual Cantina from the film but I’m sure there is good (legal) reason. We were shown to our seats which were shared with two other couples.
We studied the menu…
I made no attempt to write down what we had but they looked like this.
This was mine. I cannot say that I knew what was coming when I ordered it, but it was an experience.
I also can’t say that any of the drinks we had were the nicest of the trip, but of course, this was just about experiencing the new stuff in Galaxy’s Edge and we took it for what it was.
The place was rammed and noisy and not the best place for Freddie so we didn’t stay too long. It was 1.30 now, with the park due to close at 2pm. We noticed that Slinky Dog was showing a thirty-minute wait, so we decided to give that a go.
We set up baby swap, with Louise, Emily and I planning to ride first. Tom and Rebecca took Freddie to ride the Saucers whilst they waited, just too late to benefit from Louise deciding not to ride and instead soak up the last few minutes of sun before Dorian ended the world. Emily and I joined the standby queue.
Spookily as we came to the point where the standby and FastPass queues meet, Rebecca and Tom were stood waiting to merge and joined us. This accidental situation, got me thinking of a slight “hack” here. If you have a large party and one or two people willing to sacrifice themselves you could do the following.
Set up baby swap and say that one or two people are riding first and they join the standby. Whether they queue and ride or not is up to them. This immediately gives the rest of the party a FastPass, intended to be used as the first riders return, but there is nothing to stop those immediately joining the FastPass queue. It’s a stretch to call it a hack, but it kept me occupied thinking about it during the queue. This was a welcome distraction from the army of annoying kids in front us who did nothing but fight each other, climb on the rails and generally be a pain in the arse. Mind you, if you call your kids Hunter what do you expect?
So, in the end, we all rode together on our first ever Slinky as if it was written in the stars after all our failed attempts to get a bloody FastPass for it. The ride is a belter. Just fast enough to entertain the adults and not scary enough to terrify the kids.
The park was closing now. Weirdly the weather was still great and there seemed to be no reason to do so. With that in mind, we decided to go to Disney Springs which had no such plans to close until much later in the day. It was a twenty-minute drive and we parked in the Lime garage.
We walked for too long trying to find somewhere we could sit and have a drink. We ended up outside Splitsville on some high stools and a table. Does anybody else have real trouble making sense of the geography of the place now? My brain just can not reconcile the new layout with the old.
Whilst we rested and drank, a sudden appearance of some Dorian inspired wind blew all the menus off the table, knocking Louise’s red wine all over Emily’s bright white trainers. Being very new and very expensive she was rightly upset but the waitress was brilliant. Not only did the affected drinks get replaced, she returned with some club soda and cloths and we managed to clean any trace of red wine off Emily’s shoes and laces.
With that trauma behind us, we wandered off to the shops. Freddie added to his essential plastic tat collection….
For obvious reasons, the big balloon thing wasn’t in operation.
On our travels, Rebecca got some Up! Mickey Ears for MNSSHP. Before long, breakfast seemed a long time ago and we needed food. With it just being “round the corner” we decided on Olive Garden and we were there in a few minutes.
We were seated immediately and soon had the infamous salad and breadsticks along with our drinks.
I had some non-alcoholic berry thing. It was nice and more importantly not diet coke.
Tom naturally had a milkshake/iced coffee thing and at this point confessed that he’d been hungry for about four hours!
That used to be my plate of salad. We ordered…..
Emily – Five Cheese Ziti
Me – Steak & Alfredo
Louise and Rebecca had the lasagne.
Emily has turned vegetarian since our last trip and this meal was her single greatest sacrifice to date. Olive Garden lasagne was her most favourite meal on the planet so to watch two others eat it was painful!
Tom had the Tour of Italy.
Having skipped lunch (did you notice?) I had Tiramisu.
Tom had a huge chocolate lasagne cake. He was still so hungry that they could have brought him a urinal cake and he would have eaten it!
We paid the $180 including decent tip and made our way to the car. It was getting a bit breezy now and there was to be a curfew starting at 11pm tonight with worse weather to come. We made our now customary stop at CVS on the way home for stuff we apparently couldn’t live without. As we pulled out of the car park using an exit I hadn’t previously used, there may have been a few moments of us being on entirely the wrong carriageway, but I soon restored order with no harm done, save for some colourful words from the passenger seat.
We all watched some TV and relaxed in the villa. As I went to bed I could hear the wind really getting up outside and some pretty heavy rain. Apparently, it was quite a wild night, and the weather was pretty rough too (BOOM!) but I slept through all of that, missing any sign of Dorian altogether! The previous six days of 24/7 TV coverage seemed all the more worthwhile now.
I know these things can be devastating and deadly, and this one tragically was elsewhere, so we were thankful it didn’t cause us any issues other than a few lost hours at Hollywood Studios. Touching wood and anything else that may do the same job, we have in all our touring years managed to avoid any real hurricane impact despite almost always travelling in peak hurricane season. Long may that continue. And yes, I said touching wood…..fnarr.
I always vow to make serious notes on our travel home day. I usually fail and this year was no different. Don’t get settled, this won’t take long.
Despite doing nothing but moan about being tired all holiday, for reasons I cannot fathom I appear to have been awake at 3.45 am. I dozed off again around 5.30, waking properly at 8. That set me up nicely for the long gruelling journey home.
At this point, Louise was packing stuff into our cases, I of course had to venture out to buy an extra case as, much like me and my T-shirts, we simply wouldn’t fit everything in on the return leg. Favouring cheapness over quality I ventured round to the shops close to the Outback. Sensing that Louise would not be impressed with me returning with a couple of supermarket shopping bags, I drove a little further and found one of those classy gift shops.
I invested $35 in a medium-sized case that I felt had a 50/50 chance of surviving the journey home.
Once back at the villa I spent what felt like hours recycling and generally throwing stuff out. When Louise had completed the very easy task of packing everything I undertook a task that is only rivalled by landing on the moon. I had to get all the cases into the car. Every failed attempt meant wrestling every heavy case out of the car before getting them back in again in the next failed configuration. I had a sweat on and a desire to burn all the possessions we were trying to take home.
Eventually I got it all in but had to sacrifice one of the back seats, meaning that one of the passengers would be sitting on the half-sized, not quite a seat on the back row of the bus. I didn’t care which, they would have to fight it out Hunger Games style before breakfast.
With a final check of the villa and everyone crammed sweatily into the car, I set the alarm for the last time and girded my loins and other fleshy areas for the next twenty-four hours.
We made a pit stop at Winn Dixie for Freddie supplies for the journey home before setting off for Disney Springs to do the check in thing.
Not being a regular Virgin flyer I had no clue where this was and it only took one detour before we spotted it. Cases were dragged across the car park and placed on to a make do set of scales. Shockingly our main case was too heavy and with a deep joy, I had to open it and re-distribute stuff into other cases. No, really, it was no problem.
Not being a Virgin holidays customers we were robbed of $10 per person for the privilege of checking in here. Forcibly resisting the urge to outwardly show my disgust at the $60 I had just been robbed of, we set off, in a much roomier vehicle to get some breakfast for which I would happily pay double that.
We headed for the nearest breakfast place I was aware of, which was the Perkins at Crossroads. The breakfast on the final day has to be a festival of gluttony, punishing our bodies for needing to be back in the UK.
We all ordered the usual double whammy of coffee and juice and read the menu a couple of dozen times. A balloon artist (is that the right word?) came over and Freddie very much enjoyed her work.
We ordered –
Me – Big Country Skillet and Pancakes
Emily – Pulled Chicken Sandwich
Louise – Eggs Benedict
Tom & Mikey – Hearty Man Combo
Rebecca had a “Three Egg thing”. The piss poor attempt at the name of it and the lack of a photo serve as the perfect gauge of my mood at this point.
The food was excellent and the bill was $130 including a bountiful tip.
We headed back to Disney Springs for the traditional last-minute scramble for gifts. We parked in Lime.
We spent the next hour in World of Disney buying presents for those at home and Emily bought herself a Dooney and Bourke purse.
With the gifts purchased, Rebecca, Tom and Freddie decided to get a caricature done. It only took about fifteen minutes and the result was excellent.
Time was pushing on now and we needed to call at the Premium Outlets on the way to the airport so we rushed back to the car and headed in that direction.
We split into smaller groups for maximum efficiency. Louise and I went into a children’s clothes shop and bought Freddie’s winter wardrobe for back home. Mikey splurged oodles of dollars in the designer shops. We had arranged to meet up at 3.30 and Mikey was seen sprinting towards us several minutes after that time laden with lots of bags that I wasn’t sure how we’d get onto the aircraft. We did.
Onwards now to the airport. I somehow missed the turn off for the car return at the first attempt so we did a nice circuit of the airport before getting it second time around. The investment I made pre-holiday in the huge car seat bag was repaid now, as we were able to use it not only for the car seat, but also for all the random bags we now had from our shopping trip.
We found the place to check that in before going through security, slowly and then onto the monorail.
We arrived at gate 87 and I handed Emily and Rebecca my remaining dollars to fund a Starbucks run. I don’t know what I had as I always just tell the girls to get me whatever they are having. It tasted nice.
We boarded at 6pm and took off forty minutes later.
And there dear reader, my notes end. The flight, I remember, was the usual mix of discomfort, average food and a few films. Freddie was great yet again. He took a little while to go to sleep but once he did that was pretty much it. We had no free seats on the return leg alas so sleep was sparse and fitful.
We landed, got the cases, taxied home and well, got back to real life. Sigh.
So there we have it. The end. I wish I could say that I planned the dates of the trip so that the writing of the trip report would nudge nicely up to Christmas. I didn’t. What this trip has taught me is that I ain’t all that at planning to be honest. The balance between being able to show first timers as much as possible versus keeping everyone rested, and ready to go was not achieved if I’m honest. Despite building lots of rest days into the plan, our over eagerness to then use those days to not rest bit us on the arse a little bit. Ah well, you live and learn.
Before we left, all the concern, if that’s the right word, was around Freddie of course. How would he cope with the long flights, hot weather and the sensory overload of a trip like this. We had absolutely no reason to worry. He was, and I use this word intentionally, perfect. He was never an ounce of trouble and only enhanced the experience at every step. The memories of sharing his first Disney experience will always outweigh any of the inevitable tired, not so magical times we had. That, and don’t be offended dear reader, is why I have chronicled this trip here. As I did with the girls when they were young, these trip reports were always written so that we had a record of their experiences. Now, we will all always have this set of badly written drivel as a reminder of the time Freddie first went to Disney.
Hopefully, it won’t be the last, well, it won’t if I have anything to do with it.
There are no plans for further adventures just yet. Not Disney ones anyway. Other plans await us as a family which will become clear in the fullness of time.
Thanks as always for reading this stuff. It always amazes me that you do, and it is not taken for granted. I appreciate each one of your views, likes and comments.
If you and yours are undertaking a Florida adventure soon, I wish you a wonderful time and of course, as we have coincidentally landed at the end of this at this time of year, please have a magical Christmas and a wonderful 2019 from everyone here in Mkingdon land.
It won’t surprise you to learn that I am very sad. This applies to the now me, sat typing this, and the trip report me back in April. Going home isn’t easy at any time and by writing this bloody thing I’m doing it for a second time.
It isn’t helpful that I sit typing this at this time in August when for more years than I care to remember we have been in Florida. I shall solider on.
One of the many traditions of our trips is that I make absolutely zero notes of what we do on our last day. It’s a rebellious bout of sulking as the universe has conspired to make me work for a living.
So we woke up at some point and tackled the horror that is packing.
Yeah that last photo is a blurry mess. Do I care?
It’s hard to articulate to those not of a similar inclination the very physical pain involved in looking at photos like this and knowing you won’t be back there for a while.
Whilst there, it seems you are cossetted in a bubble wrap of loveliness, protected from real world shite by the sweet embrace of the Florida warmth. I can’t describe the love I have for particular small, inconsequential things. Such as after an early evening shower, putting on a light summer shirt and some shorts and it being forgivable to wear sandals. Meandering to your eatery of choice for too much food, served to you by someone who gives a toss. Getting back in the car and hearing that soft “bong” warning tone from your car that UK cars never have. Sigh….It doesn’t take much to make me happy….just a persistent Florida holiday.
Emily was feeling it too.
This is the posh bag she bought herself yesterday at Magic Kingdom, when the world was a better place than it was this morning.
We did all the horrible packing crap, and wrestled the cases downstairs. I got the car for the last time (sob) from the car park and drove back to load it up. We drove across, for the last time (sob) to the All Stars for Mum & Dad and headed towards Disney Springs. The need for a ridiculous amount of food outweighed any desire to shop for Louise, Emily and I so we dropped Mum & Dad off and headed for Perkins at Crossroads.
The messaging on their menu takes me back to one of those pay per view films in that hotel….OK….not again.
Emily demonstrated how we were all feeling.
I resolved to take my angst and anger out on my body and decided to order the largest amount of food possible. As an absolute minimum requirement it had to arrive on two plates.
For me…
Plate 1
Plate 2
It was a scramble of some kind.
Eggs Benedict for Louise. I can only applaud the fact that Perkins feel that a dish as good as this requires a muffin as well.
I think this was some sort of Fried Chicken Sandwich for Emily…
It was fantastic and stupidly good value for money. I think it was about $33 for the three of us.
Full of food and dread of real life, we headed back to Disney Springs.
We walked around a bit, apparently, and no doubt bought some stuff.
I’m not sure why I took this, but I suspect it was to have a record of what a blue sky looks like.
I have to say, the appearance of that ring carving booth at Disney Springs was a shock….why would anyone want a carving of their ring?
We always enjoy looking around the art shop and as the next photo exists then I guess we did that.
More walking about…
It was very hot and we needed a drink so we found a table by the lake. The mood was…well…like this
We were waiting for Mum & Dad to find us so that we could head off to the airport. I have absolutely no recollection of that drive to the airport. Maybe that’s for the best.
Dropping the hire car off was as painless as ever. They really do have that down to an art.
I do remember that security was a pain and took an age but eventually we were sat in the departure lounge awaiting the inevitable.
We wandered duty free for a bit, got some drinks and moped about appropriately.
We boarded pretty much on time and as always happens, no matter how much we wish it didn’t, we took off, leaving Florida behind again when we really didn’t want to.
Again the flight is something my mind did not capture for posterity. I think the in flight entertainment was the same as on the way out which was a bit crap. I don’t think I slept, but probably dozed for a while, who knows.
Eventually the greyness of Manchester enveloped us once again and we bumped down into the monochrome reality of real life. Trivial things such as the queue to get back into my own country and waiting for the bags just happened. Our taxi guy wasn’t stood at the exit to arrivals of course, they never are. A quick phone call later saw him turn up like the shop owner in Mr Ben and we were all in the van and enduring rush hour M60 when just a few short hours ago I was a fully paid up member of the Beach Club elite.
The last thing to report happened as we pulled up outside our house. Everyone disembarked eager to see Rebecca and as I was dragging cases out of the back of the van Louise got out very quickly. That speed was due to the fact that she fell in dramatic style, head first into our front garden wall. It turns out the arm rest of the seat she was leaning on to support her as she left the van gave way and with that her body made contact with the floor in alarming style.
It could have been a very nasty fall, but thankfully she was OK and we were then all allowed to laugh. Brews were made and we chatted to Rebecca and Tom about our adventures, said hello to the dogs and made our peace with being backing home.
So there we go. Another trip done and dusted. The one silver lining of coming home was seeing Rebecca of course as we’d all missed her. It was weird and often hard for us to not have her with us for the first time but as you may know now, she was in the early stages of a pregnancy and she’ll be due this November.
Here we go with the usual end of trip report soppy melancholic nonsense. It’s not intentional, it is more a true reflection of my feelings whenever a trip ends and we are inevitably a long way from returning.
I always struggle to articulate the hold Florida has on me. God knows Louise has begged, moaned and pleaded to go elsewhere for years but thankfully she has always given in to my enormous sulks and allowed us to go back time after time, and I think has mostly enjoyed it when we have. I just feel so comfortable there. Sure, we go to the touristy artificial version and not the real Florida. I’m not daft. But that suits me fine.
It has taken me quite some time to get this trip written up. We got back in late April!! So in the time that’s been going on of course thoughts have turned to our next holiday. It looks like it won’t be until August 2018 (sad face), but in the spirit of the circle of life, joining us will be two first timers.
If all goes to plan, Tom, (Rebecca’s fiancee) and of course young Freddie will be claiming their 1st Visit badges. It has been many, many years since we took any young children and we have never taken one as young as Freddie will be at the time. Rebecca was two the first time we went and Freddie won’t even be one when we travel.
I apologies now to all those who will be sat on our plane.
Over the years, I’ve read and even written lots of advice on the age old question, when is the best time to take your children to WDW?
For me, it’s simple. I understand all the arguments about waiting until they are a little older and it makes a lot of sense, but you know what, whatever you do those kids are always going to get older but they will never be the age they are right now ever again. So my advice? Take them now, take them whenever it is possible to afford to do so. For very small kids of course there are many things they cannot experience, but as we’ve done everything a lot, we don’t care. This will hopefully be his first trip of very many and if he doesn’t remember it, we will.
Finally, a genuine thank you to everyone who continues to read this blog. Your loyalty is astounding. Each week’s post gets almost an identical number of views which suggests both of you come back each time 🙂 I am genuinely thankful and astounded that you still give some of your time to read what is written here when you could be spending your WDW related reading time much more productively getting banned from It’s Orlando Time on Facebook.
The bad news is that from next week you’ll be back to enduring random nonsense rather than tales of our Florida adventures. Of course, there is a whole new trip to plan, so that’ll be fun right?
Thanks for reading!
Arsene Wenger…….
From the day he arrives on the planet
And Freddie becomes our grandson,
He’ll have more to see than can ever be seen
Disney’s more than can ever be done
There’s far too much to take in here
More good fun than can ever be found
But the years which roll by
Will see me always try
To show him all of that hallowed ground
It’s the Circle of Life
Hear the theme parks call
Years of fun we hope
As we share our love
Disney’s warm embrace
Through his eyes reminding
It’s the Circle
The Circle of Life
Who knew that a holiday that started on the 27th of August 2015 would last all the way until mid-February? In more ways than I could ever describe, it has been one heck of a journey.
No matter how hard I try, our last day and our journey home never have any decent notes recorded. It isn’t intentional, I just can’t seem to bring myself to record this day. So I’ll do my best with the half a page I do have and the handful of photos, but your reading may be brief today.
I had another fitful night’s sleep before the alarm woke me at 7am. The next couple of hours saw the traditional Tazmanian Devil impression as we dash around the villa trying to get everything into our cases. Inevitably this involves the purchase of an extra case, which I nipped to CVS to do before we were able to finish and leave the villa at 9.45. It took an act of God to fit everything into the car and Grandad and I were a little hot and sweaty as we reversed off the drive.
A huge breakfast was now required, so we drove up to the 192 and I decided upon the Perkins, mainly as it was the first place we saw.
We were seated and ordered orange juice, coffees and in some cases chocolate milks.
I didn’t record what everyone had but you’ll get the idea from these photos.
We paid $103 plus a large tip made up mainly of all the change I wanted to get rid of. They didn’t seem to mind.
Next on the list was a trip up to Lake Buena Vista, where, being the coward I am, I put $10 of fuel in the car. With everything else going on today I wasn’t mentally ready for a game of Russian roulette with the fuel gauge.
Just when we thought that the car was about to burst at the seams we stopped off at Publix near Emily’s apartment to stock her up one last time before she would be left to fend for herself. The mood today was sombre as you can imagine. Not only were we going home, but of course one of us was staying behind and after knowing this day would come for many months it wasn’t making it any easier. It didn’t feel real.
Anyway, as we started wandering the aisles of Publix Louise had to nip to their loo. She found us again afterwards and on we went with the shop. A few minutes later she stopped in her tracks with a look of panic on her face. It would appear she had lost her phone. She dashed back to the loos to see if it was there. She knew she had it as we entered the store and so it MUST be in there right?
Wrong!
She went to Customer Services to see if it had been handed in there but it hadn’t.
I started to incur huge data roaming charges on my own phone now trying to contact Vodafone to block the thing and report it lost. This was, pretty much, the last thing we needed amongst everything else that was going on.
It was about this time that Louise realised that she hadn’t lost her phone at all and that it had been stuffed down her bra the whole time.
How we laughed.
Already emotionally spent, we took all Emily’s food and her new iron back to the car and somehow packed it in with everything and everyone else. As we set off for The Commons we all knew we were coming to the time we had all been dreading. We were about to drop Emily off for the last time.
I won’t document this in great detail. I have a history of over sharing our stuff all over the internet so let’s not and just say that it was difficult, and it isn’t something I want to experience again.
Despite my $10 investment we still coasted into the airport on fumes with my heart racing. Maybe that wasn’t due to the low fuel?
Having booked Premium Economy for the home leg we checked in quickly and easily, got through security and then monorailed out to gate 81. Louise, Rebecca, Sarah and I got a table in the Outback. We weren’t hungry but fancied a sit down for a drink. To be polite we ordered some cheesey fries too.
With this done I wandered off to the restroom to put my long pants on. This is a symbolic event every year and denotes the end of the fun. Today it felt more sombre than usual.
We wandered duty free for a bit and then as we eventually went to board the plane which had been delayed for half an hour it struck me very hard that I had three passports in my hand and not the usual four. My stomach churned.
I know I’m over egging this upset malarkey, and even looking back now I sound like a big girl even to myself, but at the time, this was how we felt and so I’m reporting it as such.
My notes end here. I will openly admit that Louise and I cried like babies as the wheels left the tarmac of Orlando. It felt strangely symbolic and the last twenty years flashed before our eyes. All the holidays, all the times we’ve flown home together and all the challenges Emily would now have to face on her own. Sure, she was twenty, but a young twenty and it was our job to look after her, both then and forever.
We eventually gathered ourselves somewhere above the Atlantic and the flight happened. We landed, waited an age for our cases and got ourselves home.
So there we are, the end, in many ways.
It’s been a blast over sharing these adventures with you all over the years. Our return home this time was an arrival into a whole new world. Louise and I returned to an empty nest, with Emily in the US and Rebecca and her boyfriend Tom getting their first place together. Both of those departures had been a long time in the planning so we knew it was coming. It didn’t make it any easier and I think we’ve both taken a while to get used to the idea.
So at this ending of an era, I suspect there won’t be any further trip reports. It feels that way anyway, mainly as there probably won’t be any more holidays of this nature. The days of the four of us going away will now be forever captured in these reports. Any future Disney trips will be very different I’m sure and not for some time and that weirdly feels OK to be honest.
We’ve been through some huge changes and challenges as a family in the last year or two with more to come no doubt.
So now, I need to thank you for reading this one and any of the others if you have. Writing these has been a huge part of our, or certainly my, enjoyment of these holidays. Louise, Emily and Rebecca, I thank you for letting me write them, tolerating the note writing and photo taking along with allowing me to share things you’d rather I didn’t with a load of strangers on the internet.
Girls, at least when you have kids of your own, you can look back on these trip reports and let your kids know how many knob gags their Grandad knows! I’m waffling now as, to be honest, I don’t know how to end this. Bringing well over a decade of reports to a close isn’t something I know how to do, so how about a few memories from them?
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