Tag: thomas cook

What a Week That Was!

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

As weeks go, outside of those we’ve spent on US soil, this one just gone has been one of the best. I’ve done little else but tell you all about Emily’s good news since we heard last weekend, and this week has been all about paperwork and finding her a flight. The flight search ended towards the end of the week with her booked on a Thomas Cook flight on the 7th of April from Manchester. She has decided to travel out in style in Premium Economy, which handily gives her 46kg of luggage allowance. Her main worry now is how on earth she’ll get it off the baggage carousel once she is in Orlando!

There a million practical considerations now coming into play around her journey and her time out there, but we have plenty of time to sort those between now and April.

Emily has finally blogged again too.

Rebecca has also played a blinder, demonstrating once again her impressive drive, determination, confidence and maturity by getting off her backside and finding a way to make best use of her talents, and some money! For those that don’t know she is studying Media Make Up and Hair at college, and part of that is how to do horror make-up. With Halloween coming up she has been advertising her skills, and has secured a whole host of bookings in the local area to make folks up on a gory fashion for their Halloween parties. She is very, very good at this.

rebecca gore 1 rebecca gore 2

Seeing how much demand she had if you fancy it for next year, I’d get in touch with her now!

So having felt blessed with good fortune for most of the week, it ended on another high. I mentioned a couple of posts ago that Louise had started to apply for jobs, even though she doesn’t qualify until next April. She thought it might be a little early, but from her first application she was asked to attend an interview on Friday. She was of course very nervous, and had no idea how she had done, but just a couple of hours later she got a phone call to offer her a job!

This was a special moment. You’ll know, because I’ve moaned a lot, that this past few years have been very tough. We thought it would be, and we were right. Louise gave up a good job to take the brave step of re-training at an age I’m too polite to mention. So of course financially that hurt, but it has been tough in many other ways. There has been stress, silly shifts, lots and lots of hard work, and weeks on end when we haven’t seen Louise as she was locked away at the computer doing her latest assignment. So Friday’s news was very sweet indeed. Relief, joy, pride, excitement and then for Louise a few minutes later, fear at actually having to do the job for real.

To add extra cherries on top of our very large cake, the job she has secured is exactly the one she wanted at the local hospital where she desperately wanted to work. She will be a Recovery Nurse in the Operating Theatres and we are still both a little numb and disbelieving that this has happened. As you know, I am a professional self pitier and woe is me merchant so I am unused to dealing with such scenarios. I think I could get used to this.

So there you go, a great week in the Williams household. I am trying to squeeze every last drop of joy and enjoyment from it, as I know these weeks are rare. I mean, what else could have happened this week to make it any better? Well, of course here is where I go off into another “We’re not going to WDW” rant. I would but…

WE HAVE A NEW COUNTDOWN!

Yes, if Carlsberg made weeks, even they wouldn’t have been able to come up with this one.

To be honest with you, we’ve been thinking about next year for a little while, but until Emily’s fate was known we couldn’t make any plans as we didn’t know who would be travelling. So as soon as she was sorted, I moved quickly, as you might imagine, to make the plans into reality.

With Emily over there for a year, there is no way we could not go over there to see her. We have booked for next August, and with everyone out of school, college and university, we are able to travel a little later and not have to pay the ludicrous school holiday prices. We have only booked flights at this stage, as of course we have a long time to do everything else. We fly out on the 27th of August, and we are staying for an indulgent 18 days.

We have booked our flights with Thomas Cook, as we really wanted direct flights and Virgin continue to market to millionaires only it seems. Having paid north of £650 for indirect recently, and seen very similar prices for indirect again this year I was delighted to secure flights, including Premium Economy on the way back, for £580 each.

There is a new line up for the trip too. Returning to the cast list after a few years off, are my Mum and Dad, who are keen to see Emily of course, and for the first time, we are taking a boyfriend with us. Rebecca’s Tom will join us on the trip, making his debut as a cast member of one of these adventures.

Our plan is to get a villa, so that Emily can stay there with us as her work schedule allows, and we hope to do a night on site at Universal so that we can do the new Harry Potter stuff. Having spent all my time recently ignoring any Florida related news in a sulky protest, I now need to get up to speed on how these band things work, and this booking your Fastpasses up front malarkey too.

You shall, of course be subjected to every twist and turn of the planning and build up. It could be a long few months for us all.

I cannot promise that next week’s blog will be as chock full of joy and positivity, in fact I can probably guarantee it won’t be, as a lottery win aside I’m not sure what else could top this one.

Till the next time…..

 

 

A week is a long time…..

by mkingdon, posted in Walt Disney World

You may recall my post from the 8th of March….

“You do not find me in the happiest of places.”

“The desire for sunshine is immense right now, but alas not quite as immense as the gaping hole where my bank balance should be, so on I trundle, countdown-less.”

“As the message ended with him telling me he’d just booked again, I lost all empathy and cursed the swine for being able to go this year when I can’t!!!  :-)“

Well, the phrase out of the blue doesn’t quite cover the events of the week which followed this.

Having almost stopped looking forlornly at flights in the vague hope of finding one for less than a tenner, I see a meeting request appear amongst all the other dross in my diary for Monday afternoon.

“Bonus Briefing” was the title.  Now, having worked here for ten years, this is an annual event where we hear phrases like “close but no cigar” a lot, so my expectations were low, indeed, I turned up five minutes late.

Ten short minutes later, and after hammering out a few calculations on the calculator (well on what else would you hammer them out?) I am sort of dumbstruck really.  A quick wander across to my friendly HR person, and the amount I have calculated is indeed correct.  Hand shaking, I text Louise, pinching myself (it isn’t easy to do both at the same time).

My mind is already half way through a plan of course, but I fear Louise will reply with boring nonsense like…

“Oh good, we can do (insert nonsense task) to the house”

or

“We can marginally improve our failing battle against impending bankruptcy”

But no dear reader, she did not reply in that manner.  Allow me to quote….

“What are you wasting time texting me for….get the flights booked”

Joy unabounds, and I break the internet with the ferocity of my flight search (all in my own time of course, never when I should be working).

To spare you the many hours of intense searching, around about 12 hours later I am sat on my couch at home, with a smoking VISA, the proud owner of flights, a hire car, and a beaming smile.

Details you say?  OK.

We are flying with Thomas Cook on the 20th of August from Manchester.  Now these are not ordinary Thomas Cook flights (the oft discussed 29″ seat pitch, no telly, and the meal is a rotting apple if you are lucky), oh no this is the ifinitely more expensive normal flight with a whopping 33″ seat pitch, and a seat back telly…..EACH!!

I also discovered the joy of Quidco, so made back a whopping £8 into the bargain.  The car, also via a Quidco link, earns me multiple pounds back from Alamo.  We fly into Sanford, which is where we have flown to more often than not, so this is fine and dandy with us.

I am currently in negotiation (and prayers) with my lovely DVC friends, to see if they are using their points this year.  I won’t find out till next week, and this is in no way highly frustrating.  I am in the hellish limbo of not knowing whether I need to find a villa (if one is still free for our dates in the whole of Florida!), or to book perhaps some on site stuff via the Disney UK site and get free dining and stuff.  Until I know, I will be pretty unbearable.

Anyways, I am not complaining as until Monday my 40th would have been spent at our local Frankie and Bennys no doubt, so DVC, cardboard box…makes no odds really.

The usual maze of tickets still baffles me but I have several spreadsheets on the go, each involving complex macros, taking into account the phases of the moon, high tides and average temperatures for our dates, so I can secure the best value tickets for our activities.  I shall book those once accomodation is secured.

This planning lark is hard work, and at some point I will do my day job again!!

So there we are, the Gods have smiled upon us, the trip is booked, and my significant birthday will be spent where it was always destined to.

I consider myself a lucky chap, well, a bit more lucky than I was a week ago, but I probably didn’t realise I was then, and I should!!!

Till the next time….