Nobody will be more relieved than both of my readers to learn that a decision has been made for our July trip.
Yesterday we spent a good deal of time chatting about what we should do and it changed a lot during the day. Our first bit of thinking saw us considering sticking with Florida but having a completely non Disney adjacent trip and heading off down the coast, hopefully taking in Delray again and even getting as far as Key West.
I spent a while looking at options for that but soon discovered that with a flight in and out of Orlando, getting down to Key West and back up again in 14 days would mean a silly number of hotel hops and a lot of driving and in the end we discounted that as too much like hard work.
I even looked at internal flights to get us back up to Orlando from Key West on our last day but logisitically it was getting a bit silly and risky if that flight got delayed or cancelled too late in the day for us to drive up.
We then spent the afternoon looking at non US options, including places like the Dominican Republic and Mexico. We saw a few really nice top end hotels that we could do for the same budget as we had planned for Orlando and eventually stumbled across what has turned out to be our choice.
I have spent a couple of hours this morning contacting Virgin to cancel the flight and sucking up the associated fees and then going through everything else we had booked and cancelling or amending that. That included –
Airport Parking
Airport Lounge
Car Hire
Hotel
That took a while.
So America won’t be getting our hard earned and it feels like a subtle middle finger to the idiot in the Whitehouse to instead be giving them to Mexico.
We are going to Secrets Akumal, in Riviera Maya Mexico which of course 24 hours ago I had never heard of. I’ll share this video about it as this channel was the one we watched to get a good enough feel for the place to decide we should book.
I’ve been very brave and booked the flights seperately as all the packges were extortionate and involved indirect flights. So I managed to find direct flights with TUI from Manchester just by moving our dates back by one day from the 1st to the 2nd of July. We’ve been able to upgrade to Premium for a total price that is less than the refund we’ll be getting from Virgin. It also means I don’t need to rebook any airport lounge access as we’ll get that being TUI premium.
I’ve yet to book the accomodation as I want to scour the internet for the best possible deal, but a look at the obvious places shows I can book it at a price that makes it a fair bit cheaper than any of the packages offering flight and accomodation.
I’ve even booked a private transfer from Cancun airport to the resort and back again. It’s been a busy morning.
I do feel a bit sad cancelling Florida if I am honest. It wasn’t helped that literally just after we’d agreed to make this change yesterday I flicked the TV on and found Jayne McDonald doing a programme on Channel 5 about Key West and all the places in Southern Florida we had considered earlier that day. Like some weird fever dream she ended the programme by inexplicably singing Kids in America by Kim Wilde which sort of snapped me out of it, but I couldn’t escape the gutteral yearnings to stick with our original booking.
But I suppose a change is a good as a rest and we are nothing if not overdue a change in destination. I think we have sort of decided that our next Florida trip will be one that takes in the South of the state, but not with an Orlando flight making it hard to manage.
So, rightly or wrongly we’ve bitten the bullet and I’m happy with the decision, mostly, as it does feel strange and sad not to be heading to our usual haunts.
If by any chance anyone has stayed at this place do let me know your thoughts unless it was rubbish and then probably don’t as I can’t take the stress of having to unpick another holiday. At least we now get to see just how realistic the Mexico pavilion in Epcot really is. It’ll be 100% accurate I would imagine, just as the UK one is!
You join me live, as I sit in the Virgin Atlantic chat queue, trying to find out how punitive the terms would be should we cancel our flights for July. As uncomfortable as we would be giving the current US administration our hard earned and as outraged as we are at the horrific state of affiars there, we are not rich enough to wave goodbye to many thousands of pounds on that principle. I’m not sure if that makes us tight, amoral or a bit wishy washy but it is what it is.
Another week passes where a new low is found by the orange piss ant and at the speed at which things are going to hell in a hand cart, who knows what we may be flying to in July. It is time at least to understand all of our options and if cancelling gives us any better scenarios than changing to a new destination for at least £500.
If we could cancel it would at least give us a wider choice of alternatives not bound by where VA fly to from Manchester. We could of course just take any refund we may be afforded and bank that and save the money, but, well you’ve been reading this stuff for too long to know how likely that is.
I do strongly suspect that the terms of the booking will mean we would lose pretty much everything and having shelled out for Premium, that’s a high price to pay for principles and maybe an overblown concern that any of what is happening would affect a holiday.
I should know the terms of course, as I accepted them when booking. What was weird is that post booking I didn’t get any form of confirmation email from Virgin, in which I would expect to find said terms. I can see the booking on their website and in the app but what happens if I cancel seems to be buried so deep I have yet been able to uncover it.
It is of course very unlikely that I will have my answer before I finish typing up this week’s note of despair. Covid aside it would have been impossible to imagine having reservations about visiting what has been our second home for decades just a few short weeks ago. I’ve always at least tried to keep politics out of this blog but at this point there is no balance or other point of view to consider, so if I lose a reader or two it’ll be for the best.
I have no clue what Trump’s end game is really, other than to destroy everything so badly that he can somehow justify declaring martial law and suspend elections. Anything else makes little sense.
With a low expectation of getting any money back I haven’t really considered alternatives too strongly yet. Somewhere hot, with that elusive mix of being peaceful yet with enough stuff going on, with a direct flight and if at all possible without the hellscape that is a coach transfer from the airport of multiple hours and with no sign of any Agadoo style “entertainment” staff telling me how to have fun.
You can see why we keep returning to Florida!
I continue to wait for someone at Virgin to talk to me, so I shall leave you to shake your head in disbelief at how ridiculously seriously I take holidays and can over react in the most impressive way.
Another week of crazy from over the pond and I have seriously started to look into what alternative options we might have for our summer trip that didn’t involve the lottery of US airspace.
A “quick” web chat with Virgin (nope, there was a huge wait of course) and it seems whatever we do, it’ll cost us £250 each to amend our flights, plus any fare difference so it’s not something to do lightly.
Ignoring the cost for a second (and I really never will), we face the challenge of the limited options that Virgin offers for flying from Manchester. If we stick with our original dates, and we really have to due to the enormous amount of time it took to identify a suitable window for Louise and me plus Emily as our house and pet sitter and then get Louise’s time off approved, then there is almost nothing they can do directly.
Caribbean options would seem to make the most sense, but to get to somewhere like Barbados or Jamaica on our dates, flights are indirect and a lot more expensive so it becomes prohibitive. We can’t go to Dubai in July as we will melt in the 40-degree-plus temperatures and I really don’t fancy Mumbai or Johannesburg, as lovely as they may be.
Cancun would be somewhere we’d consider but again on our dates that is indirect via Atlanta, although at a similar cost, so in effect that looked like our most likely or only option.
Then we would get into the doom loop of scrolling through endless hotels and their reviews trying to overcome my aversion to unfamiliarity to try and find somewhere affordable, clean, and maybe even impressive to stay for the same budget as Drury Plaza.
However when taking that option a little further, for some reason the return flights have two changes, so that is blown out of the water too.
Again, indirect, but Toronto is within the same price range that we paid for Orlando (plus the £500 admin fee of course) but that’s a very different holiday and I know zero about Canada, other than having friends who know a lot about it. Perhaps one to explore further as a plan B but I’d be starting from scratch with no idea where to stay, what to do and how to do it. Maybe some people find that fun? 🙂
Sigh. I’ve written some first-world problem blog posts in my time, but this one takes the biscuit, dunks it into my tea and then drops it down my shirt.
So we may be “stuck” with flying into Orlando. That is a sentence I could never have predicted typing. Maybe I am being very stupid anyway as I would imagine flying to any of the other destinations involves US airspace so it does little to remove that risk however real or not it may be.
Then we only have to worry about things like hyperinflation, civil unrest and white supremacists.
On the bright side, at the rate at which the US is collapsing into chaos the orange turd may be flushed by July. You can live in hope.
For now, we sit in suck-and-see mode I suppose as swallowing the loss of the monies paid to Virgin already is not an option I’d like to consider.
If anyone who has perhaps changed their Virgin flights similarly in the past has any ideas I’m open to them of course, as well as any tips and info on Canada or other alternatives?
I suspect the most likely outcome is we stick with the plan as is, have a problem free lovely holiday and you can all shake your heads in disbelief at the nonsense I spouted in this post. Of course, none of this solves the real problem that Jellyrolls is closing/moving from the Boardwalk which is an issue much larger than the US descending into a fascist dictatorship.
In other news and in an attempt to end on a lighter, less ridiculously overreacting type way, when I inflicted one of my musical projects on you recently in the form of the video of the Pink tribute band I’m in I hinted that there may be another project in the works. Well, it has arrived!
Alongside the Pink tribute and Mustard (our main function/wedding type band), we have just launched an 80s tribute too. I of course am far too young to remember any of the songs from that era (honest) but thanks to YouTube I was able to learn them.
So I will leave you with the brand-new, Neon Vortex and the video we recorded live on one of the coldest days in January in one of the coldest rehearsal studios on the planet.
Hello again, for yet another trip report. I have to admit that I have really wrestled with the dilemma of whether to do this one or not. Even on the holiday, finding time to write notes for each day proved to be a challenge and my motivation to then find time every week to craft a post about each day has been severely tested. Life is busy right now and it’s going to be a struggle but in the end, the capturing of what we did to look back on in years to come won out and with scant regard for what will be a thrown-together and low-quality effort, here we are.
The first thing to address and explain is the title. It will mean nothing to anybody not on the trip, so that sounds like a good choice for a title doesn’t it? But, I choose titles from things that mean something for each trip and this is what stood out this time.
Each morning as we left the villa community we had to pass through a gate which opened automatically as we approached. We told the boys that they had to command it to open and from way back in the rear of the SUV, two voices duly obliged. However, Dougie couldn’t quite manage the “Open Sesame” that Freddie was using to open the gate and instead, we got “Ump Me!” at full volume and it always made us smile.
The other theme of the trip was Freddie’s constant denial of needing a wee, which then often presented itself as a problem deep into a queue or halfway through an attraction. I shall save the most innovative solution to that problem somewhere in the very long wait for Smuggler’s Run, for later in the report.
The trip officially started the evening before our flight when we took some “by the door” pics of the boys…
And it continued at 4.30am, with Louise negating the need for the 5 am alarm I had set, with the hair dryer. She had it on, she didn’t hit me with it. I slowly gathered the will to rise and went down to let the dogs out before a quick shower and putting some clothes on. Most airlines insist I find.
As you do in the early hours pre-holiday flight, I undertook some routine household maintenance by pouring some drain unblocker down our shower as I noticed whilst showering that all of my hair must have been starting to block the drain.
We finished the packing without a jot of care for the weight of the cases, being Premium elites, and we loaded the cars and rolled off the drive by 6.10am. The traffic, especially around the unfit-for-purpose M60 was as bad as expected but we arrived at the airport an hour later. We dropped the cars off and left our keys at the overly complex key drop-off thing. The TUI check-in opened literally as we arrived at it, but the Premium desk was operating at less than a Premium speed and we waited a good fifteen minutes to get served.
After a trip to the oversize drop-off place with the car seats we went through security with little bother, other than Tom getting his usual extra special attention. This would continue at every theme park for the entire trip. Ryan the rucksack was diverted for an extra inspection but when the chap brought it forward and looked at the x-ray he said he had no idea why it had been held and handed him straight over.
We wandered through the shops mainly just following the signs for the super swanky lounge we had access to courtesy of our Premium status. We got to reception at 8.15 and we were kindly admitted a full fifteen minutes early simply because I am such a nice chap.
We were guided to some tables and then let loose on the breakfast buffet. That was more than fit for purpose, so I had two lots.
It was very lovely, despite an overly long wait to get a coffee from the self-serve machine as someone had seemingly volunteered to get one for the entire flight.
With food in our bellies, Freddie took it upon himself to use the camera, apologies for a rare appearance by yours truly.
There were less successful photos too.
Thankfully the camera was back in the hands of a professional before too long….
Whilst I had my traditional post-breakfast airport poo, with limited success, everyone else wandered the shops until I caught them up. With all the snacks and things bought we went back into the lounge for a bit and just had a drink.
Hopes that the boys would behave for the next nine hours were stretched….
But with time pressing on we moved down to the gate via the longest airport walk since the last time we walked to a gate at Manchester airport. I needed a third breakfast to replenish the calories. Gate 202 was not only in the next county, but also cramped and busy due to the ongoing works at the airport. We struggled to find a seat.
We boarded when called unusually, mainly as we were in Premium and were one of the first called onto the plane. We then spent about ten frustrating minutes standing on the stairs down to the plane.
Due to our later upgrade to Premium, we weren’t all sat together, with Louise sat with Freddie and I behind them.
The plane pushed back at 11.40, followed by a smooth take-off. As Louise and Freddie started to use their seat back TVs they turned in frustration that they couldn’t hear anything. A brief investigation found that Louise had plugged both their headphones into the power sockets.
Rebecca, Tom and Dougie were sat to the side of us, in the middle.
Drinks came first, along with a menu with a few choices for food.
I had Chicken with Jasmine rice which was very good.
About two hours in I watched the three available episodes of Two and a Half Men, again. After that, I swapped seats with Louise to play cards with Freddie. Louise, not being an anti-social freak like myself, made immediate friends with Gavin who I had been sitting next to for two hours, discovered he was TUI crew off on his holidays and then chatted to him for the rest of the flight.
After cards, Freddie watched Storks and I watched Oceans 12, again. Dougie had a sleep and was generally fantastically behaved despite all our fears in the build-up to the trip. He was intrigued by the seat belt and that pretty much kept him occupied for most of the flight.
Afternoon tea was a sandwich and scone.
After about eight and a half hours we landed.
I have not witnessed any human being more excited and more verbose than Freddie was on that descent into Melbourne. We chatted all the way down during which he asked me questions such as “Is it the clouds that move or the world?”. I somehow avoided displaying my stupidity by changing the subject.
As we were getting our stuff together to disembark, Freddie got hold of the camera and took yet more candid behind the scenes shots.
Once into the airport all of our cases were off very quickly but the two car seats took a frustrating age. After about fifteen minutes we were into and through immigration within a few minutes and off to pick up the car.
A painless experience other than me forgetting to take Tom to the counter with me to add him as the second driver, but we sorted that later in the holiday.
We walked out to the car park and picked up a stunning Jeep Wagoneer.
Here it is a few days later. It easily took all of us and our cases and was a fantastic drive too.
I connected Car Play and fired up the Waze app which was clearly broken as it said it would take two hours to get to the villa.
It took us along the 192 for 90% of the way and most of it was fine, but as we got to Kissimmee the traffic built up and we were crawling through endless traffic lights for what seemed like forever. We made a pit stop to get Louise a drink and it did take the full two hours and a bit more to get there. That last half hour was incredibly frustrating with the boys understandably keen to get to where we were going and there may have been a slight sulk overtaking me.
Traffic issues would be a theme of the trip. In all our years of visiting, we have never seen traffic like it. It’s probably been a couple of years since we stayed anywhere that needed regular use of the 192 and I4 but I don’t what happened in that time, but it was a nightmare.
Upon arrival. we went to the guard house first to get our dashboard pass thing and then drove over to the villa, feeling very happy to finally be there.
The cases were dumped and Rebecca and I drove to the Publix on the US27 to stock up.
There was mild panic as we checked out with three hundred dollars worth of groceries when my credit card was declined. Thankfully, my UK debit card, linked to my Apple wallet on my phone worked so we didn’t have to put it all back. I have no idea why that happened as we had no issues anywhere else all holiday apart from having to be dragged from the table at multiple meals to enter my pin into the payment thing.
Back home we had a sandwich and some crisps before falling into bed around 11pm.
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