Tag: trip reports

Plastering and Pining

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

Events have conspired to make this past week a toughy.

We are, as I have mentioned before, undergoing some home improvements. This week has seen us getting plastered. Of course, that’s a messy thing and my oft mentioned dislike for disruption and mess has been in full effect. This work is also a blatant reminder of where a lot of our cash has been going recently, when it really should have been going on practical, sensible things like getting us across the Atlantic to Florida.

When we made these plans earlier this year, involving getting some stuff done to the house this summer and planning a trip early next year seemed OK, even manageable and it certainly demonstrated much more common sense than we have in the past decade or more.

Now, however, with my social media feeds full of people on holiday, the weather resembling November and my house like a building site, the irresponsible child in me is screaming that I should be on some roller coaster somewhere with pancakes in my belly.

Work has been extremely busy too, but to add to my longing for our usual American adventure, that’s because a member of my team is currently away, yes, on holiday. He isn’t in the US, but it is Canada which is close enough for me to put that into the same bucket of stuff that I shall keep to remind me never to be so bloody sensible ever again.

April seems a long way away.

Pining for Siesta Key…..

Our dose of US sun normally girds our loins sufficiently to get us through the grim, dark, cold and miserable UK winter. We shall have to take it on this year without that in our tanks and I fear for us. I also fear for you lot as you’ll see this manifest itself in a series of whinging, bleak and self pitying blogs. What do you mean you’re used to it?

On the subject of social media feeds and them being filled with Orlando stuff, of course that’s my own fault. Your social media content is of your own doing (mostly) and mine of course are made up of folks with similar obsessive interests in Florida. I joined a few of those Facebook Orlando groups some time ago, but never really contribute to be honest. They feel too big and impersonal and just a a diluted version of all that was good about the Disney forums most of us used back in their heyday. Plus, there’s some right crap on there too 🙂

From questions that make my toes curl, to people who make me want to scream “Stop doing Orlando wrong!!” at my phone, to what seems to have become a stream of “blogs” or “trip reports”, I feel that these groups aren’t for me, other than to keep my eye on any news /updates I need to be aware of. Call me old fashioned, but jotting down a couple of paragraphs around a few photos from your phone isn’t a trip report. It’s fine to do that of course, it’s nothing to do with me after all, and it will still be nice to look back on of course, but for us old school Orlando folk a trip report involves a lot more effort than that. Endless notes, extensive photographs, details of everything, some of which nobody wants to know about and more words than anybody in their right mind would ever want to wade through (and no singing!!). THAT’s a trip report. These Facebook things are just status updates, valid all the same, and each to their own, but let’s not use the wrong term for them eh? There’s another example of my up and down relationship with Facebook!

Hmm, not sure where that rant/trip report snobbery/Disney forum nostalgia came from….perhaps I need a holiday? Maybe that or a new Disney forum we can all use that somehow is protected from cock wombles and trouble makers? I’m not volunteering by the way, but if you find one let me know?

Till the next time…..

Entertaining Wees and Some Cold Turkey!

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

Regular readers know that on the odd occasion that I have to go to London, I do so with a heavy heart and a desire to get in and out as quickly as possible.  Last week was no different.  It was the first journey to the capital with the new company, and so had added elements of dread as I am still very much in the zone of trying not to look like a right tit as much as is possible.

Upon reaching London I do go a bit touristy to be honest, and with a new company comes a new office venue, and this one in the heart of the West End.  As you might imagine, the streets in this part of London, are filled with hundreds of theatre types dancing on top of taxis in pink leg warmers, the dancers in leg warmers, not the taxis!  We stopped for a £7 coffee in Haymarket, and had to wait ages for Bob Hoskins, Julie Walters and Robert De Niro to decide whether they wanted a croissant or a skinny muffin.

So having walked with slack jaw past Eros, those large boards with Coke on that you see on the telly (and I don’t mean Frankie Cocozza’s dressing table) and a myriad of theatres I got to the offices and proceeded to blag my way through a series of meetings, nodding when everyone else did, and somehow fumbling my way through a presentation or two.

The reason for all this pre-amble is that during a break in proceedings I had a wee, and I think it may be a contender for an award for The Wee with the Best View in Britain!

london wee view
A loo with a view

These are the perks of working in the heart of the capital I imagine.  A nice as it is to look at the London Eye whilst peeing all over your shoes, it does not (for me) make the daily use of the tube anything like bearable.  I am much happier sat in first gear for an hour traveling the twelve miles or so to the office!!

So the day was pretty much a success, as the meetings went well and I was back home before 8pm.

The highlight of the day, without doubt though was the phone call I got from Emily on the way down.  She was due to pick up her GCSE results for her Maths re-take.  Having inherited the Williams aversion to Maths, she too did not pass it first time around.  This is a family tradition, and having retook it recently she had not exuded confidence about passing this time either.  I do admit to being a little nervy for the first hour of the journey, whist trying to engage in jaunty badinage with the boss next to me, but once she’d called the trip seemed a little more bearable all round.

Thankfully, her call to me was a joyous one, as she had passed, and we were all absolutely delighted.  Having mastered algebra and isosceles triangles she can now forget them forever and just wave her certificate at employers.

One downside of the journey down south was that I missed Rebecca perform in her GCSE Dance group that evening.  One of the very few school performances I have missed since they started being sheep in the nativity in nursery!  She did very well according to Louise, as a zebra!  I imagine it very similar to the Lion King Show in the Animal Kingdom!

The rest of the week was relatively uneventful, my Mum’s birthday aside today.  We popped round with a present and a card, and I spent a comfy hour in the restful grip of my Dad’s brand new “ladyboy” chair.  Only the die hard long standing trip report readers amongst you may get that reference!!

We are now in the full maelstrom of March which is officially the busiest and most expensive month of the year in the world of Williams.  It contains four family birthdays and three Mother’s days.  Yes that’s three.  My Mum of course, Louise’s Mum and Louise.  As grown up as the girls are they still seem incapable of finding their way to a shop and procuring their Mum a pressie.

In other news, I, no we, as I include Louise in this, are in the full grip of WDW cold turkey.  Like the full-blown addiction it is, we are metaphorically rocking ourselves slowly in the corner, quietly whispering random words such as Philharmagic, Applebees, Epcot, and overdraft.  I cannot lie to you, we have both this week spent time on websites that contain flight searches.  This has not helped, and in fact only reinforced how much we cannot afford to go this year.  This makes me sad, in more ways than one.

So our house is like some scene from Trainspotting, but the train in question circles the Magic Kingdom. I made the very big mistake earlier this week of re-reading one of my trip reports as someone had just commented on it.  In light of the coldness of my turkey, this was not a wise thing to do.  It did reinforce my thinking that the writing of these trip reports is well worth the effort at the time, as reading them some years later really does allow you to transport yourself to the exact time and place.  Let’s face it, that’s a lot cheaper than paying for flights.

Till the next time…..

 

 

Alice, Archie and a Sugar Rush

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

You do not find me in the happiest of places.

I stare at my diary for the week, and my heart is filled with dread and horror at the utter nonsense I have to get through this week.  Presentations, disciplinaries (three of them!!) and generally stuff I really resent wasting my life on.  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.

Peter Capaldi
Angry Man!

The weekend shot by in record time it seems, and I find myself back at my desk again, tired and unrefreshed.  Last night however I did watch a superb film, which I caught by accident.  In the Loop was brilliant, witty, frenetic, and seemed to be over in about ten minutes.  A sure sign of a good film.  The character played by Peter Capaldi was pure genius, and is surely how everyone wants to behave at work, just for one day!!

Sunday also saw me escort Rebecca to her friend’s house to visit their new puppy Archie.  He’s a Bichon Frise (small white fluffy dog), and has cornered the market in cuteness.  Rebecca in turn adopted her puppy eyes in a desperate attempt to get one of her own.  Not a chance!!  We tried the puppy thing a few years ago, with a lovely Basset Hound called Truman, but heartbreakingly we had to rehome him as we just didn’t have the time he needed, as we both worked full time at the time.

I am never going through that again!!  In no way did I get emotional at the time, and “get something in my eye” as I handed him over.

Archie the dog
Cuteness be thy name

In what is sounding like an action packed weekend we also went to see Alice in Wonderland at our local cinema.  What a kerfuffle!  With our usual detailed advanced planning we decided to go about thirty minutes before it was due to start.  I tried in vain to book tickets on the website, and only encountered errors.  I even tried the quaint method of phoning them up, but still problems intervened.

In the end we just jumped in the car and drove there.  The queue we encountered was of WDW proportions….on New Years Eve…..for Soarin’.  Still, if I ran a cinema how could I have predicted such a large attendance on the weekend of the launch of one of the biggest films of the year!  Add to that, all the ticket collection machines were down too, so everyone had to join the queue, even if they had booked on the error ridden website!!  With this in mind it should have come as no surprise that only three staff were serving.

We resolved to queue but get tickets for the 7pm show, and adjourn to a local eatery to while away the intervening hours.  You can see how this was turning into a very expensive trip to the cinema.  Frankie and Bennys received our custom, with all the waiting staff in fancy dress to “celebrate” the launch of Alice in Wonderland.  If they knew about it, how come the cinema didn’t?  A steak ciabbatta later and we’re back at the cinema (via a swift detour to Asda to secure cheapo sweets as I needed petrol anyway), and lo, another queue to enjoy.

So after a lovely thirty minute wait we watched all the people we were queuing with earlier exit the film, and look at us in a weird way, wondering how and/or why we were in the queue for the film that they saw us queue up for earlier, with them.

Eventually we enter, and having queued we bag a good seat, and the pick n mix begins.  The film passes in a haze of fried eggs, chocolate raisins, white mice and mini eggs, and I hit a sugar induced coma just as the Jabberwocky appears.  Who said the drugs don’t work.  The film itself was better than I expected if I am honest.  I have never watched any version of an Alice film all the way through, from the animated Disney one to the cruelly low budget ones, such as a dreadful 70’s version with Fiona Fullerton.

I was pleasantly surprised to get into it (after what felt like a slow start) and actually enjoy it.  Good job, saying the whole trip cost north of £100!!  Tight, me, never!!!!

The other main theme of the weekend was Louise coming over all spring cleaner on us.  Apparently it was required that we and Emily swap bedrooms, which Louise did more or less unaided on her day off on Thursday, but the weekend meant a massive clear out of years of crud which we have accumulated nicely.  Needless to say a trip to the tip was in order, and about seven hours of pulling stuff out of wardrobes, looking at it, and then trying to push it back in again ensued.

No wonder the weekend went quickly!!  How I managed to fit in a good few hours of Call of Duty I will never know.

I also received a lovely email from a Dibber, who had spent the weekend reading my trip reports.  He was very complimentary about my ramblings which is always lovely to hear.  My ego knows no beginnings!!

This was an extraordinary email which really touched me (something in my eye again), as it outlined their own personal battles to get to Florida after Travel City went bang, and many other challenges seemed to be attracted to them.  Needless to say the troubles were overcome, they went to WDW and it changed their lives.  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!!!  🙂

For clarity that was an attempt at humour.

Till the next time…..