We’ve experienced all kinds of things in Florida, the vast majority good of course, but you don’t visit a place as much as we do and avoid encountering upsets, arguments and downright upsetting stuff over all those years.
Today, however, is something I have no idea how to write about. Only my type A, OCD need for completing stuff sees me sitting at the keyboard and having to get through it. So here we go….
I was still waking up at 6am despite the holiday being almost over. Thanks, body clock. We watched another episode of Dahmer via Netflix and I think Louise nodded back off for a bit. Emily was with Mary back home and we were calling and messaging constantly with the latest updates etc.
At around 8.55am Florida time, Emily sent us two words. “She’s gone”.
She immediately called us, and Rebecca joined the call from her home too. We had all been preparing ourselves for this moment for at least eight or nine months since Mary had a stroke in December 2021 and had to come and live with us. There had been many times in those months that we thought she was leaving us, only to bounce back like the fighter she was, but all that preparation did not make it any easier now.
There were lots of tears, of course, accompanied by a numb feeling of disbelief. After a while, we all hung up and we began the process of informing those who needed to know and arranging things such as a funeral director. Thankfully, technology and much-improved roaming contracts made this much easier than it may have been a few years ago.
We also spoke to the nursing home and went through what would happen between now and when we would get home. As much as Louise feels incredibly guilty about being away when her Mum passed, any attempt to fly home earlier than scheduled, once we suspected we may not get back in time, would have seen us either in the air or in an airport at this moment, unable to make arrangements or speak with the girls as easily as we could now, so if there can be any good thing about a moment like this, we should cling to that.
Amongst all this, I had nipped down to Fuel in the Dolphin’s lobby, their take-out food option and got some breakfast and coffee, mainly as I didn’t know what else to do.
Once all the calls we could make were done, we had no idea what to do with ourselves so we just went back to the pool again around 11.30. Louise cried pretty much all day and I felt like a fairly useless spare part, lying there in the sun, feeling like we shouldn’t but not wanting to sit in the room.
More calls were received and made during the afternoon and I handled as many of those as I could to prevent Louise from having to.
At around 5pm we went back to the room and had showers and got dressed. At some point during the day, I had looked for somewhere to eat this evening and just chose the closest thing I could find, The Yachtsman’s Steakhouse at the Yacht Club. We were booked in for 7.30.
We walked over there, the gorgeous surroundings feeling all the weirder at a time like this.
We arrived with a little time to spare so we went into the Crew’s Cup bar for a drink. Louise had red wine and I had a chocolate martini again.
On a day that probably called for it, we had a second round, this time I swapped to a beer.
We checked in next door at the restaurant at 7.25 and we were seated after a five-minute wait. It was odd to experience the world carrying on as normal, with the Cast Members doing their jobs and greeting us happily. We were served by Marty and during the meal, we chatted with the couple at the next table who were from Minnesota. They were frequent visitors too and it’s always nice to talk to other folks bitten by the bug and pick their brains about all the stuff you haven’t done yet.
We started with another lovely bread service.
I ordered the New York Strip.
Louise, the Filet Mignon.
We had creamed spinach and mushrooms as our sides.
We were too full for pudding, which was the second saddest thing to happen today.
We strolled back to the hotel slowly, soaking up the environment.
With some perfect timing, the Epcot fireworks started right at that moment and I took far too many photos of very poor quality.
You know I love this place and I lingered longer than was probably needed just to soak it in a little more. I always think about the horrid winter waiting for us back home and how I have to charge my batteries with the life force from this area just to get me through it.
We were back in the room and quickly asleep after a day we will never forget, full of all sorts of emotions. The next day would see us fly home.
I heard a line in a film once, I can’t remember which film now, but it has really stuck with me ever since.
The line is something like, “The greatest lies a man tells are to himself”.
Never is this more true than when you swear you will not be eating breakfast the next day as you are so full after a huge meal that evening.
We were awake early and out of the room around 7.30 on the hunt for food.
The Dolphin has a buffet breakfast option at a place called The Market so only requiring a light start to the day we thought we’d go for an all-you-can-eat buffet, which makes perfect sense. As the law dictates we ordered coffee and juice and our server directed us to the food. Now, I do not wish to appear greedy or over-anxious to consume large amounts of food (again) but these buggers have their buffet set up behind a counter with someone plating up your food. This means that you have to ask them for everything you want on your plate and will discourage the multiple-trip eater from doing so for fear of being judged. Shame on you Dolphin, I have contacted Trading Standards.
My one and only plate looked like this.
How I was supposed to survive until lunch on this was a worry.
OK, there were two plates as this stuff was self-serve.
We paid the $65 bill and left. We are getting to some tricky ground now in this trip which is hard to write about. It was today that we started to understand that back home, Mary was very likely coming to the end. Louise was talking regularly to the care home in a nurse’s language that often needed translating for me.
Literally whilst she was on the phone with them I was standing staring at my phone trying to find any viable flight options to get us home earlier. With Hurricane Ian having just passed and the airports and flights having been shut down for three days, it was very slim pickings and any flight leaving earlier than our scheduled one took so many stops that it would only get us home a few hours earlier than we would anyway. It looked like we were here until our planned return in a couple of days’ time. All we could hope at this point was that Mary could hold on.
What I write here may seem glib and disrespectful in light of this situation but clearly, I am not going to burden you with the very serious conversations and feelings that were happening from here on in. I’ll concentrate on the food and the stuff we managed to do in between.
Back home, the girls were tag teaming being with their Grandma and we of course joined them via video whenever that was possible. We went to the pool to lie in a state of, well, I don’t know what state it was, but it felt surreal and not very nice.
At around 2pm our time, Rebecca called us from Mary’s bedside. Whilst she was clearly not in a good way, she absolutely responded to Louise’s voice and this was both uplifting and upsetting in equal measure. Whilst Louise did that I was making calls to the UK to try and arrange for a priest to go and see Mary who was a practising Catholic, as we knew from conversations with her, that she would want this.
Somehow I tracked someone down and like an actual angel, we saw him arrive in Rebecca’s phone that we were talking to her on within about twenty minutes. We will be forever grateful to him for that. We and Rebecca left him with Mary for a few minutes to do what needed to be done.
We just sat staring at the pool for the rest of the afternoon feeling helpless.
At around 5.30pm we went back to the room and changed. In our current dazed state, there had been zero thought given to dining plans so for ease we just walked on auto-pilot back to Il Mulino across the walkway from the Dolphin. We were seated after a ten-minute wait, at the same table as last night weirdly.
I had the same starter as it was fabulous and I didn’t think anything else could beat it.
Louise followed suit with a repeat of meatballs.
Tonight though we both went for the Rigatoni which was the cheesy pasta thing Louise had last night. It appears to have escaped my camera so just remember it from last night.
Tonight’s bill was $165 including tip which tells you how expensive my steak was last night.
We then just went back to our room and watched some TV before sleep.
Another early rise which was a shock as we had been so active over the last few days!!
Some frantic phone checking was fruitless in the search for news of park reopenings at Universal. We were checking out today but if they were to open up we could still use a day of Front of Line to get Islands of Adventure done.
We got on with our packing hoping things would be clearer soon.
We like this hotel a lot, but frankly, at this point, we were both very much over the sight of the inside of this hotel room.
We were both showered and dressed by 8.30 and there was still nothing being said on any of the Universal social networks about the parks today so we had little choice but to check out and go and eat. We got a coffee from the market in the lobby and I paid a visit to reception to query a double charge on my credit card. At check-in, they had seemingly had issues trying to pre-auth my card for charging and had run it twice. Both times had worked it seemed.
I was reassured that would all be refunded automatically (we hadn’t charged anything) minus the frankly offensive parking charges and off I went. It may not astonish you to learn that neither charge was refunded and it took a good deal of faff, chasing and emailing to get that done once back home.
We left at 8.40ish and got the cases into the car before pointing it at Hash House a Go Go. If we couldn’t go and have some theme park fun we would go and eat dangerous amounts of calories instead. As we drove out of the hotel past the car park entrance for the theme parks we saw team members there with barricades up, preventing anyone from entering. This was as good a sign as any that they would be shut today. Why they could not put this out in an update seemed odd.
The car park looked empty and we were seated immediately.
There’s an unwritten rule that when having a ridiculous American breakfast you have to order two drinks, one hot and one cold so we did that in the shape of coffees and juices, mine Cranberry and Louise, Orange.
We both went for the French Toast.
It was magnificent and ridiculous all at the same time.
I just couldn’t fit those pieces of orange in though.
In the absence of any information from Universal, we decided to head to Disney Springs to get our gift shopping completed. The sat nav took us off the I4 a junction later than I might have chosen and we had an agonising ten-minute wait at some traffic lights waiting to U-Turn into Lime Garage. It was 10.10 and the queue to go through security was huge. Clearly, everyone was stir-crazy and with no parks to visit, here they were.
We started in World of Disney, which was unsurprisingly busy. We picked up a good number of gifts and moved on to the Co-Op Marketplace and Trend-D where more spending happened. Freddie’s latest obsession was Darth Vader so we got him a full costume. With Halloween approaching this would be his costume of choice for Trick or Treating in. Here is a glimpse into that future with Dougie taking on the role of Baby Yoda.
We walked all the way over to the M&M store for M&M addict Tom back home. Louise took a call from the care home and some family members who had been to see Mary. The juxtaposition of the blue skies and holiday activities versus what was going on back home was incredibly odd.
We were done shopping, so we walked back to Lime and pointed the car at the Dolphin, our final resort for this trip.
I self-parked and we checked in to find our room ready. We made our way up to room 1644W and dumped the cases and changed into pool attire. Our first impressions of the resort were very good.
I figured out where to get towels from and we did some hardcore relaxing by the pool, helped by a bucket of alcohol each.
We did very little until around 5pm when we went back to the room to get ready for dinner. Yes, we were hungry again despite that breakfast.
We were out by 7pm with no firm dinner plans. We wandered across to the Swan with nowhere in mind and stumbled across Il Mulino.
There was no wait to be seated and we were served by a chap called Howie, who was from the Wirral. Turns out he had done the Cultural Representative Programme about 18 years ago and never gone home, after marrying an American.
He looked after us excellently.
There was a phenomenal bread service to start, with some eggplant salad thing to dip stuff into. I appreciate this write-up is not one to trouble the food critics at The Times.
Louise started with Meat Balls.
I was busy devouring my starter, the Rice Balls, which was one of the best things to have ever been in my mouth.
You will already know that Louise had a “cheesy pasta thing”, but this one was exceptional.
If ever a photo did not do justice to a plate of food this next one is it.
I had the Tenderloin, which was not a condition for which CVS might supply an ointment, instead, probably the best steak I had ever eaten. It was stupidly expensive for a tightwad like me, but I really, really enjoyed it.
All in all, this was one of our best-ever meals in Florida. In all our years of visiting, this place had never once been on our radar and it goes to show that sometimes, despite all the planning and research, you just come across somewhere that is a delight. We would be back.
The bill was $205 including a good tip so this is not a cheap place to go, but as a treat, it was very much worth it.
Despite being fuller than a full thing, we soldiered on to Jellyrolls, resisting the huge temptation to just go to bed. We found an empty table, set up a tab and enjoyed the show. We hadn’t been for years and it was great to be back. We managed a very enjoyable hour before the desire to sleep was victorious. The last song we watched was If I Had A Million Dollars by Bare Naked Ladies, and if I did, I would eat at Il Mulino every night and then pop into Jellyrolls I think.
We even managed an episode of Dahmer back in the room before passing out.
I imagine you were excited about returning this week to read about another day spent in our hotel room watching weather happen in real life and on our telly? Yep, this is the good stuff. Buckle up.
I was awake at 6am, keen not to miss any of the excitement today. Rebecca called and thankfully Dougie’s A&E visit resulted in him being OK and back home again on the mend.
After some weather on the TV, we went down to breakfast and this time we were doing it properly, buffet style in the restaurant there.
I didn’t take many photos of the wide variety of things I put into my body but I did capture this breakfast staple before it went down the hatch.
Suffice to say there were multiple trips along the buffet and we left very full. Again, it was not the best buffet we have ever had but it was the best one currently available to us so it had to do. The most offensive element was that items that ran out were left not refilled for long periods. Eggs and pancakes being the things missing from the selection for all our visit. This is a grave sin in the world of buffet.
We went back up to our room and felt inexplicably tired, so we dozed or a bit.
At some point later, (the days were merging into one never-ending hotel room experience) we got up and showered. With the worst of the weather having passed over us last night as we slept, we thought we’d get some fresh air and go for a walk around the hotel grounds.
We started out on the bridge near the entrance to get a feel for what conditions were like.
One of those windows was our room. Look, there’s nothing to write about so details like this matter!
Whilst our immediate area seemed to have escaped the worst of the hurricane, I am sad to tell you that Shania Twain did not make it.
Satisfied that death was not imminent, we had a walk around.
We found ourselves close to Sapphire Falls.
So we had a wander inside for a nosey. These hotels are huge. This was just one of the many conference rooms.
We found our way up to reception where a lot of people were hanging around. This is a random photo of some stairs there.
We bought some gifts for folks back home in the gift shop and just wandered around a bit. Outside the weather was still very wet and windy but not dangerous.
We went back to Royal Pacific and had a drink in the bar there.
With all other options exhausted, we went back to the room and got ready to go and find some food. Whilst Louise ran the hairdryer for about four days I spoke to Mum & Dad for a bit.
We headed down to Jake’s feeling peckish. There was absolute heartbreak as we were greeted with a two and half hour wait time for a table. Not having any desire to revisit the Islands Dining Room we were a little stumped for ideas as venturing out was still not an option.
In the end, we had to resort to the Market counter service place and we had a hot beef sandwich (not a lady’s medical condition) and a pizza. There were barely worthy of a photograph.
Feeling deprived of food-based loveliness, we went back to the Market, bought a lot of chocolate, and went back up to our room. All weathered out, instead, we watched some real crime documentary things for the evening and tried to find information on whether the Universal parks would be open tomorrow, but there was no info to be found. We fell asleep not knowing what we would be doing the following day other than packing and leaving to move over to the Dolphin.
This may not take long! Our activities today were severely curtailed by Ian.
I was awake at 6am and put the news on immediately to see what was happening. All the parks were closed today, so this was to be the way of things for the foreseeable. The worst of the weather had not reached us and we still had a good twelve hours or so until that would be the case, but of course, that did not mean the news channels would not spend every minute until then talking about it.
I nipped down to the Market in the lobby to get us some breakfast and I picked up some hugely over priced snacks for later on.
That was pretty much our day to be honest. Eating and watching reporters stand in bad weather in places we had never heard of.
Outside was looking like this.
To get a feel for our day today, imagine lying on your bed for many hours watching rolling news. Much time passed……
The worst of Ian was due to arrive overnight but by around 4.30, when I took this video, things were just beginning to turn nastyish.
Late in the afternoon I showered and got ready to find somewhere to eat. There are two restaurants at Royal Pacific and we did the other one last night so after a ten-minute wait, we had a table at the Islands Dining Room around 6pm.
Oddly the weather outside was still looking relatively OK saying that the entire state was petty much locked down.
Having spent all day in our room, clearly, we had gone a little stir-crazy as we somehow ordered a bottle of wine that cost $60. I suppose we had not spent any cash on anything else today.
To start we had
Me – Pot Stickers
Sure they look like something served in a bush tucker trial, but they were very tasty.
Louise had spring rolls
I continued with Street Noodles.
Louise had a sweet and sour chicken thing, which seemed very nice. She could not finish it and offered me the last piece of chicken. It was a large one, so I cut it in half only to find it was very much raw inside.
For those with delicate stomachs, look away now.
Louise was obviously concerned that she had eaten the rest of it and we feared impending illness but she was fine. I suspect this piece, being so much bigger than the rest had just not cooked, whilst the smaller ones had.
We, of course, told our server about the problem and he removed the item from our bill and apologised profusely.
With nothing else to do before getting back to the weather channel, I ordered a dessert. It was a coffee cake of sorts and was, to be frank disappointing.
This restaurant is not on our list of places to which we must return.
We headed back up to the room for more TV, and with the storm getting very close to us now we watched with more interest. We’d also heard from Rebecca around this time that Dougie (youngest Grandson) was in A&E and was not very well. This took precedence over the hurricane in our worry league table. Sleep came at some point to end an eventful yet uneventful day.
After over two decades of family trips to Florida, you’d imagine that everyone in the Williams/Mkingdon tribe would understand the five-hour time difference by now. Rebecca ringing us at 6.30am local time did nothing to support that theory. Why yes, it was the first time this trip I had slept past 5.30am, why do you ask?
We spoke for a while, then dozed a little and got up and packed for our move to Universal. We were out of our room by 8 and undertook an unremarkable journey up the I4 to Royal Pacific. I self-parked, checked in and was delighted to find our room ready. Maybe a symptom of the incoming Ian that rooms were available at this early hour? We made our way to room 1247. We dumped the cases and walked out to the water taxi. We were met with no wait and a captain that looked a bit like Tom Hardy. No, I didn’t take a photo, he isn’t a piece of meat!
We chose to do Universal Studios today as we wanted to try the “new and improved” Mummy ride. Knowing that all our decisions work out perfectly, what could go wrong? This was one of the attractions not included in our Front of Line pass, so we thought we’d get this out of the way first before the queues built up. As we entered the park the app was saying it had a 15-minute wait, but that was just to get your locker! I hate the locker crap at Universal.
We made our way into and through the park and no, I cannot explain this photo.
There was, as the song goes, dancing in the street.
and people….
By the time we got to the ride, it had a 35-minute wait, but we figured it was still very much worth doing it now. We lockered our stuff and entered what was a very slow-moving queue. Eventually, we made our way up to the front of the queue and we could see the vehicles now, so we’d be on in just a minute.
The ride broke down.
I seethed considerably as we waited about 20 minutes with nothing happening and the team members encouraging everyone to leave. We waited them out and at around 9.55 we were the first to board the (hopefully) now-repaired ride.
Other than the queue taking you up some stairs now, I have to say I couldn’t determine any major changes to this ride. It’s been a while since we did it, so maybe I just have a bad memory. Anyway, it’s been an equally long time since it took me almost an hour to ride Mummy. (Obligatory joke whenever we do this ride.)
We left in need of breakfast and stopped at Starbucks for a coffee and sandwich. Yes, the ones in Magic Kingdom were very average but why would that stop us from having them again? We sat outside eating, people-watching and feeding the birds our average food.
With food onboard, we made our way over to Gringotts.
Imagine some fire in that photo. I couldn’t be bothered to wait for it.
Delightfully we had Front of Line here and we sailed past the extensive standby line so quickly that I didn’t take many photos of the back clerks etc. Even with our specialness, it took 15 minutes to get onto the ride.
This is a very impressive ride and I think I’ve done it a handful of times now. Not once have I ever heard or understood what the story is meant to be about. It does not reduce my enjoyment of it though.
Onwards to Men in Black now.
We were sat as a two on a row made for three. To prove that I am in no way overly competitive I picked up the spare gun and shot two-handed all the way around. I scored 140,000 but this could not prevent a loss for our car as my colleagues, were, let’s say shite. Not one of them in the front row of our vehicle scored over 10,000.
We wandered now round to the Simpsons Ride. Somehow Louise had never ridden this before.
Being September we were seeing the Horror Nights stuff throughout the park.
An enjoyable ride if not a little rough, again, no doubt a symptom of my now advanced years. We stopped in the shop to get Emily’s boyfriend a particular T-shirt he wanted before making our way over to Rip Ride Rockit.
This is a ride that I know is not going to be good for me, but I ride it regardless. For this one, you have to almost strip naked and deposit everything into a locker before entering through airport-style detectors. We boarded, and it is typically during the vertical climb to start this ride that the familiar feeling of regret rushes through me. The clenching that had to happen during that climb is enough to do me a mischief and that is followed by unprecedented screaming for the duration of the experience. It’s a violent ride but in a good way.
In need of a gentler experience, we headed for Fallon, using our Front of Line to bypass no queue whatsoever.
That is one of those photos that, if you look at it in a certain way, Jesus appears in it.
We paused for a drink at this point getting water and a beer from the cart outside of Fallon. We sat in the little garden there and rested a bit.
We were both feeling a bit weary at this point but we had to push on as Ian was coming and we had no clue what if any further time we may get in the parks over the next few days. So Transformers it was.
I stand by my summary of this ride from January. It is Spiderman with a different film and vehicle. Good though despite it being one of just too many of these simulator-style rides at Uni.
Appreciating the ability to sit down in it, the Horror Make-up Show was next on our list.
This is a little gem, please don’t miss it out of your Universal day.
Minions next (how good is having Front of Line?) and we were straight in.
We followed this with a sit down for five minutes, looking at weather apps and the skies. Then we planned to do the Bourne show but made the mistake of walking to it via some shops. Louise got distracted, bought some stuff and by the time we got to the show it was full. I did not mind at all. It’s not as if we have never seen it!
The next show wasn’t until 3.45 and the rain was about to arrive so we decided to get a water taxi back to the hotel and hunker down.
We waited ten minutes for a boat and once back in the room rested and watched the non-stop coverage of Ian.
Not wishing to venture out of the hotel I had booked Jakes Bar at 6pm for dinner. Not one we would choose in normal circumstances but at this point, we were grateful for it and the staff manning it, allowing us to eat.
We shared a Mediterranean platter to start.
We both then had the New York Steak.
We shared, well, Louise had at least one bite of, a cheesecake.
It was a pricey $180 including tip. We did have wines and beers too.
We shopped for some snacks for what might be an interesting day or two and were back up in the room by 8.30. I couldn’t figure out a way to cast my phone to the telly, so no Netflix tonight. We watched more news before going to sleep around 10.
Two parks days on the trot, on a trip that was not supposed to include any WDW parks. Madness.
I was awake at my usual 5.30am and when 7am rolled around I was onto the app doing the required admin to have some fun. Cheers Chapek!
I secured a LL for Flights Of Passage and Genie+ for the day.
Around this time, after this vast expense, Louise informed me that she wasn’t feeling too well. After throwing objects around the room for a while in frustration, I left her in bed and wandered to the main building for some breakfast. I had some overnight oats and a coffee as my body is a temple. On my way to breakfast, I had taken a load of dirty washing (it was ours, not some random pile) and put them on to wash in the laundry.
On my way back to the room I stopped in to move everything over to the dryer. See, this is the sort of content you come here for. International laundry.
I went back to the room for an hour whilst that happened and Louise was up and dressed at least, but was in no shape to do a theme park. We would be having a much gentler day and you will be having slightly more boring content to read. Blame Louise. I was theme park ready at 5.30!
Despite being in no fit state to go to Animal Kingdom, Target it seemed was a different matter so we headed there. On our way there, the nursing home called about Mary who wasn’t doing too great and right about now we started to wonder if we may need to head home earlier than planned. The home assured us that was not the case for now so we went on with our day.
Target took another $100 off us for bits and we headed back to the resort pool. Somehow we found our way to a back entrance to POR, and we were promptly turned around as that was only for Cast Members we were politely told.
We did this for quite some time.
We chatted to folks back home via the internet, read, swam and relaxed trying not to think about the chunk of change I’d dropped on Flights Of Passage and Genie+.
Soon enough thoughts turned to eating and we failed to secure a booking for the Cheesecake Factory and didn’t want to risk the wait as it is always horrific. So instead, as this time we had no vegetarian Emily with us, we booked a table at the Outback.
We also had to pack for our move to Universal so we headed back to the room around 4.30 to do that and get ready. After showers and things we were out at 6.45 and headed to Formosa, our usual stomping ground on so many previous trips. The traffic was bad again, with it being a Monday and the back end of rush hour I suppose and we got there at 7.20 for our 7.30 booking. Look at us all early. I told you Louise wasn’t her normal self.
The Outback, it seemed was undergoing something of a facelift.
It would not, we hoped, affect their cooking abilities.
We were seated quickly and greeted with the excellent bread service that we had forgotten about. It had been a while since we’d been here.
That’s where it was, moments earlier.
We ordered –
Filet Mignon x 2.
Mine with a jacket spud….
Louise with mash….
The food was great, but bloody hell it was cold in the restaurant. I had come out in just a short-sleeved shirt and I was sat with two napkins over my arms to fight off hypothermia.
To help us warm up we onboarded more calories in the form of a rare dessert.
Carrot Cake for me
The Thunder from Down Under for Louise (not a euphemism)
To cap off this action-packed day we drove home and were in bed for 9pm. I worked out how to get Netflix on the telly and we managed one episode of Dahmer before sleep took us.
What is this madness? Two posts in one day? Often it takes a superhuman effort to squeeze out one, but we are mid-trip report, so my weekly nonsense about what is happening in life (and as ever, there is a fair bit going on) isn’t a thing. So I just wanted to share an update with you as it relates to the main reason this blog exists.
Despite only recently returning from our “couples retreat” trip in September, we have booked to return to Orlando, this time taking Emily along with us. Rebecca, Tom and the boys are already booked to go in April/May so Florida is getting its fill of Williams dollars it seems.
Oddly, I feel some sort of need to justify this ridiculous extravagance. Let me confirm, we are not very rich, just really irresponsible!
Before I share the plan, the reasons for the trip are many and include –
First and foremost of course, we want to go again.
Fantasmic is back and it needs watching. Or at least we need to go and try to watch it and no doubt end up disappointed.
Our last trip, as much as we enjoyed it, and we really did, was beset with three days of a hurricane and of course Mary’s sad passing, so we feel like some of that trip was lost or impacted.
My Dad isn’t in the best of health these days, and along with Mary’s passing, both Louise and I are firmly in the “f**k it” mindset of doing stuff we want to do whilst we are fit and able to do it. All too soon it will be too late.
With one thing and another we’ve had a tough year or so and, well, as I say, f**k it.
We asked Emily if she’d like to come along as she’s not been since last January and has severe withdrawal symptoms. With saving for her own place being a priority for her now, she would be unlikely to return under her own steam for a while.
So enough apologetic justification for doing what we want to do. What is the plan?
We go on the 9th of January. We are flying with Virgin this time and managed to get Premium both ways for an acceptable price. We like Aer Lingus a lot, but they only offer Business Class as an Economy alternative and that is big money for the three of us. Premium is a decent halfway house between Economy and Business so they got our business this time.
We are staying at Caribbean Beach for seven nights to start. This resort was selected mainly due to the Skyliner, as it will enable us to visit our beloved Boardwalk of an evening without the need to drive. It’s a cheaper alternative to staying at one of the Boardwalk resorts but still allows us to do what we love to do there.
Yes, this time we are definitely going to do the WDW parks. January is not a time of year to depend on there being sunbathing weather, so the plan is to do Disney.
Even though Louise and I have three days of Universal tickets to use from our last trip, due to Hurricane Ian, we aren’t doing Universal on this trip as there isn’t time. Why you may ask?
Well for the first time ever we are doing a Disney Cruise. We move from Caribbean Beach to the Disney Wish for a four-night cruise to Nassau and Castaway Cay. Being a walking contradiction, Louise suggested/insisted we do this despite having told me for the last few decades that she would never do a cruise.
Had we added Universal to the plan then we would have been in a park every day and that way lies tiredness and a lack of enjoyment.
After the cruise, we then move back to Orlando to finish with three nights at the Yacht Club, where despite my nightly prayers, I suspect we won’t get another upgrade to Club Level. Go on Disney, you know it makes sense!
I honestly didn’t plan this but it seems if I continue to write up the last trip at the current rate, the last day will get posted the day before we go on the next trip. This is ridiculous, extravagant and at the same time awesome.
We’ve been watching a fair few Tracker vlogs recently as they now seem to live on the Disney Wish, so I feel we have a decent amount of knowledge about the cruise experience and The Wish, but as we were starting from zero knowledge, of course, if there are any cruise experts reading this, your tips and advice would be most welcome. Ditto Caribbean Beach.
So far our plans include dining at Il Mulino again, Yak & Yeti whilst in DAK and a brunch at somewhere new to us, City Works at Disney Springs. We also plan to spend another evening with Yeeha Bob.
It feels weird to be one of those folks who have multiple trips per year, but I come back to the recurring theme of this post, f**k it, you’re a long time dead.
We watched some coverage of incoming Ian, knowing by now that we’d suffer some disruption, but there was bugger all we could do about it so, as you should with all life’s problems, we ignored them and carried on with the holiday.
We dozed for a bit and must have fallen back asleep as we were not up and out until 10.45. We walked to the main building and found some breakfast in the River Market.
We both had the Mickey Waffle Bounty Platter.
Whilst it was indeed a platter of bounty, being fat bastards, I wandered off and found us a cake each too.
Next, a highlight of the trip, as we wandered the gift shop looking for plasters for Louise’s poorly feet. Living La Vida Loca indeed. We secured some and some “bits” and left to walk back to the quiet pool near our building.
It was and remained very quiet indeed for most of the day. I was in “kneed” of some R&R.
It was lovely and hot today, perfect for doing not a great deal around some water.
At various points, we dipped our hot bodies into the pool and then lay in the sun for a while. It is this sort of content that makes for a thrilling trip report. To remedy that here is an exhilarating photo of the laundry and restrooms by this pool.
At one point I ventured into that building to liberate two bottles of water from the vending machine. There have been briefer hostage negotiations, as the witchcraft and guile needed to supply the relevant bills and coins in the right order for the machine to cooperate were laughable. We needed and enjoyed the water though.
We’d had enough of this level of excitement by around 4pm and we went back to the room to get ready to go and eat. You will notice we had not eaten lunch today. This frankly was irresponsible.
Our hunger no doubt hurried our readying and we were back out and in the car by 5.30 headed for Bahama Breeze at Lake Buena Vista. I had reserved a table online for 6.30 but time was tight as we wanted to get Louise the traditional new pair of trainers in an effort to stop her feet from preventing any further walking this trip.
I was feeling the stress of the ticking clock. The traffic was horrific around the Premium Outlet Mall of course. Parking was equally challenging but we were fortunate to fluke a spot quickly as we happened across someone coming out. It was now 18.05.
We walked briskly to the shops and soon found an Adidas shop. We had about ten minutes to find something suitable and by some miracle we did it. The first pair Louise tried on were the ones so I quickly paid and we made our way back to the car. We were off again at 18.25 and we just needed to make the short journey back to Bahama Breeze. The queuing traffic was the only thing preventing us from being on time.
After all our rushing and my stressing we were checking in at 18.35 with no issues. We were seated immediately and kicked things off with some Guac and Chips.
I “only” had a salad. As ever, a salad in Florida turned up needing three people to carry it, and it was delicious and incredibly filling. The menu helpfully told me this was “only” 860 calories. I know the runners and riders in this competition are limited, but this could well be the best salad I had ever eaten. Sure it contained melted cheese, but shouldn’t every salad?
You may have already guessed that Louise had a pasta thing. This may be her favourite pasta thing in the world as she always has the Jerk Chicken Pasta here.
Louise had a Long Island Iced Tea and I of course had a few diet cokes. Altogether the bill was £75 plus a good tip. I paid using one of those new fandangled machines on the table and we left.
We were going to spend this evening in the company of Yeehaa Bob, so back at the resort, I dropped Louise off at the main building and then went back to our building to park the car. Louise bagged us a table whilst I did that and we ordered some drinks.
I started with an Octoberfest beer and Louise of course had red wine while we waited for the main man to arrive.
Being very full and unable to continue onboarding large quantities of liquid I moved on to Chocolate Martinis. Yes, plural.
They were delicious and based on their taste, had no alcohol whatsoever in them.
Somewhere in this time Bob had turned up and started to perform. I seem to have only taken photos of what I was drinking.
After a Mai Tai, I was onto a couple of Negretos.
Oh, there he is.
It was all very enjoyable and I say that as someone who abhors shows with audience participation. You can choose to be involved as little as you wish. There was a large group down by the stage who did a lot of “participating, ” allowing others to sit back and enjoy. A really good fun night out.
We were both, I believe the kids would say “buzzing” and we didn’t leave the bar until about 12.30. You probably know that I do not drink very often and after the amount and variety of stuff I had necked tonight, it was impressive that somehow I navigated our way back to the room avoiding a large body of water and an unintended swim and we probably went straight to sleep. Turns out we’d spent about $200 on drinks, so yes, we definitely went straight to sleep.
You know what time I woke up. You’re not as bored of it as I was. The upside was that by 7.40am we were ready to go to the parks for some theme park action. Today was Hollywood Studios.
Another plus was that at the crucial 7am booking window I had already been awake for several hours and I was able to give Disney some extra money to ride something my park ticket should already cover. A LL for Rise of The Resistance was secured. I had also bought Genie+ for the day. We had one day in each park so had to fall on that sword, brimming with resentment, it must be said.
Once parked in Mickey 301, we walked in and straight up to Galaxy’s Edge, hoping to avoid the worst of the queues for Smuggler’s Run.
This rush was probably why all my photos will not be winning any competitions.
Slightly moist with a lovely early morning sweat, we were delighted to see a five-minute wait posted and we went in.
It probably took ten minutes, and I await my hefty compensation from Disney for that but we were soon being boarded for what would be Louise’s first ride of this one. We were to ride with a really cute American family. Mum, Dad and two young girls who were to be absolutely dreadful pilots, but the enthusiasm of the whole family and commitment to the storyline made the whole thing very enjoyable. They were from “The South” of the US by the sounds of things and the Mum sounded just like Holly Hunter. It was just lovely to see a young family really loving the immersive experience.
If you have ridden this, you will appreciate the skill and dexterity it took to take a photo mid-ride.
Now, I allowed breakfast to happen and despite my disappointment with the Ronto Wrap things in January decided to risk another. They were much better this time around and very tasty. We sat and consumed those and a coffee, waiting for 9.30 to roll around when we wandered down to Rise, ready for our 9.40 boarding group slot.
No spoilers here, (apart from the many photos below!) mainly as I am pretty much the last person on the planet to get to ride it, but what an awesome experience. This is not a ride, it is an experience. There is (at least to me) unfathomable complexity in the whole thing and I tip my hat to the Imagineers who got this up and running. Chapek can suck my round hairy things for charging me extra for riding it of course.
We were heading for Frozen next and we came out of Galaxy’s Edge and turned right walking past the ABC Commissary. At this point, Louise questioned this route as not being the most efficient. I reminded her that I am the map, and cannot be questioned on such matters.
As we approached the entrance we came across one of my pet hates in WDW. No, it isn’t clowns sitting down halfway down a row of seats, it is people loitering at the entrance of a ride, dithering about something and making everyone trying to get in navigate their way around them. They were on the end of one of my most severe tuts. To add to the misery they caused, once they had worked out their arses from elbows and decided that they did want to go in, after all, they made a huge deal about excusing themselves past everyone walking in for some reason. Idiots.
Luckily people were being forced to move to the end of rows or there would have been a scene.
The show was good fun as usual.
I’d booked a LL for Rock n Rollercoaster earlier for right about now so we went there next, wincing at the 50-minute standby queue. We waltzed straight to the front along wth a load of other LL folks so I have no idea how the standby line ever moved forward. This, in a nutshell, is the issue Disney are having with Genie+. Too many folks are buying it and making the standby lines untenable. This is why they have stopped you from buying it in advance and increased the price of it on busier days.
Once we were in the alley, there was a worrying delay and an empty car or two was run. I feared it breaking down but luckily all was well and we rode and screamed.
Tradition dictates this photo is taken.
I declared it snack time and we got this stuff.
Neither snack would make it into any of our all-time top ten lists of things we’ve eaten at WDW but they were OK. We eventually found a table to eat at as things were busy. At the one next to us two people were minding their own business eating something when a woman came to their table and gave them a load of verbal abuse.
“What are you doing at my table?! Can’t you see my scooter is parked next to it. Why have you sat here?”
Honestly, it was awful. How they were supposed to know the scooter abandoned by this table had somehow reserved it was beyond me. To their credit, they kept their calm, gave her a measured tongue-lashing and said she could put that table and scooter where darkness resides. They left her to it.
This woman then sat down and was looking around at us and other neighbours, trying to gain support for her approach. She said something to us like “Can you believe some people?”.
We replied that honestly no we could not and gave her more passive-aggressive disapproval.
We had a little time to kill before the Beauty & The Beast show at 11, so we wandered the shops for a while. This would turn out to be a costly mistake as ended up in the Pandora shop and somehow spent a crazy amount of dollars on three necklaces, one for Louise and one each for the girls. The guilt at not having brought them with us was strong.
We completed our purchase at 10.59 and had to speed walk back to the theatre, taking our place on the bleachers right at the back just as the show was starting.
It was good to see the show back to something like its original format and not the “socially distanced” version we saw in January.
The zoom on my “old-fashioned” camera is rather good. It had to be as we were a way back plus there was a chap in the wheelchair section who kept standing up to take endless videos. The irony.
Somehow in the midst of all this shopping and watching, I had managed to book a LL for Toy Story Mania, which is where we headed next, avoiding a 50-minute standby queue.
The scale of the defeat I inflicted on Louise was impressive.
Every ride had long standby waits now and we were unable to book any further LLs for the moment. As ever the fallbacks in this scenario in DHS are Star Tours and The Muppets.
Star Tours first.
We encountered a new (to us) film in Star Tours which is always nice after so many years.
We emerged to light rain and this increased the speed of our walk to the Muppets. The wait was just however long the pre-show had left to run. We entered when it was at this bit.
This is a classic of course and one we have to experience but I always have and still do detest Waldo, the spirit of 3D. Just me?
As the show ended we encountered torrential rain and had to shelter at the exit for ten minutes.
Louise needed the loo so we braved the wet and made our way to the restrooms near Pizza Planet. I sheltered near the entrance of the ride we had just left.
We were in need of some sustenance so we headed to the Backlot Express and shared a Cheeseburger whilst avoiding another rain shower.
We nipped next door to watch the next Indy show. The recent wetness had curtailed the extent of that show quite a lot but luckily we had seen it once or twice before!
Now we had some time to kill until out next LL at 5.40 so foolishly we wandered more shops. We did catch a sliver of a parade as it passed.
I cannot explain this photo.
We joined the huge queue for a Starbucks and it took us an age to get a couple of coffees. We queued next to what Louise described as “the most beautiful female she had ever seen”. I of course had no opinion on the matter but it would not surprise me to learn that she was friends with Jasmine, if you know what I mean.
We drank as we wandered to Slinky, picking up a Num Num on the way, but we had some cream for that back at the room.
The standby for Slinky was 100 minutes. It was clear why, as the LL queue was always busy and they had to keep letting those folks on as they had forked out the cash. The ride is always better than you think it is going to be, but not 100 minutes good.
Our final LL of the day was at Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway so we headed there now.
As we were queuing we were joined by a fabulous chap, dressed in a full-length leather coat and knee-high leather boots. He looked like a mix of Homelander from The Boys and Joe Longthorne (ask your Dad).
This ride has a really creative pre-show but endless queues. Just when you think you may be getting close to riding, more lines await. The ride exceeded Louise’s expectations on her first time, but was no Great Movie Ride.
It was time to go. With no Fantasmic on, it felt weird to have no “finale” to the day, but instead, we had food to eat. Back at the car I searched for an Applebees and followed my phone to a new one for us near Celebration.
It was much quieter than all the other Applebees we had been to, so this was a stroke of luck. We were seated immediately.
Louise – Nachos of course
I had Parmesan Steak and Shrimp.
Both were very good and Louise benefitted from the 2-4-1 on drinks. The bill was a very acceptable $58 so I left $75.
We were both knackered and just wanted to go to sleep. I waited until I had driven us back to the resort before doing so at 10 after watching some news on an incoming hurricane. These things always just pass Orlando by right? It would be a lot of fuss over nothing no doubt!
Another early rise. On recent trips, my body clock seems to be refusing to budge from UK time. I can only blame Brexit.
We took the chance to speak to folks back home, who we were still clearly operating on the same time zone as, and at around 7am, went out onto the balcony as we had nowhere to be in any rush.
Louise and I chatted for a bit and it was right around now that our plans and trip report title went out of the window. Honestly, pre-trip I had zero intentions of darkening a Disney theme park’s door. I had been scarred by our January experiences and did not need that stress in my life.
However, I suppose having been so close to Epcot for several hours, we were tempted. I “just had a look” to see if there were park reservations available and by now, we knew it was game over. I quickly booked a 4-day pass, reserved our entrance to Epcot that day and then things needed sorting. Never have I been so unprepared for a day’s theme parking.
Firstly, I needed to change. I was dressed for a day of swimming and relaxing and needed to get out of my current swim shorts and into some that would take the rigours of over 20,000 steps and my mighty undercarriage.
Whilst Louise was making similar adjustments to her wardrobe, I had also bagged a Lightning Lane for Guardians of the Galaxy. This, proving my well-made point from January that if you are off-site scum, this Genie+ thing is barely of any use to you in this regard.
We were out of the room at 7.40, walking towards International Gateway. As we did I cancelled our ADR for that evening at Sanaa as we would be in the park until late.
As would be the case every time we went near a Disney park this trip, Ryan and I got pulled aside for a full cavity search at security as we passed through the scanner. At the gate, I zapped my Magic Band and scanned Louise’s QR code from my recent ticket booking to get us in. Louise hadn’t even brought her Magic Band, so sure were we that we would not be doing park things.
For now, she had an old-school plastic card thing.
To add to our good fortune, we had early entry this morning as we were high-class on-site glitterati and we, therefore, went straight to Remy to remedy not being able to ride this thing in January.
There was a decent queue there already but nothing that wouldn’t clear in a few minutes once the ride opened at 8am.
All of my malice and angst from January were melting away and Disney was pulling me back from the brink, I could feel it.
I knew they would. They couldn’t keep getting things so wrong, could they? It was 8.05 now and the line was moving. There was genuine excitement at riding something for the first time. I was messaging Emily back home telling her all about our change of plans and that we were about to ride Remy. It was great.
Then the ride broke down, they shut it and sent all of the queue away.
Not only could we not ride it, but any advantage from our early entry was now squandered on a queue that led to nothing.
We walked back to World Showcase with me muttering unspeakable things and tripping over my bottom lip. All we could do now was walk down to Soarin’ and see if we could eke out any sort of advantage over the pleb crowds coming in through the main entrance. I was so upset that for reasons I still cannot explain we walked the long way around World Showcase rather than down through the UK and Canada. I realised this mistake sometime around Italy by which time it was too late and we were committed to the full loop.
Hot, sweaty and annoyed, we eventually got down into Future World.
Even my camera was angry.
There was a ten-minute wait posted but it was in effect a walk-on. No, this did not make me feel any better! We did get the top row, which did help a little bit and yes, it’s an awesome ride and one of my favourites so I suppose we will stay in the park today after all.
Food next and we just grabbed a breakfast roll thing from the Land food court. It was OK but America’s unfamiliarity with brown sauce was a loss.
We were definitely now back in park touring mode as we had just fifteen minutes to get that into us and then walk over to Guardians before our Lightning Lane slot passed. I necked mine in seconds and then “encouraged” Louise to do the same as if she were Adam Richman mid-food challenge. Full of sandwich and indigestion, we made it to Guardians in time.
It took just five minutes to get onto the ride.
Wow.
We just laughed for the entire ride, a mixture of appreciation for how much fun it is and the joy of riding something new. It is the perfect mix of innovation, just being thrilling enough with a huge dollop of fun. No doubt around 90% of the detail passed me by on this first ride but we loved it.
It was raining quite hard as we stood at the exit so we loitered in the shop for a bit resisting the need to buy a poncho.
As the rain slackened a little we dashed over to the Creations eatery, as it was the closest building and cover from the rain, which was new to us. It was no Electric Umbrella but it looks nice.
We made our way down to Spaceship Earth to find a queue of worrying length, but it turned out to be just ten minutes before we settled in to listen to Judy.
I was so relaxed during the whole experience that as I left the ride I did not notice that my phone had slipped from my pocket. Luckily, as you need to look at your phone every seven seconds in a WDW park, I did notice just as we entered the post-ride bit where you see your photos up on the map.
I quickly found a CM who gave me the “not another one” look and wandered back up to the ride. She had asked me to describe the phone to her.
“Well, it’s an iPhone in a black silicone case. Surely that is unique?” I said. “Oh, and the lock screen image is of the best dog ever to live”.
“Ah, Oli the Old English,” she said with a knowing look.
She quickly retrieved my phone from the no-doubt skip full of devices that we idiot tourists keep leaving on rides.
To settle the blood pressure we stopped to get a drink and some popcorn and had those at a table in the now lovely sunny weather.
Around this time, with a few seconds to spare, we thought about where we may eat that evening. Being last-minute Larrys, the choice was limited but we found a table at the Mexican place overlooking the water in World Showcase at 5.30.
Mission Space next, and only because the Orange lane had a long wait and absolutely not because I am getting old and the intense version makes me go all woozy these days, we chose Green.
We rode with a single rider who was riding for the first time as he overshot our circled places just outside the ride and tried to join the next party. I just hoped I would not mark the occasion of his first mission by barfing all over him. The story on Green was different and new to me (I think). Old age again?
By now it was 12.05 and way past time for lunch. We went back to Creations, forgiving it for not being Electric Umbrella and mobile ordered. Not being that hungry and with a relatively early ADR this evening we just went for a couple of salads. They were of course huge and we couldn’t finish them. Very tasty too. Those chucks of chicken were huge and plentiful.
We people watched through the window for a while just to have a rest and I remembered from somewhere in the dark bowels of my memory that at 1pm we would have a chance to get another slot for Guardians.
Everybody was on their phone outside the window through which we were people-watching, just waiting for the slot to open up. When the time came, I just clicked any button that appeared and somehow ended up with an estimated return time of 5.25. My celebrations were slightly curtailed when I realised that this clashed with our recently booked ADR. I tried and failed to reschedule our meal. I decided to ignore the problem for now and just see what happened, hoping the Guardians slot would creep forward a little.
Being two adults in our fifties next it was necessary to ride Journey Into Imagination so we walked over there.
As we exited, Emily face-timed us from the care home so we could see and talk to Mary. After that, we made our way to The Seas and rode the Nemo thing.
We then wandered around the tanks for a bit before Louise popped into the restroom to make her own release into the sea.
We grabbed a water on the way out. It was very hot now. We had a sit on a bench for a bit with our drink and we had about an hour to kill until our Guardian’s return time which was now saying it would be around 4.45, which was much more helpful. We decided to slowly wander in that direction but on the way, it started raining very hard so we ducked into Spaceship Earth and rode that again to avoid the rain.
That did the trick as it had stopped by the time we emerged, this time with my phone safely in my pocket.
We loitered not too far from Guardians relentlessly refreshing the app to see if the return time improved any further. We got the alert at 16.35 that we could now board. I was still a little concerned about how long it might take to ride it, as this time we had to do some queuing, not being a LL, and I had no concept of the queue structure so had no clue how long we would have to wait.
Fifteen minutes and we were in. From our first ride, I did have some clue as to the best places to stand in the pre-show to bypass some of the queueing after that which helped and we were out and done by 5.17. We got the same song again, (I Ran, which as tributes to a country go, is no O Canada?) and it wasn’t until returning home that I even knew there could be multiple song options on this ride.
We now had to walk briskly up to Mexico for our 5.30 ADR. We arrived at the podium at 5.29. It was a majestic demonstration of theme park touring. We did then have to wait five minutes behind the chap already being attended to, booking his party of 716 guests in and feeling the need to tell the CM everyone’s name, age, birth sign and inside leg measurement. The CM had only asked how many children were in his party and we all had to endure a rundown of names, ages and heights.
After some passive-aggressive sighing, we were seen to and soon seated.
We started with some Guac and Chips.
I had a beer and Louise a Sangria.
I have to say there was not a great deal of choice for Entrees and even by the time they were brought to our table neither of us could say with any certainty which we had ordered. It was all a bit of a blur and with most dishes carrying names in a foreign language on the menu, our tired brains could not retain that information for the ten minutes it took between ordering and their arrival. Anyway, what we had was very tasty.
The service was efficient, or in other words, we were out of there very quickly. No room for desserts. $150 including tip.
It was raining again so we dashed across to the Mexico pavilion.
We did some brief browsing…but I am more of a boxer’s man!
Then we rode the ride, chuckling as the boat almost tipped over backwards as we sat down. The folks in the front were not of equal heft.
I blessed Norway with one of my wees before quickly moving on to China. We wandered the shop for a bit, as usual buying nothing before a similar look around Germany and Italy.
At the Spain food booth, we got a couple of drinks, a beer for me and a wine for Louise. As we were served the CM asked us if we preferred waffles or pancakes. Our two answers of pancakes seemed to win him some game he was playing with the CM on the next register. Sadly it did not result in any free drinks for us.
We wandered some more before stopping at Morocco for another drink and a sit-down. A Sangria for Louise and I tried a Strawberry Daquiri. A band and belly dancer performed briefly before the rain put a stop to that.
The weather was getting a little unpleasant now, with persistent drizzle and a chilly wind so we decided to call it a night and walked up to International Gateway.
It was too wet and we were too tired to wait around for an hour to see the fireworks. We could see most of them from our room anyway!
It took a while to walk “home” as Louise’s feet were suffering. One year, after all these years of practice she will eventually find a suitable set of footwear that won’t cripple her after one day in a theme park! We had done a bit of walking to be fair.
We stopped in at the Club Lounge for a wine. coffee and cakes.
We got back to the room at 8.50. Louise watched the fireworks on the balcony but I collapsed straight into bed. I was knackered. I fell asleep immediately and didn’t even hear Louise shower or dry her hair!
You know what it’s like. After a long gruelling day of travel, stress and bloating (or is that just me on planes?) you could really do with a decent sleep and a good lie-in, but your body clock hates you and you find yourself awake at 4.30am. That’s bad enough, but on this particular morning, I had Louise telling me that Emily phoned a little while ago to report that our kitchen back home was completely flooded and they had the water turned off at the mains.
With all hopes of today being less stressful than yesterday abandoned before sunrise, I sprang (I’m being generous!) into action. I contacted a local plumber who had been to us a couple of times before and begged him to be available that day to go and save our house from water damage and crucially allow Emily to have a poo, as the toilets couldn’t currently be flushed.
He said he would do his very best and now being fully awake and coursing with adrenaline, a return to sleep was not going to happen. Instead, I got up, got dressed and went out for a walk around the Boardwalk, three times. This mammoth and impressive athletic undertaking burned an enormous 350 calories. How am I to retain my gloriously athletic frame when the odds are stacked against me in such an unfair manner?
It was still dark of course so the place looked glorious with all the lights a-twinkling.
Despite the early hour I encountered and awkwardly acknowledged several joggers making their loops at a much higher pace than I. It became more awkward each time we passed each other as we looped in opposite directions.
The closing of the ESPN bar had passed me by, so this was a surprise.
This new place was news to me too.
After my three laps, I returned to the hotel and found my way to the quiet pool by which we intended to spend today.
Back in the room, Louise was sleeping, so I went out onto the balcony and make no apologies for yet more photos.
Rebecca phoned and I shared my view and had a chat with her until waking Louise at 7am as I was hungry. I made us a coffee whilst Louise got dressed and then we made our way to the Club Lounge for breakfast. An impressive spread was on offer, with POG juice my drink of choice.
We made our way down to the quiet pool via the shop where we got some suncream and After Sun. Rebecca phoned again, as she had been called by the care home so had questions for Louise about some of Mary’s medication.
It was indeed a very quiet pool.
We met and briefly chatted with Wendy, one of my two blog readers, who was by the same pool and then spent a lot of time reading, relaxing and swimming.
My underlying stress levels about the potential carnage in our kitchen back home were niggling at me, but at around 11.15 (4.15 back home) the plumber called and told me the issue was caused by the disastrous standard of work carried out by an emergency plumber we had been forced to get out a few weeks ago, but he had fixed it all for £80. I was mightily relieved.
With that huge weight lifted from my shoulders, we went up to the Club Lounge to add a huge weight to my stomach instead. I had swam a whole six lengths so far, so with that and my walk this morning I would be wasting away unless I onboarded some serious calories. To be fair, the choice at lunch was light with crudites being the main fare, but still, it was all lovely. We chatted with my Mum & Dad as we lunched, and got back to the pool around 1.30pm.
We read and relaxed some more until about 4pm and then made our way back to the room where more relaxing happened.
Inexplicably, Louise had the hairdryer on for forty minutes which restricted my TV watching somewhat, but when she was 99.9% ready I got in the shower, got dressed and was still ready first.
I got the car and picked Louise up at the entrance and we were Target bound for the infamous holiday “bits”. I knew the Target we were going to, up past the Premium Outlet Mall, near the new Cheesecake Factory we had booked to eat at this evening. If you do wish to go to this one, book online. The waits are often horrible.
As we got to the end of Hotel Boulevard at Lake Buena Vista every bone in my body was telling me to turn right down to Bahama Breeze where I would then go left. The sat nav said to turn left at Crossroads instead so I trusted it and found a whole new way to a place I thought I knew fairly well, turning right by the Olive Garden we often frequent.
In Target, I secured my elusive shaver which was still cheaper than a tiny pot of moisturiser Louise “needed”. We picked up some other bits and left $111 lighter. This never happens to us, but we were early for our reservation and sat in our car people-watching for about fifteen minutes.
We went in and were seated immediately with the reception full of folks waiting for a long time. Book ahead!
We got drinks and a ridiculously good bread service.
During our multiple visits to the Cheesecake Factory in January, we had established that they served the best Nachos on the planet and there will be no debate about this. So we ordered those of course, with added steak.
Despite their vastness and the fact that in January five of us shared them, this happened.
I, as I would do a lot on this trip, ordered steak. This was a Ribeye and was very large. Here’s me trying to show how large it was compared to my chubby hands. The photo is a little blurry and you can’t make out that my watch says I had burned about 6,000 calories already…no sorry, I had eaten 6,000 calories.
Louise, as she often does, ordered a cheesy pasta thing.
A wine for Louise and diet coke for me saw the bill at $125 with a good tip. This was an awesome meal and we would be back.
Very full and tired I pointed the car at the Yacht Club, parked and picked up some water and went to the room. I managed to read for half an hour before dropping off around 10.30.
It had been a stressful build-up and countdown as you know. But here we are, with the alarm going off at 5am rousing us from our sleep to begin our journey. In the early stages of packing, with there just being the two of us, we had played with the idea of just taking the one case. Now, with minutes to go until we needed to leave, I was wrestling with two very full cases, arguing with Louise about what she would need to sacrifice for us to stand a chance of getting on the plane. A handbag and a large make-up case were jettisoned. I wouldn’t need them anyway.
Having let the dogs do what they needed to do outside, I launched them into Emily’s bedroom and said our goodbyes. Knowing it could be at least an hour or two until food, I fuelled up with some toast and a coffee whilst Louise took the customary half an hour longer to get ready than was desired. I had wanted to leave at 6 and ahead of schedule, we left the drive at 6.24 am. The first of many weird things about it just being the two of us on this trip meant there was nobody to take a “door photo” of!
The drive to the airport was problem free but I think we both thought that it didn’t feel real.
We arrived at the airport at 7.10 and headed for T2 West car park which I had now used twice and that familiarity would make things easier. As I pulled in, oddly, the machine at the entrance spat a token at me. Bit weird, but OK. It was busy and we had to journey up many, many levels to find a spot. I pulled the cases from the car but couldn’t shake the nagging doubt that something was wrong. Yep, it was me, I was wrong. Upon checking my booking confirmation we were in the wrong car park. Somehow, I had managed to book some meet-and-greet nonsense in another car park. I have no idea how this happened as I avoid meet and greet like the plague. I do not want my car being rallied across the UK by some bloke in a high-vis vest for 2 weeks.
So we loaded the cases back into the car, went down all the ramps we had just come up, paid the £6 fee and started looking for the correct car park. I’m not saying this was stressful or that my nerves were shot after the fraught countdown to this trip, but I almost pointed the car back at the motorway and went home.
After a few minutes, we spotted T2 East, which had a meet and greet sign over it and we queued, yes, queued to get into it. Once inside we were directed up to the right place, parked the car and spent a frustrating amount of time inside the terminal waiting for and then figuring out the ridiculously complex mechanism to drop your key off. Safe to say, I will make sure I never make that mistake again.
We arrived at the check-in desks once again to be astounded by the fact that nobody else seemed to have checked in online. What is wrong with these people? When I was doing that the day before, the Aer Lingus website crashed so I assumed everyone was doing the same thing at the same time. Apparently not.
We were diverted to a kiosk and without too much assistance from a human had our cases labelled up. One of the two was over 23kg so we had to do a quick reveal of some underwear to the terminal as we opened up one case to transfer some stuff to the other. Now the plane would be safe to take off!!
We then couldn’t find the luggage drop-off point (what do you mean I only did this in January and should know the drill??) and we had to get more human help to sort us out.
Cases dumped, we headed for security and used my fast track thing to bypass no queues at all. Despite being fairly regular travellers we still never know exactly what electronics go in the tray on their own and do we take our shoes off and do I need a full internal.
This whole pre-departure process is just overly stressful and unnecessary.
There is always a sigh of relief once security is done, mainly as next comes food. I had an unavoidable wee before joining the queue at San Carlos for a table. This took twenty minutes but felt like one hundred and twenty. Finally seated, with the bonus of having a window seat, we ordered.
Eggs Benedict for Louise (half eaten).
Breakfast Sandwich for me
Juice and coffee for me and two Mimosas for Louise. The bill was £37 and whilst we waited to pay, we Facetimed Rebecca to say our farewells.
Some shops were wandered. My shaver for the trimming of my manly beard and bald head had broken yesterday, thankfully before I started shaving things and not half-way through, so I needed a new one. Not one shop sold them. I would have to search one out stateside.
We bought some books, as of course we would not be doing theme parks this trip aside from a few days at Universal, so we would need something to entertain us on the long relaxing days around the pool. Right?
Louise went off to release a chocolate hostage and I wandered about a bit, stumbling across this chap, who I think was off on international duty with Belgium.
We moved down to the gate area around 10.15 in good time for our 11am departure. Boarding started at 11am so getting away on time was going to be a struggle! We marvelled at the queue as we do every time and boarded last.
Being the day of the Queen’s funeral, which was of course a surprise to the management at Manchester Airport, once on board and already very late in getting going, the pilot announced that all take-offs and landings had just been unexpectedly halted as a mark of respect, as the funeral had just started, so we sat some more. We finally pushed back from the gate at 12.15 and left the ground at 12.30.
This will sound mean and derogatory but I spent much of the first hour watching a woman across the aisle playing Bejewelled on her seat back TV. I say playing. Honestly, in that hour she did not move one “jewel” and just kept whacking the screen in frustration as she just could not work out how the game worked. It took all of my willpower not to lean over and show her how to do it.
Drinks came, then some food. A surprisingly good Beef Stroganoff.
I watched some episodes of The Office as the film selection was very poor.
It took some time but I eventually managed to hand over some money to get access to WiFi. With the situation back home we couldn’t be out of contact for nine hours. Yes, we were and would be worried about Mary for the whole trip but also had our workmen at the house (no the work still isn’t finished) and needed to be in touch with Emily who was supervising them much to her delight.
There was some unavoidable expenditure as Louise “had to” buy a set of three lipsticks on a plane, despite having frequented every retail outlet in the North West in preparation for this trip, which made absolute sense. I had a wee before settling into the cheese-fest that was the new Top Gun film.
Despite now being chock full of cheese courtesy of Tom Cruise, like some mid-90’s Nicole Kidman, somehow, I was starving and it felt like an age until we were served some sort of Chicken Tikka pasty. It was inhaled. The rest of the flight was pretty bumpy and we eventually landed around 4.05pm local time.
That lady was still trying to figure out Bejewelled!
Of course, the airbridge broke at our gate so we sat waiting some more, being teased by all of the Orlando outside of the window that we could not get to.
We were the last off the plane at 4.35 and through immigration in about fifteen minutes. Our cases were already making their way around the carousel so I grabbed those and then of course waited for Louise to go to the toilet. As I did, the magic of these holidays was reinforced as a large family group, also probably waiting for someone to go on the loo despite having been sat next to one for nine hours, were arguing. I didn’t get the full context but Grandma was shouting at Mum something about “getting the F**king car seat”.
With Louise now empty, we made our way to the monorail and the very welcome greeting from the Mayor.
Upon alighting we naturally headed to the “B” side as we have every single time we have done this journey. In fact, I would say that until January’s trip I had been unaware that there was an “A” side where you can get your hire car etc.
I waited five minutes to get an Alamo person to sort me out and then all we had to do before hitting the open road was pick up our Visitor Toll pass thing from their kiosk. I wandered up and down for about ten minutes before asking someone who told me they only have a kiosk on the “A” side! Seriously, that is just nonsense. So I trouped all the way over there, got my pass and walked all the way back. Yes I did the same thing in January, what of it? My cognitive decline is a growing worry.
We arrived at the row of cars we had to choose from. We spent more time than we ever have previously sizing up our options, and despite that still drove out in a car that I wasn’t that happy with. Don’t get me wrong, it ran fine and was comfortable, it was just fairly old with high mileage and no sat nav. We should have chosen better!
I did manage to drive to the Yacht Club without electronic aid. It has only taken forty-plus years of holidaying here to accomplish that. Once through the security gate, I dropped the bags and Louise at the entrance and went to park the car over in the Convention Centre car park as things were busy. Bell Services took our bags as the My Disney Experience app said our room was not ready, which was very odd at this time of day. So I went to reception and gave them my name.
“Oh hello Mr Williams. If you would follow me please I will escort you to your floor”.
Bit weird but I suppose this is a deluxe resort. As we headed to the elevator the Cast member explained that we had been upgraded to Club Level.
I was vaguely aware of what this was, but it had been so far out of our price range on our previous trips with larger family groups that I had never taken the trouble to look into it.
We were left at the reception up on floor five where two cast members sorted us out, gave us our room keys and explained how it all worked. We had timed it perfectly as the afternoon “snacks” were ending in about fifteen minutes so they ushered us into the Club room with a couple of glasses of fizz (mine had a man in it!) and we ate and drank some lovely stuff, a bit dazed and confused.
We exercised some restraint on the eating front as we knew we wanted to go out and eat in a bit, so we headed to room 5231
and could not believe the view we discovered.
We were a little gobsmacked at the whole experience and just sat looking at that view and taking too many photos.
I had a quick shower and then booked an ADR for Ale & Compass in the hotel for a little later. We checked in at the podium and then went next door into the lounge for a wine and Sam Adams.
Our table was soon ready and we ordered.
New York Strip for me
A chicken pasta thing for Louise
My steak was awesome and had some magical, unidentifiable sauce with it. I loved it as did Louise hers. I went crazy and ordered a Maple Old Fashioned which was also lovely.
At this point I was triple glassing it.
The bill was $120 with a very good tip included and we wandered back up to the Club room for a coffee and two tiny desserts.
We grabbed a couple of waters and were back in the room by 9.00, tired, shocked and happy to be here. To top off the day, as we went out onto the balcony the Epcot fireworks were happening.
I’d apologise for so many photos usually, but we may never be that fortunate again, to get such a view from our room. I know you know, but this is one of my very favourite places on the planet.
Grateful, and also just full, we went to sleep around 9.30.
This will be brief. We have so much to do that I can’t be spending too much time papping on here. As things stand, with mere hours until our flight leaves, we are going. That could change of course.
Mary was in very poor health on Thursday evening and we thought we may not be going, and for the sake of our mental health, I guess we have to stay in that frame of mind until we are airborne.
The home she will be in is absolutely equipped with everything and everyone needed for any eventuality, so it’s just a case of her remaining fit enough for us to take her in and us getting on the plane. I appreciate that might sound a little odd, but we need this break.
We’ll be dropping her off early this afternoon and have booked about six removal trucks to do so. She’s taking a fair bit of kit with her.
The last week at work has been a constant stream of meetings that I had to drag myself through. I feel like there are a million things I haven’t done, and that I am bound to forget to do something crucial like check-in for the flight online. Someone remind me!
On Thursday I went to the Post Office to grab a few dollars in cash. The least said about the exchange rate the better. It was borderline offensive.
So the plan for the rest of today is to take Mary in, stay with her for a few hours to make sure she is settled, and then meet Tom, Rebecca and the boys for some tea so we can say our goodbyes, before coming home so Louise can hoover the ceilings and re-pave the front drive, as is the tradition if we leave the country for two weeks. It is going to be a busy pre-holiday day.
Emily and her boyfriend Mikey are house and pet-sitting. With the zoo that we have this is a full-time job so please wish them good luck. With two dogs, three cats and a number of rats that I have lost track of they may have to sleep in shifts.
As ever I will be sharing stuff during our trip on the Mkingdon Facebook page so if you haven’t “Liked” that already, what on earth are you thinking? Go ahead and do that so you can see pictures of a lot of food. On our return, I will be doing some blogging around the trip of course but I’m not sure two weeks of pools and food will make for the most interesting reading. We’ll see.
If all goes to plan, in a few hours (well, a good few) we’ll be enjoying views like this, so keep your fingers crossed for us, please.
Image pinched from disneytouristblog.com
I have been watching my emails like a hawk for Aer Lingus emails, paranoid they are going to cancel the flight. I even checked availability on the Virgin flights tomorrow in case we end up in the lurch and need an alternative. As of yesterday, there were some seats left. Crazy, right?
I am reluctant to say it but it looks like we may actually be going, but I stand ready to be corrected on that.
So enough waffle, there are things to do and flights to check in to.
Confidence levels that we will get on the plane – Low to Moderate
It has been a stressful old week. Work has been ridiculous but more importantly, until late afternoon on Thursday, we had no respite care booked for Mary. If this were as easily obtainable as hen’s teeth, dipped in unicorn semen, we would have fared better. Louise has spoken to every care facility in the North West, and each one had some new and interesting reason why they could not help us, or it was a dump. We were getting worried.
Anyhow, on Thursday I got the call from Louise that her lastest and last visit to a nursing home had paid off, and Mary was booked in. With this news in the bag, I allowed the release of the suitcases from whichever dark hole they had been stashed into since January and the packing has begun, I am led to believe.
The limited belief that we might go away has risen slightly but not to any level that allows excitement to build. This may be the case until we are wheels up from the runway, at the obligatory half an hour later than the take-off time planned. How I long for a holiday that can be booked with the confidence that it will actually happen. It will be a fraught week to come, as we keep everything crossed that Mary remains in a state of health conducive to going on her holidays to the nursing home.
I am getting so paranoid about travel now that every news event is considered a potential barrier to it happening. Of course, I have persistent low-level fear that the airport will be packed and queues horrendous, and/or the airline will cancel our flight at the last minute, but yesterday when the Queen’s funeral was announced for the day we should be travelling, I spent a panic filled few minutes on google trying to figure out if some ancient custom would mean flights might be affected. I know it’s silly, but I am scarred by the last three years of uncertain plans.
These restrained levels of excitement have probably played a part in my resisting making any more ADR bookings. It is one less thing to cancel should it come to that. I would make an exception for O’hana still, as I would like to tie that in with an evening on the Poly beach watching some fireworks and maybe some Trader Sam’s, but the respite care of the North West had more availability it seems. I am getting a bit weary of having to try so hard to “do things” on Disney property. I yearn for the days when all you had to do was pay a small fortune.
In other news, Freddie completed his first week at school and enjoyed it. More importantly, Rebecca is now past the trauma of him going to school for the first time! There were tears.
Dougie rolled over for the first time and has teeth incoming, and at this rate will be at University next week, and I completed ten years of service at my current employer. I arrived home from the office on Thursday to a huge Fortnum and Masons hamper. It is a lovely place to work, assuming you have to work somewhere (and I do), and Louise was very excited, not so much by the contents of the hamper, but more the hamper itself becoming a high-class repository for our Christmas decorations for years to come.
My Dad is coping OK following his release from the hospital but isn’t in the best of health and our work of course is still not complete, with the eternal promise of “tomorrow” being the completion date. That “tomorrow” should have been Saturday and then today, but naturally is once again “tomorrow”.
We have a bit going on as you can see, and if we ever exist in a chaos-free world again, I’m not sure I would know how to deal with it.
Still, on the plus side, only one more week of this unbearable wailing in blog form to endure before we all know either way. I’m off to rock back and forwards in a corner for quite some time.
Firstly, thanks to everyone who sent me birthday wishes last week. They were all read and appreciated. The day was spent at work, so it will not rank in my all-time top 10 birthdays, but I got to spend the evening with these dudes and eat some pizza, so all was not lost.
Present wise, recognising I am a bugger to buy for, I did very well. A new iWatch (my other broke a few weeks ago), a huge pack of Pick n Mix, some cash, clothes, a very posh neck pillow for the plane and some dollars for spending on our (hopefully) upcoming trip.
On that note, having endured most of 2020 and 2021 reading these posts each week where I would prattle on about a trip to Florida that wasn’t certain and usually did not happen, I can only imagine your delight that we are back there again now. At least it can only last for a few weeks this time and relies on the health of some parents and not some global pandemic inflicting grief, misery and destitution on the world.
My Dad is home from the hospital as of Friday, and Mary carries on carrying on. As we stand, the trip is on but excitement levels are low, to avoid what could be likely disappointment.
Having talked about how I was going to go with the flow and not plan anything, last week, with all of you already knowing that I was lying, I caved and booked an ADR. I would have booked two had there been any availability on any evening of our entire trip for O’hana, (what’s going on with that?) but there was not and so we just have the one, so far, at Sanaa. That bread service is like a tractor beam.
For those times when we may wish to eat on site, I have been doing some “same day booking” tests with the app. For several days I have fired it up and looked for places to eat that evening and there has been plenty to choose from. So I am trying to hold firm and not tie us to specific times if I can help it, so we can just make plans once we know when we want to eat. Then I can give Louise three hours to get ready, having lied about the actual time of a booking by at least half an hour so that we may only set off half an hour late.
You know we have many off-site places we have to go to, so our on-site culinary adventures may be limited. Having had a quick look at some options around the Swan & Dolphin and noticed that Shula’s steakhouse has a $155 steak on the menu, then it could be McDonalds for many meals!
Our off-site list, as if you haven’t seen it a million times before, will probably include…..
Bahama Breeze
Olive Garden
Romano’s Macaroni Grill
Teak
Applebees
Cowfish
Cheesecake Factory
The last of those probably being the standout of our January trip. We have declared them the server of the world’s best Nachos and I will not be taking questions or entering into a debate about that. As Louise is the world’s biggest lover of Nachos, it stands to reason that we return to let her sample what she missed earlier this year.
I had a number of very understandable comments on last week’s post doubting my ability to resist going to the WDW parks, particularly Epcot, as we will be staying so close for half of the trip. My resolve is strong, but of course, all I have seen in my Disney social feeds since booking this trip is how empty the WDW parks are right now and folks are being paid to go on the rides….well, not quite.
There are no plans to change our plans, as we need a relaxing break and the extra cost and complexity of us attempting the Disney stuff is just not compatible with that. I’m not saying my brain is 100% comfortable with that stance, but it’s what we’re doing!
It does feel like everything park related is going to take a good few years to settle down. Perhaps by then, we’ll have been able to ride Remy and Rise?
I was delighted to realise that many of the hoops we had to jump through in January to get on a plane are no longer a thing. Using the VeriFly app this time was much easier, simply uploading our vaccination QR codes and attesting that we had a passport and that was it.
So we’re two weeks away, don’t know if we’re going and doing much of the prep to do so at the same time. It’s the Schrodinger’s Cat of a holiday.
And of course, the work in the garden isn’t finished.
I really should know better and by now, tempting fate should be the last thing I do, but, if I am honest, at times I can almost convince myself that we may actually get to go on this holiday. Well, from a COVID restrictions point of view anyway.
Other life events, particularly the well being of Louise’s Mum may play their part yet, but I don’t think we will see any further travel restrictions now. Let’s face it, it is impossible to undertake any more testing than is already in place and with Omicron now everywhere in the world, there is very little to be gained from closing borders.
The other event that happened this week has also all but confirmed that we will go. We have bought two new suitcases. That investment means there is no turning back now and we must be aboard that plane.
What sort of trip we will have is a different matter of course, with all these tests, masks and faff but we take what we can get at this stage.
That’s one way to look at things but as with every painful twist and turn through this epic will we won’t we saga it is equally easy to argue that every passing day sees the messaging being ramped up about the need for further restrictions and rather than just do them, the powers that be as ever leak out teasers to test the waters and soften us up.
Literally anything could happen between now and January 3rd. I think it is pretty likely that January will see some tighter lockdown rules in the UK once we’ve all done our duty by spending all our money in the shops and at our Christmas parties, and if we do get to go then we may just miss their introduction but come home to them. Ten days quarantine for returning travellers anyone?
It is a bit surreal to be this close to a trip and still not know if we will go. This is the closest we have got of all the dates we’ve had booked, but for our own sanity I think we have had to not let ourselves believe it is happening. I’m not even sure if and when there may be further reviews and announcements. Having gone into plan B in a panic to divert the media has he now shot his bolt that he had loaded for the 19th of December?
It probably doesn’t matter as only a US change of policy about their borders would scupper us I think. My guess is the first we would hear about that will be if it happens. I am so weary of tossing this same coin what feels like every week now. I’m sure you are too.
So we go on, day by day, edging closer to a final answer. If I were a betting man and had to put a money on one outcome I would say right now it’s more likely we get to go, just. Only just. Much as this endless uncertainty has removed much of the wind from my sails for the anticipation of this trip it has also removed the same wind from writing about it, so we will leave it there for everyone’s sanity and see what next week brings.
Another
week goes by, and as time tends to, so does another year. We had a birthday
this week as Emily turned 24. Believe me she is struggling to come to terms
with how that happened as much as you may be. At some point I’ll let her into
the secret that no matter what age you actually are you never really feel like
a proper grown up and everyone is just busking it and doing their best to get
by.
We all
enjoyed her cake, made expertly by Rebecca, who is developing a real skill for
this sort of thing.
Freddie
had some for brunch minutes after arriving with it.
As you
may know from previous Julys, Oli shares Emily’s birthday and the big daft
bugger is now a mature 8 year old with fading tolerance for the not very mature
Bean. It gets to us all.
We had a
family takeaway curry on Friday evening to commemorate the day and over ordered
so spectacularly that our fridge still contains Naan bread and some curry. That
is never a bad thing.
Onto
matters of planning. Surely there can be nothing left to plan? The issue is
that most folks have a lengthy countdown to these trips, and with planning
being interesting, fun and a way to make trip seem closer (assuming you are
wired in the appropriate way, and I am), over time you end up adding stuff and
planning bits and pieces because of all of the above. However, with just the 30
days to go until departure, this week I excelled myself and conducted an act of
planning genius so cunning that I can’t tell you what it is. It is more cunning
than Mr McCunning, the teacher of cunning at Cunning Town School for foxes who
wish to be more cunning.
There’s a
few reasons I can’t tell you. One of them is that I know for a fact that Bob
Iger reads my blog every week and if he realised the brilliance of my act he
wouldn’t know whether to sue me or hire me, and I can’t take the risk he’ll
choose the wrong option.
Other reasons include the fact that whilst it absolutely does not break any rules, if everyone did it, then Disney would probably put things in place to stop it or at least make it more difficult. Also, now that I have bragged about my brilliance I want to wait and see if it comes off before admitting to what it is so I don’t look (more) stupid. All I will say is that it has been an issue I have been wrestling with for a while and all of a sudden during last week inspiration came to me. I quickly made the relevant arrangements and felt pretty smug, if not smug or confident enough to tell you about it.
If you
never hear of this again, you will know which way it went. If it works I will
probably admit to it in the trip report and then you can all tell me you all do
it anyway and everyone knows about it and I am in no way clever or special.
Loins are being girded right now, ready for the FastPass thing to start on Tuesday. As we are off site scum, I will need to try every day for two weeks to secure the passes we want for each day 30 days hence. Day one is usually fairly stress free as Magic Kingdom is our park of choice and there’s typically a good enough selection of rides and attractions to get decent FastPasses. The thinking is to secure Mine Train if we can, something like Haunted Mansion and then a ride ideal for Freddie. We may ride Peter Pan but only with a FastPass. It always seems to have at least a forty minute wait and we won’t be doing that.
The
FastPass pressure will really be on for the days we are at Animal Kingdom and
Hollywood Studios to get those rides everybody wants. Stay tuned for me trying
to put a positive spin on getting FastPasses for the bird show at DAK and the
car park at DHS.
Ryan has
now been rescued from his cupboard where he rests between trips. All relevant
documents, tickets and anything trip related such as the digital camera I only
ever use in WDW, are being randomly stuffed into him. A tactical repack of Ryan
will happen close to departure so that things are to hand in the order I will
need them during the journey. This is in no way sad.
The next major milestone will come post pay day on Wednesday when I will sit weeping, looking at the dollar rate for a few hours before realising I have no choice but to order some anyway. As cunning as I am, I have yet to find a way to rig the currency markets for my own benefit as your Rees Moggs tend to. I spit on your Brexit. Anything which make my holidays more expensive, by definition, cannot be a good thing.
And on that political bombshell, I shall return to my Sunday and wish you well for yours….
For hardened rock and roll legends like myself, there’s a condition that afflicts us all, especially when you are of a certain vintage. Gigamortis is ravaging my body this morning after a Mustard outing last night at a 30th birthday party in Stockport. I told you I was rock and roll.
As enjoyable as playing is, it comes with a lot of pre and post show effort and of course a late night, so waking up the next morning feeling stiff (and not in a fun way) is an occupational hazard. It feels like I have been run over by a truck. I think it was the third stage dive, or maybe the twelve foot knee slide that may have tipped me over the edge.
On second thoughts it may be that I was sat in the lounge at 1.50am with a cup of tea and three jaffa cakes that destroyed my body. There’s only so much candle burning anyone can take.
Louise is working all weekend again ( I do wonder why these politicians keep going on about moving to a seven day NHS?) so that gives me a great excuse to do very little aside from the daily walking of the dogs. Rebecca, Tom and Freddie are due for Sunday tea later. In my current state the chances of me making a Sunday roast are zero, although I make good one, so a Chinese is on the cards.
You know that food is important to this family, and I suspect most of those coming for tea will be pleased with my decision. On the subject of food, whilst I was out gigging last night, a prior crime caught up with me. Here is a snippet of our family group chat of which I am not proud, but, you leave stuff like that in the fridge for more than a couple of days and there is only one outcome.
Now then, whilst you are here, look, we are at an important milestone….
Is there anything more tedious and tiresome that some idiot telling you how many days it is until their holiday? Suck it up, I’m telling you anyway. The digits will be double tomorrow and this countdown does seem to be progressing nicely. Being busy at work helps with that I guess, and on this week’s to do list was the renewal of my passport.
Much has changed in the ten years since I got my last one. Firstly, it seems a lot easier to do it now. It’s all online and you can supply your own photo. Last time I was up at the local Co-Op pumping pound coins into the photo booth trying not to recreate the Tenacious D video for Tribute (Google it). There were also a load of forms to fill in and post off if I remember rightly. We’ve come a long way baby.
The other thing that has changed is my photo. If you compare the two photos from this week and 2009 all I can say is that they are a fair reflection of the trial and tribulations of the last decade. I won’t be sharing the new one as I have the look of a stroke victim or a very tired middle aged man. Either way, it didn’t enhance my fragile sense of self-confidence.
It takes around three weeks for the new one to arrive and then I’ll have to go online and update all of our ESTAs, as Louise and I both have new passports and we need to put our US accommodation details for this year in. I’m not sure that really matters, but if it saves me a cavity search at Orlando airport it seems a small price to pay.
I have resisted the ADR urge this week. There was a brief moment whilst watching a Tracker video that a dessert party was almost booked (it was the Star Wars one at DHS we were watching, and the food looked tremendous) but a quick google confirmed my suspicions that it wouldn’t be on when we are there as Galaxy’s Edge will have just opened and you’ll need a FastPass just to get into the parking lot.
One thing I am trying to build into this year’s plan is something I’d be open to your suggestions on please. One thing we like to do, Louise especially, of an evening is to head back to the villa for showers, a liberal application of After Sun, and some loose fitting clothes and to head out for a nice meal. You know all that of course, but as an additional bonus, somewhere laid back to have a drinkie or two can be lovely if we can stay awake long enough. As an example, in previous years we have done so on the deck of Bahama Breeze whilst listening to the steel drum man. The Boardwalk can offer a similar experience, Disney Springs has a few places with this on offer and City Walk is a busier place to do this. In the absence of beach side bars, anywhere you know of that ticks these boxes would be interest. I thank you.
I am away now to cosset my gig ravaged body, take some drugs (Ibuprofen) before spending five minutes trying to make it look I’ve tidied up before Louise gets home.
As I come up with some guff each week to form one of these posts, I never know what the week ahead will bring. Usually I have a good idea that it will include lots of work related stuff I’d rather not be doing but other than that, it is a glorious meander through the maze of chance.
Last week work took me to Glasgow on Wednesday for a meeting. I don’t do very many of these things these days, so it was a nice change. Earlier in my “career” I used to be out and about a lot and what I remembered was how not being tied to my desk breaks up the week and makes it less of a slog.
The trip north is rarely a chore, as it can be when journeying south, as the M6 in that direction is a joy and is exactly how motorways should be. I travelled up most of the way with a colleague, one I have mentioned many times, who is a DVC owner and fellow Disney lover so the conversation usually drifts towards Florida and food making the journey even more enjoyable.
It was during one of those conversations that Steve asked me how my Dad was doing. He’s had a lot of health issues over recent years and has had a bit of a bobbins 2018 so far, to put it mildly. I was pleased to be telling Steve that did seem to be behind him, with some positive news recently from the docs and the resumption of his summer golfing routine.
That of course meant that I was to be proved wrong, and I was surprised and concerned to see an ambulance pull up next door on Friday evening. To cut the story short, he has a severe infection and is currently hooked up to antibiotics so strong that in future whenever he gets angry he will turn green and rip his shirt.
There was a concern it may be something more sinister, so thankfully, although he has felt rubbish, it should be sorted once the drugs work and hopefully he’ll be home before long. Serves me right for opening my big mouth I suppose.
In more trivial news, tomorrow sees us dancing. We move into double digits and the pace of this countdown seems somehow to be picking up. I know it isn’t but the nice summer weather, the end of the football season and a realisation that we only have three pay days until we go all add up to fooling me into thinking we’re nearly there.
That should serve as some sort of kick up the arse for me to shed a stone or three of my winter weight. By that I mean the last few decades of winters. I think I will try on all the T-shirts that I know are snug and rely on my inner scrooge to motivate me. I do not want to have to buy a whole new range of T-shirts that fit, so let me attempt to force myself into a healthier regime by writing it down here.
LOSE WEIGHT YOU FAT KNACKER
There we go, how could that possibly fail? It is essential my waistline reduces so that my fanny pack will fit around it.
Every time we go there is a pre-holiday diet to endure. The trick, as if I am any sort of expert on weight loss, is not to go too early. This is what I have been telling myself anyway. If I get down to a more acceptable weight too soon there’s always the risk that my lack of will power will see me drifting back towards my current Jabba like state. It’s like a long distance runner timing his kick for home. Go too soon as he will be picked off on the home straight, leave it too late and he will never catch the leaders.
Right now, I am doing some stretches and lunges at the start line and wondering how on earth I am going to make it past the first mile, never mind what position I may finish in. The race itself may be less tortuous than all these running allegories.
Enough, I have a load of stuff to do including a hospital visit.
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