Tag: WDW

The Ump Me, Do You Need A Wee Tour 2024 – Day Two Wednesday 16th October

by mkingdon, posted in The Ump Me, Do You Need A Wee Tour 2024

We did a decent job with the body clocks. Well, Louise and I did. I think Dougie made a very early appearance so Tom was in the pool at some unreasonable hour. It was 5.45pm for us and we finished unpacking and showered.

It looked like I was being a kind and wonderful husband by making Louise some coffee and toast and taking it upstairs to her while she got ready, but it was really just a selfish attempt to hurry things along and get us out of the house at an hour to benefit from the first day’s early rise.

I dressed in my smallest T-shirt knowing it may never fit again this trip.

At 7 a.m. on the dot, I was on the Disney app securing a virtual queue for Tiana. This was a pleasing start. Three days earlier in the UK, I had secured us Multipasses, hoping to make the first day go smoothly. As we were off-site, there were slim pickings in terms of times for our first of the day, so they pretty much only started from lunchtime.

We left the house at 8 am, which was right around the time I would have liked to have been waiting at the turnstiles to get into Magic Kingdom. It took 25 minutes to get there and we parked in Peter Pan 25. I had passed Rebecca the camera, not needing to explain what was required of her.

It felt a little cool this morning and we were surrounded by folks in several layers of fleece and long pants. The early start may have been catching up with some of us already.

We arrived at the tram stop as one was pulling away but that was because there was another right behind it. Tom, as would happen every day, got pulled for a manual bag check but we were getting closer!

The monorail looked stacked with a queue stretching right down the ramp, so we opted for the ferry. Of course, as we got very close to the entrance they closed the gate and it left. We could see another one coming in over the water.

We boarded after a few minutes and with being close to the front of the waiting guests we got a seat too. I hung over the side taking some more pictures.

These trips are often just a long stream of decisions about which line might move the quickest and typically me getting most of them wrong. Here was the next.

We were behind the usual collection of goons trying to use Blockbuster membership cards to get in, but finally, we made it.

I fired up the app looking for some guidance on which ride to head for first which wouldn’t have a long standby line. Three rides were currently down which was a bit shit and it proved to have a significant knock-on effect until our lightning lanes kicked in later.

Pirates, Jungle Cruise, and one other, which I forget were down. These big crowd soakers not being available meant that other rides were already mobbed. Buzz said it was ten minutes so we headed there and joined the queue which looked suspiciously longer than ten minutes.

The fact that we were queuing outside pointed towards a much longer wait and that we were able to see some local wildlife. Everyone thought this was a frog, but I toad them it wasn’t.

It took 45 minutes to get on the ride which was in danger of squashing the magical joy of that first-day arrival in Magic Kingdom. Still, everyone enjoyed the ride. We exited, immediately needing food. It was 10 am after all.

Options were slim I have to say. We settled on Friar’s Nook after seeing a longer queue at Gaston’s place for the Creme Brulee Croissant than we went through for Buzz. I mobile ordered and we made our way over. Tom and I waited whilst everyone else walked over to Pinocchio Haus to get a table. We waited for what felt like an age, but it was at least 20 minutes.

The boys had Hot Dogs and the adults all had these tot bowl things.

Our first LL was due now over at Barnstormer so we walked that way.

Thinking we might not fit in the same carriage, Louise and I sat this one out and had a tactical wee. Dougie absolutely loved what was his first rollercoaster ride.

Our virtual queue for Tiana was called. Louise volunteered to stay with Dougie and took him off for a walk to get him to have a nap. The rest of us walked up through Frontierland.

The wait in the virtual queue was about 40 minutes. It did feel odd that it wasn’t Splash Mountain, which was laced with so many memories for us, but it’s a good ride and Freddie loved it.

We were behind Go Pro guy….

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As we left the ride, I did what I would do upon leaving and/or entering every attraction. I fired up the app to plan our next move or the move after the next three moves in most cases. I noticed that more rides were down and tried to take a picture of the app to show you all but, well…..

Second time lucky.

Obviously, this meant the wait times for anything still open were getting a bit silly.

We secured some of the Tiana “Beg Nets”, as Freddie called them and met up with Louise and a sleeping Dougie. Next, we used our LL for Big Thunder, with Louise and I riding second after sitting with Dougie.

Coffee was required now so we made our way right over to Tomorrowland and the Joffries there. This sort of summed up our experience today really.

That took half an hour only for me to then spill half of my (thankfully cold) coffee over myself when putting my straw in.

Dougie was back with us…

and Freddie was in heaven.

Because we are not stupid, Louise and I sat out with our coffees whilst everyone else rode Astro Orbiter. I took the chance to “fiddle with my fastpasses” in the app and managed to move some stuff around to better suit us. It is a full-time job these days.

Philharmagic next for everyone.

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Look how fresh and happy Dougie is after a good nap. During this trip I had a couple of “million-dollar ideas” and I hereby copyright them.

The first was Disney adding the concept of “Nap Pods” into their parks. They would be similar to the sleep pods in Japan…

You hire one for a couple of hours. They are air-conditioned and soundproof and allow you to catch some sleep before emerging looking as happy as Dougie did.

The second idea was that Disney should sell (much cheaper) dummy magic bands that kids under 3 wear. They beep when scanned but obviously don’t need to work for real. Dougie felt so left out as we all scanned into parks and rides, constantly lifting up his naked wrist to the scanner.

We were first into the theatre and I can confirm we moved all the way to the end of our row to avoid the cast members having to harass us as they did all the idiots sitting down in the middle with a full theatre trying to get in. Both of the boys really enjoyed the show.

We walked straight over to Small World for our LL there.

It was a big hit with Dougie.

Safe to say Freddie enjoys the faster rides these days.

It was time now to make our way out of the park and over to Wilderness Lodge for our Whispering Canyon ADR. The park was rammed and I think we all were welcoming the prospect of some quiet time.

We caught the boat over….

It didn’t take us as long as I expected to get there and we were pretty early for our 5 pm reservation. So we chilled in the lobby for a bit. There are worse places to be.

The camera once again fell into tiny hands.

Freddie then had a go with impressive results.

Mainly….

I had checked in via the app and as soon as they opened at 5 we were seated. Everyone ordered the unlimited skillet apart from Louise who had the Nachos.

Dougie being told no, he can’t have the camera again….

The food was so delicious and we had far more than we should have, getting our skillet refilled a few times. Beyond the odd shout for ketchup, I have to say there are no signs of any of the “shenanigans” that made this place legendary in years gone by. Go for the food as it is delightful, but from our last few visits don’t expect the fun and interaction there may have been in the past. Tom made the most of the bottomless milkshakes on offer here and all up it was $236 including an already-added 18% tip. This was due to our party size.

We waddled back to the boat and sailed back to Magic Kingdom. Golden hour was upon us.

It was getting a little chilly again, so Ryan was raided for Louise’s cardigan and the boys felt the benefit.

The resort monorail and a tram got us back to the car.

The traffic was horrific trying to join the 192. It does appear to be broken. You know of course that around this time we would make our first visit to CVS for vital things we needed but did not bring. We were home by 8 and all soon very much asleep.

As first days go, not our best. We had fun of course, but with so many rides being down it really buggered up the park today and if this were our first experience of Magic Kingdom it would not have been a favourable one. Even getting food and drinks proved troublesome which we have never really seen before. The Multipass thing did save the day I suppose at vast expense, but it’s pretty poor for off-site guests as by three days out there isn’t much left for the headliners and everything else has very few early slots available. You need your first LL to be as soon as you get in the park so that you can use that to then free up the ability to book another tier 1 ride. It’s complicated, expensive and needs constant attention throughout the day. Disney, please change this.

Till the next time…..

The Ump Me, Do You Need A Wee Tour 2024 – Day One Tuesday 15th October

by mkingdon, posted in The Ump Me, Do You Need A Wee Tour 2024

Hello again, for yet another trip report. I have to admit that I have really wrestled with the dilemma of whether to do this one or not. Even on the holiday, finding time to write notes for each day proved to be a challenge and my motivation to then find time every week to craft a post about each day has been severely tested. Life is busy right now and it’s going to be a struggle but in the end, the capturing of what we did to look back on in years to come won out and with scant regard for what will be a thrown-together and low-quality effort, here we are.

The first thing to address and explain is the title. It will mean nothing to anybody not on the trip, so that sounds like a good choice for a title doesn’t it? But, I choose titles from things that mean something for each trip and this is what stood out this time.

Each morning as we left the villa community we had to pass through a gate which opened automatically as we approached. We told the boys that they had to command it to open and from way back in the rear of the SUV, two voices duly obliged. However, Dougie couldn’t quite manage the “Open Sesame” that Freddie was using to open the gate and instead, we got “Ump Me!” at full volume and it always made us smile.

The other theme of the trip was Freddie’s constant denial of needing a wee, which then often presented itself as a problem deep into a queue or halfway through an attraction. I shall save the most innovative solution to that problem somewhere in the very long wait for Smuggler’s Run, for later in the report.

The trip officially started the evening before our flight when we took some “by the door” pics of the boys…

And it continued at 4.30am, with Louise negating the need for the 5 am alarm I had set, with the hair dryer. She had it on, she didn’t hit me with it. I slowly gathered the will to rise and went down to let the dogs out before a quick shower and putting some clothes on. Most airlines insist I find.

As you do in the early hours pre-holiday flight, I undertook some routine household maintenance by pouring some drain unblocker down our shower as I noticed whilst showering that all of my hair must have been starting to block the drain.

We finished the packing without a jot of care for the weight of the cases, being Premium elites, and we loaded the cars and rolled off the drive by 6.10am. The traffic, especially around the unfit-for-purpose M60 was as bad as expected but we arrived at the airport an hour later. We dropped the cars off and left our keys at the overly complex key drop-off thing. The TUI check-in opened literally as we arrived at it, but the Premium desk was operating at less than a Premium speed and we waited a good fifteen minutes to get served.

After a trip to the oversize drop-off place with the car seats we went through security with little bother, other than Tom getting his usual extra special attention. This would continue at every theme park for the entire trip. Ryan the rucksack was diverted for an extra inspection but when the chap brought it forward and looked at the x-ray he said he had no idea why it had been held and handed him straight over.

We wandered through the shops mainly just following the signs for the super swanky lounge we had access to courtesy of our Premium status. We got to reception at 8.15 and we were kindly admitted a full fifteen minutes early simply because I am such a nice chap.

We were guided to some tables and then let loose on the breakfast buffet. That was more than fit for purpose, so I had two lots.

It was very lovely, despite an overly long wait to get a coffee from the self-serve machine as someone had seemingly volunteered to get one for the entire flight.

With food in our bellies, Freddie took it upon himself to use the camera, apologies for a rare appearance by yours truly.

There were less successful photos too.

Thankfully the camera was back in the hands of a professional before too long….

Whilst I had my traditional post-breakfast airport poo, with limited success, everyone else wandered the shops until I caught them up. With all the snacks and things bought we went back into the lounge for a bit and just had a drink.

Hopes that the boys would behave for the next nine hours were stretched….

But with time pressing on we moved down to the gate via the longest airport walk since the last time we walked to a gate at Manchester airport. I needed a third breakfast to replenish the calories. Gate 202 was not only in the next county, but also cramped and busy due to the ongoing works at the airport. We struggled to find a seat.

We boarded when called unusually, mainly as we were in Premium and were one of the first called onto the plane. We then spent about ten frustrating minutes standing on the stairs down to the plane.

Due to our later upgrade to Premium, we weren’t all sat together, with Louise sat with Freddie and I behind them.

The plane pushed back at 11.40, followed by a smooth take-off. As Louise and Freddie started to use their seat back TVs they turned in frustration that they couldn’t hear anything. A brief investigation found that Louise had plugged both their headphones into the power sockets.

Rebecca, Tom and Dougie were sat to the side of us, in the middle.

Drinks came first, along with a menu with a few choices for food.

I had Chicken with Jasmine rice which was very good.

About two hours in I watched the three available episodes of Two and a Half Men, again. After that, I swapped seats with Louise to play cards with Freddie. Louise, not being an anti-social freak like myself, made immediate friends with Gavin who I had been sitting next to for two hours, discovered he was TUI crew off on his holidays and then chatted to him for the rest of the flight.

After cards, Freddie watched Storks and I watched Oceans 12, again. Dougie had a sleep and was generally fantastically behaved despite all our fears in the build-up to the trip. He was intrigued by the seat belt and that pretty much kept him occupied for most of the flight.

Afternoon tea was a sandwich and scone.

After about eight and a half hours we landed.

I have not witnessed any human being more excited and more verbose than Freddie was on that descent into Melbourne. We chatted all the way down during which he asked me questions such as “Is it the clouds that move or the world?”. I somehow avoided displaying my stupidity by changing the subject.

As we were getting our stuff together to disembark, Freddie got hold of the camera and took yet more candid behind the scenes shots.

Once into the airport all of our cases were off very quickly but the two car seats took a frustrating age. After about fifteen minutes we were into and through immigration within a few minutes and off to pick up the car.

A painless experience other than me forgetting to take Tom to the counter with me to add him as the second driver, but we sorted that later in the holiday.

We walked out to the car park and picked up a stunning Jeep Wagoneer.

Here it is a few days later. It easily took all of us and our cases and was a fantastic drive too.

I connected Car Play and fired up the Waze app which was clearly broken as it said it would take two hours to get to the villa.

It took us along the 192 for 90% of the way and most of it was fine, but as we got to Kissimmee the traffic built up and we were crawling through endless traffic lights for what seemed like forever. We made a pit stop to get Louise a drink and it did take the full two hours and a bit more to get there. That last half hour was incredibly frustrating with the boys understandably keen to get to where we were going and there may have been a slight sulk overtaking me.

Traffic issues would be a theme of the trip. In all our years of visiting, we have never seen traffic like it. It’s probably been a couple of years since we stayed anywhere that needed regular use of the 192 and I4 but I don’t what happened in that time, but it was a nightmare.

Upon arrival. we went to the guard house first to get our dashboard pass thing and then drove over to the villa, feeling very happy to finally be there.

The cases were dumped and Rebecca and I drove to the Publix on the US27 to stock up.

There was mild panic as we checked out with three hundred dollars worth of groceries when my credit card was declined. Thankfully, my UK debit card, linked to my Apple wallet on my phone worked so we didn’t have to put it all back. I have no idea why that happened as we had no issues anywhere else all holiday apart from having to be dragged from the table at multiple meals to enter my pin into the payment thing.

Back home we had a sandwich and some crisps before falling into bed around 11pm.

I took some random pictures of bits of the villa.

I don’t know why, but I was very tired.

Till the next time……

Bu Bye

by mkingdon, posted in Walt Disney World

Here we are then. Just one workday stands between me and all the fun of the fair and as expected, last week surpassed itself with its length, drudgery and amount of pride-swallowing, ego-enduring nonsense that work can often be. The trick now is to try to push that and the stuff I know I’ll be returning to from my mind for a couple of weeks to make the most of what will be a hard-earned break. Yeah I know we take loads of holidays but in between we really work for them.

On Saturday I bought us Multi Pass for the first day, which, as the law dictates will be Magic Kingdom. I know that you know that I think this, but the cost of that at $29 each plus tax is just a piss-take. It really is and even for someone as dyed in the wool a Disney fan as I am, it really does impact my propensity to do their parks in future. We shall definitely be using that system only as a necessity as it just has such a huge impact on the budget. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, for us at least it just means we spend less time and money in their parks. Knowing that extra cost will happen we plan to eat off-site more than we would and I will be less likely to splurge on merchandise.

Anyway, with a bit of playing around with the original selections and times presented to us, I have what I think is a solid base for the first day. Being off-site scum of course we joined the party very late, just three days before our visit so despite only having the crumbs from the table of availability, I would give that a 7 out of 10. I have already begun to mentally come to terms with the fact that we will not get on Tiana’s new thing.

We hope very much that Dougie will make it on to Branstormer. He is soooo close to the height requirement, we just have to cross our fingers that he can do his first Disney coaster.

So as I type everyone else is out doing and buying those last-minute things you need (I’m told) for such a trip. Louise has us pretty much packed and she finished work on Friday so is now free to prep us to death.

The weather post-Milton looks glorious, at least for the next week or so, with nothing currently of any concern forming out to sea so we hope that continues. There was a brief concern about a “cold front” predicted for next Thursday, but context is important as that for Floridians means it will drop into the nasty mid-seventies (if you are young, don’t ask me what temperature that really is….just use the correct method for temperatures instead!). Such temperatures here have half the population shirtless and two out of three households holding mandatory barbeques, so I think we’ll be OK.

The last bit of planning I had to do was my “airport Dad” approach to what time we need to leave the house to get to the airport. This is not as simple as you may think. Since we moved house a few years ago we are a little further away from the airport and with this being a weekday departure and the M60 not being fit for purpose, it is hard to negotiate the journey without us being ridiculously early or late. With a flight at 11.25, our journey to the airport is right in the middle of the armageddon of rush hour so planning is crucial.

So my plan is to leave the house at 6.15ish, which even with the catastrophic traffic getting off the M61 onto the M60 and then battling that across Barton Bridge past the Trafford Centre, we should be getting to the airport I think around 7.30. I thought everyone worked from home these days, but the motorways of the North West tell a different story.

That gives us time to park the car. This will take a little longer as our usual place was full and we have to do a meet and greet option which I don’t really like as you have to figure out dropping your keys off at an “automated” set of lockers and it’s all a bit faffy. Once that is done that should get us to 8am or so and that is when check in opens. Being posh Premium superstars we should be escorted through that by our own personal valet within seconds and into security.

I don’t want to jinx it but when we did this last May the experience had undergone a big upgrade and improvement with seemingly new technology making the whole thing a breeze.

With that behind us, we have access to The Escape Lounge from 8.30 and all should be well. That’s just the journey to the airport which goes to prove that these holidays don’t just happen you know. From there it’s just a matter of surviving nine hours in a tube with a very rumbunctious Dougie. Wish us luck.

As ever, from time to time I’ll share as we go on the Mkingdon Facebook page. So give that a Like if you haven’t already.

Other than that, I think we’re done and we’ll see you back here in November!

Till the next time…..

Hurry Up & Hurricanes

by mkingdon, posted in Walt Disney World

If there were any justice in the world I would be sat here typing this today, about a stone lighter than I was last week. That is based purely on the amount of snot I have expelled from my body in the last seven days.

I know that sounds like a joke but honestly, I don’t know where it’s coming from. No end of blowing is enough (amirite guys?) and as soon as I empty about a pound of the stuff into a tissue my nose is totally blocked again. Surely all that mucus must weigh something?

For that reason, this week is one I wish not to repeat and of course, I am glad whatever germs are causing this will have passed (right?) before we get on the plane.

Emily has passed her first few days back in the UK wrestling with pretty dreadful jetlag and trying to get back to work whilst weeping at the cost of flights for next August. It comes to something when you have your fingers crossed hoping for something under £1k each. Apparently, her friend the teacher has a blue light card which can bestow glorious discounts on things like flights. If anyone has any experience of that please let me know. I’m also wondering right about now why Louise doesn’t have one???

A lot of our attention in the last few days of our countdown is on the seeming conveyor belt of hurricanes aimed directly for every single one of our holiday plans. Milton is looking like it will pass directy over the theme parks area right now, with of course a lot of time yet for that to change. We just have everything crossed that this will be the last for a while and the two weeks after next week will be natural disaster free.

I had a “last minute” review of our plan, as you do, mainly to see if I could somehow avoid the Saturday we currently have at Hollywood Studios. I do try to avoid the parks as much as possible at a weekend, especially DHS, but I have concluded there is no way to juggle it. It’ll have to be a case of buying the Multi-Pass thing and bearing with.

Demonstrating how close we are now to departure, I got the instructions through for our villa a few days ago which I thought was the last bit of admin required before we worry about checking in online. However, for reasons I cannot fathom, check-in seemed to open up on the 1st of October so I’ve done that too. Although it seems you can’t get your boarding passes by doing so, instead you get a “Confirmation of Check-in” thing and have to present that to the desk at the airport to get your boarding passes. That all seems a bit odd and potentially pointless. I’m pretty sure that was not the case when we flew with them back in May.

I have ticked off another couple of unpleasant milestones on my journey towards this holiday. Wednesday saw me tolerating a Motorway Awareness course. At close to 1am driving home from a gig, on an empty motorway I was pictured doing 58mph in a 50mph variable speed limit zone. Sure, that’s not legal but it doesn’t half stick in the craw when the photo they send you shows you alone in three lanes of motorway. Anyway, I am now suitably chastised, poorer and educated. Then on Friday I went to the dentist. Hardly life threatening but as you may have noticed, I don’t like folks messing with my teeth and once again it was unpleasant and expensive. Never a good combo.

So here we are at what is often in my view the hardest part of the countdown. We are impossibly close and yet somehow it seems impossibly far away at the same time. I just want next week to hurry up and be over whilst recognising that if that wish were granted the same may apply to the two weeks after it and that would not be a good thing at all. I have been instructed by Louise to “get my stuff out” which is not a euphemism but rather the job of dumping all the clothes I wish to take onto the bed so that packing may begin. That’s how close we are. I have to admit, that solitary Monday the 14th, the day before we go, is praying on my mind as a schoolboy error. Why I did not book it off work I have no idea. Now, it is festooned with meetings I cannot avoid and I shall have to endure it. The firstest of first-world problems.

See you back here this time next week for the pre-departure sign-off. It’ll be here before you know it….right???

Till the next time…..

Helene Going Back

by mkingdon, posted in Walt Disney World

Emily is home. She arrived back in the UK on Friday morning. If it is possible to experience the end of a WDW trip sadness by proxy, I did on Thursday watching their last day unfold in the WhatsApp group.

Knowing what an incredible time they had just made me genuinely sad for them that it was ending. Some spice was added to the end of their trip with Hurricane Helene’s arrival, and her impact coincided almost exactly with their flight departure. Thankfully for them and Orlando, she stayed off the coast but some of the scenes from the west coast of Florida were heartbreaking.

Having stayed at Siesta Key a few years ago, this was a shocking sight.

Orlando again seemed to miss the worst of things and we have every appendage crossed that nothing forms in the coming weeks to impact our trip. How selfish does that sound when thousands of folks lost their homes a few days ago?

You may already know this, but for anyone with Florida plans that may involve hurricane season, I have long followed Denis Phillips who gives incredibly regular, sensible and accurate updates whenever anything is heading to Florida. If you don’t already, he’s worth following to avoid trying to get info from all kinds of sources when it matters.

Anyway, within 12 hours of touching down on UK soil, Emily had done the sensible thing and booked again for next year. They will be going back with another couple, more first-timers, and it will be Emily’s 30th next year so it all made sense that a trip would be taken to mark that occasion.

They are staying at the All Stars again, but have to go in August as one of the other couple is a teacher, so flight costs will be horrific and with the hotel and tickets in the bag, their quest will be to source a flight for less than a family car.

I have two weeks (and one day) left at work before we go and, as ever, I am more than ready for it. It has been a hectic and demanding time at work and I feel pretty burnt out, despite having had a lovely holiday back in May. Louise feels the same but she’s a nurse so she deserves to much more than the desk-based, work-from-home most of the time Nancy boy I am.

I purchased some dollars last week, well, I loaded my Caxton card with some and was delighted to get a rate of 1.31. That delight is relative to the recent years of atrocious rates of course and I’d be much more delighted with the 1.5s or 1.6s that were the norm for so many years.

Rebecca’s ankle is improving rapidly, with the boot now mostly off and a lot of mobility back which is great news. She did have to return to A&E last week to have her elbow checked out as it was getting more and more painful and less useful with each passing day. Thankfully, again no broken bones just ligament damage and bruising causing the pain.

The decision was taken last week to cancel Halloween Horror Nights by Rebecca and Tom. Emily’s experience and comments on my blogs and other vlogs and blogs just made the whole expense and effort not seem worthwhile. They will find another evening to have some kid-free time I’m sure.

Hopefully, Louise and I can do similar and find an evening where we can do Jellyrolls. We really enjoyed the several nights we spent there last November on our park-free solo trip staying at Drury Plaza. We must do that trip again sometime.

It goes without saying that as we approach another trip I am desperately trying to trim a few pounds so I only come back as fat as I normally am. With every passing year it seems to get harder and at some point, I am just going to have to put up with being chunky and adorable. I’m a handful of pounds down from my heaviest, so if I can follow that with another handful or so in the next two weeks I may have myself some runway to eat what I like for a couple of weeks. My metabolism is a cruel mistress.

Two more of these posts before departure. You can get excited about that if nothing else.

Till the next time…….

Trouble Afoot

by mkingdon, posted in Walt Disney World

The “highlight” of this week was a stomach-churning panic on Wednesday afternoon with a tearful phone call whilst I was at work (Rebecca was the one in tears, but if I’m at work there’s always a chance I am too) saying she had just fallen down some steps and broken her ankle!

I left the meeting I was in the middle of without explanation and flew homeward. Tom had got home to her first, so we arranged to meet at the hospital so I could take the boys home while they were seen in A&E.

When I looked at her ankle, I was sure it was broken. While waiting for them to arrive at A&E, I had already done some extensive googling on whether you could fly with a broken limb. It seemed to be the case that you could, but of course, doing WDW with a broken ankle would not be ideal.

A few hours later they returned home with the news that it was not actually broken, but there was severe tendon/ligament damage. She was in a boot and on crutches but relieved.

Of course, there is the small matter of managing everyday life on one leg with two young kids for the next few weeks but at least the holiday was not badly affected!

Just 24 hours later the huge swelling was much reduced so we are very hopeful she will be ambulatory by the time we fly. It was around this time that all the other injuries she had picked up all over her body started to hurt with the pain in her ankle subsiding a little. It was a heck of a fall.

The other daughter continues to have the best time ever over in Orlando. We receive a steady stream of food and drink pictures which is always welcome and not quite as painful as it might be if we were not headed there very soon. I feel very conflicted that I never want their trip to end as I know how much they are loving it, but it has to if ours is ever to get here.

Emily wept uncontrollably at Fantasmic as did most of us just watching the video she sent. There is something about that finale music in that show that just gets me.

On Wednesday they did Halloween Horror Nights and were, to be honest, a little underwhelmed, mainly due to the huge wait times for everything. Only one house was done as every house had wait times of well over an hour and even the food trucks had similar queues.

They made the most of it by attending the show, scare zones, and riding the rides, which did have low wait times. It seems you need Express, but the cost for that is huge/frankly ridiculous so now Rebecca and Tom are considering whether to bother or not on our trip as with the tickets and Express for those few hours would cost close to £500. That is tough to justify and seems a mad way to operate the event.

Why not double the cost of the entry ticket but sell half as many so those going can actually do some of the things they want to?

Amongst other things, they’ve also done Beaches & Cream, a load more walking and are generally living their best lives. Feedback from Mikey the first-timer is that he is blown away, already addicted and plans for next year are being hatched.

In my own planning, I have picked up the remaining reservations in and around Universal that I was looking for. The first at Toothsome on the night Rebecca and Tom are/were planning to do HHN. I’ve booked the meal for us all just in case they decide not to go and I can always amend it if they do go after all. If they don’t we’ll just have a night at City Walk.

The others are Cowfish and on our day in IOA I have booked us into Mythos. Despite me seeming to remember it has a very good reputation I think we have only ever done it once. It being within the park makes it handy, with us not having to come all the way out to City Walk to eat. We are booked at 5.30pm, so should we wish to do more in the park after that, we don’t have walk all that way back in.

I ticked off another milestone yesterday, getting a work event out of the way that always looks better in the rearview mirror. Three weeks left at work now. I’m hunkering down for the final push.

Till the next time…..

A Second Hand Trip Report

by mkingdon, posted in Walt Disney World

This time next month, that’ll be us.

I have very little to report on our trip this week as work has been stupidly intense and I’ve been down south for most of the week having to actually pretend I know what I’m doing.

Instead, I can share some stuff on Emily’s trip that started last Thursday. She flew Aer Lingus taking just under nine hours. She may be just short of 30 but yes I did spend a good amount of time in my hotel room tracking her flight until it landed.

After some kerfuffle with her Revolut card not working they took a Lyft from MCO to the All Stars in what was incredible heat.

They are delighted with their room, which is right by the bus stop and pool.

Friday was a special day being her boyfriend’s first ever experience of WDW and let’s just summarise things by saying he was absolutely blown away with the scale, quality and magic of it all.

Magic Kingdom was very quiet all day with the longest wait being 25 minutes for Haunted Mansion. They rope-dropped Tron and were one of the first to ride.

They had one of those special days with everything just going perfectly it seems.

Breakfast was from Sleepy Hollow..

Tiana was ridden, ticking off another first for them both.

After a stop at the Poly for some drinks on the beach, when Mikey nearly cried at the loveliness of it all they headed out to Olive Garden for tea.

22,000 steps, lots of rides and lovely food all made for a day that could not have gone any better they say.

The next day, yesterday, was Typhoon Lagoon and then Sickies for tea but I don’t have any photos or details of that yet as they are still asleep. 🙂

After almost a year of planning and counting down I am just so delighted that things have been so perfect so far. Living vicariously through Emily’s trip will hopefully cushion the blow of not being there for the next fortnight as I battle through the tribulations of working for a living.

In news closer to home, Louise is currently suffering from a perforated and infected ear drum which is incredibly painful. She is on the relevant meds of course, but let’s hope that doesn’t cause her any serious issues when we fly in 30 days. As someone who suffered very badly with ear pain on almost every flight when I was younger, I know just how unbearable that can be.

This bonus pseudo-trip report is your lot for this week. Depending on what Emily posts in the group chat in the coming days there may be some more next week!

Till the next time……

And Now It’s Time To Pay The Price

by mkingdon, posted in Walt Disney World

Thanks for all the interest and feedback on the “big plan” post last week. As much as I really appreciate those who persisted with the non-Disney content I have been posting, it’s clear from the views and visitor numbers last week that most of you really have more interest in WDW, which I am totally on board with!

For those who asked about Emily’s trip, if you want to follow along with her, your best bet would be to follow her on Instagram here. She will without doubt be posting there throughout. She leaves on Thursday. She also does some blogging if you wanted to follow that too.

I was due to take her to the airport but as it often does, work has gotten in the way of things I want to do, insisting I am down south on that day, so she has a friend taking her instead. Sure she’s 29, sure she’s been to WDW countless times, sure she lived there, but there is still some low level of worry when waving your offspring off to travel that distance.

After all the fun and games of the planning, based on having secured everything with low deposits, we are now at the stage where the pain hits and to quote a WDW vlogger, “and now it’s time to pay the price”.

I have just paid off all the balances, including the theme park tickets, villa and car. I’m not gonna lie, parting with that level of pound notes hurts no matter what the reason. Still, of all things I could spend money on this is one of the better ones. On the plus side, it’s a real sign that this trip is almost here.

It may shock you to learn that nothing has changed in the plan since last week. We are probably getting too close now for that to happen. In a couple of weeks, I have two meals to book at Citywalk (they only seem to offer slots a month in advance). Those will be Toothsome and Cowfish.

I still have low-level anxiety/PTSD from our more recent WDW trips as the state of the parks in terms of crowds, wait times and general post-pandemic recovery are fresh in my mind. I don’t know if this is reality but the park activity I see on social media seems to vary between “there is literally only me in this theme park today” to “do not even try to enter Orlando as it is full”.

With a better “FastPass” system in place, I am hoping things will be better. We are also visiting outside of any UK school holidays and when I look at the various crowd-level tools online most seem to be scoring most of our time there around the 6 out of 10 mark with slightly busier times predicted towards the end of our trip as we get close to Halloween (the day itself, not the season which starts in early August at WDW of course).

With lower crowd levels the quandary of course is should I book the multi-pass thing three days in advance (being off-site scum) or wait and see how the park looks that morning? I suspect I shall play it safe and book it for our first MK day to remove any stress/waiting on that special first day and then see how it goes. The natural exception to that, I think, will be Hollywood Studios, and I’ll probably cave and book the multi-pass for that park without hesitation, having had horrifying experiences there on the last couple of trips.

For anyone who has been and done it with the new system, I would be keen to hear feedback and experiences of the new thing.

I am girding my loins now for the final push at work. I’ve got a daunting couple of weeks with many things in the diary that I would rather not do (I refer you to the section above about these trips costing a lot of money to understand why I have to do them), but if my many years on this spinning rock have taught me anything it is that I will always be fatter than I want to be and everything passes. Typically even the most horrifying things in your future are survivable.

I am being over dramatic as my “things” are just a couple of days at Head Office next week and then a work conference/event the weekend after. I am not pulling babies from burning buildings but imposter syndrome is a bugger.

This time next week it’ll be a month until we go and just another milestone on the countdown ticked off. Of course, that just means I have five weeks to lose four stone. Seems doable?

Till the next time……

Wake Me Up When September Ends

by mkingdon, posted in Walt Disney World

With all that sunbathing nonsense out of the way, let’s get down to the serious business of getting ready for a holiday I think we can all understand and get behind.

We are just 44 days away from our Orlando theme park bonanza folks and whilst you’ve all been snoozing/trudging through endless blogs about sand and food, I’ve been busy planning our October trip.

There’s a lot to get through and rather than be sensible and eek that content out over the next few weeks, I’ll no doubt just shoot my shot this week and worry about next week when I’m staring at the blank page in a week’s time.

The first thing to report is that whilst we were all “at” Delray Beach, once again, Bob Iger has taken on board my feedback from this blog and scrapped Genie+. Good lad Bob, but you missed the bit about not charging for this stuff on top of the sky-high theme park tickets, but we’ll take a win where we can get it.

I approve of the change in general but of course, it came with some baggage.

  1. Why does it cost money?
  2. Why are off-site guests penalised? (I know the answer and I only care as we’ll be off-site this time)
  3. Why are International visitors massively penalised unless you spend enough time reading WDW internet content to come across the fairly simple workaround? The workaround of setting the country of your address in the app to the US is so easily preventable that I strongly suspect Disney has left that in intentionally to mitigate a problem they couldn’t solve properly. (Isn’t the issue something about card payments for non-US folks?) My day job involves developing stuff for online products and it smells of a handy “oops we didn’t realise that was possible”. I applaud it.

Being weeks behind the release of this change I won’t go on about it anymore as I’m sure every angle has already been covered. I look forward to being able to secure some rides before we arrive in the parks again.

Moving on to our personal plan, one of the first things I did after getting home from our Delray trip was upgrade to Premium. I think it was about £150 each to do so and having experienced the economy seats, we were keen not to again, especially with two small kids who we will definitely want to go to sleep on the way back. The slightly enhanced room in Premium will be worth that investment and, much to my surprise (I am blissfully unaware lots of the time) until Rebecca told me, that entitles us to Lounge access and a free breakfast at Manchester airport so we’ve already made some of the £150 each back. Add the same sort of thing on the return journey and we’ll be close to a profit.

I’m under no illusions that we’ll be lying down in some sort of Business Class bed-seat, as we sat just behind the magic curtain of Premium on our last trip with TUI and could see the forbidden fruits clearly, but we’ll take the larger seat, slightly better food, more luggage allowance and hopefully getting our cases off more quickly.

This past week has been ADR time and as ever, the success has not been as complete as I may have liked. Overall though, I’ve done OK. Of course, I had sworn that we would eat off-site almost all the time and I have then caved and made more ADRs than I first intended, but we will still be dining off-site a fair bit.

With a two-year-old with us, all dining plans live and die with him, so there are a fair few early meal slots booked and only the odd late one, where that was the only availability, which will be in the lap of the toddler Gods.

To once again demonstrate my masterful planning skills, with the plan pretty much locked and loaded, including our ADRs, a last-minute decision to add in a trip to Universal just last week may have flummoxed other less awesome planners, but no. A ten-minute conversation with Rebecca, whilst staring at the plan, along with some swift internet interrogation saw us expertly evaluate options and then move stuff around with minimal disruption, ADR cancellation or pain. If only I were this good at my day job.

So let’s take a trot through our plans, shall we? I will say that after a few trips where we have not done a great deal and bored you to death with beaches and pools, this trip is hard-core, jam-packed and will probably kill us. Being (even if I say so myself) an elite-level WDW trip planner I recognise and embrace this and should we need to amend stuff on the hoof due to exhaustion and/or killing each other with our bare hands, then I shall rise to that challenge with ease. This is nobody’s first rodeo and we go into the plan with eyes wide open and loins girded.

Day One

As you now know we fly Premium out of Manchester with TUI on October 15th. Airport parking has been secured (which is getting a bit pricey these days I must say) and we are scheduled to be wheels up at 11.25 so we should be in the air at around 1pm if things go to form.

We arrive in Melbourne mid-afternoon and have a suitable vehicle awaiting us courtesy of Discount Florida Car Hire again. An unwelcome but necessary 90 minutes in the car should see us pull up outside our favourite villa on Amelia Downs Trail in Kissimmee and we shall unpack, do a shop and eat no doubt. The boys will be in the pool if they are still awake I’m sure.

Day Two

It goes without saying that this is a Magic Kingdom day. Who knows what time Dougie might be awake so it could be a short or long one. Eating wise, we have gone for an old favourite and a regular tactic on our first park day in Whispering Canyon Cafe at 5.20, as it seems these days that all the shenanigans and fun are back after their suspension for the pandemic and for Tom’s benefit they still offer unlimited refills on milkshakes so he intends to bankrupt them. I suspect we’ll be done at that point and will head home.

Day Three

A rest day but with a twist. On recent theme park trips, we have done Typhoon Lagoon on day two which works really well, offering rest for the oldies and slides and stuff for the youngsters. We will eat off-site that evening at Sickies on the 192.

Day Four

Unusually it is Animal Kingdom today. Typically we would visit the parks in the correct order, which is the order in which they opened, and today would be Epcot, but for reasons I cannot now remember we will be at DAK, for what might be our one and only day here. The second day had to be sacrificed recently to squeeze the two Universal parks in.

Day Five

A rest day, and we plan to spend it at the villa and most likely at the large resort pool on offer. We may go for a sit-down breakfast at a new place I have seen online called @The Diner. Then we will do our best to be hungry again for dinner at The Cheesecake Factory at LBV.

Day Six

Ah Epcot, there you are. This will be our Future World day and after some skilful manoeuvres on my part with ADR bookings, I managed to secure us the “hen’s teeth” booking of Space 220 for lunch. Freddie is incredibly keen to go here so that was pleasing.

Then in the evening Rebecca and Tom will activate their built-in babysitters and allow us to watch the boys whilst they head up to experience Halloween Horror Nights at Universal. We will probably drive us all up there and drop them off and then Louise and I will eat with the boys on City Walk, maybe Toothsome. Rebecca and Tom will get a Lyft back home when they are done.

Day Seven

Hollywood Studios, our nemesis from recent trips, delivering THE worst theme park experience from a “getting on things” perspective consistently, driven by the recently deceased Genie+ nonsense. We hope things will be better now. Knowing from past experiences that whenever we want to do Fantasmic it will be rained off, we have taken the earliest opportunity possible to book a Fantasmic Dining Package, choosing the SciFi Diner for lunch.

Day Eight

A much-needed pool day again. We may again avail ourselves of a sit-down breakfast and possibly return to a real favourite of ours in Hash House A Go Go. Then after some serious lying down in the sun, we shall visit The Outback and I will without doubt have a large steak. It takes some real skills to make yourself hungry enough to dine out twice in one day but it is a challenge we intend to rise to.

Day Nine

We head to Universal and a one-night stay at Royal Pacific to get the Front Of Line access. We shall get there as early as possible, check in and head over to IOA first (I think). With this being very fresh into the plan, there are no firm dining plans for that evening but City Walk is our lobster so that will get firmed up shortly.

Day Ten

Universal Studios of course. And should stamina and timings permit, then we will return to Teak Neighbourhood Grill for dinner. It’s been a while since we dined here. I think our last visit was on the trip amid all the Covid restrictions and the experience wasn’t perfect. The menu looks great and hopefully, everything is back as it should be with the service so it’s definitely worth another try.

Day Eleven

Epcot again today with a likely focus on World Showcase. A huge stroke of fortune came our way in the shape of the Eat To The Beat concert series. A few months ago when the lineup was announced it was the usual mix of the odd famous person or band amidst a load of artists we at least had no idea about. Anyway, it turned out that during our trip, Hanson would be performing. We saw them recently supporting Busted and have liked them ever since the one song everyone knows them for back in the 90’s. So I have booked lunch at Garden Grill as part of the Eat To The Beat package which secures us a seat in their 5.30 show.

I wanted to get us into Beaches and Cream for our evening meal and did so but the only slot available by the time I’d sorted the Garden Grill booking was at 9.15pm. We will just see how everyone is doing by that time and play it by ear. I think leaving Epcot in the early evening for a Boardwalk stroll will be on the cards either way. There’s a Banana Bread Espresso Martini at The Boardwalk Bellevue Lounge that I have my eye on.

Day Twelve

Day two at Hollywood Studios and lunch is to be at the Rodeo Roundup place in Toy Story Land.

Thanks to Disney Food Blog for that photo

Nothing is booked for tea/dinner so we may head off-site and try to help the budget by going to Olive Garden. If energy permits, then we might head to Disney Springs for a stroll and with a following wind, one of the Espresso Martinis from Wine Bar George.

Day Thirteen

With one day left on our three-day Universal tickets, we will use that up today at Volcano Bay. A first for Louise and I and I suspect this will be a welcome break from the parks and a chance to rest up a little bit for those who want to.

Dinner is pencilled in for Cowfish at City Walk.

Day Fourteen

The emotional last full day and of course that means Magic Kingdom for the farewell lap of honour. Having, much to our surprise, thoroughly enjoyed our unplanned visit there on our last trip to the parks, I have booked us in at The Liberty Tree for a 5.40pm ADR.

Fireworks and tears will be experienced as we leave the park for the final time.

Day Fifteen

The usual mix of packing, a visit to Disney Springs, some food, perhaps at The Polite Pig and then the longer-than-usual drive back to the airport. We don’t fly until 7pm so that should work out OK.

So there you have it. It’s a humdinger and no doubt some of that won’t happen, but he who dares wins. As ever, the thinking is that despite the last few decades telling me otherwise, who knows if and when any of us may get to return.

In other news, Emily and her boyfriend go to WDW on September 12th for a long-awaited trip they booked well before we booked ours. It is Mikey’s first visit and they are both ridiculously excited. They are staying at the All-Stars and flying Aer Lingus. I can’t wait to hear all about it. You can’t beat a first-time visit, especially when an experienced guide is with you to show you the ropes.

Till the next time…..

The Doing Diddly In Delray Tour 2024 – Day Four Friday 31st May

by mkingdon, posted in The Doing Diddly In Delray Tour 2024

I spent most of the morning in bed doing something I very rarely do.

Having a lie-in.

It was 10.30 before I was up and about but hey, we had nowhere to be. I had some breakfast and watched some telly whilst Louise slept on. Once she arose she wanted to go out for breakfast. Clearly, as I had already had mine I would just get a drink or something at Boheme Bistro.

I don’t know how to explain why the waitress brought me this to be honest….

It was definite brunch/early lunch territory so Louise went for a BLT.

Eating Hobbit style, with a middle breakfast, might just be the lifestyle I’ve been looking for.

Leaving $60 including tip, we set off back to the hotel to take up our positions by the pool. It was rammed today, with two other people crowding us.

Louise ignored the “you have to wait for an hour after eating before going in the pool” rule….

I cowered in the shade as certain body parts were still a little well done. We only had to move beds once today to chase the shade, but I did have to make several dashes back to the room for reasons I won’t go into, but I was very glad we were not at the beach today. Nobody wants *that* in the water.

With little else to report other than more of the same for the rest of the day, Louise went back to the room around 5.30 to start getting ready and I stayed out by the pool for a bit reading.

I showered and readied around 6.30 and we nipped out to Publix for “bits”.

We dropped the car off back at the hotel and ordered a Lyft. Stand by, because after a lot of nothing happening, there is about to be some mild drama.

We were picked up in a HUGE Toyota Sequoia by a lovely female driver. Delray was rammed, being the start of the weekend, and once she got us within striking distance of our restaurant of choice, we jumped out of the car in the middle of backed-up traffic and jogged unathletically across the road to avoid death.

We walked the remaining distance to Rocco’s Tacos and approached the podium. Upon hearing my accent the young girl trying to sort us a table asked which part of London I was from. Vocally, Dick Van Dyke I am not. I rolled my eyes and explained roughly where we lived and she explained that she lived in Cambridge when she was very young as her Dad was in the Air Force, stationed in the UK.

Pleasant chat over, she asked for my mobile number so she could text me. I thought that was a little bold with Louise stood next to me, but after a few awkward moments, it turns out she meant when the table was ready.

We started walking to the bar, and I did one of 300 daily pocket pats, ensuring I had my car keys, phone, etc. A sudden sickness came over me as I felt the emptiness of one pocket. Looking paler than milk I realised I had left my phone in the Lyft!

We ran outside, knowing she had long gone and with panic raging, I grabbed Louise’s phone and tried to call mine. It would not connect.

I tried to log into my Lyft account on Louise’s phone so that I could message the driver, but that wasn’t possible as it sent a verification code to my phone!

I logged into my iCloud on Louise’s phone and could see my phone moving, so it was definitely in the car, but that was driving away from Delray.

With my mind swimming with the horrors of dealing with losing my phone whilst away, I sent the sound alarm thing to my phone many times. I then tried calling it via every method available, Messenger, WhatsApp and the like. Finally, what felt like a thousand minutes later, the driver picked up. She had heard me pinging it and realised what had happened. She very kindly agreed to bring it back to Delray once she had finished her current drop-off.

I cannot describe the feeling of relief.

We stood outside the restaurant for about 20 minutes, having gone back inside to tell them that there was no point texting me yet and I explained why.

Eventually, she pulled up and I could have dragged her through the passenger window and kissed her. Instead, I gave her the maximum tip the app would allow which was the better option for everyone all things considered..

With my sheen of sweat now subsiding, we claimed our table and sat down to eat. This was the second time that I have left my phone in a taxi whilst overseas and I can only blame the poor pocketage on my very attractive holiday shorts.

We started with some chips and Guac. Enough to sink a battleship.

We ordered a Margharita each.

and ordered the same entree….a salad….

Honest! It was called a Taco Salad Bowl and it was awesome. This was our best meal so far, perhaps enhanced by the surge of adrenaline still pumping through my body, but we paid the $120 including tip happily and left.

We strolled down to Johnny Brown’s, a bar that always seemed to have live music on. It was absolutely packed. It was a literal fight to get a drink and we somehow bagged a table right outside the restrooms. Maybe that was why.

We’ve had better views.

The band were decent but the thought of another trip to the bar and the feeling that we were getting eaten alive by something drove us to seek another venue.

We ended up in the Yacht Club again where another band was playing. This place was much less crowded and civilized and we had a few drinks here whilst listening to the band, who, again were pretty good. Unlike my photography.

We jumped in a Lyft home around midnight and bed swallowed us up as eagerly as I had that Taco Salad earlier.

Till the next time……

The Doing Diddly In Delray Tour 2024 – Day Three Thursday 30th May

by mkingdon, posted in The Doing Diddly In Delray Tour 2024

A good night’s sleep was ended around 6.30am. Rebecca phoned us around 7am to let us know Dougie and Tom had spent the night in A&E, as Dougie was having some serious breathing issues. At the risk of getting political, they left after five hours still not having seen a doctor and there was no realistic chance they would at any point. Go vote on July 4th! Someone else needs a go now.

We got up and had breakfast in our room and then I made the seven-step journey to the pool to “secure” some beds.

Being the only person at the pool, that was not too hard.

We spent most of the day in the shade due to being burned to a crisp from yesterday on the beach. We moved to different beds three times throughout the day to follow the shade!

We spent a good amount of time in the pool, cooling off and chatting. At some point, I made the long seven-step journey back to the room to get our sandwiches and crisps for lunch.

Mid-afternoon, I captured my impressive exercise stats for the day so far.

You know it’s hot when the locals can’t place all their feet on the hot floor.

At around 3.30 we decided to go for a drive to nowhere in particular. We were hot and if I’m honest I just fancied taking our lovely car out for a spin.

We got dressed and pointed the Jeep south on the A1A. Within a minute or so, as we left the area around Atlantic Avenue we started to see some of the most incredible houses we had ever laid eyes on. Louise, frankly, did a poor job of capturing them.

Delray has some proper wealth in and around it for sure. We drove south for about an hour, just soaking in the sights and at that point made the decision to drive on down to Hollywood, outside of Miami. Why?

Well, back in 1980 when all this Florida madness started for me, we stayed in Hollywood. As most of you will know, the story is that we went to AT Mays Travel Agents in Bolton, as we usually did to book our Spanish holiday and due to a dollar rate of around $2.20 to the pound, they told us we could go to Miami for less money than Spain. The rest is, as they say, history.

It felt silly to be staying so close this time without going to have a look, not that I had any real memories of the trip, which was now 43 years ago! But having lost my Dad recently, I felt the need to go and see where it all started I suppose.

With only 25 miles left on the Sat Nav to get to Hollywood, I wondered why it said we wouldn’t be there for 50 minutes. Well, the bobbins traffic in and around Fort Lauderdale soon explained that. It took all of those 50 minutes, but we were definitely in the “we’ve come too far to not complete this” territory now.

I had no clue where we stayed in 1980, and earlier in the pool when talking to Louise about it, from nowhere the name The Diplomat came to me. I was very spooked when I later looked at Google maps before setting off to see a hotel with that name in Hollywood literally be the first thing I saw when I zoomed in. This was weird.

Now, as we were finally driving along the “front” looking at all the hotels, not too surprisingly nothing really rang a bell. We did go past The Diplomat but it looked huge and it didn’t feel like the place we were at, but in 43 years they could have rebuilt the whole town of course.

When I messaged my Mum and Brother later that evening he seemed to think it was called Hotel Miami and there was one called that too, but it was closed now.

Louise needed the loo before we set off for home, so we stopped off at the nearest place likely to have one so that she could release her very own Whopper.

Whilst she did that I got us both an iced coffee to go and as I sat and waited my phone buzzed with a news alert that Donald Trump had been found guilty in his trial. This was also a bit weird as when we walked back to the car we saw that we were directly across from this.

Today felt a bit surreal all round.

We set the Sat Nav for home, this time using the I-95 rather than the A1A so the time was roughly halved. We found CNN on Sirius Radio and listened to the fallout from the Trump trial as we drove back. Again, the I-95 was busy and stressful.

Thankfully we eventually pulled off it onto the A1A again and tried to snap some more fancy houses on the way back into Delray.

We showered and got ready with a Lyft picking us up at around 9pm

and we headed for Vic & Angelos, an Italian.

We ordered a bottle of Montepulciano and some starters.

Mine was an Eggplant Lasagne thing.

Louise’s Meatball obsession continued.

We both had the same Entree. Nonna’s Sunday Gravy.

You may notice it involved another huge Meatball.

We were defeated and could not finish as of course we had also devoured the bread service.

As we were eating outside on the pavement, we were entertained by a lady pulling up and then reversing straight into a very fancy Range Rover parked behind her. She jumped out and we both thought she’d been drinking. A passerby took some photos of her and her car and they exchanged some strong words. She ended up not leaving a note and driving away. I don’t think there was any damage to be fair.

I didn’t note the price of the meal but I’d wager at $150ish due to the wine.

We strolled up Atlantic Avenue looking for somewhere to get a drink. At our age we want somewhere with something going on, but that’s not too busy and noisy. It’s tragic I know.

Right at the far end of Atlantic Avenue is the Yacht Club, a small bar that tonight had some Karaoke on. As there were no more bars if we walked any further, we decided to go in and to be fair it was good fun.

We had a couple of drinks and watched some “mixed” performances. These included an out-of-time Elvis, a crooner who may have been over 100 years old and a yacht rock guy.

We left at 12 and took a Lyft home where bed was immediate.

Till the next time…..

The Doing Diddly In Delray Tour 2024 – Day Two Wednesday 29th May

by mkingdon, posted in The Doing Diddly In Delray Tour 2024

Sure, I’d been awake for 22 hours, but that didn’t prevent my body from waking me up at 3am. Rather than wet the bed I got up for a wee and then thankfully returned to sleep until around 5.30am.

Louise slept on a bit so I spent that time dealing with some work stuff (hey, you don’t get to be paid millions a year and then have a holiday without doing work stuff…and the same applies when you get paid buttons too it seems).

When Louise was up we finished the unpacking, I made a coffee and whilst Louise got ready I wrote up my notes for the long travel day yesterday, narrowly avoiding PTSD when it came to the drive from the airport.

We were still ready and out of the door by 8am and we strolled down towards the beach and decided upon Luna Rosa for some breakfast.

We both ordered the same thing: Iced coffee and eggs Benedict on avocado and toast. I have never been so hipster in my life!

This was the view from our table.

I think it’s a sign of having had a good holiday when looking back at photos like these causes you physical pain and a deep longing to be back there.

Yes, it was delicious.

After leaving $70 including tip we crossed the road to the beach.

It was still pretty empty at this time and we had our pick of beds.

We oiled up and lay down. We both ventured into the sea for a bit. It was not cold and very calm and clear, and you had to go a long way out to get out of your depth. It was lovely.

Knowing a chap would be coming by soon to collect payment for the bed and brolly hire I feared that I may need some cash, so I had a wander to find an ATM machine. This turned into quite the hike as the nearest one was a fifteen-minute “stroll” up Atlantic Avenue. By Jingo it was hot.

As gruelling as that walk was, it was good to have a look around and get our bearings for where eateries and bars were located.

On the walk back to the beach I called into our room for a tactical wee and to pick up some water. We got a very sad message from an upset Emily that one of her rats, Jim had sadly passed. He was old in rat terms so it wasn’t unexpected but they mean the world to Emily and losing a pet is always tough.

Back at the beach, the bed man came and I need not have worried about payment. He had a card machine linked to his phone and we negotiated a discounted rate for buying multiple days.

We read, dozed and rested for a while longer before needing some lunch around 12.30. Today was to be a big food day it seems!

We wandered up Atlantic Avenue and chose Boheme Bistro based almost entirely on its proximity to the beach.

Louise had a Chicken Caesar Salad.

I had a Turkey Baguette.

Diet cokes and a wine and it cost us $80 including tip.

Louise nipped back to the room which was just around the corner for a loo stop and I went back to the beach.

On the beds next to us (at the beach, not in our room!) were two young college girls. Their conversation was loud enough to hear in Orlando and it was a terrifying “Mean Girls” experience that made me very glad I was old.

We rested some more and then Facetimed my Mum for a bit.

We left the beach at 5.30 after a hard day. A five-minute walk saw us back at the hotel, where we jumped into the jeep and found the local Publix to do some stocking up. Cereal, milk, some sandwiches for lunch tomorrow, (this eating out three times a day was not sustainable) natural yoghurt for Louise who had of course burned herself in the sun today and some water. A terrifying $90.

Back “home”, we showered and I booked us a table at The Office for 9.30. We ordered a Lyft at 9pm and we were picked up moments later.

I had a Giant Pretzel, but I’m not one to brag.

Louise had meatballs adorned with some green crap.

Our entrees were….

A Short Rib Sandwich for me. It was awesome. That white dip is melted marshmallow!

Louise had The Office Burger

With wines for Louise and an Espresso Martini for me, all this came to $145 including a healthy tip.

We were knackered and full so a Lyft was ordered to take us to bed. I jumped in the back seat with Louise a step or two behind me on the other side of the car and he started to set off with her only half in. There was much shouting of “woah, stop, hang on etc” and thankfully no harm was done. I think he apologised for every second of the short journey home.

We were home and in bed by 10.45, deep in a food coma.

Till the next time…..

The Doing Diddly In Delray Tour 2024 – Day One Tuesday 28th May

by mkingdon, posted in The Doing Diddly In Delray Tour 2024

Things did not get off to a great start. The night before our flight I received a message from Tui saying that our In-Flight Entertainment would not be working, but fear not, we could claim £30 compensation…EACH….if we wished.

Louise was less than pleased. As a nervous flyer, this distraction is key to her surviving a flight. Trying very hard not to let this darken our mood we pressed on with final preparations and went to bed around 11.30.

I set my alarm for 4.30am, but Louise was up and about well before that ensuring that I was too. I had not had the greatest of sleeps. I found myself anxiously pondering all the things I had not done, feeling massively underprepared for this trip for some reason.

With the broken IFE thing on my mind I put my ear bud things on to charge for an hour before we left just in case I might need them. I had discovered late last night that inexplicably, despite owning about 723 of them, I could not find any UK to US power adapters. This had also kept me awake and with my last search now also fruitless I was resigned to buying a couple at the airport at vast expense. We had a 4 way extension each packed in the luggage so two would be enough.

There was a sweat-inducing fifteen minutes of weighing cases and redistributing weight (TUI only give you 20kg each and I was trying to get both cases around that figure) and Ryan had to step up and take three pairs of Louise’s shoes to get us under 40kg combined.

We said our goodbyes to Emily and Mikey, inflicted the dogs upon them and left the house our customary fifteen minutes behind schedule at 6.15. It took fifty minutes to get to Manchester airport which wasn’t too bad considering it was mid-week rush hour around the M60.

Upon arrival at the airport we parked in our customary T2 West, having to drive all the way up to level 7 to find a spot my car might fit into. Once at TUI’s desks there were kiosks to use to avoid the (small) queue but they involved having a boarding card already. I had checked in online and I know I downloaded/saved them somewhere, but could I find them now? Nope. So we trudged over to the desks and after a few minutes we were checked in by a surly young chap who’s attitude was inexplicable. Despite me entering our US address on the TUI website, he still insisted on not only entering it again, but he would not trust me to read it to him, no, he had to see it himself on my phone, having googled it. Weird.

Security was a “walk on” to use theme park parlance. I don’t know if they have new equipment and/or processes but nothing needed to come out of bags and we retained our shoes. We walked through the scanner and we were done in under two minutes. Such an improvement on recent trips.

We were drawn automatically to our usual breakfast joint of San Carlos and again it was really quiet. Ever since Covid we have had to queue here for quite some time to get a table, but today it was half full and we were seated immediately by the window.

What a view.

As I fired my camera up for these first pictures I discovered some pictures taken by Freddie last Christmas. I had handed him my camera and told him to capture the day. There were some belters.

We had a good chuckle over those whilst we looked at the menu. As we waited for our food (and you may not believe this), we saw a few small flurries of snow outside the window…in May. Honest!

We were so distracted (and out of practice) that I only remembered to take food photos after we’d started eating. I had the Bacon and Egg on Sourdough….

and Louise a full English of sorts…

We both had tea and Louise added a Mimosa. It was £43.

We wandered the duty-free spraying ourselves with every sample on offer. How lovely we must have smelled. Tragically, Louise could not find the one she felt compelled to buy.

I got a US adapter from Boots and then a few minutes later I got another from WH Smith.

For those of you paying attention, towards the end of our last trip in November, with about two days to go Louise spent almost $200 on a new pair of sunglasses. Yeah, I know.

Still, with us having two trips booked for this year, they would get some use.

She had lost them. So now we found ourselves shopping for some more. Safe to say they did not cost almost $200 this time.

We moved on to the book shop where Louise bought one she wouldn’t touch for the entire trip and then we had a coffee, waiting for the gate info to appear. We moved to the gate at 10.30 and waited for everyone else to queue up to board before we did so last.

We Facetimed Rebecca whilst boarding happened and I squoze in (or is it out?) a last minute pre-flight wee.

A couple of weeks ago, I had changed our seats to row 10 as I noticed that of the three seats in that row, none were taken, whereas our selected seats had us and someone else in them. My plan worked and it turned out that we had that row of three just to us and along with them being extra leg room we also had extra width too, which despite my pre-holiday diet was very welcome.

Much to our delight, and the cabin crew’s surprise, the IFE was working. We pushed back bang on time and took off at 11.50 through some pretty bumpy clouds.

Drinks were served and I watched three episodes of Two and A Half Men that I had only watched a few hundred times before.

The food was perfectly edible and not as blurry as it looks when it came.

That’s better. I devoured everything and anything else put in front of me. For some reason, I am always inexplicably ravenous on a flight.

We tinkered with the very cool dimmable windows for a bit.

I read for a bit and stared at the map too.

Louise bought some Back Opium (the perfume, not narcotics) and some Pringles. I was more pleased with one of those as you can imagine.

I watched two episodes of The Middle and some Big Bang Theory. By this point we were ninety minutes out and for the rest of the flight we listened to the family behind us argue constantly until landing.

Landing at Melbourne is a test of nerve for a nervy flyer like Louise as it is all sea until almost the last minute but the pilot managed and we landed on time. After the Premium elite de-planed we were the first of the plebs off, being in row 10. It’s just a short walk to the one and only baggage carousel and we had a bit of a wait for our cases being one of the last into immigration. The wait was only ten minutes though.

Another few steps to the car hire desks and with most Tui folks I guess being on packages, the majority went out to the coaches leaving the car hire queue non-existent and I was served immediately. I was just about to be handed the keys to some SUV when a manager walked behind my server and said “We have a Jeep Wrangler, if Sir would prefer?”

Well “Sir” did prefer and we walked over to the car park to be delighted by it. Here it is a short time in the future at our hotel.

We were delighted to be hit by that Florida heat as we left the building. It felt nice to be home.

Very pleased with the car and the ease of which we had got from the plane to it (Melbourne is very straightforward and easy compared to MCO), we spent a few minutes getting sorted in the car, connecting my phone to Car Play and setting the sat nav off and then we were away. The estimated journey time was two hours, which seemed odd as when I’d looked at it back home it had been ninety minutes but we would soon discover why.

For now, the mood was glorious and as I connected to one of my Spotify playlists, Happiness by McFly came on, and full of the “just arrived” joy, a lovely car and excellent weather we drove along on a cloud of loveliness and indeed Happiness.

It took a little while to make it out of Melbourne and onto the I95 (this road is horrible and makes the I4 look like a dream) and begin our long journey down south. The sat nav said go straight on for 120 miles, so we did.

The first hour was without incident and we were making good progress. Then, quickly, the rain came. We could see the other side of the I95 backed up coming towards us and above that queue a horrible grey hazy mess of stuff that did not look good.

What followed was one of the most stressful and unenjoyable forty minutes of my life, and I’ve had an office job since I was 17! These were some of the worst conditions I have ever driven in, and I’ve been through a good few Flordia downpours in a car.

This was literally the calm before the storm.

Once the rain started, I didn’t blink for forty minutes. My nails were dug deep into the steering wheel and if Louise spoke to me I could not afford the loss of concentration to even listen. I was glued to the two red dots in front of me that I hoped were a vehicle.

It felt endless and every time I thought it couldn’t get worse, it did. The wipers were just spreading water around the windscreen and we did not go above 20mph for a long time. What a storm!

We finally got some respite with about twenty miles to go and I could exhale at last. When we finally did arrive at our hotel it felt like every minute of the more than two hours it took us to get there.

We checked in around 7.20pm and after a little bit of unpacking and organising we were out looking for food.

This was the huge church right across from the hotel entrance.

We stood here waiting for our recently ordered Lyft. I had fired up the map and simply chosen the closest eatery to our hotel.

This was a huge source of shame when our driver turned up, circled the block and dropped us off at the Delray Hideaway about 17 seconds later. Look, we had no idea of the geography and we were tired! I tipped well enough to make it an apology.

Delray Hideaway was, it seems, the locals place, that not many tourists seemed to get to, judging by the stares as we entered. It was very “basic” but the food was decent, quickly delivered and the service was good. We declined to play the bingo that was just about to start.

We had some Mozzarella sticks to start.

I had the Chicken Sandwich

and Louise the French Dip.

With a couple of wines and beers it was $90 including tip.

Despite having been awake for far too long by now we had a short stroll around the place to get our bearings.

Even down to the beach which was a five minute stroll from our hotel.

On our way back, we spotted some lovely local homes.

Back at the hotel we found the second pool…..

and the whole place looked lovely in the dark.

Sadly we did not take photos of the room before we messed it up with some of our stuff but here you go….

Lounge

Dining Area (we did not use this)

Kitchen

Bathroom

For some reason, probably due to the mess we’d already made, I did not photograph the bedroom.

We fell into bed at 9.30 pm US time, 2.30am Uk time, having now been awake for 22 hours. The joys of travel day.

Sleep came quickly.

Till the next time…….

No Sleep Till Delray.

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

As predicted it’s been a busy old week, with work scaling new heights in ways to keep me occupied for more hours than it should. Battered, bruised and breathless I fell over the finishing line on Friday. My task now is to try and come down from the adrenaline and stress of work life so that I can actually relax and enjoy not working for a bit. Look, I know I’m not pulling babies from burning buildings but it has its moments.

As a parting gift, the UK graced us with 48 hours of continuous pouring rain, just to confirm that our decision to go somewhere else for a bit was correct. Also, how cold has it been? It’s ridiculous for late May.

Having eliminated the pouring water inside the house last week, this week it was (mainly) outside. The biggest challenge has been convincing the dogs to actually step foot outside to do their business. Hey and guess what? We have another leak. Whilst Emily was showering on Friday I could hear a dripping noise and yep water was coming down through the kitchen ceiling and probably has been for a while from time to time as there is a faint brown patch around that area. This house hates me. Well, that can wait till we get back and Emily can use our shower until then and the plumber can return, no doubt to cut more holes into this money pit.

Louise finished on Thursday and has been in prep mode since then. There will not be a shop unvisited before departure and somewhere in between all that and me doing two Pink gigs this weekend, we’ll leave the house at some point early on Tuesday with a couple of cases full of what we need, purely down to Louise getting us all packed on Saturday. The bank holiday Monday is well-timed.

Today I have to break my golden rule of never going to the tip at weekend as needs must so we do not leave Emily with a house full of rubbish that has somehow appeared asa result of holiday prep. No I don’t understand that either.

I should probably report in with you all on the weight loss front. It’s been a fairly strict and well-behaved four weeks and depending on what mood the scales are in of a morning it looks like I have shed something like 8 to 10 pounds. It sounds like a good effort but the injustice of that small number compared to the huge effort and time taken is heartbreaking. It also brings home how horrendous I must have looked at my heaviest as even in my new svelte form I will still be scaring folks on the beach.

Let’s see how the calorie sponge that is my body responds to ten days of holiday eating and you can all make your own bets as to whether all of that goes back on.

So we leave on Tuesday morning, so you can expect the usual “I’m at the airport” post on Facebook just to make you all feel happy for me. Right?

Anyway, we have a busy day ahead so I must leave you. As ever, feel free to follow the trip “live-ish” on the Mkingdon Facebook page and you can all look forward to another trip report about sitting in the sun most days followed by what we had for tea (dinner). You lucky, lucky folks.

Till the next time…..

Water Palaver

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

I know you will have been on the edges of your collective seats after my leak cliffhanger last week. Well, what a palaver it turned out to be.

A non-criminal plumber turned up on Tuesday after much encouragement/badgering and spent a good amount of time scouring our house for the source of this bloody water.

He ended up in all our loft spaces and then cutting holes out of floors and walls to understand what may be happening. He could see some wetness on some stonework through one of the holes he cut but no telltale signs of any burst pipes.

After quite some time he left, giving me the number of a roofer he recommended as he strongly suspected it was coming from the roof above where we were seeing signs of water.

Frustrated, we sat down to dinner (tea) and after that, I thought I would go and try to dry out the wet stonework that had been spotted through the aforementioned hole. I spent a good ten minutes drying stuff out with Louise’s hairdryer (you may be shocked to learn I do not possess one) and then sticking my phone camera through our new hole and videoing what it could see. All of a sudden I spied some fresh-looking water and stretched my arm as far as it would go to video the evidence.

Yep, we had a leaky pipe.

The relief was palpable as I knew that any faffing up on the roof would take weeks and probably not definitively solve anything. I messaged the plumber who said he’d be back the next day to fix it by cutting yet another hole in another section of wall to get to it.

The quality of the camera work is dreadful but I was filming blind with my arm through a hole up to the shoulder, whilst lying on my side.

How a pipe suddenly starts leaking like that when nothing has been able to touch it since it was installed probably decades ago I had no idea, but I feel both incredibly unlucky that this happened to us, but at the same time so fortunate that we happened to cut a hole in a wall in just the right place to eventually allow me to see it.

The plumber did not make it back to us until Thursday, and after giving us another hole in another wall, he replaced the offending pipe. It had a tiny pinprick of a hole in it. He told me that lime in mortar will literally eat copper and the pipes should have been insulated/covered. He replaced it with plastic ones to avoid a repeat. No doubt this won’t be the last time a small prick causes untold carnage and expense.

Now, I just hope all the water damage internally will dry out alright and allow us to get it back to as it was, as well as having to repair all the bloody holes in our walls. This is the current state of play at our house…..

In more pleasant news, Wednesday saw Dougie turn 2. He was spoilt appropriately by everyone and we (me, Louise, Emily, my Mum, Tom, Rebecca, Freddie, Dougie and Tom’s Mum) went out for a meal on Wednesday night to celebrate.

We had a nice meal, the obligatory bad singing, and good cake in what looks like an abandoned restaurant, but there were other folks dining around us.

So now I enter my last week at work before a holiday. It’s always a difficult one, not least as it lasts for about three years, but also as I am desperately trying to prepare my colleagues for the gaping void my absence will no doubt leave, hoping they can somehow manage without me.

Then once that is done there is the chaos and carnage of getting stuff into cases, prepping the house for Emily and Mikey and making sure our zoo has all they need to be kept in the manner to which they have become accustomed. I’m always happy to be at the airport with all that done.

Here’s to a week without further house-based drama, smooth sailing on the holiday prep front and some kind of miraculous three-stone weight loss thrown in for good measure.

Till the next time…..

Feeling Stressed

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

I was inundated with a comment recently asking if I still did the Mustard thing. That isn’t some deviant food-based kink, but instead, a band that I have played bass guitar in for almost a decade now. I do and we’ve also started a Pink tribute, so now I gig in both lineups.

For someone of my incredibly average musical abilities, I enjoy playing live and just about manage to keep up with the other members who are much more talented than I am.

Despite playing quite a few gigs each year, I rarely go to any. The reason for that is that most of my gigs are on the nights I would typically go to watch one, but also, it has to be a special gig to tempt me into the palaver of all the traffic, parking and expense involved now in seeing a “proper famous band” at a large venue. I’m not sure The Feeling qualifies as one of those, but the palaver was still decent. When you almost spend as much time getting out of the car park as you did at the gig something isn’t quite right.

I could at this point, spend a while asking how Disney can disperse tens of thousands of vehicles out of one exit seamlessly and yet a multi-story in Manchester is in gridlock from 10.30 till midnight. I won’t do that though.

Despite all those trepidations, Louise and I made the effort last night. We went to watch The Feeling at the Albert Halls in Manchester. I will include a humble brag at this point, that I too have played that venue with Mustard. Granted it was a Thursday night at some Architects awards bash and the audience was a little less interested in us, but still I’m claiming it. It is genuinely awesome to play venues like that as they have incredible gear and top professional sound guys who make you sound fantastic and take away all the stress.

Anyway, The Feeling is a band that both Louise and I really like. They are the perfect blend of catchy pop tunes, great musicianship and consistency. It was a great gig.

Away from Rock ‘n roll, I have continued to eat less than I would normally and have shed a pound or so more. If I keep this up over the next two weeks I should have bought enough runway to eat what I like on my hols so that I return only as fat as I was a few weeks ago, staring down the barrel of having to lose it all over again at some point.

I am cursed with a metabolism so slow it is a wonder I continue to exist and I only have to look at food on the internet and I put weight on. It is a constant struggle and if I were to ever meet a Genie and get three wishes, one of mine would be to be able to eat whatever I liked but remain at my ideal BMI, which I don’t think I have ever been in all my years on this planet.

Anyway, we’ll be going away whatever weight I am and the cases are out now and safely stowed in a spare room until the packing commences whenever Louise gets around to it. I shall be summoned to try on and select the stuff I want to take and we’ll both say we won’t take a lot of stuff but inevitably overpack and carry a load of clothes both ways over the Atlantic having not worn them.

I am of course ready for the break. I always say that and of course were we not lucky enough to be able to have this booked I am sure I would survive without it, but some time away from the stresses of daily life will be lovely.

The latest thing that I was over-anxious about was a leak in our house last week. Louise spotted a wall in the utility looking damp and after a lot of moving stuff around and swearing, it looked like the outside tap on the other side of the wall must be leaking within the cavity between the stonework and the internal wall.

There was no chance of me getting to it and of course there was no isolation switch fitted on that outside tap so we sat with the water off completely for most of Friday waiting for the plumber to come and attend to what was a quick job for anyone less incompetent. When you need someone to come out quickly, the quality of their work is often the sacrifice and whilst he did indeed disconnect the suspected pipe, charging me what he did for literally 30 seconds of work upset me both financially and from the point of view that was I even slightly competent, I could have done that myself. Anywho, he will never darken our door again.

On Saturday I noticed that the wall was still wet and indeed the issue was not resolved. I spent most of the morning trying to diagnose what the hell was happening, whilst messaging our regular plumber who has agreed to come out asap next week to have a look. The problem may be located in the ceiling above it. These things stress me out more than I can tell you, as my brain defaults to worst-case scenario mode and I have visions of re-plastering and endless damage as a result of any fix, not to mention the expense. These fears are always based on a complete lack of knowledge of these matters and at times like these I miss my Dad’s advice and personal black book of any tradesman you could ever require. He had golfed with every trade on the planet.

As you will know from my well-documented roof struggles a few months ago, nothing stresses me out more than water getting into the house where it shouldn’t be. By the way, in the end, I went up on the roof (I was terrified) and fixed the issue. Well, water is no longer coming in. How permanent that fix will be, who knows.

Hopefully, I will bring you a post about how silly I was to be worrying about it all next week.

Enjoy the sun.

Till the next time…….

I Predict A Diet

by mkingdon, posted in Walt Disney World

When it comes to Disney, especially with a trip on the cards, there is little I like to do more than to think about scenarios that may or may not happen that will have hardly any impact on my life in the long term. Things like not getting specific ADRs or the parks being too busy or that those FOMO perks that Disney gives to on-site guests will make our off-site trip a disaster. It’s all part of the fun. For example, it seems off-site scum can only start to book their Genie+ Lightning Lanes from park opening, not 7am like the honoured on-site types. A bit petty Disney if you ask me. If you’re going to do this, then you need to come up with some affordable accommodation options for larger parties.

The only thing I enjoy more is whinging about Genie+ but I guess I’m not alone there.

Another fun part of this countdown process is to make completely unsubstantiated guesses based on zero knowledge about what Disney may or may not do in the future.

Take for example….

Soon, in Summer 2024, the new version of Splash Mountain will open. Tiana’s ride (not the official title) will be welcome for a couple of reasons.

  1. Having such a major ride down for so long just means there are fewer things to spread the people around and all the other attractions get busier. (This is the entire issue with Hollywood Studios right now. Not enough things for too many people to do, but that’s a whole other blog post.)
  2. It may draw some folks away from the likes of Seven Dwarves at rope drop and give other folks a fairer chance to ride it without paying extra or waiting for 90 minutes.

Emily and I were pondering if Tiana’s ride would be added to the list of individual lightning lane attractions in Magic Kingdom. There is much to think about.

It seems that MK is currently the only park with more than one such attraction…

Epcot – Guardians

Hollywood Studios – Rise of the Resistance

Animal Kingdom – Flights of Passage

Magic Kingdom – Tron and Seven Dwarves

So adding a third would be bordering on a piss take in my view. The options seem to be to take that piss and add a third which would be punitive and very unpopular, leave Tiana’s ride as Splash was, as part of the (still paid for and shite) Genie+ service, or add it to the Individual LL list and drop one of the others.

Personally, I think they will leave Tiana as Splash was. If they were to make it one of the two, then which of the existing ones would they drop?

Tron is too new surely and Seven Dwarves is one of the most popular and slowest loading rides on property, so that could just be carnage.

As ever, this thought process will be a complete waste of time because the last time I correctly predicted what Disney would do next I had a fringe.

I’d be interested in your views of course.

Speaking of change and new rides. Due to some clickbait-style headline writing by some other Disney-related blog (not that you read any others of course), there were a couple of minutes late last week when it seemed like Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin was going to be replaced by a Wreck-It Ralph attraction. A quick scan of the article once they had my very valuable click, confirmed that this was in Tokyo. Let’s hope that nonsense idea never darkens Florida’s door.

The other thing I have done in the last few days is begin to firm up some dining plans. We are months from ADR booking but I did try out the new system where you can put in a range of dates for a restaurant and see all the ADRs available. That is excellent!

My strategy for our eating on this trip is to focus on off-site places as much as possible with just a smattering of on-site ADRs. Sure, cost is a consideration. Feeding six folks multiple times a day on property is a pricey hobby, but we also love a lot of off-site places.

So I am adding an eatery of choice for each day and if it so happens that on one of those days we don’t want to leave the parks or that doesn’t fit with our plans, we will just try to find somewhere there and then via the app. We do want to try and get ADRs for a few such as Garden Grill, Rodeo Roundup, Space 220 (yeah right) and probably one character meal.

On that note, has anyone done BR77 Steakhouse on the 192. It’s a Brazillian Steakhouse type place it seems and I was thinking of giving it a try. Other than that, our list is the usual suspects.

All of this theme park talk ignores the fact that we are now just four weeks away from our absolutely no theme park trip at the end of May, to Delray Beach. When we called in to see my Mum last week she asked if we had the cases out yet. Even for me, five weeks out was a bit early, but it won’t be long.

The only prep required now for that one is to get some bloody weight off. My “Fat Elvis” period has been dragging on for a while now and it seems these days the only thing that can motivate me to get some lard off is a trip overseas. Let’s see how that goes over the coming weeks. The hardest part for me is starting. Once I begin to see any sort of result, I can stick at it, but as the years go by, it just becomes harder and harder to get the ball rolling.

If only everything in life were as easy as getting fat.

Till the next time…..

A Swift Change?

by mkingdon, posted in Walt Disney World

One of the criticisms of holidaying in the same place for a few decades, both spoken and probably mainly unspoken by folks I know, is “How can you keep going to the same place and doing the same things”.

Sure, I get that and there is some part of a trip to WDW specifically where that familiarity is part of the comfort and magical feelings that a certain type of traveller craves. A great deal of the joy and satisfaction I get is from showing this stuff to new people whether that be parents, kids or now grandkids.

My answer to that question is always the same. We do something different every time, mixed in with the warm glow of the familiar. We’ve done on-site, off-site, Vero, Naples, The Keys, Siesta Key and a load of other stuff I have no doubt forgotten. I guess the best answer is, that I’ve been going since 1980 and still haven’t come close to “doing everything” and never will.

Also of course things change regularly whether we may want it to or not. Parks get new stuff and indeed new parks happen too. We still, for example, haven’t done Aquatica, Volcano Bay or Legoland.

Anyway, flying that flag of trying something for the first time this week is Emily, who despite her very real fear of the whole event, has booked Halloween Horror Nights for her trip in September. There had been much debate, pondering and a little dithering, but my advice was you’d be daft not to. You never know if you’ll get the chance again and all things (within reason) should be tried once.

So good on Emily for giving it a shot. Technically we could also do it on our October trip but with a six-year-old and two-year-old with us that really isn’t practical and nobody is ready for the huge amount of screaming that would ensue from Louise for sure, but also me.

I have been to a Halloween event at DLP some years ago, which had some of the same elements I think, but from the vlogs I have seen of HHN, it was nowhere near as intense.

If the houses prove to be too terrifying I suggested there is always the option of taking the chance to do some rides whilst the queues are (I assume) short, so what is not to like.

For those with experience of this event, your comments, advice and feedback are welcome.

Having said that we always do something new, eateries aside, it feels like our October trip may not see that happen. This trip is a good old-fashioned WDW-only (probably) event and will be all about doing all the stuff we love with the boys.

Sure Tiana’s ride may be open by then so that will be a first and perhaps just once I will be one of those folks who return from WDW and say “I actually lost weight with all that walking”!

Really, who are these people and what are they (not) eating!?

But it feels right that this is how it may turn out. I know in reality it hasn’t been that long since we did the parks but it feels that way, and this trip, as is always the case when you take kids with you, will inevitably involve a load of firsts for them and I can’t wait.

Freddie is very much looking forward to being able to ride pretty much anything, certainly on Disney property. He is very tall for his age and the one in his sights is Rock n Rollercoaster as it is the only thing at WDW that goes upside down. Right now it is closed for refurbishment but it does seem to be promising to re-open in Summer 2024 so hopefully, we’ll be OK.

Rumours abound about whether the theming will change from Aerosmith to something else. I get that Aerosmith aren’t exactly relevant to anyone born in the last few decades so a change makes sense. I don’t know if they will move away from the band idea, but one rumour doing the rounds is that Queen will replace them.

For me, this makes no sense. They are no longer a band, mainly as the main man has been dead for decades and they are barely any more relevant to younger folks than Aerosmith. I do struggle to think of a band big enough to resonate with the older generations yet still be relevant to today’s music scene.

If anyone suggests Coldplay I will burn the ride down.

If any act makes any kind of sense it would be Taylor Swift. She is, love her or hate her, the biggest act on the planet right now, is young enough to have some career longevity to come and she already has a relationship with Disney, with her Eras tour thing showing on Disney+.

I’m not sure her music would have the same adrenaline-fueled effect that Walk This Way has as you are catapulted forward to start the ride, but it would permanently make the queues for the ride three hours as the Swifties descended upon it. Could they still call it Rock n Rollercoaster with a Swift theme? I don’t think so.

What say you? Can anyone see a B*Witched-themed ride working? I’d be interested in your suggestions so that I can let Bob Iger know. He’s a loyal reader as you know.

Till the next time…..

Weather To Plan

by mkingdon, posted in Walt Disney World

If ever there was a week to undermine any activity from the UK Tourist Board, then this must have been it. I don’t know about your neck of the woods, but the weather here was beyond atrocious and only increased my desire and anticipation to be somewhere warm. Insult was added to injury as we supposed to entering the time of year when you may feel justified in believing that the worst of the bleak winter is over.

What feels like 412th named storm of recent times battered us with sideways rain and annoyingly strong winds meaning that I was outside at the back of the house on multiple occasions, tethering down garden furniture that we’ve had for three years and hardly used because the weather here is always so shit.

There is a part of me that is beginning to think I have personally angered the weather gods, as even when we have managed to escape to Florida in recent times, we have enjoyed less than stellar conditions there too.

I am sure that is all about to change when we land in Melbourne at the end of May. It’s been some time since we were in Florida in their summer time, so I am very much up for a bit of sunburn and moaning about it being too hot.

Having had that whinge, as I write this I am sat with the conservatory door open with dry conditions outside. However, this is very much the exception.

You might point out that we have moved to the edge of the Lancashire moors and we need to expect biblical weather more often than not, but I don’t think we are alone in experiencing this nonsense. Speaking of which it is now over three years since we moved to this house. I’m sure for anyone who cares and/or remembers, it feels like time has whizzed by since my weekly posts were mainly moaning about solicitors and the snail-like progress of our move.

Anyway, the UK’s insistence on having bobbins weather is certainly increasing our desire not to be here and it is heightening our anticipation for our sun, sea and sand holiday in about six weeks time.

Looking ahead to that next trip in May, you may sympathise that it feels odd not to have anything of note to plan. What sort of holiday is that right? The uplifting effect of having a holiday booked is increased when there is pleasant stuff to plan and arrange. I think we all know that.

Well, with some determination, some planning activities can be found. I don’t know if anyone else uses this feature or whether I am just the last person on the planet to do so, but I’ve been using the Want To Go thing on Google maps to identify potential eateries (what else) around Delray Beach.

Highlighted on the below is our accommodation, and all the little red pins are restaurants that look of interest that I have added to my “want to go” list.

We probably won’t get to them all but it doesn’t hurt to have options right?

I am very encouraged that many of those places on this eatery-filled boulevard have great reviews and for foodies (fatties) like us, this is a utopian situation. Selecting our restaurant of choice shall be the main activity of our inactive days on the beach or by the pool.

I have invested in a small Amazon Fire tablet to feed my holiday time need to read. In November, we had to do several shopping trips as I kept running out of reading material, so now with my little electronic friend, I shall have an endless supply of holiday page-turners.

Before we do leave I think I’ll also have a look for some places of interest within driving distance, mainly as I don’t want to have paid for a hire car to not use it! The area is new to use so it would be good to explore the likes of West Palm Beach and maybe even as far afield as Miami could be worth a day trip. I quite fancy going to visit Hollywood (not the one in California) as that is where we stayed on our very first trip to the States in 1980. I haven’t changed a bit since then so I am sure it hasn’t either.

See, no planning to be done at all.

Till the next time….

More Questions Than Answers.

by mkingdon, posted in Walt Disney World

Another week gone and another week of seemingly endless posts on Facebook WDW groups of crowds that look biblical in proportion. Sure, it’s Spring Break, and for balance, there were some posts and blog posts about a really quiet week in the parks last month but overall, I have to say I am very trepidacious about our trip in October.

Nothing ruins a trip like overly busy parks and not being able to get on anything.

Having been out of the loop park-wise for some time, or at least it feels like I have, what is going on?

Is it social media over-egging the issue? Are we still in some kind of post-pandemic bounce back or have we reached a point where the existing parks just cannot accommodate the number of guests attending? Are there actually more guests and Genie+ (or some other factor) is playing a part in creating longer lines from that same number?

A minute’s worth of research suggests that the latter or something like it may be the case.

Thanks to queue-times.com for the graph.

Pre-pandemic attendance at MK was higher and this is replicated at all four parks, with only DHS almost back to pre-Covid attendance. Of course, we don’t yet have 2023 or 2024 data so that may show a sudden spike?

Are there still shortages of CMs? Are there other factors I am not considering (there definitely will be!).

So what is going so wrong in the parks that wait times of over an hour for most rides are the norm? Do Disney care? Is that bad for business or not?

I recognise I am asking lots of questions and not many answers. My opinion is tainted by my hatred of Genie+ I guess. Sure, I really resent the extra money it requires but it just doesn’t look to be working as well as the old system. We’ve had good days using it, with an afternoon/evening stacked with ride after ride despite the park being busy but is that causing a lot of pain in the standby lines? Why aren’t Disney offering virtual queues for all rides and attractions so guests can be free to roam the park spending money?

There has been a clamour for a fifth gate for almost as long as I can remember and with Universal taking the bull by the horns and opening new stuff, are we at a point where Disney need to or will respond?

Will they be reluctant to do so when seemingly at war with the state governor who seems to be intent on biting the hand that feeds him?

If overall attendance is still not back to 2019 levels will they want to create a fifth park or just continue to expand what they have? There has been talk of a significant MK expansion recently.

As well as offering more capacity it would also deliver a draw to get guests to return. Nothing mobilises the Disney faithful like a new thing. There are four-hour queues for a popcorn bucket. Add to that the benefit to guests of spreading themselves out over five parks and not four, and the whole experience may improve and return visits would increase perhaps.

If nothing else, the Disney vlogging community would definitely thank them!

Of course, that new park brings a lot of investment and cost to build and run it but I suspect Disney are not short of a few bob.

As we are now some 30 years since WDW opened a new park it feels like time to do so, and as ever the healthy competition of Universal being in Florida and doing just that may be the catalyst for Disney to finally announce this.

As you know, I have a direct line to Bob Iger, so I will be passing on my thoughts to him via this post. He is always the first to read them as you know.

Ultimately, I am looking to be reassured that we won’t be pissing away thousands of quid in October to stare at the app and not see a wait time under 90 minutes. If Bob could pull his finger out and announce and build that fifth gate by then that would be lovely.

Till the next time….