Tag: west wing

My Poor Sack

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

It’s fine. Really…don’t worry about it….I spend many minutes making my blog look all different and nobody makes a comment.

Image result for it's fine cry gif

Moving on…

For a four day one, last week did its best impression of a twelve day one, or was that just me? As much as I was all upbeat last week about being on the home straight of the countdown to our holiday, sometime during the endless monotony and despair of my working week, the unavoidable, and seemingly unending road to that particular event hit me like a car driven by a Geordie TV presenter. (Too soon?)

If I’m not careful this post could easily set off down mid-life crisis boulevard so I shall apply the hand brake to that train of thought, un-mix my metaphors and head in a different direction.

My West Wing addiction has continued, with season two now completed. When’s the new series out? Due to watching that, I have to confess that I was the one person in the UK who didn’t watch the Saturday Takeaway thing last night. I didn’t watch it last year either. It’s a bit weird I suppose for someone like me with such an obsession with the place, but I feel upset and offended by it. I don’t want people to know about Florida thank you very much. If the secret gets out I’ll be waiting an extra ten minutes for every ride. Stop, advertising it on prime time TV!

In a small yet potentially vital planning move, I made a strategic purchase last week. As part of the preparation for Freddie’s first time, I have assumed that there will be times when the bangs and crashes of WDW will be a little too much for a ten month old, especially if he’s having a kip. With that in mind, he now owns his very own set of noise cancelling headphones. The fireworks of an evening at the various parks are likely to upset a sleeping toddler so we’re hoping we can just slip these on and he’ll be oblivious.

They will also be getting a first live trial at Rebecca’s birthday party in a few weeks to defend his ears from the face melting awesomeness of Mustard.

There are some other milestones on the horizon but as nice as it is for them to arrive, they are things like paying the balance on the villa next month. Things get a little more exciting as we hit the summer and we need to get the theme park tickets sorted so that we are primed and ready for the securing of FastPasses. It is then, and only then that I can start to think about considering the plan done. There is always the chance that an unavailable FastPass may mean some juggling of days. The laminator will be idle until then. Of course, as soon as Freddie’s passport turns up, we will be ESTAing too.

I should also share with you some troubling news that I have kept hidden from you for almost a year now. Ryan is not in good health. If you don’t know who or what Ryan is, this next section will be very confusing to you.

He is currently resting in the spare room with a busted zip. I blame myself. I tried to get too much into him and for a sack of his years, it was all a bit much and it broke him.

There are two schools of thought in play.

  1. He’s had a good run and now, with a new generation of the family in tow, it could be a good time to introduce a new sack, Ryan’s daughter if you will, to our trips.
  2. We shall rebuild him.

I am hopeful that the second option will be possible. I need to seek out someone with the necessary skills to remove and replace the busted zipper and make him whole again. The girls are a big fan of option two, and were genuinely upset that Ryan may have travelled for the last time. I hope they feel the same way about me in years to come when my metaphorical zipper gets busted.

Should anyone be an expert in these matters and be willing to handle this delicate operation then do get in touch!

Till the next time…. Discount Disney Tickets

Birthdays and Books

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

Welcome to the shiny and new looking blog. A lick of paint and a shifting around of the furniture was overdue so here we are, looking all different.

From time to time, I do wonder what I’m doing with this blog. When I look around the internet at the Disney “blogging community” I seem to be doing pretty much everything wrong. It would appear that I should be an early thirties Mum of at least three kids with names like Gunner and Zeke and my profile should proclaim that I am a social media strategist, which I think means you use Instagram and have more than 100 followers.

Anyway, I do what I do, writing the same stuff for the same loyal folks and it’s all good. It seems I am missing the opportunity to “monetize” my blog and allow it to fund my lavish lifestyle, but all of that sounds like a load of work that I don’t have time for.

I clearly shouldn’t go looking at what other folks are up to with their blogs, it’s just a distraction. I’ve never really considered myself a Disney blogger in the sense that most seem to, as they don’t drone on about everyday stuff in the glorious way in which I can and do!

Speaking of funding my lavish lifestyle, Facebook memories reminded this week that it is now five years since I self-published my first lot of trip reports.

Book Image
Mkingdon’s Tales of Family, Food and Florida

It launched in a blaze of typos and spelling mistakes but God bless you, many of you bought it, promoted it and gave lovely feedback. Though some members of the Disney forum community may never believe it, the intention was not to make money from that exercise. You will notice that I have not retired to a beach front Florida location yet.

The idea at the time was to do a few things…

  1. Save my trip reports somewhere a little more permanent than a forum site on the internet that I had no control over
  2. Learn how to self-publish a book as I had been toying with the idea of writing a novel and I needed to know how hard/easy it would be to get that self-published. I did eventually write that novel, All This and More, so you should buy it immediately.
  3. Be discovered by someone willing to fund my permanent residence in WDW and write about it for loads of money.

As Meatloaf once said, two out of three ain’t bad.

Anyway, if you bought it, thank you. The fact that is has nearly eighty reviews, almost all of which are five stars, is both incredible and very much appreciated.

Elsewhere in my Facebook memories, it showed what I already knew. I have always been slimmer and younger than I am right at this moment, but also that this time of year is a cavalcade of family birthdays. My nephew George, my niece Sarah and of course Louise all have a birthday over the course of two days in late March.

We went out for a lovely meal on Wednesday to celebrate Louise’s. It was our first meal out with Freddie and he was great. He enthralled the waiting staff, played and laughed his way through the entire thing. This augers well for the many dining experiences planned for Florida later in the year.

I have been off work this week and it’s been glorious. I have done very little indeed and therefore it qualifies as glorious. I took the very deliberate decision to do as little as possible and force myself to relax. I do find that hard to be honest. My type A, get stuff done mentality is my enemy. I constantly battle my brain’s need to feel as if I have “done stuff” before I am allowed to do nothing. Doing nothing of course has included a tip run, some tidying, some admin tasks I’ve been putting off and walking the dogs, but beyond that I have been using the couch and streaming services in equal measure.

I have watched all of The Looming Towers on Amazon Prime, which was excellent and much better than I was expecting, and having had my “Whitehouse drama” taste buds whetted, I sought out the original in the form of The West Wing and I devoured Season 1 in a few days. Season 2 is going much the same way.

With Easter upon us, and Happy Chocolate Day to you all by the way, you never know, the weather may be turning , the nights getting lighter, and in terms of what is most important, we are entering the home straight in the run up to our holiday. It’s roughly twelve months since our last trip so by the time we go in August it will be exactly far too long between trips and I think we are all feeling it. Rebecca, having not been with us last time, is suffering more than most as I think this is the longest period in her life that she hasn’t set foot on WDW property.

Right, I’m waffling now, a symptom of me not planning out my blog posts, which is something else I’m not getting right. Next week, there will be a “haul post” where I walk you through everything I got from Asda in the big shop. This will be linked to my Pinterest, YouTube channel and Friends Reunited account. Please, click, share, follow, subscribe etc etc.

Oh, that reminds me. During last week I saw a news article telling of some waste of oxygen YouTube “star” who was arrested at WDW. Sigh, this intentionally provocative, self promoting, desperate for views and clicks shite is everything that is wrong with social media and YouTube specifically. There’s some belting content to be watched on there, but these types need to be stripped of their smartphones, broadband and human rights until they learn their lesson.

Till the next time…..