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Orlando Day 5

Day 5 – Saturday 27th November

To Epcot or to not Epcot?

Today was planned to be a day at Epcot but frankly, we were all shattered. Having looked at our schedule, we had already decided not to go to Animal Kingdom again, which was scheduled for Sunday, so we decided on a lie in and lazy day today, and moved Epcot back 24 hours to Sunday (which was still a GREEN day – GREEN = low crowds forecast).

So, following a lie in (Lucy woke up at 10) we got ready and went out for breakfast. With Lucy & Emma still being young it isn’t worth buying them a full meal so we prefer to go to buffet restaurants. This morning we went to Golden Corral which we had heard a lot of good things about. Literally, they had everything on the buffet. Bearing in mind it was breakfast they had all of the usual American breakfasts available at the buffet but also pies, chips, cakes, joints of meat etc..... It was ridiculous really but that didn’t stop me

It’s amazing what people will eat first thing in the day when it’s freely available.

Following this we went to Downtown Disney, which is only a mile or so from our resort. For those of you that haven’t been, Downtown Disney is located on a lake, and has shops and restaurants surrounding it, as well as boat hire. On the way there we were overtaken by a DeLorean (the car used in Back to the Future). These are very rare and according to Wikipedia only about 6500 still exist. Co-incidentally.... I was wearing my Back to the Future t-shirt. Andrea grabbed a pic of it (see below).

Downtown Disney is famous for a few things, like the massive Lego shop, the biggest Disney shop in the world, Rainforest Cafe and the ‘Characters in Flight’ balloon ride (it is a hot balloon but is tethered and reaches 400 ft in altitude).

It was a lovely relaxing day that we all needed, ready for rope drop at Epcot tomorrow!

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Orlando Day 4

Day 4 – Friday 26th November

Princesses for the Day!

Today was a special day (although aren’t they all at Disneyworld?). We had two major treats today:

Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique

Dinner at Cinderella’s Royal Table

Both of these take place in the castle at Magic Kingdom. The first is Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique which is where little princesses go to get a makeover. We dressed them in their Belle dresses and headed in. Once they are seated a “Fairy Godmother in Waiting” does their hair and another one does makeup and nails. It was a fantastic experience for the girls and they looked amazing at the end of it. Once we left and were walking around the park they were getting lots of nice comments and smiles from other guests and the Cast Members were calling them “Princess”.

The next treat was dinner on the first floor of the castle as the guest of Cinderella. Once we checked in we had our photo taken with Cinderella then we were seated in the dining room. The food and setting was amazing and we were lucky to be seated at the window which gave us a great view of Fantasyland down below.

Once dinner commenced the other Disney Princesses made an appearance, starting with Snow White, then Sleeping Beauty and finally Belle. Each of them came to our table and spent time with the girls, signing their autograph books and posing for pictures.

Following ALL of this we spent a further couple of hours exploring the Magic Kingdom and went on a few rides. Eventually we left the park with 2 sleeping beauties laid in the double buggy.

A fantastic and very memorable day!

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Orlando Day 3

Day 3 – Thursday 25th November

Look at me I'm famous!

Today was a special day. We were given a free limo character breakfast because we booked our holiday so far in advance (June 2009). When we arrived at reception we couldn’t believe what we saw – a black Lincoln stretch limo! This took us to the 1900 Park Fayre restaurant at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort, the best hotel in Orlando.

The breakfast was great; we met Pooh, Tigger, Mary Poppins, Alice and the Mad Hatter. Each of them come to your table so you can have some time with them and they will sign the kids autograph books and pose for pictures.

After this the limo brought us back to our resort (with Lucy & Emma hanging out the window saying that they were famous) and we then drove to Animal Kingdom. Today is Thanksgiving in the US, and Animal Kingdom was the only park that we were going to consider going to because of the high crowd levels at the other parks. Animal Kingdom is OK, I suppose. We said last year that we wouldn’t go again but we did...... Crowd levels were mad! It isn’t the biggest park so it fills up quickly.

In the evening we went to the Polynesian Resort to meet up with some friends that we had met online whilst planning our trip, to sit on the resort’s beach and watch “Wishes” fireworks. This was a lovely way to spend Thanksgiving evening.

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Orlando Day 2

Wednesday 24th November

Hollywood Studios - "I am too British for this......"

Once again we were awake by 04.30 this morning, therefore we were at Hollywood Studios (HS) by 08.20. Already the lines were long and they opened the turnstyles at 08.30. I am not sure whether this is normal or because the lines were so large. Despite getting through and into the park we had to wait until 08.55 before we could advance towards our target..... Toy Story Mania.

Thousands of other people had the same idea! We were so boxed in we had to make our way via the little walkway in front of Brown Derby, which meant that we got all backed up because the majority of the crowd were advancing through the middle of the street and they had the flow, so joining the flow was difficult.

Honestly, I have never seen anything like this at a theme park. There were so many people heading in the same direction it was ridiculous. The Cast Member's (CM’s) were trying to keep order and tried to stop people from running but it wasn't working. I couldn't run because I was boxed in.

Typically, I tried to be polite, much to my detriment, by letting strollers and people through, especially if they wanted to cross my path. Whilst this is good manners, it did not help my cause and I started to fall behind. I could hear the sound of my Spanish friend in my head.... "stop being so English!"

There was good humour before the start, with everyone wishing each other good luck, but then it was a war! Anyway, by 09.10 I was getting my fastpasses (FP). The CM's at the machines do a great job in getting them quickly for you. Each has their own system. My CM would put the pass in, take out the FP, hover it over my hand which gave me about a second to grab it before going for the next pass. I think that if I hadn't have grabbed them at this point she would have dropped them.

So, by 09.10 the FP return was already 11.50 - 12.50, the regular line was at 90 minutes (!) and by 10.05 FP distribution had ended. At least we managed to get on and I scored 100,700 despite having to help Emma who couldn't aim it properly. After that we watched Beauty & The Beast, caught some characters and then got FP's for Little Mermaid this evening.

We headed back to the resort for rest before heading back to HS. We were REALLY lucky because as we entered HS a family that were leaving gave us their 4 fastpasses for Toy Story Mania so we got to go on that ride again! This time I was with Lucy and I scored 149,700. By now it was 6pm and time for the fabulous ‘Osbourne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Osborne_Family_Spectacle_of_Dancing_Lights) – these amazing lights can be seen in the photos I took.

Eventually we flaked out around 9pm so hopefully everyone gets a bit more sleep tonight!

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Orlando Day 1

Today is our first full day in Orlando and it’s the Magic Kingdom! Because of the time difference and our body clocks Andrea and I were up at 02.50 and by 03.30 we were all up and raring to go! So....... we have several hours to kill. Trying to keep the girls quiet was a nightmare so we got ready and headed off for a drive just after 6am as the sun rose.

We ended up at the Ponderosa Restaurant which was next to the hotel we stayed at last year – we were hoping to see Manny, who was our favourite waiter last year and sure enough, he was there! He is from Puerto Rico and always spoke Spanish to the girls, and it was nice that he remembered who they were.

After this we headed off to the Magic Kingdom. We have never been to the park before it opened and I was amazed at how busy it already was. I have always wanted to see ‘Rope Drop’ which is the opening ceremony when Mickey and the gang arrive on the railroad with the keys to the park. Following this we headed into the park and headed straight to Fantasyland, by-passing all of the masses that were gawping at everything on Main Street.

Because of this we managed to get onto ‘Dumbo’, ‘Peter Pan’ & ‘It’s a Small World’ with no wait...... the benefit of getting there early. After this we managed to get Lucy and Emma onto ‘Big Thunder Mountain’ which is the runaway mine train rollercoaster. It was the first time that the girls had been on a proper rollercoaster – Lucy loved it but Emma grabbed the safety bar for dear life!

By now it was lunchtime and time to head home to relax and have a nap. On the way out of the park we got our photos taken with Donald Duck and the girls met Princess Tiana, who is Disney’s newest Princess.

A fantastic day – tomorrow we are off to Hollywood Studios!

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Our Orlando holiday - a pre-trip report

There is nothing like planning a Disney holiday is there? Other holidays you just book, worry about what to pack the week before, turn up at the airport and go…… but not a Disney one!

We visited WDW in May 2009 – we had a fantastic time BUT….. the weather was a major letdown. The first few days were fine; hot and humid, and dry, but then it all went wrong. The heavens opened and we were deluged for the rest of the holiday. Whilst this didn’t ruin the trip it did make it very difficult as we were staying off site and did not have a car.

Within 2 weeks of returning we decided to book again, as we saw a great deal inc. a car. So, on the 18th June 2009, we rebooked…..

Cast: Me – 37 yr old dad, Andrea – 37 yr old mum, Lucy – 6 yr old & Emma – 4 yrs old. Our Disney experience is fairly extensive for such a young family (2 visits to WDW, 4 visits to Disneyland Resort Paris) so we are getting good at touring.

As you will gather, I am the planner. I am the one that has been drilling into the family the importance of getting up early each day, about getting breaks during the day and generally making sure that our plan is tailored as per TGM’s guidelines.

Now, we live in Spain. Although we are from England we moved here over 5 years ago, so…. Going for 2 weeks makes sense. We know that we are fortunate to be spending 2 weeks in Orlando and we will be making the most of it.

Believe it or not, it is actually much cheaper and much easier to fly to Orlando via London. I have no idea why it’s cheaper; perhaps it is because there is more competition on the London – Orlando route. It’s a heck of a lot easier too because we can night stop in London and then fly direct/non-stop to MCO the next day. If we were to fly from Spain then we would have to get to Madrid (5 hr drive) and then fly to the US stopping in Miami or NY. I really don’t fancy the idea of having to change planes on the same day especially with the girls.

So…… we fly to London on the 20th November and we will spend 1 night with family then 1 night at the Gatwick Hilton (which the girls LOVE as it is part of the airport) before flying to Orlando on the 22nd November for our 14 night holiday.

We considered staying onsite but to be honest, and you might recoil in horror at this, we prefer to stay offsite because it gives us a break from Disney while we are there. We like to eat locally rather than just at Disney and, as we are also visiting other Orlando attractions while we are there (Sea World, Kennedy etc….) this holiday isn’t going to be exclusively Disney anyway. Plus, there is a good saving to be made in staying offsite.

In May last year we spent 2 weeks at the Holiday Inn in Kissimmee. This was fine except the room was very cramped with the 4 of us in and because of the rain we couldn’t really spend a lot of time in the room. We therefore decided on looking for accommodation with full facilities such as laundry and a full kitchen. This is why we have chosen to stay at Cypress Pointe Resort in Lake Buena Vista.

It does seem to have been a long time since we were all together for a break so we are so looking forward to this trip. We can’t wait to get there, to see the looks on our girls faces, to chill out, to have fun and…… to meet some of the TGM’ers we have met here when we all get together on that Polynesian Resort beach on Thanksgiving to watch Wishes!

One of the bands from the Fiesta in Alfaz

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This one had a dance routine too!

This was the best one of the night

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A re-run of the Spanish football's team triumphant return to Madrid.

Alfaz Fiesta Queens

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Lucy has an x-ray

A couple of weeks ago someone dropped a heavy object onto Lucy's foot. Things were ok for a while then she realised that she was struggling with her gym class.

We took her for an x-ray which Lucy didn't enjoy, but there is no fracture, just an inflamation of a joint.

Doctors orders......? 2 weeks rest.

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