We're Doing A Sequel!

[Guest]

We're Back By Popular Demand,
Come On Everyone Let's Strike Up The Band...
-The Muppets Most Wanted

Part 1 - The Beginning
Part 2 - Flights Booked & A Sneaky Holiday Extension!

Yep, only 375 Days To Go! So now seemed as good a time as any to start the pre trip!

We knew, probably before we even landed on Disney soil last time, that our first trip was never going to be our last and we've put down the deposit and booked our return for August/September 2015! I was trying to force myself to finish my trip report of our last trip before beginning this but I've kept my excitement pent up too long and it had to come out - will be finishing my last trippie ASAP though!

So, who's going?
Well, firstly there's Scott and I, who you may remember from our
previous trip.

We look like this...



Last time it was just us (and we'll definitely go just us many, many more times) but after we waved our amazing holiday in some of our friends' faces we pretty much had to agree to allow them to come on this trip, so this time we'll be joined by Andrew and Iain...



L-R Scott, Iain, Andrew.



This is them meeting the Bare Naked Ladies back in November, which they'd prefer I use but it's a bit blurry so thought I'd include the two!


We loved our last trip but it was almost a taster/introduction to Disney, we definitely weren't there long enough so this time we've currently got 17 nights booked, leaving on August 26th and returning September 12th. I would have preferred to go a tad later, but Iain's university starts back earlier than the rest of us so we had to come back slightly earlier (boo!) otherwise I'd have ideally booked to be there the first 17 nights in September. The rainy season will still be upon us but fingers crossed we won't be plagued too much, and most of my research says it SHOULD be calming down (whether it will or not will be a different story of course!) by the end of August in comparison to July (prays!)

At the current moment we have no flights booked as they're not available yet so no info there, but I'm hoping it might work out cheaper to fly a day or so before we're meant to / a day after we're meant to return so as to sneak an extra day on!

And where will we be spending those 17 nights? Well my friends, when going with the three Lion King/animals in general obsessives there was really only one option - Animal Kingdom Lodge.



I loved POFQ and would go back in a heartbeat, but I'm afraid the idea of being able to take a stuffed Simba out on the balcony and hold it above their heads whilst pretending to be Rafiki and singing Circle Of Life (yes, they know ALL the words, including the African bits) won out.

I am very excited to be staying in AKL btw, I realise I'm making this sound like it was entirely their choice and it wasn't, it's such an iconic Disney hotel that I definitely wanted to tick it off the list - but for anyone considering POFQ it's one I'd 100% return to, and quite a nice one if you are going as a couple. I'm a little bit anxious about how far out AKL is as well in terms of travelling to other parks but I suppose that just means we'll need to make sure we're definitely out of bed when the alarm says and not snoozing, trying to persuade the other to go in the shower first!

And with 17 nights in AKL comes 17 nights of free Disney Dining Plan. Oooooooh yes!

So far the credits have all been planned out on where they're being spent - just a few that we want to make sure to try this time round that we didn't last time are Beaches & Cream for The Kitchen Sink (okay, start the list with one you'll not use your credits for Rosie, way to go!), Kona Cafe for Tonga Toast breakfast (though we might go to Capt. Cook's and get this on the QS credits instead, we'll see!) the Coral Reef Restaurant, Garden Grill, Tepan Edo, Cali Grill and the OMG-I-WILL-GET-IT-BOOKED-THIS-TIME! Tomorrowland Terrace Dessert Party. There are many others on the list but those are the 'this is set in stone and we are doing these' options that didn't make the cut last time for one reason or another.

We also need to tick the frozen fantas off the list as we never had any last time! And I will be trying a grey goose slush, which again I never got round to last trip!

(Can you tell a lot of my planning focus goes into reading menus and salivating over the food we will be eating in 375 days?!)

Since we're staying on Disney it probably goes without saying we'll be doing Disney (duh!) - we didn't do water parks last time and I'm still not massively fussed but the boys will be checking out the two Disney water parks.

One thing I actually want to do is spend more time at the hotel this holiday - without feeling like we're compromising on park time of course - but obviously you pay a lot of money to stay on Disney and the hotels are beautiful and last time, although we kept saying how beautiful it was, it could have literally been a very convenient Holiday Inn as we literally just slept in it, so I definitely want to spend time appreciating the hotel we're paying a small fortune to stay at!

I'd also like to try and visit the Universal Park this time, mainly for Harry Potter! Not sure if we'll take the risk in case the rain stops us being able to get as much done per day at Disney but it's definitely something I'd like to do, and the guys would all like to see HP too as well as the Simpsons area - which looks incredible as well!

Since we're there longer again I'd like to do a little more off-site shopping, last time we did the Premium Outlets at Vineland Avenue, The Loop & The Florida Mall. This time I'd like to do them as well as the Premium Outlets at International Drive and the Mall of Millennia (which is fine with the boys as they want to go to The Cheesecake Factory given we're all massive Big Bang Theory fans!) In 2015 Monday 7th September is Labor Day and we know how Americans like to use any holiday as an excuse to do extra discounts for everything, so I'm hoping to go shopping over Labor Day/Labor Day Weekend and snag some cheeky extra money off at the outlets!

We're really not at all bothered about Discovery Cove/Seaworld/Busch Gradens etc, so it's really a case of Disney, possibly Universal and shopping.

Oh, and one more little thing...

MICKEY'S NOT SO SCARY HALLOWEEN PARTY!







Eep!

I literally said to Scott just after we'd booked that we'd probably miss the Halloween party start dates by a few days, but this year they're running from September 1st so presumably it will be the same next year. I know it probably won't feel very Halloween-y and it'll be really early (though that hopefully means a fairly quiet party with amazing photos) but I'm so excited to go!

I bought a Glinda dress from The Disney Store when Oz The Great and Powerful came out, so as long as I shift about two stone before we go (currently on Slimming World and fully expecting to shift the weight long before we actually go!) then my costume is sorted! I bought a tiara in Disney World the last time we went so I'll take that (or one of my many other tiaras, they're something I seem to collect despite not ever wearing any of them ) and then buy a wand once I'm there, there was a lovely one that was about $40 that was sold to match the tiaras so it'll go well and look a lot better than a plastic-y one. Though of course I could just get another one when we go back to Cinderella's Royal Table

Anyway... those are the people and the rough plans - and that's about enough to calm me down of my excess, shaking levels of excitement for now - going to head back to my actual trip report and finish that (hopefully) before updating. Though I have (already) been shopping, so that should be coming soon actually...



Next Up...
Part 2 - Flights Booked & A Sneaky Holiday Extension!

[AilsanotElsa]

Yeahhhh! Love reading your reports and trippies! Love your blog and youtube vids aswel! Xx

[Guest]

Yay, looking forward to reading along! need to catch up on your last trippie too

[Guest]

Originally Posted by AilsanotElsa

Yeahhhh! Love reading your reports and trippies! Love your blog and youtube vids aswel! Xx

See more...

Ahh thank you so much, that's so lovely of you to say xx

[Guest]

Originally Posted by Fluzz

Yay, looking forward to reading along! need to catch up on your last trippie too

See more...

Haha I really need to get on it and finish that one! xx

[Guest]

So, big news since last time - we now have our flights booked!

We booked with Thomas Cook and paid a lot more than I expected to pay with TC, but still less than half the price of the BA flights for our dates, so I'll try not to complain too much!



They worked out at £795.07 each - including the fact we paid to add on to have extra suitcases. We paid for 2 extra on the way out and 3 on the way back as we're planning to just shove the smallest extra case inside the largest one on the way out, since they'll be empty to use for all our shopping! The extra cases get charged at £50 per way so in total £250 of the £3180.28 is suitcase charges, but we just split it between us all equally as we'll all make use of the extra cases.

I had really been hoping for these super cheap bargain TC flights I hear about where they're under £600 each but it wasn't to be, but tbh I'm just glad we've booked them and have our flights set in stone now.

They're direct Glasgow - Orlando International Airport so that's bit of a bonus as we don't have to waste time with the stopover at London, meaning we leave at 11.45 on the way out and arrive in Orlando at 15.35, when last time we left the house at 4am Glasgow time and got to the hotel by about 7pm Orlando time thanks to having to go Glasgow-London then London-Orlando. I don't mind the stopover, but it's definitely more convenient without it in terms of getting there earlier and getting more out of your first day.




Anywayyyyyyy, now that we have the flights and the flight dates we have a little bit more exciting news! Thanks to TC only flying on certain dates we HAD (see, we HAD to, thanks to restrictions on dates, it wasn't like we wanted to or anything) to extend our little holiday a bit and now instead of going for 17 nights we're going for 21 nights!

I'm really pleased as it'll hopefully mean we can take everything at a slightly slower pace and if there are a few days or nights where shows get rained off or we can't get stuff done because of the rain it shouldn't be so much of an issue. it also means that if we have less on the to-do list for each day we won't need to be up and out the hotel room by 7am every morning just to get to parks on time for opening - I'm sure AKL is going to be amazing but for non morning persons like myself the travel time we'll need to allow for when factoring in what time to get up at to get to parks for rope drop or breakfasts isn't pleasant!

The other thing this means of course is that our dining plan is also extended - we now have 21 Snack Credits, 21 Quick Service Credits & 21 Table Service Credits each to play with! Ooh yes!

I'm hoping to lose some more weight before we go on this holiday but I'm sure after 3 weeks of DDP I'll come back with most of it back on!


We have 21 day park tickets which means since we're there for 22 days we can't go to the parks on our last day, but our flight home leaves at 16.35 and we're using our free Magical Express transfer so we'll probably be leaving the resort around 12noon anyway, so it wouldn't have been much of a morning in the parks anyway since we'd need to allow time to get back to collect our luggage and everything and make sure we were in plenty of time for the bus!


Anyway, in other small titbits of update info...


I signed up for a FairFX account and bought my first lot of dollars! Last trip we just used cash, and I'll still definitely be taking a few hundred dollars in cash for tips and buses and little things but having the card will be much easier and safer if anything happens! Not that the card bit is that important - it's more the excitement that I've got it and now can transfer money to start building up for spends when I'm away! Will be concentrating on paying the actual holiday off first - maybe a good idea! - but hopefully it'll mean I'll transfer over small amounts of money every so often that if I was changing it into cash I probably wouldn't actually bother going in to the shop with, that'll hopefully then add up!


I'm sorry this has been such a word heavy update, I'll be back soon with a more photo heavy update of the things I've bought for going so far!

[janewah]

Hello! We're going in December this year so I was enjoying your trippie and saw there was a sequel, great news!

Nice job on the flights, I know what you mean about feeling like you might not have got the "omg cheapest flights ever", but having them booked is a relief! Direct is definitely the way to go too, I flew direct from Glasgow the first time I went and it was great. We're going to do the suitcase-within-a-suitcase trick too.

You will LOVE AKL! It's a beautiful resort and to be honest I'm kind of spoiled for staying anywhere else now. Make sure you and your BF set aside a wee dinner date night just the two of you during the trip, Jiko is lovely. Don't worry about it being too far out, we had a few longer lies and never felt majorly rushed to fit everything in and we only had 2 weeks.
You'll get into the swing of the travel times (roughly AKL-AK 5 mins, AKL-MGM 10/15, AKL-Epcot 20, AKL-MK 25). We made the earlier starts for rope drops and breakfasts towards the beginning of the holiday because I am not a morning person and knew the exhaustion would set in!

Looking forward to the rest of your Xmas trippie and seeing your plans for next trip!

[Guest]

Originally Posted by janewah

Hello! We're going in December this year so I was enjoying your trippie and saw there was a sequel, great news!

Nice job on the flights, I know what you mean about feeling like you might not have got the "omg cheapest flights ever", but having them booked is a relief! Direct is definitely the way to go too, I flew direct from Glasgow the first time I went and it was great. We're going to do the suitcase-within-a-suitcase trick too.

You will LOVE AKL! It's a beautiful resort and to be honest I'm kind of spoiled for staying anywhere else now. Make sure you and your BF set aside a wee dinner date night just the two of you during the trip, Jiko is lovely. Don't worry about it being too far out, we had a few longer lies and never felt majorly rushed to fit everything in and we only had 2 weeks.
You'll get into the swing of the travel times (roughly AKL-AK 5 mins, AKL-MGM 10/15, AKL-Epcot 20, AKL-MK 25). We made the earlier starts for rope drops and breakfasts towards the beginning of the holiday because I am not a morning person and knew the exhaustion would set in!

Looking forward to the rest of your Xmas trippie and seeing your plans for next trip!

See more...

That's definitely less travelling time than I thought we'd be talking about so that's good news! I'm totally not a morning person either so I'll be checking off those rope drops the first few days of the holiday and then switching to lie ins! Would always MUCH rather do late nights than early mornings, though of course having a Disney park to go to does make getting out of bed that little bit easier

[axxxl]

Yaay I'm going to be following this now! I'm sooo jealous you're going for 21 nights. Tbh I probably would have booked it but I don't think we'd get the time off work! I'm off to read your other trippie now