theDIBB - Third times a charm May 2022

Pre Travel day and travel day

Hey everyone, we've been back over a month now. We had a fantastic time, despite it being busier than we are use too and having to get to grips with Genie + overall it was just an amazing holiday. Its taken me a while to get to writing my first day but finally here it is.

Im sorry for the lack of photos today :erm:

Pre travel day

The Pre travel day wasn't anything too exciting. Ryan stayed home and prepared the last bits while I went to work as I hate wasting a days holiday. I finished at 4pm and got home ready for us to take our Covid tests. This doesn't really have any relevance to anyone now as this was scrapped when we got back but it was easily enough. We paid for the supervised LFT so we booked an appointment and joined a Skype waiting room ready for someone to take our call. We both did it in separate rooms on separate calls but I think we could have done it together. The lady went through the test, step by step before telling me to write a code, the date and time on my test and then the call ended. The 15 minute wait was agonising because everything relied on these two tests. By the fact I'm writing this trip report you’ll have guessed they were both negative thank goodness. The stress didn't stop there though as we would have to test later in the holiday for the cruise but thats another story. Once the 15 minutes were up we had to take a photo of the negative test next to our passports before uploading them to this website. The results came back an hour later while we were already travelling.

With the tests done we packed up our last bits and put everything into the car ready to travel up to London for the evening. We were staying at Ryan's dads the night before and he was giving us a lift to the airport the following day. The travel there was easy enough. We arrived around 9pm, chilled out for a bit ready for the following day.

Travel day

We woke up around 7am to check our bags one last time and get ready to leave. Washed, showered and dressed we packed our suitcases into the car and left for the airport at 8am. The journey took around 40 minutes due to the traffic and by the time we had been dropped off and into the airport it was 8:50am.
We went straight to bag drop to drop the bags off. Mine was 17kg because I packed light and Ryan's was 19kg. Once we had shown the crew member our verifly app we headed off to security. We were though security by 9:10am which was much quicker than we expected. With the first part of the stress done we went to meet our friends Jackie and Andy, who we would be sharing the villa with.

We sat down for breakfast. Ryan had a full english breakfast and a pint… yes at 9:30am. its 5 o clock somewhere right? yeah too early for me too but hey he's on holiday. I had eggs benedict and an apple juice. The two meals came to £30. A tad on the expensive side but its only going to get worse when we get to Disney. We chatted for a while discussing our plans and what we were looking forward too before asking for the bill and finishing up at 10:50am.

From here we went to the pharmacy to get a few last minute bits like hand wipes and sanitiser. I was obsessed with wiping everything and anything as I knew we all had to take another test in a few days time. We sat in a seating area next to the pharmacy waiting for boarding.

We boarded around 11:30am and it all happened very smoothly. We were sat on a three seater but we didn't have a single person next to us and had some how managed seats opposite our friends without requesting them, bonus. The first flight was to Dublin and lasted around 55 minutes before landing at 1:10pm.

We were at the back of the plane so took us a little while to get off. Once we were off we headed through to security. Ryan got pulled to the side for extra searches and I didn't want to be left alone so I caught up with Jackie and Andy and went through with them. Once we had Ryan back we headed to the final part where they take your finger prints and make you feel completely paranoid about the fact your going on holiday. We were asked the usual question and away we go. We decided against getting any food as we only had around 40 minutes before boarding was meant to happen so we sat in a little seating area until it was boarding time once again.

The next boarding started and I was in trouble for choosing the latest time possible to use the rest rooms, oops. We boarded at 3:10pm however once everyone was seated they informed us there was a issue with some of the technology and they would need to reset something. We ended up waiting an hour before we actually took off. We were sat in the middle row and again no-one sat with us so once we had taken off Ryan made me move to the far off seat so we could spread out… that or he just didn't want to spend the next 8 hours with me.

We had both downloaded things on our phones to watch so we both cracked on with that, Ryan was watching Ozark and I've been watching Greys Anatomy so I watched that. The choices on the tv weren't bad and I could have found something to watch quite easily but we were both excited to watch our own programmes. Around 45 minutes after take off we were given drinks and snacks which we both had a coke and the sour cream pretzels which are just too good. Neither off us took our headphones out to talk with the snacks.

 Dinner came round shortly after which was a pasta Bolognese which was actually really nice. I am that weirdo that loves plane food though. It came with a honey mustard pasta which was pretty bland to be honest and a slice of sourdough. For pudding it was a strawberry shortcake which was just ok but not sweet enough for me. Tea and coffee was also served at this time.

I start to lose track of my timings because I generally drift in and out of sleep when I'm on planes but at some point we were given a small pot of ice cream. I dont normally take the ice cream when its offered but this was really delicious. It was vanilla but it was super creamy.

I remember looking at my phone at 9:40pm and thinking jeez we still have 2 hours 40 left.

The rest of the flight was uneventful and we landed on time. As we had been through security in Dublin we went straight through to collect our bags which was a weird feeling. You come straight off the plane and onto the monorail.

We waited around 15 minutes for our bags before heading downstairs to the car hire place. We hadn't hired a car due to costs but Jackie and Andy had. There was a wait for this queue so we did wait here 15/20 minute. Ryan asked how much it would be to go onto their car hire and they allowed it for free! Which meant he was able to have a go driving around when he wanted too.

We headed over to pick the car before started the journey to the villa. We took a route which allowed us to drive under the Walt Disney World sign so we could have our first look at Disney. We stopped off at CVS to grab some drinks and then into Arby's next door for some food. I had a buffalo wing slider and curly fries and Ryan had a wrap and curly fires with a drink each which cost $15. We both really enjoyed this as a quick meal. I'd have liked to try this again further along in the holiday but there just wasn't time.

We took the food back to the villa. We sat around the pool outside to eat our food before heading inside to unpack our suitcases. Once we were unpacked we sat in the front room and watched a bit of Tim Rracker before finally going to bed 11pm local time. It had been a extremely long day and we were so happy to finally be there after waiting for some many years for this trip to come around. Sorry for the lack of photos on this day but there will be more as the days go on! Thank you for reading!

Tomorrow - A day in Celebration and Disney Springs