theDIBB - The Magic 3 do WDW again May 2022

Hello, we’re back for another trip report after an amazing two weeks in the Disney bubble in May/June 2022.

This was our second trip to the magic, our first was in October 2019 and we also visited DLP in February 2018 - links to those reports are in my signature.

Right, on with the report!

Travel Day

Obviously we’d passed our covid tests the day before - I really thought they’d have been scrapped by the time of our holiday but it turns out I was a few weeks early! So happy for all of you who don’t need to worry about them anymore, definitely made it tricky to really believe we were actually going on holiday.

Our taxi picked us up at 6.30am for a quick trip to Heathrow. Our driver was a super chatty Scot who didn’t let us out at the other end until he’d finished his story :pgig:
We had to pay the extra £5 that Heathrow now charges for drop offs, and we managed to ignore all the signs and go to the wrong Virgin counter but eventually we were checked in and through security.

It was all very fast thankfully, I’d been worried after all the horror stories in the news lately - our only delay was Heath getting a full pat down and swabbing, he clearly looks like a dodgy 10-year-old!

I’d originally booked the No.1 Lounge but they’d emailed saying we’d been moved to the Aspire Lounge as there was no space at the other one - well I don’t know if No.1 would’ve been better but Aspire was rubbish! The food and coffee was nasty, they’d blocked off loads of tables and there weren’t enough loos. We’ll definitely avoid it in the future.

The flight was itself was fine - felt long but all went smoothly. We were in premium but the new planes don’t have the upstairs bit anymore and it was definitely nicer up there.

Security at Orlando was super fast too - we were so lucky with this on the trip - and our bags appeared nice and early. At check in, a Virgin member of staff had warned us to be careful about picking up the right Disney suitcases because she’d seen so many before…no one else had any on our flight but she still made us feel like Disney sheep!
(Photo from our previous trip)

We got a Lyft to our home for the next two weeks, the Polynesian. It cost $43 including tip and we were there by 4pm.

We were in a first floor room in Rarotonga, which was really close to the pool, food and monorail.
The greeter was hilarious - he covered Heath in leis and was full of jokes - “Where are you from?” UK. “Yeah I’m fine” - a lovely welcome!

As it was only early evening, we obviously had to head to the Magic Kingdom and have our first ride on the monorail!

It was so amazing to see the castle and be back in the magic after such a crazy couple of years.

I have a rule that if I see a PhotoPass photographer without a queue, we’re getting photos - whether we’ve been up for 24 hours or not! So when I spotted one on Main Street, the boys were forced to get posing with me.

We’d pre-bought Genie+ (cost £293.58 for 3 of us for 14 days) and we’d been booking rides on the flight. However, it was obviously a really quiet day as we had to keep waiting for ride times to move late enough! We’d booked Jungle Cruise and Peter Pan by the time we arrived.

Peter Pan was our first ride of the holiday and the photos we’d just had taken on PhotoPass came through while we were walking in. I teared up as I looked at them…we’d actually made it to Disney World! We had 2 weeks of fun ahead and it was such a lovely feeling.

As Peter Pan was the ride we’d booked last, we could grab our next one once we’d tapped in and as it was quiet we just kept going straight from ride to ride - Big Thunder Mountain, then Pirates, followed by our earlier booking of Jungle Cruise and then Buzz before Mark put his foot down and insisted we go to bed as we were due to get up for rope drop at Hollywood Studios the following day. Good job one of us is sensible :d:

We came across one of the mini parades on our travels - loved these and so nice to have them just pop up suddenly.

We saw some forked lightening behind the castle which was awesome so we knew a storm was coming. We decided to grab dinner first and headed to Cosmic Ray’s.

We did a mobile order but it glitched and said we were there before our window even opened. I was stressed thinking we’d have to pay twice but when I explained it to a lovely CM there, she just said, “don’t worry, we’ll always take care of you here!” There it is, the Disney magic!
After we’d scoffed our nuggets, we got the monorail home, unpacked, showered and collapsed into bed to listen to the huge downpour going on outside.