A great big beautiful – Summer 2022

[Goldia]

Originally Posted by caitlinsmummy

Fab update as always Abby, I hope you manage to get a better rate for RPR, I kept checking ours but never managed to get it any cheaper. I was still bitter I couldn't get a HRH Club Room for the price we had in May 2020 which was cancelled ahhh well maybe one day. Definitely keep checking though!

I can't believe you've never been shopping at the outlets! they can be very hit and miss though. Caitlin and I got a few body sprays from Victoria Secrets for around $5 each, in the UK they're about £12 each so a good saving. We did get some clothes but not many. I'm sure you'll find some bargains though. Definitely make sure you download the Simon app and sign up to the free club and you can get extra discounts in some of the shops.

Mall At Millenia is more like Bluewater/Lakeside/Metrocentre, it has higher end shops in at normal prices (I got my necklace at the Mall at Millenia) that is where Cheesecake Factory is though xx

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Oh I know it's shameful that we've never been shopping in Orlando we have been to malls in both Boston and NYC. Didn't buy anything in Boston but it did have a cheesecake factory of course we went in - it would have been rude not to!

It's good to know mall at millennia is similar to our malls. I'm going to look at the Simons app today.

[Goldia]

Genie+ Planning and Virtual Days

I've had a go of a few of these virtual days. Obviously I haven’t used Genie+ in real life, yet, so that has to caveat all my experiences of it. I have already purchased Genie+ for our trip this summer as I figured we would be going to the WDW parks for 14 days and I would rather buy in advance at a reduced rate than on the day at full price.



Given my virtual booking experiences I’m not sure it lives up to the ‘greater choice’ stated here but hey ho! I’ve seen that Disney are suggesting on average guests book 2 Genie+ slots per day and I have to say I’ll be disappointed if we don’t get 3 per day .

I’m trying to remind myself it is not the same as FP+ to try and reign in my expectations. In the past we would have booked all 3 FP+ attractions at 60 days out and they would have all been booked for the morning, apart from when we were doing a water park in which case they were booked for the evening. Given our long lengths of stay at 14 days we would always be able to book all the tier 1 attractions over the course of the trip as we would visit each park multiple times. After using all our morning FP+ choices we would book 4th, 5th and even 6th FP+ attractions. Usually our days were split into thirds, early mornings in the parks, afternoons by the pool and evenings back to the parks. So, we would often have a FP+ attraction booked for the evening.



When I added Genie+ I hoped it would be able to replicate this style of park visit. We have never been rope drop to park close guests. I guess we have the luxury of long trips and haven’t had to cram everything into one day. However, in my experimenting the most successful virtual days have been when stacking for the evening. I started out looking for morning slots as this is what I used to do with FP+. But that is really frustrating as they seem to go very quickly

For example - One day I 'booked' Rock and Roller coaster for 9.10am but then when checking for other rides after doing my virtual tap in the only options were for the afternoon, excluding shows or meet and greets which we have no interest in booking as Genie+

AK will be our first park on day 1 and this is one park where I have focused the virtual bookings for the morning as we will be up early and out for rope drop. I plan on us doing FOP as our first ride and using the stand-by queue for the very first time.

Mornings at AK have worked pretty well with me being able to ‘book’:
10.25 am Kilimanjaro Safari
10.45 am Kali River Rapids
11.45 am Dinosaur
1 pm Festival of the Lion King

Without Everest being open this would be a pretty good day and I’d be happy if we could get these 4 as Genie+ and I’d be satisfied we had got our monies worth if this came to fruition. On a different virtual day we could have booked Na’vi River instead of Kali River Rapids, along with the other attractions and for similar morning slots.

The only other park that morning slots seem to work well for is MK, and that is likely due to the fact there are so many attractions offering Genie+:
9.45 am Splash Mountain
10.45 am Speedway
11 am Mad Tea Party
11.45 am Big Thunder Mountain

I then assumed we would have a break at the resort and head back in the evening and started stacking rides every 2 hours managing to book:
6.50 pm Pirates of the Caribbean
7.25 pm Peter Pan
7.45 pm Haunted Mansion
8.25 pm Space Mountain

This summer if we end up having a day like this at MK I would be over the moon and very happy with my Genie+ purchase .



The other thing that I'm aware of from people who have actually used genie+ in real life and not just virtually is that the time you see isn't always the time you get. I have assumed this to mean that often it is far later, as opposed to earlier . In an evening stacking scenario this is actually better assuming we were entering a park after 5 pm and planning to stay until close.

When I’ve focused on just stacking for the evening this seems relatively easy! Albeit I’m doing it on my sofa from home. I've been able to book all 3 mountains, but in actual fact it doesn't seem to be those 3 that were the priority for booking as slots seem to be available for a while:
Booking 1 - 5.25 pm Jungle Cruise
Booking 2 - 5.10 pm Peter Pan
Booking 3 - 7.20 pm Space Mountain
Booking 4 - 8.05 pm Splash Mountain
Booking 5 - 10.20 pm Big Thunder Mountain
Booking 6 - 8.10 pm Pirates of the Caribbean

That would be a pretty good evening with a couple of rides after 5 pm, hopefully we would be able to get dinner between 6 pm and the next ride with all the mountains and Pirates to look forward.

So, this led me to the idea that stacking for the evening could be less stressful than aiming for morning bookings. This is going to be my strategy for HS and I hope we will be able to get in the line for Rise just prior to park close. We’ll see how this works in reality for us, I hope I don't end up having to eat my words!

HS evening stack example:
Booking 1 - 6.25 pm Smugglers Run
Booking 2 - 7.55 pm Mickey and Minnie Runaway Railway
Booking 3 - 4.50 pm Alien Swirling Saucers
Booking 4 - 8.25 pm Toy Story Mania
Booking 5 - 7.20 pm Star Tours

On other days I've prioritised booking, Slinky Dog, Tower of Terror or Rock and Roller first thing at 7 am. I've never been able to get all 3 on the same day as by the time the 2 hours window is passed there are no times left for the other rides. So, at the very least I've learned that we will either need to prioritise these in early morning park time, or plan for a few evenings at HS to be able to ride these without a massive wait.

As far as Epcot goes it’s easy enough to stack evening rides for everything with one big caveat – one of Test Track or Frozen Ever After must be prioritised. I’ve never been able to ‘book’ them both on the same evening. Whichever one is booked first by the time the 2 hour rule is up the other is all sold out. I’ve not tried fiddle-faddling as I’m just not that invested at home. I’m accepting of the attractions showing as available and the time slots given.

What does all this mean ? I think we are going to have to get used to a different mindset when using Genie+ this summer. I’m thinking we will do some early park visits for the first 4 or 5 days but from this point on I'm going to plan mornings where we chill out at a water park or in the resort, or head off shopping and then go to the parks for later afternoon early evening. We also have the bonus of staying at Deluxe resorts so will have the extra evening hours at MK and Epcot which I’d like to try out.

It's been fun doing these virtual days over the last week or so and I hopefully this will avoid disappointment when it comes to booking attractions this summer on our trip as now I'm not going to be expecting to book lots of attractions throughout the morning and I have seen there are options for evening stacking. Well, that's the plan as ever we'll see if the plan actually turns out that way in real life

[Em4owen]

Really useful tips. I've been reading up on Genie+ strategy but haven't tested it out yet. I'm guessing you really need to do more than one day per park to maximise it for the headliners but you did amazing with your practises!

[Zomax25]

I’ve just decided to come back and read thedibb again and really excited to see a pre trip report to read along with. It’s all so exciting.

I also feel like the pandemic has stolen the time with the kids being “little”, I mean DD1 was 11 at the start and is now a very different 14 year old who won’t be doing what she would have in 2020. I had a big trip planned but cancelled and then joys of bRexit\Covid and house renovations mean that holiday funds are gone so hopefully next year I can take the girls! But a 15 and 9 year old instead of 12 and 6 year old is a big difference. I am definitely going to grab some teen girl tips!
As for shopping we have done day trips to the outlets that are further away that you can get more bargains from, but as none of us is really into brands anymore (XDH was) we probably will stick to the malls and Cheesecake Factory is an essential! I can’t wait to hear what else you have planned and follow along this summer.

[Goldia]

Originally Posted by Em4owen

Really useful tips. I've been reading up on Genie+ strategy but haven't tested it out yet. I'm guessing you really need to do more than one day per park to maximise it for the headliners but you did amazing with your practises!

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We always like to go to the parks more than once, to get an early morning visit and a late night visit at each park every trip. Yes, I think genie+ will allow at least one headliner attraction to be booked, but possibly not all of them in one visit. For us we already have it for the whole trip as I bought it in advance so we should be able to prioritise different rides on each visit.

Originally Posted by Zomax25

I’ve just decided to come back and read thedibb again and really excited to see a pre trip report to read along with. It’s all so exciting.

I also feel like the pandemic has stolen the time with the kids being “little”, I mean DD1 was 11 at the start and is now a very different 14 year old who won’t be doing what she would have in 2020. I had a big trip planned but cancelled and then joys of bRexit\Covid and house renovations mean that holiday funds are gone so hopefully next year I can take the girls! But a 15 and 9 year old instead of 12 and 6 year old is a big difference. I am definitely going to grab some teen girl tips!
As for shopping we have done day trips to the outlets that are further away that you can get more bargains from, but as none of us is really into brands anymore (XDH was) we probably will stick to the malls and Cheesecake Factory is an essential! I can’t wait to hear what else you have planned and follow along this summer.

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Time slips through your fingers ... I knew there would come a time when my DS wouldn't want to holiday with us I just hadn't realised 2019 would be our last Orlando trip. I hope in a few years he'll be back to wanting to holiday with us again. Fingers crossed.

The age difference for your eldest going from a 12 year old to a 15 year old is massive. There are so many changes that happen in that time period, that's what we're noticing now with Kate as she's 15.

Ah well, we've got to make the best of what we've got. I'm looking forward to the summer. Thank you for your tips about shopping, that will be a new experience for us this summer!

[Goldia]

Let’s Talk About Food Baby!

We are now in double digits woo hoo . It’s time to dance people.



And with the countdown getting to less than 100 days I really need to make some decisions about what we are going to eat, where and when so that I can book some ADRs.

As per usual Dave is not interested at all in the advance planning of what he may or may not fancy eating in 3 months time . I know it’s so inconsiderate of him . Food is one of the things that both Dave and Kate look forward to the most and has featured in our pre travel day discussions at the airport hotel when we’re all looking forward to the trip. So, he will indulge in a little bit of advance planning !

I’ve been wondering how to set a budget for food I know this is an age old question on the Dibb. All bar one of our previous Orlando trips involved the ‘free’ DDP. In 2017 when we had the NYC and Orlando split stay we spent just over £1,800 on food and drink, inc tips at restaurants. That was for two weeks. Not bad really at £130 per night for four people. Of course I’ve been scouring menus and trying to get a short list together but the potential cost has been nagging away at the back of my mind .

This morning I bit the bullet, I was reading through the how much is your trip costing thread in the trip planning section and I tallied up the costs so far.

Flights used Avios and companion voucher £870 total, so £290 each
Airport parking and premier inn, includes cost of meal night before flight and breakfast on travel day £193
2 nights All star sports preferred room £332
8 nights wilderness lodge DVC points - difficult to say. I saw lots of people posting £0 for this but in the end I added in the cost of the dues so £880.
6 nights boardwalk villas DVC £0
Disney tickets Inc Genie £1725 total, £575 each
4 nights DoubleTree Hilton £45 as used Tesco Clubcard vouchers on hotels.com
1 night RPR £320
Universal Annual Passes from 2019 will be reactivated so £0

Total cost £4,032
Per person £1,344
Per person per night £61

This is pretty good, heck it’s an amazing price but of course it doesn’t include any spending money of which by far the biggest cost is going to be food and drink. I decided to budget £200 per night so multiplied by 22 this is going to be a whopping £4,400 and double the cost of the holiday don't tell Dave as he will literally have a heart attack! But, I feel like this is a realistic budget for food, alcohol and tips if we do some supermarket shops for snacks, breakfast and drinks for the room. I'm hopeful it will allow us to eat at a QS and a TS meal each day.

New costs Inc budget for food:
Total cost £8,432
Per person £2,811
Per person per night £128

Even with a £200 per night budget I think I'm going to have to reign myself in on the cocktail front . It will be interesting to see if we stick to this budget!

Right, lets actually get down to the fun stuff of deciding what restaurants. As this post is already getting long I’ll stick to table service and post separately for quick service, snacks and off site restaurants.

MK

I’m keen to try some of the places we’ve not been to before. On previous trips we’ve eaten at:
Be Our Guest – breakfast and both dinner before and after they introduced the set menu. I’m not fussed about returning here.
Cinderella’s Table – again we’ve eaten here a couple of times both at dinner and I’m not interested in returning.
Crystal Palace – a possibility if the characters return. We loved the lunch and dinner buffets here and Kate adores Piglet so if the characters come back I’d be tempted but at the moment it’s another no.
Jungle Skipper Canteen – we had a great meal here in 2018 but I’m sticking to my guns with eating at new to us places.
Tony’s Town Square – our first table service with my parents and boy it was great, I know lots of people don’t rate this very highly but we loved it. My dad could not get over the size of his calamari starter. But again, no return for us this trip as it’s all about new restaurants.

That leaves The Diamond Horseshoe, Liberty Tree Tavern and The Plaza. I believe The Diamond Horseshoe shares a kitchen with Liberty Tree Tavern and I’ve been keen to try this for a long time! So, we'll leave Diamond Horseshoe for a future trip and this time round we'll go for Liberty Tree Tavern for dinner. It serves a yummy Thanksgiving style meal similar to our beloved Garden Grill and the dessert is an ooey gooey toffee cake. I cannot wait to eat here!



The Plaza also looks great



And who can turn down the Monte Cristo Sandwich – deep fried in funnel cake batter with house made bacon, roasted turkey and provolone with a side of strawberry jam! Plus, of course, there’s the yummy ice cream sundaes.



So that’s it for MK just two table service in my plans. LTT and The Plaza.

Epcot

We’ve eaten at Akershus (breakfast and dinner), Biergarten, Chefs de France, Garden Grill (breakfast, lunch and dinner – not on the same day ), La Hacienda de San Angel and Teppan Edo.

Of these the only one I’m interested in returning to is Garden Grill. It’s my favourite WDW restaurant. But, we are going to do the dinner at LTT and this dinner is really similar but with a strawberry shortcake pudding. At the moment the rest are consigned to the once and done category.

So, where do I want to book at Epcot?

I’m keen to book up Space 220 although I’ve been reading the lounge menu and that looks good.



Do you need to book the lounge as an ADR or is this somewhere we could turn up to on the day and just get added to a walk up waitlist?

Via Napoli – oh those huge pizzas look fab, this is another that’s on my short list.



Nine Dragons – we like Chinese food and we’ve eaten at the quick serve restaurant so I’m keen to try out their dinner menu.



HS

At HS there’s only a handful of table service restaurants, and we’ve eaten at them all bar one. We’ve done 50’s Prime Time (the kids were so nervous here about the antics), Hollywood and Vine, Mama Melrose Ristorante and Sci-Fi Dine In Theatre. Of these I’d maybe go back to Sci-Fi, but this was Max’s favourite and his pick for our cancelled trip in 2020 so I kind of don’t want to go back there without him. This is a maybe.

We’ve not eaten at Hollywood Brown Derby and I really want to have their Cobb Salad.



We’ve had the margarita and martini flight in the HBD lounge and I know you can get the salad along with sliders and a charcuterie in the lounge so I think this is what we’re going to do.



While we’re talking about lounges I also want to go to Baseline Taphouse the pretzel is calling me.



Plus of course Oga’s Cantina.



AK

We’ve done Tusker House breakfast and dinner and it is a fab buffet, but I’m not that fussed about returning here. But that’s it for AK table service that we’ve tried before.

I’m not interested in Rainforest café so that’s not on the list. But Yak and Yeti is probably going to be our first TS of the trip as day 1 is going to be AK. The menu here looks great and we have a Landry card.



Again I’m more interested in eating at the Nomad Lounge rather than in the full table service at Tiffins. They have a great looking bread service and the churros look awesome.






DS

We’ve only eaten at 2 Disney Springs Table Service restaurants – Raglan Road and House of Blues. Kate loved the pulled pork burger at House of Blues so that is definitely on the list for us to go back to.



I have a long list of places here I’d like to try. Top of that list is The Boathouse – Lou Mongello raves about it and I am desperate to eat here.



I also would like to do a brunch at DS – possibly at House of Blues, but there’s also Homecomin’ which everyone raves about. STK, City Works, Wine Bar George and Wolfgang Puck Bar and Grill also all have brunches that have good menus. I’m really struggling to narrow these down. I definitely need help on this one.

Plus of course there are some great lounges in DS. Jock Lindsey’s Hangar Bar is one of our favourites we had drinks here back in 2018 and the bar menu looks good.



Resorts

As we are staying at Wilderness Lodge we will definitely have to back to Whispering Canyon Café for the skillet!



Plus Geyser Point will feature heavily here.



While we’re here I want to head over to Fort Wilderness to try out Trail’s End Restaurant we’ve not eaten here before and I know it’s not yet back to the normal buffet and is served family style, I’m keeping my fingers crossed it goes back to normal by the time we get there.



When we move to the Boardwalk I’m planning on us eating at Beaches and Cream again, Kate’s 2nd favourite meal was the tomato soup and grilled cheese here.



We won’t do the kitchen sink though, we wouldn’t stand a chance without Max. But maybe I’ll order an appetizer so that I can then try the No Way Jose sundae.



Others on our list for this part of the stay are Ale and Compass, possibly Cape May Café or Trattoria al Forno for breakfast if Garden Grill isn’t doing breakfast.

I also want to go to AbracadaBar – you can see where our budget of £200 per day is going to struggle can’t you?



Right that is definitely enough talk for now! I’m off to check on my Easter Lamb with Boulangere Potatoes and I still need to make the Hot Cross Bun Bread Pudding.

Happy Easter Everyone

[unixgirl]

I had the No way Jose sundae this trip - it was lovely but way too large. I managed to make a dent in it.

[Buggles94]

Love all your updates - feel like you are there already Abby. We love Liberty Tree Tavern and Garden Grill. That toffee cake is amazing. DS asked for seconds on last visit! Sounds like you have Genie + mastered and hopefully the Extended Evening Hours continue. We used them for EPCOT and MK at Christmas and was similar to an after hours event!

[mrsdjh]

Hi Abby
I have been guilty of reading and running up until now. I can understand how you must feel about Max not coming on this trip but the last couple of years his age group have missed out on so much - it’s good that he has a free summer he can chill and do things with his friends. I’m sure you’ll all have a great summer.

We just got back on Friday. Both girls came so I can help with the shopping a bit although I can’t believe you’ve never been! We went to the Mall of Millenia for the first time - we wouldn’t go again. It’s too many higher end stores and not many bargains for us. We did however go to the Cheesecake Factory for the first time which we loved.

There is a Cheesecake Factory next to the Premium Outlets at Vineland so you could go there and do both shopping and food.

Definitely sign up to the Premium Outlets websites VIP club so you can use any discounts. These usually work on top of the discounts shown in store - you just show the relevant coupon on your phone at the till. They used to do a paper discount book you could collect from the food court but it’s $10 now. I do have one from the Premium Outlets International as we had a coupon for one. I can send you it if you like, just PM me your address. We went to that one as it has a Victorias Secret, Bath and Body works and Tillys which were on the girls list, but it is further from Disney than the Vineland one.

If you’re going shopping by taxi, check the price on both Uber and Lyft before ordering - we found Lyft a little cheaper this time. As there was 4 of us we had to have the larger taxi as they’re not using the front seats but you wouldn’t need that.

I would definitely suggest trying the Target at Rolling Oaks. On that site there is also a TJMaxx and a Ross plus a dollar tree for cheap sweets to bring home. There are also food places across the car park - we went to Olive Garden, but there’s also a Bahama Breeze, Longhorn Steakhouse, Chipotle, Panera Bread. Also you can now walk across the car park to Sunset Walk which is part of Margaritaville - that has a Fords Garage and other places sunsetwalk

We always go to the Target on our first full day and buy water and snacks for the room. It’s nearest to Animal Kingdom so we get the taxi from there.

I think your ideas re Genie + are right. Do early entry the first few mornings to get some big hitters done and then stack for late afternoons/evenings. Keep watching Molly All Ears vlogs - they are really helpful. At Magic Kingdom I stacked the main rides we wanted ie the mountains for the early evening and then we just ride what we wanted after the fireworks until park closing which was 11.00pm. All the queue standby times were low then except Space Mountain and 7 Dwarfs.

With food, we don’t generally eat Table Service. The only two we had this time were the off site ones. We’ve only had free QSDP once as we always go at Easter so it’s usually not part of the free dining offer. I found we ate less than I thought we would this time and our snack game was poor. I don’t know if this was because it was so hot - our first day it was a record high temperature for April according to the news. We occasionally shared eg at Blaze Pizza or I had a kids meal!

Hope that wasn’t too long a reply! Looking forward to following along.

[Goldia]

Originally Posted by unixgirl

I had the No way Jose sundae this trip - it was lovely but way too large. I managed to make a dent in it.

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That looks great although you're right maybe I should skip the appetizer entirely it looks huge!

Originally Posted by Buggles94

Love all your updates - feel like you are there already Abby. We love Liberty Tree Tavern and Garden Grill. That toffee cake is amazing. DS asked for seconds on last visit! Sounds like you have Genie + mastered and hopefully the Extended Evening Hours continue. We used them for EPCOT and MK at Christmas and was similar to an after hours event!

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I'm excited to try out LTT, I had an ADR for it for 2020...and now I'll be sure to ask for seconds! That's great the evening hours are so quiet, I'm looking forward to being there late at night, the parks are so pretty, I'm desperate to see the lights on spaceship earth.

Originally Posted by mrsdjh

Hi Abby
I have been guilty of reading and running up until now. I can understand how you must feel about Max not coming on this trip but the last couple of years his age group have missed out on so much - it’s good that he has a free summer he can chill and do things with his friends. I’m sure you’ll all have a great summer.

We just got back on Friday. Both girls came so I can help with the shopping a bit although I can’t believe you’ve never been! We went to the Mall of Millenia for the first time - we wouldn’t go again. It’s too many higher end stores and not many bargains for us. We did however go to the Cheesecake Factory for the first time which we loved.

There is a Cheesecake Factory next to the Premium Outlets at Vineland so you could go there and do both shopping and food.

Definitely sign up to the Premium Outlets websites VIP club so you can use any discounts. These usually work on top of the discounts shown in store - you just show the relevant coupon on your phone at the till. They used to do a paper discount book you could collect from the food court but it’s $10 now. I do have one from the Premium Outlets International as we had a coupon for one. I can send you it if you like, just PM me your address. We went to that one as it has a Victorias Secret, Bath and Body works and Tillys which were on the girls list, but it is further from Disney than the Vineland one.

If you’re going shopping by taxi, check the price on both Uber and Lyft before ordering - we found Lyft a little cheaper this time. As there was 4 of us we had to have the larger taxi as they’re not using the front seats but you wouldn’t need that.

I would definitely suggest trying the Target at Rolling Oaks. On that site there is also a TJMaxx and a Ross plus a dollar tree for cheap sweets to bring home. There are also food places across the car park - we went to Olive Garden, but there’s also a Bahama Breeze, Longhorn Steakhouse, Chipotle, Panera Bread. Also you can now walk across the car park to Sunset Walk which is part of Margaritaville - that has a Fords Garage and other places sunsetwalk

We always go to the Target on our first full day and buy water and snacks for the room. It’s nearest to Animal Kingdom so we get the taxi from there.

I think your ideas re Genie + are right. Do early entry the first few mornings to get some big hitters done and then stack for late afternoons/evenings. Keep watching Molly All Ears vlogs - they are really helpful. At Magic Kingdom I stacked the main rides we wanted ie the mountains for the early evening and then we just ride what we wanted after the fireworks until park closing which was 11.00pm. All the queue standby times were low then except Space Mountain and 7 Dwarfs.

With food, we don’t generally eat Table Service. The only two we had this time were the off site ones. We’ve only had free QSDP once as we always go at Easter so it’s usually not part of the free dining offer. I found we ate less than I thought we would this time and our snack game was poor. I don’t know if this was because it was so hot - our first day it was a record high temperature for April according to the news. We occasionally shared eg at Blaze Pizza or I had a kids meal!

Hope that wasn’t too long a reply! Looking forward to following along.

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Hi there

What a great reply. I hope you had a wonderful trip and enjoyed spending time together.

Thanks for letting me know that Mall of Millenia may not suit us. I do think I'll give the Rolling Oaks option a go for our first foray into shopping. Our first two nights we stay at All star Sports, so in the AK area and I think on day 2 when we move to Wilderness Lodge we will have pool time in the morning then head out shopping. We will need to pick up some food and drink snacks plus Kate can have a good look around all the non food aisles at Target. We've never been to a Bahama Breeze and people on here rave about it so maybe we'll try that too before heading into the store. Then we can just go directly to WL from there. That's my current plan anyway...

We may go to the international premium outlets when we move to the universal hotel. I'm not sure if we will be shopped out by then. I've planned in 2 shopping trips, which is a lot for us! I know I really need to get my act together on the shopping front

Well, there's one thing that's a bonus with us is it being a 3 this trip...We will only need one uber/Lyft. Funnily enough I only used lyft in 2019 as it was always far cheaper than uber. That's good to know.

It's really interesting to read about how Genie+ worked for you. Thank you. I'm glad to have done a bit of research here in terms of how it could work stacking rides in the evening as otherwise I'd have probably tried to use it like FP+ and aim for morning slots.

I do get what you mean about food when you're there...My eyes are bigger than my belly at the moment. Looking at all the vlogs and menus I want everything. But in reality when we get there I reckon we won't manage half the places I've got planned!

Thanks for all your tips I'm really grateful,

A x