Almost the Whole Shebang - July 2019 - Pre-Trip Report

[DollyDimples]

So I wasn’t planning on doing a pre-trip report but I had some time free time today and rather than doing the sensible thing of picking up my laptop and doing a bit of extra work to try to start getting on top of things before being off for 3 ½ weeks I have decided to give this a go instead.

I have decided to do this pre-trip report mainly to document all the decisions that we have made about this trip for my own memory and also because I have found reading other people’s pre-trip and trip reports so useful in our planning. Hopefully somebody will benefit for reading this, even if it is just to say I wouldn’t do things that way!

Let’s Start With The Cast

Me, Laura.

I am 40, a work as a consultant civil engineer, mostly doing hydraulic and hydrological modelling for river and sewer networks. Most of my spare time is spent running around after DS. I love watching crime dramas, watching rugby, camping, baking, drinking gin with friends and do quite a lot of parent volunteering with DS’s primary school fundraising group and his Scout group. I love theme parks, normally fairly nervous of big rollercoasters but generally enjoy them when I am on them. Not so keen on waterparks.


DH, Graham.

Graham is 41. He is a principle teacher in a secondary school. He loves Star Wars and Marvel, Rubgy, video games, camping and most of his job. He is spends lots of time running after DS too, playing in our local rugby clubs veterans (old peoples) team. In addition to his teaching job he does a lot of extra work for the qualifications authority writing exam papers and assignment papers and marking. Between now and when we go on this trip just about all of his evenings and weekend will be taken up with marking which means we will have bonus holiday spending money. Graham loves theme parks, rollercoasters the bigger the better and also a big fan of waterparks.

DS, Evan.

Evan is 11, he will be 12 a few weeks after we get home from our trip. Where to start! Evan LOVES video games, in particular at the moment Fortnite. He also loves reading, playing rugby (not so keen on watching it or any other sport) and is always keen to try new things. He loves theme parks and not being the tallest of kids has loved the big roller coasters that he has managed to do so far. He is also a fan of waterparks and is looking forward to doing a few types of slides that he hasn’t been tall enough to do so far.

Disney, Florida and Us

Graham and I got married in 2003 (it is our 16th wedding anniversary in the middle of our trip) and after lots of trips to the travel agents where we almost booked a variety of package holidays we ended up booking a DIY trip and visiting 4 European cities, the last one being Paris. We decided, neither of us having been to Disneyland Paris or and other Disney park that one of the days we were in Paris we would visit Disneyland and we both fell in love.

Roll on a couple of years and DH had a job interview for a promoted post in the school he worked in at that time. He didn’t expect to get the job being fairly new into teaching and joked as he left the house that morning that if he got the job we were going to Orlando for our summer holiday. Roll on 8 hours or so and he got the job and that weekend we were at the travel agents booking our first (and only to date) trip to Orlando.

We knew next to nothing about what we were booking. We booked a 14 night package with Thomson, flew from Glasgow to Sandford, staying in a HoJo on I Drive (near Sand Lake Drive/International Drive Junction). We had a basic hire car and over the two weeks fitted in the four Disney parks, both Disney water parks, Wet ‘n’ wild, Universal Studios and Island of Adventure, Seaworld, Busch Gardens and Kennedy Space Station, Cirque du Soleil and a few shopping trips. We can only remember having a couple of sit down table service meal at Disney (Mama Melrose and House of Blues), ate at city walk a few times (def Margarritaville and NBC but possibly more) and then a few places on i-drive around the hotel. We LOVED it but the trip was exhausting. We landed home on the Sunday morning and I was back at work the next day leaving all of the holiday washing for DH who, being a teacher still has a few weeks of summer holiday left.
We vowed to go back but to wait until we had children and to wait until they were tall enough to ride anything that we would want to ride. One of the things (each to their own) that we didn’t like was people standing in queues for big rides with kids who were far too little to ride the ride for themselves so said we wouldn’t do that.

DS first experience of Disney was a trip to Disneyland Paris when he was 5. We surprised him that he was going for his birthday in August and were so excited for the trip. It ended up being a total disaster for me and more hard going for DH as we discovered my passport was missing the afternoon before we were due to go. We literally tore the house to bits and it was nowhere to be found. DH and DS went without me and had an amazing time and I was gutted.

As a result we ended up (all with passports) having a surprise trip to Disneyland Paris the following July, tagging it on to the end of a trip to the Vendee and not telling DS we were going. He didn’t have a clue until we arrived. We all had an amazing time.

Since then DH has been to Disneyland Paris twice on school trips (the next one is already being arranged for December 2020) and me and DS gatecrashed the second of these trips (We knew DH would be allocated a standard room in the dismay hotel). This was again a surprise for DS who didn’t know he was going. We sent DH away the night before whit a suitcase for us on the coach with the school kids and I woke DS up the next morning at 3.30 so we could get to the airport for the 6.30 flight to Paris. We had a day in the city and then got to train out to Disneyland by which time DH had arrived by coach. We had a brilliant couple of days and then packed saw DH off back on the coach, had another day in the parks and then flew home and still got back before DH!