Be..Our..Guest! November 2016 Pre Trip Report *Updated

[Minnie_04]

Be..Our..Guest! November 2016 Pre Trip Report

Welcome to the pre trippy! This will be my third trip report.. though I did fail with the last one. I started the report so well.. and then.. well. I lost time so I never got round to finishing. Whoops!
Never mind, I’m determined this time to write and complete the trip report.. so here goes!

The Cast:
Me, Megan, chief planner and organiser! I love all things Disney and Harry Potter related so of course I absolutely love Florida! We’ve all been to Florida three times, so this will be our fourth trip. My favourite park is Hollywood Studios, and I can’t wait to go back on the Hogwarts Express! I suppose I do most of the planning for the trip and will be the one booking all the ADRs and Fastpasses! I also love to take pictures, so will be snapping away on holiday.

Mum, Jenny, chief money spender! She’s a big fan of Beauty and the Beast and has therefore made the agenda of this holiday to dine in the BOG restaurant as we were unable to get a table last time. She’s diabetic and often has problems with her feet, so last time she eventually gave in and used a wheelchair for some of the holiday. She’s not keen on having one (and a bit stubborn!) but she might use one again this year.

Dad, Mike, chief driver! He’s the other main organiser of the holiday, he does all the driving and the paying! He takes a long time to make decisions, spending days and days looking and planning before actually deciding what to do! He’s not so keen on Universal and Islands of Adventure, but he enjoys Disney.



Flights:
We booked our flights back in January this year. We’ve used some Tesco Clubcard vouchers and transferred them to Virgin Airmiles. We fly out on Monday November 7th on the lunchtime flight. We decided to pay and prebook our sets as we wanted to give ‘the bubble’ a go. We’ve got seats right at the front of the bubble at the door on the way there. We’ve got plenty of legroom then! We’ve sat by the door on a plane before when we went to Menorca, so we know to pack plenty of extra socks for the cold feet! We’re going for three weeks so we fly back on Monday 28th November, and we’ve booked in for dubbers row!

The Villa:
Like I said, dad likes to spend a long time looking before he makes a decision. And that was the case when we were looking for a villa. It took ages! We eventually settled on a gorgeous Dibb villa on High Grove. We’ve not stayed on this community before but it appears to be only about ten minutes from Disney wo we’re happy.
This is their website.






It looks amazing, and all the reviews are so good so we went ahead and booked it!

The Plans
We’ve started to plan out the days of the holiday as we’re up to our 180 days this week, so we wanted to start booking our ADRs.
We haven’t bought our tickets yet but we’re planning to buy one annual pass as it means we won’t have to pay for parking, and we definitely make the most of the discount in the Disney shops! We bought an annual pass last time, and we certainly used it a lot in the shops and restaurants, and with the parking we made up the price difference to a normal ticket.
Dad isn’t too keen on going to Universal but theres no way i’m missing out on Harry Potter. I’m not sure what tickets we’ll get for here yet, but we only really plan to go for a couple of days.
We also want to take a visit to Celebration and have a little look round there.
We did Discovery Cove last time, so I don’t think we’re going to be going back here.
We’ve been thinking about doing the Keys to the Kingdom tour this holiday as well as we haven’t done this before. It will be really good to see behind the Disney Magic. It will be christmas time when we go this time, so we are planning to go to Mickeys Very Merry Christmas Party! We’ve not done this before, i’ve done the Halloween one and really enjoyed it, so looking forward to that. The last few days of our holiday will be Holiday’s Around The World at Epcot so that will be really exciting!

Thats the general plans for now, but i’ll keep updating as we go! I’ve already started booking our ADRs so i’ll be sure to update soon with all our plans!

Megan
xx

Update 1: ADRs!
Update 2: Planning!
Update 3: Almost 30 days!

[Louisiana]

3 weeks sounds fabulous!
And that villa looks great.

I did the keys to the kingdom tour last year and I really enjoyed it, there is a lot of walking/standing around though.

[Minnie_04]

Originally Posted by Louisiana

3 weeks sounds fabulous!
And that villa looks great.

I did the keys to the kingdom tour last year and I really enjoyed it, there is a lot of walking/standing around though.

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We did three weeks last time and it was so good to have the extra time to relax a bit!
Yeah, we have heard that about the tour, i'v already suggested to mum that maybe she should have a chair because of all the walking involved!

[dav220588]

Following alone, I think we might be there at the same time

[EJSakaAnna]

Plans sounds great, hope you get the ADRs you want .

[Minnie_04]

Be..Our..Guest! November 2016 Pre Trip Report
Update: ADRs

Well it’s already time for an update!
I’ve been busy booking some ADRs for our trip, we may still make some more or change the ones we have, but we have a few to be working with for now.

For our very first day we’ve decided to go out for breakfast as we’re usually awake pretty early and the villa won’t be stocked up yet! So we’ve made a reservation for The Wave in the Contemporary Hotel at 9am. We plan to get the monorail from the car park and then head in to Magic Kingdom for the rest of the morning before we go to Walmart.

For Thursday November 10th we’ve booked a table at The Grand Floridian Cafe for 6:30pm. We’ve planned to go shopping at Disney Springs in the day/afternoon and then head over to the hotel for dinner. We dined here last time and absolutely loved the food. We might also have a look around the hotel a bit and then watch the fireworks outside near the boat.

The plan was to get a lunchtime reservation for BOG on Tuesday 15th as we were then going to stay in the park for the evenings VMCP. However, I tried and tried online and could not get a reservation at all. The whole system seemed to have crashed, so I ended up calling and couldn't get a reservation. Boooo. So instead I’ve booked a table at The Plaza Restaurant at 3:15pm so that we can have some decent food before going to the party!

For BOG I continued to try everyday to get a reservation but could not get one. I ended up trying one afternoon looking at everyday we were there for breakfast or lunch, and somehow I got one! I’m guessing someone must have cancelled their booking, so we’ve got one for Sat 12th November at 12:55! Needless to say mum is very excited!

Now we’ve never been ones to go out for breakfast much, and in our previous holidays we’ve never done a Disney breakfast, but we’ve gone and booked two for this holiday! We’ve booked for Boma at 9:15am on Sunday 13th November. We’ve never been into the Animal Kingdom Lodge so we’re really looking forward to having a nosey around! We then plan to spend the rest of the day in Animal Kingdom. It’s not really been released what the evening schedule is going to be for Animal Kingdom in November yet, so we haven’t booked any other dining packages or anything until we know what’s going to be on!

The last ADR we have at the minute is for Beaches and Cream Soda Shop for Wednesday 16th November at 4:30pm. It was a pretty last minute booking so this was the only time we could get. We’ve never eaten here but I’ve been going on about it for ages because I want to eat their ice creams! We’d like to have a look around the Broadwalk too, so figured we may as well go here when we go The Epcot, and then head back into the park for the evening and fireworks. Since it’s the food and wine festival we figured we could grab a late night snack around the world if we were hungry later!

That’s all for now!
I’m sure there will be more updates to come soon!

Megan
xx

[Minnie_04]

Be..Our..Guest! November 2016 Pre Trip Report
Update: Planning!

Well time has sure flown by! We can’t believe how quickly it’s come around and it’s less than 80 days to go!
Since the last update we’ve done quite a fair amount of planning and spending!

We’re flying out on the Monday, so we’ve booked an overnight stay for the Sunday night at the Premier Inn North Terminal. We ummmed and ahhhed about whether we would rather stay closer, or bit further out for a slightly cheaper price. We decided to go ahead and book the terminal one on the flex rate about £75 per room, and then hope that the saver rate might come down. Surprisingly it did! We were able to cancel the initial booking and book on the saver rate of £35 per room. Result!
We then had to decide whether we wanted to hire a car to drive down to the airport, or bring our own and pay for parking. Trouble was, in our area the car hires aren’t open on a Sunday, and so we would have to pick up the car Saturday lunch time, which means we would have to be at Gatwick by lunchtime Sunday to drop it off. We don’t need to be there that early! So instead, we’re using our own car and using Tesco club card points for the parking, so we only had to pay a couple of pounds ourselves for the three weeks!
We’ve also booked our hire car for Orlando. Dad spent weeks looking at the prices and they were surprisingly quite low, but typical the night we actually sit down to book it and the prices shoot up! :non ono: We were going to use Virgin Atlantic, but as the prices went up we went with Alamo. Initially we booked a Midsize SUV, but after a few weeks the prices started to drop. Dad had read that sometimes the options to pick from can be a bit limited in this group, and as the prices came down it was then only about £30 to upgrade to the Standard SUV. So we did that. Only problem we have now though, is that it seems to have kicked mum off the option to be an additional driver. We’ve tried to go on and edit it, but it won’t let us. We may just have to add mum on once we are there. (Not that I trust her driving, she’s only the back up! )
We’ve also bought an annual pass. We did this last time we were there, and it seems just about worth it. With the free parking and the discounts you can use, we make up for the extra cost of buying one. We still need to buy the rest of the tickets, and using the discount we plan to get tickets for Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party. We’re also debating doing the Keys to the Kingdom Tour as we’ve never done this.
We’ve also been planning out the days of the holiday. It’s proving quite hard though as we’re not sure about parades and things going on, and whether Rivers of Light will be on, or about the fireworks in Studios. Disney seem a bit slow on announcing what’s happening, but so far we have this:

Tuesday 8th
9am ADR at The Wave in The Contemporary.
Magic Kingdom for the morning.
Walmart for shopping!
Then a pool/relaxing afternoon.

Wednesday 9th
Hollywood Studios, possibly Fantasmic/Fireworks (Depending what’s on!)

Thursday 10th
Disney Springs
6:30pm ADR for the Grand Floridian Cafe
Hopefully have a wonder down to see the fireworks from dock.

Friday 11th
It’s Veterans day so we’re planning to stay in for the day.

Saturday 12th
12:55pm ADR for Be Our Guest!
Possibly stay in Magic Kingdom for a bit.

Sunday 13th
9:15am ADR for Boma in the Animal Kingdom Lodge
Then head into Animal Kingdom, not sure about evening events!

Monday 14th
Restful day at home!
Maybe some Walmart shopping!

Tuesday 15th
Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party!
3:15pm ADR for The Plaza in Main Street. Not sure about this one yet, we may cancel and just eat quick service. I just booked it so we knew we had something!

Wednesday 16th
Epcot from lunchtime/afternoon. Stay to watch Illuminations.
4:30pm ADR for Beaches and Cream in the Beach Club. Only because we want the ice cream!

Thursday 17th
Home, relaxing day.

Friday 18th
Universal Studios/Islands of Adventure.
Probably Bubba Gumps for dinner as we love it there!

Saturday 19th
Celebration/Disney Springs.
We’ve never been to Celebration but would like to have a look around.

Sunday 20th
Pool, shopping, relax day.

Monday 21st
Possible Keys to the Kingdom Tour

Tuesday 22nd
Universal Studios/Islands of Adventure to do whatever we missed the first time!

Wednesday 23rd
Shopping/Disney Springs

Thursday 24th
It’s Thanksgiving, so we will probably stay home, relax.

Friday 25th
Black Friday! We plan to avoid the shops and head to Epcot as it’s the first day of their christmas celebrations.
4:30pm ADR for The Garden Grille, a dinner package to see the 8:30pm Candlelight show.

Saturday 26th
Magic Kingdom and Wishes.

Sunday 27th
The last day! Hollywood Studios and Fantasmic.
We usually like to do Magic Kingdom and Wishes on the last day, but because of MVMCP it’s not on, so our second favourite is Fantasmic.

I’m sure things will change soon, or once we our there. We haven’t planned many evening type things as like I said, we don’t really know what will be on! I’m sure if there is a show in Animal Kingdom we will head in one night to see that, and we may go in on other evenings to see wishes. We doubt they will put on a night time parade to replace the Main Street Electrical, which is a shame, but hopefully there will be other shows for us to see instead. We’ve not seen the new fireworks at Hollywood, but hopefully they will continue them due to no parade in MK.
But for now, that’s it!
Just need to buy the tickets now!

Megan
xx

[MikeH23]

looking forward to your next update

[Louisiana]

Just read your update, I'm planning on being at MK on the 12th and AK on the 13th!

I'm doing the Mvmcp but I picked the Sunday night, I'm really looking forward to it. I did the Halloween party last year and it was fun.

[Minnie_04]

Originally Posted by Louisiana

Just read your update, I'm planning on being at MK on the 12th and AK on the 13th!

I'm doing the Mvmcp but I picked the Sunday night, I'm really looking forward to it. I did the Halloween party last year and it was fun.

See more...

We'll have to look out for you in AK!
Yeah, I'm really excited about the Christmas Party too, I enjoyed the Halloween one last time too.
It's a bit expensive but I hope it will be worth it!