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Old 25 Mar 20, 01:12 PM  
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AJ86
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Join Date: Apr 19
Florida Trip no3 - Day 8 - September 2019

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Day 8 - 21st September 2019 - Typhoon Lagoon & Disney Springs

Sorry for the lack of pictures today, at the water park I leave my phone at the hotel and during dinner I didn’t take any pics of food so I will let your imagination run wild!

Today's start is no different to the others, we rise around half 8 and have our cream cheese and bagels while watching classic cartoons for the millionth time.


Our plan today is to head to Typhoon lagoon, so we gather our bits together, pack a mini picnic, consisting mainly of the huge pile of goldfish we need to work through, and head out around 10. We decide to take the bus today to Typhoon Lagoon, and like most of the other busses it is shared between the 3 resorts.



Staying at the Movies we are at the end of the 3 hotels so the bus works its way round picking up at each hotel and by the time it gets to the movies they can squeeze about 5 people on. Have no idea why they don’t have a bus for each resort especially in peak times. So a little tip if staying at the Movies, head over to one of the other resorts to make sure you get on a bus. We arrive around 10 and again surprised to see it wasn’t that busy. We grab loungers fairly easily near to the entrance of the pool.


We don’t spend much time on the loungers at all, and before long we are in the wave pool enjoying the massive waves. As much as I love trying not to drown and drinking the majority of the pool water we head out and do a few laps of the lazy river. I can never successfully get into a ring, and have as much grace as a diving hippo, so to save my shorts coming down and more eye rolling from my wife, I grab a noddle and float around with the support of this. I try to direct my wife to as many water features as possible and accidentally stop while she is under the waterfalls.


We dry off a little and grab a bite to eat forgetting we have packed enough gold fish to feed the entire lagoon, and grab some chicken nuggets to share.


I forgo the advise always given to me and wait a lot less than an hour after eating and head straight back into the wave pool. This time they have put the choppy waves on, and the life guards sure earn their keep, they dived in around 3 times in the space of around 40 mins, and can quite easily see how you can run into trouble.


We wave goodbye to the wave pool and head out to dry off. In the car park we instantly regret not bringing the car down, and walk round the edge to of course the furthest stop possible. Again really sorry to anyone staying at the all star resorts, you must have waited a lot longer for a bus as I was around. We watched near enough all the resort busses go round twice before an all star bus turned up around 30 mins after we got to the stop.


Tonight we are meeting some friends for dinner who are also out here, so we head out to get the bus to Disney Springs, again the bus is shared between the 3 resorts, and they drop off and pick up at the same time so it can be a little chaotic at time on the bus.



We meet our friends at Paddlefish, and we ask for the magical dinning menu, which is 3 courses for
$35. The menu is separate to the normal one and had 3 starters, mains and desserts to pick from. It does offer great value I think as a normal main would be in the region of about $25-$40. To start I have the clam chowder soup, main is the cat fish and dessert is the cheesecake, for the rest of the table this is also the fried green tomatoes, to start, pork chop for main and key lime pie and chocolate cake for dessert. The food is lovely as is the cocktails we have. The service is not great, starters take for ages to come out, and then within about 3 mins of the starters the mains follow, so we are still eating and the mains are sitting on the table going cold, no offer to take them back and bring them when we are ready. If it was just me and my wife I would have told them to bring it back when we are done, but it seemed easier to go with the flow. they also come to collect plates while some of the party are still eating, which again not sure if it is a British thing but guess they might have been trying to be helpful.


It was a good meal for what we paid for it, and we paid $110 each couple including tip for the 3
courses and a cocktail so not bad, just a shame about the service.


After dinner we take a walk around the shops and look at lot of stuff we can’t afford or stuff we would love to buy but would be a nightmare to bring home.


We say goodbye to our friends and make our way to the bus station, where I get a news alert from
BBC to say that Thomas Cook have gone into administration. I work in travel and have also worked
for Thomas Cook in previous roles and have a number of friends who were still with them. it was
such a shame to see them go under, and really felt sorry for the guys who lost their jobs and who lost holiday or were still on holiday with them.


In my quest to book flights for this trip Thomas Cook had come out as one of the cheapest options
along with BA. Had I booked with BA my return date was one of their strike days, so this was
ultimately cancelled, so if I had booked with them I would have then gone to Thomas cook who then
would have cancelled my return flight. I did look online later on to see what flight options would have been available to me to get home, if I needed to rebook it would have cost me an extra £550 each to get back with Norwegian. I see people on here umming and arring over whether to book a certain airline or not, and bad luck can happen to any airline be its strikes, cancellations, swapping out with another carrier, or if they are in financial trouble. I personally would book any airline, and could have quite easily done so with Thomas cook, just be sensible when booking and do so on a credit card and to make sure you are ATOL protected so you can get back if you are overseas.


Anyway back to my story, as is standard procedure now we trek to the furthest point and wait for ages for a bus back to the resorts. They are of course overwhelmed as you have 3 massive hotels waiting for the same bus, so we have to wait for the second one to come, all in all from deciding to leave to getting into bed takes about and 1h30. The busses are a massive plus point, and of course free, but can see why people moan about them so much! We are back in bed and I read some more stories of Thomas Cook online and message some friends to say how sorry I am for them.

Day 9

Edited at 01:08 PM.
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Old 2 Apr 20, 11:46 AM  
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mitch-fishguard
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Norwegian were very naughty.(Or were they?) I paid £600, I think for both of us, just before TC went down. TC were selling flights right up to the second they announced. The very second.
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Old 3 Sep 20, 06:44 AM  
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Taffy1959
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We were in Orlando the same time as you and we were on the last but one TC flight out of Orlando.
It was so sad seeing the crew upset and not knowing what the future held for them.
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