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Old 30 Sep 19, 10:08 PM  
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sha9
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If you book it you will go. Sept 2019. Pre travel & travel day.

Ok now I'm back I'm going to get these reports written! I'm going to attempt a simultaneous dining and trip report posting so we'll see. Normally I just link to the dining part each day as it's less work but if you want to read just the dining part or the whole dining part it's here.

The pre trip report is here but for anyone who doesn't want to read, my sister and me are spinster aunts in our 40's who like to go to Disney and prefer an onsite stay with some kind of dining plan. This was our first year at Coronado Springs and our first time on Quick Service dining plan.

I've combined pre travel and travel day. The dining report for today is here.

Pre travel day was a bit boring. We both had a waxing booked, Marie’s earlier than mine as she had some work booked. I spent the day taking my car for a service, going for my wax & pedicure and cleaning the house. I was almost done when I got the text to say my car was ready so asked Mum to drop me off. She arrived just as Marie arrived home so she didn’t really need to take me but since she was there she took me anyway. She had suggested we go to theirs for dinner and then Dad could pick us up closer to 7pm to avoid rush hour. I got the house finished and Marie cleaned her van then we popped round for some home made macaroni cheese. Mum had also made lentil soup so between that, the bread with the soup and the garlic bread with the mac n cheese we rolled home to finish packing.
It didn’t take us too long and once done we nipped next door to leave a key. Denise next door insisted she would get us some bread and milk and we were to tell Mum not to bother!

Dad arrived around 7pm and we were off to the Holiday Inn at Glasgow Airport. Traffic was fine and it took about 45 minutes I think. We checked in and were given a first floor “airport view” room. It was a typical HI room so was fine. Although small it does the job. It did intermittently smell of cigarettes and I think now it was because we were only one floor up and probably got the stench from people smoking outdoors. I was tempted to ask for a change but since it went away and we were only there a night I left it.











We got settled in and had a cup of tea with a couple of kit kats I’d grabbed from the fridge before we left home! We’d also brought what little milk we had left. We watched Men In Black 3 which was all that was on really. We both fell asleep quickly after turning the TV off about 10ish.
We were both awake a couple of times over night. I found myself lying awake at half 4 for a while before eventually getting back to sleep. I wrote up some notes while I was awake. This has been the pattern recently and I was hoping it wouldn’t last while on holiday. The alarm was set for 7.30am but we didn’t need it. I woke up at 6.38am and lay for a while. Marie woke not long after so we had a coffee and watched BBC Breakfast before getting showered and ready. This was the point I chastised myself for trusting Marie when she told me she had a hairbrush and comb. She did not have the kind of hairbrush I use, just a metallic round brush. Lesson learned!

We had decided at check in to pre book breakfast at the hotel as you could save £3. So instead of £15 it cost £12 each. We headed down around 8ish and it wasn’t too busy. It’s a buffet of both hot breakfast items and continental.

After breakfast we headed back to the room and got packed up. We were aiming to head over to the airport about 9.30am to check in 4 hours before as we’ve noticed that the VA economy check in queue is usually pretty huge 3 hours before. Our last few times with VA has been PE so we’ve always checked in pretty quickly. There was already a short queue and a woman from work who was on our flight had already been there about 15 minutes. Check in opened just as we arrived though and we weren’t long.
We’d paid for priority security and laughed as we went through as it was totally unnecessary. There was a handful of people at security. With it being Friday I think most airport traffic had already been through earlier.
We stopped at Duty Free to get a present for Dad’s birthday – a bottle of expensive whiskey, some L’Occitane night serum for me and I also bought a DKNY perfume that was quite cheap. I had wanted to do the Shop and Collect but apparently you can only do that on flights within the EU so that was that. I therefore had to humph a large bottle of whiskey all the way to Orlando and back!
We then went to Boots as we had to buy a suitable hairbrush (turned out to be rubbish).
We had booked the Upper Deck Lounge for about 10.30am so headed there next. Since I wanted to check in so early I thought it would be best to book a lounge for comfort.











It was quite quiet when we arrived and it looked like breakfast was just finishing up. Being Scotland they had tablet and macaroon in wee bowls on the counter. Lunch was brought out it not long after and was 3 types of sandwich – cheese & onion, tuna & sweetcorn and ham. There was also soup – tomato and cream of chicken. I also noticed cheese and crackers. There was a bar, a fridge with cans of fizzy juice, coolers with different fruit juices, a coffee machine and a hot water dispenser. I loved being able to pop up and get a drink or a snack any time I wanted, even if it wasn’t a huge selection. After enjoying some quiet time in our window seats it started to get a bit busy and a couple sat in the seats next to us. I personally felt it got a bit too busy but it probably didn’t help that our flight was delayed an hour so we stayed for our full 3 hours.

We headed into the departure lounge about half one. The gate wasn’t displayed yet but we had seen the Virgin tail from the lounge so just went in that direction. Because it still hadn’t displayed on the screens there weren’t many at the gate so boarding was very straightforward. When we got to our seats there was no-one in the window seat but it was still early so we didn’t relax until they closed the door. We realise we were very lucky but we did end up with the 3 seats to ourselves so Marie moved into the window seat. Despite being smaller than average our bags didn’t fit in the overhead locker so we put them in the wardrobe. We took off about 3pm (should have been 1.40pm)
I found the economy leg room much better than I had expected however it may have been partly due to having the extra seat.







(Empty seat)

We both relaxed into the flight and I read for a little while. I then put Avengers: Endgame on but fast forwarded to the final battle. This makes me cry from the minute Sam says “on your left” so I basically wept until dinner. Dinner was served soon. Normally I’m ok with airline food but this was below par.

After dinner I decided to watch Men In Black International just as the woman in front reclined into my knees. As I was in the back row I was able to recline without bothering anyone but the screen doesn’t tilt in economy so I struggled a bit to watch. It also wasn’t particularly comfortable. Now I know this is divisive and people say if it wasn’t ok to recline the seats wouldn’t be designed to recline but I’d counter that with if they were designed to recline they wouldn’t make it so uncomfortable for the person behind. It drives me insane on a day flight and I think we’ll look at exit row seats next year. Of course I’ll need to lose weight so my bum fits!

Anyway, after Men in Black I read some more then about 1 ½ hours from landing they served afternoon tea. For the rest of the flight I watched the start of Aladdin.

We landed an hour late so hadn’t made up any time and it then took an hour to get through immigration, get our bags and get to Magical Express which I thought wasn’t bad. The woman in front of us at immigration had obviously enjoyed the on board alcohol and staggered all the way along the queue ignoring the announcements about not using your phone or tablet. She then opened the bag of skittles we’d been given on the plane and scattered them across the floor as she walked. She did keep me entertained.

After we got off the monorail I turned my wifi on and checked MDE. Our room number was showing as were our QSDP credits.




We arrived at Magical Express to a huge queue. Well 2 huge queues. One was moving and one was not. Every now and then someone would ask what the difference was and I would point out “that one’s moving”. After I said this a couple of times we decided to move to the queue that was moving.




We eventually got checked in which took seconds after they scanned my Magic Band and stood waiting for the coach to Coronado Springs which took 30 minutes to come. I assume we had just missed one. Thankfully it left pretty much straight away. By now it was about 8.20pm and we’d landed about 2 hours earlier. We arrived at CSR about 9pm and the queue at check in was quite long so this took some time. We could have went straight to our room but wanted to opt out of housekeeping plus Marie had her upgraded Magic Band to collect. We were eventually checked in by someone who wasn’t very competent. She couldn’t find our MBs and said we’d get $130 when we should have got $140 for 15 nights. She then sent the gift card to a non-existent email without checking it with me. She offered us a refund on the upgraded MB and gave us generic yellow and green ones.


Check in.








Once we were done we dragged our cases to Casitas 2 where our room was. It felt like miles away and didn’t feel very preferred! Casitas 1 seemed to go on forever!
Finally we got to our room and dumped the bags.









We were hungry so headed across to El Mercado de Coronado for some food and our refillable mugs.

Took a couple of photos on the way.




By now it was 9.50pm (or 2.50am!) so Marie got chicken nuggets (not advertised as adult portions but you can get if you ask) and I got a burger. This was all fine but you could tell it was close to closing time. We collected our mugs, Marie getting a Halloween themed one and me a Buzz Lightyear one.

As we left El Centro we popped into Café Rix to see if they had any breakfast pastries but it was just the same selection as El Mercado.
We got back to the room, unpacked and went to bed about 10.45pm.
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Edited at 11:12 AM.
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Old 30 Sep 19, 10:25 PM  
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sha9
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I’ve posted this in the wrong section! Oh well.
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Old 30 Sep 19, 10:51 PM  
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collybird
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I still found you haha. I'm sure the mods will move you

So funny that they class that as an ‘Airport View’, how scenic.

I’ve had that hair brush drama you had with make up brushes before, now I am loyal to one kind and one kind only.

The lounge actually seems like it’s worth the money, now that we’re leaving earlier than planned we don’t really need it but something to keep in mind for the future.

That’s really great that your room number and QS credits were showing on MDE before you’d even been to the desk.

Did Marie never get her upgraded band? I’ll be irrationally sad if I don’t get mine!

The Gran Destino Tour lobby looks absolutely gorgeous.

Quite a stressful travel day as they go, the Magical Express doesn't look like the most magical of experiences.
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Old 30 Sep 19, 11:01 PM  
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Floridafour
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That’s a long travel day 🙁
Lovely when you finally arrive though & know you have the whole holiday ahead of you. Looking forward to reading more 🙂
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Old 1 Oct 19, 01:31 AM  
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Found the trippie!
Long first day. Only trouble with that VA flight is that it arrives in MCO about the same time as one from Manchester and one from Sao Paulo. Immigration can be a nightmare.
Sorry you were disappointed in the VA food ours was quite palatable. The crew were from Manchester and kept us well watered.
Strange with the DME sometimes it's really quick and others dreadfully slow for no apparent reason.
Looking forward to your views on CSR.
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Old 1 Oct 19, 06:43 PM  
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sha9
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Originally Posted by collybird View Post
I still found you haha. I'm sure the mods will move you

So funny that they class that as an ‘Airport View’, how scenic.

I’ve had that hair brush drama you had with make up brushes before, now I am loyal to one kind and one kind only.

The lounge actually seems like it’s worth the money, now that we’re leaving earlier than planned we don’t really need it but something to keep in mind for the future.

That’s really great that your room number and QS credits were showing on MDE before you’d even been to the desk.

Did Marie never get her upgraded band? I’ll be irrationally sad if I don’t get mine!

The Gran Destino Tour lobby looks absolutely gorgeous.

Quite a stressful travel day as they go, the Magical Express doesn't look like the most magical of experiences.
To be fair it was me that classed it as airport view .

The lounge was definitely worth it as the departure lounge was heaving. Frankie & Benny’s had a queue. We’ll be booking it next year for sure.

You’ll need to keep reading to find out about the band .

The hotel is gorgeous although we never did get round to a proper look about.

Originally Posted by Floridafour View Post
That’s a long travel day 🙁
Lovely when you finally arrive though & know you have the whole holiday ahead of you. Looking forward to reading more 🙂
That’s my favourite bit!

Originally Posted by disneypars View Post
Found the trippie!
Long first day. Only trouble with that VA flight is that it arrives in MCO about the same time as one from Manchester and one from Sao Paulo. Immigration can be a nightmare.
Sorry you were disappointed in the VA food ours was quite palatable. The crew were from Manchester and kept us well watered.
Strange with the DME sometimes it's really quick and others dreadfully slow for no apparent reason.
Looking forward to your views on CSR.
Immigration wasn’t as bad as I feared and better than the last time we flew VA. DME was a bit disappointing but I expect we just missed a coach.
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Old 3 Oct 19, 08:31 PM  
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You must have been very jet lagged when you posted this day. Not too many traumas today, which is nice for travel day. Shame about the wait for the magical express, but otherwise all was pretty standard. The hotel room looks marvellous by the way. We've never been to Coronado springs as they never seem to have availability for our dates during the free DDP offer. One day...
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Old 3 Oct 19, 09:59 PM  
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Originally Posted by Goldia View Post
You must have been very jet lagged when you posted this day. Not too many traumas today, which is nice for travel day. Shame about the wait for the magical express, but otherwise all was pretty standard. The hotel room looks marvellous by the way. We've never been to Coronado springs as they never seem to have availability for our dates during the free DDP offer. One day...
You're right, the wait for DME and the hour flight delay weren't too bad. Everything feels exaggerated on travel day when you're tired though.

I find resort availability so variable. Looking at our dates now there's not much left in standard rooms at all. No POFQ in any category!
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Old 7 Oct 19, 12:24 PM  
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Nice easy travel day. We're from EK and always like to stay at an airport hotel when flying direct from Glasgow. Makes it a relaxed start to your holidays. Also enjoy spending time in the lounge and love the bits of macaroon and tablet they serve.

Will be following along and looking forward to reading the rest of your report.
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Old 10 Oct 19, 11:38 AM  
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Looking forward to reading your report!
I am impressed your room number and ddp credits showed as soon as you connected to WiFi. Did you do online check in?
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