The Dodgem and the Bumper Car Do Disney- August 2012- Day 1

[xAimeex]

Hello, here's Day 1 of our trip, travel day!

Cast
Aimee-23
Lauren- 21
Mum and Dad aka Jill and Sean (I realised I forgot to mention their names in Day 0 haha)

Trip Index here

Day 1-1st August 2012- Travel Day

Lauren and I were both awake around 6 but we didn’t get out of bed till 7. Our flight was at 1 o clock so we weren’t in a big rush this morning which made it nice and chilled. Luckily I had woken up feeling so much better. I can only guess that it was allergies that made me feel so ill the day before so I took an allergy pill just in case.

We got up and re-packed the stuff we’d taken out for the night before and then got ourselves ready.


Lauren


Me

We left the Premier Inn at 9:30 to catch the shuttle bus to Gatwick. It took about 10 minutes to get there. Having done online check in the day before we only needed to go to bag drop. This was all really simple.

We’d been in a panic worrying about whether our hand luggage would be overweight and repacking the hand luggage until the digital luggage scales read 6kg. As it turned out they didn’t even weigh them! Our suitcases were all way underweight, the heaviest was only 16kg.

We headed to security and I was the only one in the family to set off the scanner. After being patted down and sent on my way I collected all my stuff and started to head out when another security lady randomly stopped me to have another check of my bag. There’s always one isn’t there haha.

Once I’d finally made it through security we went and got some magazines and snacks for the plane before heading to the V room! It was the first time we’d been able to book this so we were looking forward to it.

It didn’t disappoint! It’s great in here. Definitely an incentive to book through Virgin holidays again. We went in at about 11 and went straight for the food as we were all starving by this point. We could have used the V room from 10 but we ended up leaving Premier Inn later than planned.



In the V room

The food was really really good. I was really surprised at how much of a selection there was. We started off with hot food. Lauren and I had sausages and beans. Mum and Dad had a fried breakfast of sausage, scrambled eggs, bacon and tomato. They also did things like beans on toast, bacon rolls etc.





I have the biggest sweet tooth in the family so my eyes lit up when I saw all the pastries! There were croissants, pain au chocolat, cinnamon buns, muffins, flapjack, caramel slice, donuts etc. Sadly I didn’t have the stomach capacity to try it all but the bits I did have were delicious.

Drinks were the usual fizzy drinks- Pepsi, Fanta etc. There was tea, coffee, cappuccino etc available. There were also juices, squash plus smoothies (these were in tiny quantities though).

There was a selection of fresh fruit and yogurts and cereal as well.

However the best thing I discovered in the V room was the pancake making machine! You pressed a button and after a couple of minutes 2 fresh American style pancakes popped out! Toppings were lemon and sugar, toffee sauce, chocolate sauce, strawberry jam and marshmallows. I had one with lemon and sugar and one with toffee sauce, yum! I should have taken a picture of the machine and the perfect pancakes they produced but I was too busy eating them at the time to remember.


Before I discovered the pancake machine

We sat and watched the planes taking off while we ate and then sat and watched a last few bits of the Olympics (they did show it on American sports channels, but I’d say 90% of the time they only showed events that team USA were expected to do well in, the bits we saw at least.) While we were watching we saw the English girls win gold for the 2000m rowing, everyone clapped and cheered!

Around this time they announced that our flight was delayed an hour till 2. We didn’t mind though as this meant we had more time to enjoy the V room!

They have computer in there with internet access so I dibbed for a bit. There seemed to be a lot for kids to do in there too. A small soft play area for babies and toddlers and a games room for kids and teenagers.

Eventually our flight was called so we left the V room and headed over to our departure gate. There was a fairly big queue but once we got through the passport check we could walk straight down to the plane, so no sitting around waiting which was nice. We got talking to a family in the queue who had travelled down from Cardiff the day before on a 4 hour coach trip with a 2 year old. Hi if you’re on the dibb . I’m a nanny to 3 little girls and 2 little boys (not all at the same time I might add) so I have such massive respect for all you parents who do these long journeys with small children.


Goodbye gloomy England

We got on the plane and discovered that we were lucky enough to be on one of the refurbed 747’s, Ladybird! This meant we had the upgraded IFE. This was brilliant, it’ll be great when all the 747’s are refurbished and everyone can enjoy it. It was all touch screen and there was a huge choice of films to choose from.


Upgraded IFE



We took off at about 2:15. Mum and I both started off watching the 5 year engagement, it was really funny to begin with but we both gave up watching in the middle as it got a bit rubbish. Lauren watched The Hunger Games and Dad watched The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

We had the little pretzels they give you. We did notice that it seemed to take ages for the meal to come out though. It wasn’t too much of a problem for us as we’d stuffed ourselves full earlier but it must have been a long wait for people with children.

There were 3 choices. I had bangers and mash. Lauren had pasta in a cheese and vegetable sauce. Mum and Dad had chicken and potatoes in a cheese and leek sauce. We all enjoyed this. Am I the only person who actually quite likes plane food? I like having my little tray of food . I rarely had hot lunch when I was at school, clearly it’s damaged me .


Bangers and Mash


Chicken and potato in cheese and leek sauce


Pasta in cheese and vegetable sauce

They served dessert a little bit later which was good as we had time to let our food go down a bit. It was a GU mango and passion fruit cheesecake, yum. Lauren said no thanks to hers, I would have eaten it though.

After this we had a bit of turbulence for about half an hour so the seatbelt signs were on. I find turbulence always seems to happen on planes right when you’ve just filled your stomach with food haha.

The rest of the flight was spent with us all watching some more films, Mission Impossible (whatever number it’s on now? ), Journey 2 and I watched Mirror Mirror which was really good. I tried to sleep for a while as I was still a bit washed out from feeling ill yesterday. We were sat in the seats in front of one of the exits so we could recline without feeling guilty about anyone behind. I didn’t actually fall asleep in the end though. They bought ice creams round, they were the skinny cow ones and Lauren didn’t like hers so I ended up eating both.


One ice cream just wasn't enough

About an hour and a half before the end of the flight they brought round afternoon tea (although it was actually 9pm in England at this point hehe). It was cheese and red onion sandwiches and a cupcake with vanilla icing, again it was very nice.


Afternoon tea

We landed just before half 5 and did the usual thing of rushing to get all the suitcases down the second the seatbelt sign goes off even though it doesn’t get you off the plane any quicker. Funny how you never rush like this when it’s time to get off the plane back in England haha.

We were really lucky as immigration was really quiet and we got through in 10 minutes. We got to the luggage carousel just as 3 of our suitcases were passing by so we grabbed them. We were still waiting on the last one when the carousel stopped. Luckily Jesus (one of the airport staff) was there to save the day. There was a luggage strap caught in the mechanism and he climbed straight up and fixed it.

We finally got the last case and then headed to yet another queue! I know we’re British and we’re meant to be good at it but really.

We handed in our white customs form and headed up the stairs to catch the shuttle. I reckon they should change this to a sloped moving walkway like when you exit Pirates of the Caribbean haha, it would make it a lot easier with heavy suitcases.

We made it to the main building and it was time to say our goodbyes to Mum and Dad. We were all a bit tired and snappy by this point and I reckon MCO is one of the worst designed airports ever. We were excited to be there but we still couldn’t help but get snappy with each other when trying to work out which side of the airport we needed to be on.

After leaving Mum and Dad, Lauren and I had to collect our $150 dollar Disney gift card from the Virgin desk. This turned out to be really stressful! We walked across to the A side and then down in the lifts to level 1. We then regretted the decision not to get a trolley as we struggled to pull our suitcases to almost the very end of level 1 to find the Virgin holiday’s desk.

Has anyone else noticed that MCO is really hot! Tesco’s has better air conditioning. I hate to sound like a moaner but I don’t think we’d have been so snappy with each other if we hadn’t been boiling.

We got the card no problem and then realised we needed to be on the B side to catch the Magical Express. Looking back I guess for a free gift card you have to put a bit of effort in hehe.

We traipsed back with all the cases right to the very other end of the airport. Again major respect to anyone who does this with children. It was now gone midnight at home and we’d been up since 6 so we really just wanted to sit down now.

We got the Magical Express which is always exciting. It’s nice to start that Disney magic from the airport. We usually spend the journey pointing out all the things we recognise but we were struggling to keep our eyes open by now.

We made it to Port Orleans French Quarter finally! It’s always lovely to come back here. Even the smell makes me smile.

We checked in and were in building 6. Not as close to the food court as 5 but FQ is such a small resort that everywhere is close. That’s one of the reasons we like it so much. For anyone wondering about the snack credits for UK guests in 2012 we still had 2 per day.

We got up to the room and chucked our stuff down. The rooms have been refurbished since we were last here and they really are beautiful now!


The refurbished room at POFQ

Continued...

[xAimeex]

We went down to Sassagoula floatworks and food factory and grabbed some refillable mugs. Lauren had some potato chips as she wasn’t very hungry. I had to have beignets though, this is tradition when we stay here. They’re the best thing about French Quarter for me haha. As I said earlier I have a massive sweet tooth and beignets are to die for.



We took the food back to the room to eat (you can tell from the amount of powdered sugar in the picture that it’s hard to eat these publicly and still have your dignity in tact at the end). I called down to front desk about our garden grocer order. Someone from bell services bought it up. We had water, apple juice, lucky charms, lots of poptarts, cookies and donuts amongst other stuff. All really healthy stuff as you can see.


As you can see we planned to eat really healthily on holiday

We then grabbed our pj’s, toothbrushes etc before literally falling into bed at 9 pm US time, 2am UK time. I usually like to unpack first but we were shattered.

All in all our travel day was pretty good. The plane journey was great and went really quickly, mostly due to the upgraded IFE, it made all the difference. MCO got a bit stressful but those couple of hours spent stressed in the airport are worth it for a couple of weeks spent in Florida!

[J1WYX]

Great start... looking forward to reading more reports.

MCO is hot and testing at times When you land your tired and ratty when you leave your snappy and depressed----still wouldnt change it as its the centre of many happy memories... and i cant wait to get back there


Nice to see a fellow Dibber with the same holiday diet as me!

[Guest]

Glad you were feeling better today! Travel day went smoothly, it's great getting through immigration so fast! Looking forward to reading more

[Guest]

great start! look forward to more...

[Iloveflorida]

I can't wait to start my holiday diet just like yours!

[w3dal]

i see you have your 5-a-day covered there

loving the new screen, they were well overdue an upgrade the plane we were on in March was so old it didnt even work hopefully have better luck in much

have an amazing holiday

Dal

[RachelM]

what a good day.

[scotsprincess]

Can't wait to read more

[NatsyNoo]

Great start!