The Bare Necessities - Travel Day Tuesday 30th July 2019

[Goldia]

Welcome to The Bare Necessities Trip Report. I’m Abby and I went to Orlando at the end of July 2019 with my husband David, our children Max (14) and Kate (12). We’ve been to Orlando before But this trip was different as we had my parents Jac and Tom with us, they will be referred to as Mum and Dad or Grandma and Grandad throughout the report. I was so excited to take them with us as this was their first time to WDW.

Travel Day

So, of course I woke up in the night, but I didn’t end up with any long patches of not sleeping. I had some tossing and turning and I did wake up early, too excited to sleep. I was pretty happy that my phone said it was 4.55am when I woke up for good and I decided that was near enough to 5am for me to call it morning. My fitbit told me I had 4 hours and 43 minutes of sleep. Not bad really for the night before travel day.

Max somehow slept through me showering and drinking 2 cups of tea and a coffee.

If you recall from pre travel day, me and Max are in one room and Dave and Kate in the non-interconnecting room next door.

I pottered around a bit. I then got a bit bored waiting for everyone so I sent a message on our what's app!

Come on everyone it's Floriday

Of course, everyone else started waking up eventually. Kate came to my room and brought the toiletries for their bathroom, good girl

Max couldn’t pretend he was asleep anymore, so he got himself ready.

The taxi was booked for 8am to take us to the airport and we agreed to meet down in reception at 7.45am. The kids played a quick game of cards with Mum and Dad, I wandered in and out looking out for our taxi.

It arrived bang on time, well technically early as it was 7.57am, but the taxi driver had to quickly pop to the toilet as he’d had a nose bleed on the way to us . We didn’t wait long as it wasn’t too bad a nose bleed and we were soon on our way to Gatwick.

Time for a taxi photo.

While we were in the taxi ‘A million dreams’ was playing on the radio and I announced that this was a good omen and that it was going to be a brilliant holiday me, Kate and Mum were singing along.

At the airport we tried to do the bag drop print outs at the self service counters, but this didn’t work and so we joined the very long queue to check in at the desks. This was a real pain While in the line Dave tried to help Dad set up the free wifi on his phone, but it wasn’t working properly.

They spent around 15 minutes trying to sort it out and so it kept them busy for a chunk of the time and it was entertainment for me as I was just sniggering at Dad stabbing his phone and watching Dave who managed to keep his cool and remain patient. In the end they gave up and the check in line took around 20 minutes until we were at the front.

The check in man at the desk entered in the wrong weight for the cases and he then spent ages trying to figure out how to cancel it and in the end had to get a colleague to sort out this out as we were going to get charged for a case that was no where near 20kg, never mind 23kg. She explained what he had to do and he managed to clear out the wrong weight and enter the correct weight. Phew.

We’d already been allocated our seats when I did the OLCI 24 hours in advance and we were in rows 34 and 35 (A, B, C) and this didn’t change. I was happy with this as I hadn’t wanted to pay for booking the seats and as Kate was now 12 we couldn’t do early check in and we weren’t guaranteed to be sitting together either. While I think of it, we had the exact same rows on the way back from Orlando so maybe these were allocated before the outbound journey?

Security was pretty straightforward, no problems and we didn’t get stopped for extra screening with our bags.

We were pretty hungry and went to Breakfast at Wondertree.

Five of us had breakfast, Dad said he doesn't eat breakfast (you will on this trip) so he just had an orange juice. He joked he was on a diet. Me, Dave and Mum had Mimosas they were yummy. Max had a hot chocolate and Kate a smoothy.

The kids both had buttermilk pancakes with bacon and maple syrup. It was 3 pancakes and quite filling, they loved it.

Dave had the Moroccan breakfast, poached eggs, tomatoes, hummus. He wished he'd got mine.

Mum had banana bread with blueberry compote. This was good.

I had the eggs in a skillet. This was fab. It had breakfast potatoes, chorizo, scrambled eggs, onion and peppers. Really tasty. I was the breakfast winner, although the kids would disagree.

Mum and me also had an espresso after the meal. The waiter was really good, brought water and refilled the bottle without being asked.

The bill was £80, so not cheap. The mimosas was £8 each. Meals all around £8 or £9.

During the meal Dad went and bought some duty free as he wanted to have some bottles for the hotel room. I tried to explain that there was no need for extra, but they both wanted Bacardi, Gin and Pimms. In the end of course they didn’t drink it. Fortunately we had room in our case and brought the unopened bottle of Gin back for them.

Kate spotted the gate information had been posted as gate 15

So we scattered a bit as we all had different things we wanted to do and agreed to meet up at the gate.

Mum wanted to buy some headphones, so she went off with Max to get them, but she was a bit surprised at how expensive they were and ended up just getting some stick on nails from Boots. She stuck them on while on the plane.

Kate wanted a look round the book shop so Dave went with her while I went to the toilet to put on a pair of leggings under my dress.

We then all met up at the gate and scanned in pretty quick.

Boarding had begun and we joined the long line, but this went along quite fast. I was pleased to see it was raining outside as I always love going away somewhere hot while it’s raining here

The plane left on time at 11.15 and overall it was a pretty good flight.

In row 34 was me, Dave and Mum.

Behind us were Kate, Dad and Max.

The kids had both wanted to fly with Grandad...he has the best snacks, not that they didn't go prepared So, I'm less sure of what they ate...I'd ordered the kids child meals not really thinking that they would eat them.

We had the usual pretzels and drink. I had a gin and tonic plus a wine for the meal

Dave got 2 bottles of wine, Mum got white wine and water she needs a bit of training

Kate took my phone to photo her tray.

And Grandads tray as he managed to get 3 drinks, requesting a shandy so he got a beer and a sprite and a bottle of wine for the meal (which he saved for the hotel).

Child meals were nuggets and mash. Max ate some of his. There was a yoghurt and a babybel. I thought it looked pretty good.

Kate wasn't interested. The smell of the food often makes her gag. Grandad suggested she put her nose in the Pringles tube

The main meal choices were chicken or vegetable pasta. All of us went for the chicken. I honestly think this is the best meal I've had on a plane.

It was a honey chicken, but not too sweet, with Dauphinoise potatoes and veg. This was so tasty.

The only thing I didn't bother with was the roll as they are often a bit tough. Fab meal really pleased.



I ended up watching a movie I’d never heard of before. A comedy called Hot Pursuit with Reece Witherspoon and Gloria from Modern Family this was hilarious and I was really laughing.

I then fancied a bit of a nap so put Moana on, it worked like a dream and I didn’t see much of it at all. Not that Moana is a bad movie, just that it’s helpful for me to pretend I’m going to watch a movie and if I’ve seen it before then I end up dozing. Well, I actually ended up sleeping for near enough two hours.

I took a few photos out the window.

Kate and me then played a few of the games Battleships and Chess, plus I played a bit of Who wants to be a millionaire?

Afternoon tea for the kids was a cheese sandwich and a jaffa cake bar. Max liked his. Kate doesn't like cheese unless it's melted on a pizza or a lasagne so Grandad had hers.

For the adults it was a chicken Caesar sandwich and a banana bread cake. This was also good.

So really a thumbs up for the BA food

On the approach to Florida I took a few more photos.

It was coming up for 3.15pm and we were on time for landing which was great. It had been a really good flight up to this point

Unfortunately, the pilot told us there were thunderstorms over Orlando and we did quite a lot of circling up and down the coast.

This lasted for nearly 45 minutes.

Finally, just after 4pm the pilot must have been given the all clear (or we were running out of fuel) and we went for the landing. This is by far the worst landing experience I have ever had We had a lot of drops, very much like the drops on Tower of Terror Children were crying, adults were screaming…a lot. The multiple drops seemed to last for most of the descent and it was only once we were pretty low to the ground that they stopped.

We did of course land alive and everyone clapped. Phew it was not a nice landing experience.

There was a lot of rain on the tarmac and we could tell there had been a huge storm.

There was a fairly long wait in the immigration hall. Dad had to go to the toilet and told us to carry on and he would catch up with us. So he ended up having to push past the rest of the plane who were waiting behind us Once through immigration and baggage reclaim we were happy as we thought we would be on our way speedily. But there were really long queues to get on the monorail. This was a real bottleneck of people. Lots of very tired, pretty stressed people and it took ages.

We made our way after about an hour of waiting to the Magical Express. It was now gone 5pm and of course there was a queue here as well . Mum decided she wanted to take her special flight socks off so she did this while we waited (this was sight to behold I didn’t take photos as I was trying to pretend I wasn’t with her).

Boarding the magical express was fine and the journey wasn’t long.

The bus went to OKW first for dropping off and we had a quick look at where we had been last summer. Then next up was POFQ. Hurrah

We arrived at POFQ around 6.30pm. We’d done the online check in but we went to reception to collect our magic bands and to see if we had been given neighbouring rooms. I had already seen that we had been allocated room 4112 a ground floor room in building 4 so I was pretty happy with that as it was close to the bus stop and the pool and restaurant. I prefer top floor so we don’t have people walking about above us but I figured this was fine if we were the same floor and building as Mum and Dad.

Unfortunately, Mum and Dad had not been allocated building 4, but this was changed pretty quickly, without a fuss and they were given room 4129, which was a great ground floor room that was just 3 doors down from the food hall. When we got there I realised it was an accessible room (which they didn’t need) but they were happy they were in the same building as us as we were just around the corner.

Our magic bands! Pink for me this time.

I took some photos of our room before we started unpacking. I was really pleased. It was a lovely room.

It’s a fairly standard layout with the 2 beds, 2 sinks in the dressing area and then the shower over the bath and toilet in the bathroom.

We did a bit of speed unpacking...putting packing cubes into drawers changed into swimwear and we were in the pool by 7pm. We picked up Mum and Dad on the way to the pool.

We had an hour in there...It was lovely and relaxing, not too busy. Mum, Dave, Max and Kate all went down the slide.

Then we tried out the hot tub.

We picked out our resort mugs and activated them. I did a little training session for Mum and Dad on how to get drinks.

For dinner we each ordered a QS meal, of course with hindsight we could have shared. The food is all served on proper plates with real cutlery too which is nice.

I had the fried chicken with mash, green beans and carrots. This was delicious but I couldn't eat all the chicken, good thing really as everyone liked the look of it and helped themselves to my leftovers.

Dave has a steak po boy with chunky chips. He loved it.

Max had a bacon cheeseburger and chips, he couldn't eat all the chips. Must have been tired

Kate had a chicken sandwich, with chips. She said it was a little dry and didn't finish it but she helped me with the chicken.

We got 2 beers and 2 ciders with the 4 QS meals, this was put through as 2 transactions as it's a 2 alcohol limit per person. No ID was asked for, which is handy as I had forgotten to bring it and had left it in the room. We didn't actually drink any of them I know you're a bit shocked we were just too tired.

Mum had a prawn salad. It was great and made to order. She got a Margarita with hers. She didn't drink it!

Dad had shrimp and grits, also made to order (no photo here sorry). He feared there weren't as many shrimps as he would have liked, but he just had to dig deeper in the bowl. Dad got a bottle of Prosecco. He opened this and shared it with mum.

Our first meals were fab and we were looking forward to many more.

After dinner Kate and me went to the shop to look for an autograph book. There was the standard one which she has had before and a Toy Story style one. She decided to wait until we go to Magic Kingdom tomorrow before buying one.

It was after 9pm and so we went back to our rooms to shower and get ready for bed. We sorted out the stuff we would need in the morning and I set the wake up call on the room phone for 6am. I love doing this and if you’ve never done it before please do it, it’s a simple system which talks you through what to do (you don’t have to actually speak to anyone) and then in the morning a character phones to wake you up.

We were tired, but happy that in spite of the horrific landing experience it had been a good travel day. We had been in the pool already and had a lovely dinner from the QS. We were all excited for our first taste of the magic tomorrow .

Statistics
Steps 11858, pretty good really for a 9 hour flight

Coming soon
Next up is my parents first trip to Magic Kingdom, with some rope drop rides before breakfast at BOG, Dad very nearly became a Galactic Hero on Buzz, lunch at Tony’s Town Square, the Parade and then Disney Springs for Polite Pig in the evening.

[Fuellady]

Good start, although I can imagine how frustrated you must have been waiting for every one else to get going in the morning. That never happens to us, as travelling from Aberdeen the flight is always super early, usually around 6.30am so it's always a mad rush and no time for dilly dallying (or 3 hot drinks!)

Nice photos from the air during your circling, not a great finish to the flight though with the Tower of Terror style turbulence It all sounds a bit slow once you landed with long queues before you could get going to POFQ. It was good that you managed a bit of pool time and dinner despite the delays. Your room looks nice too.

Edited to add: Yay, I'm first

[collybird]

Had to chuckle at your dad stock piling the alcohol, he clearly hadn’t been paying proper attention during the DDP module of Disney School.

I think the food at FQ looks great, and lovely that it is served on real plates with proper cutlery but I do wish they wouldn’t wrap the burgers, breakfast sandwiches etc in that paper, it just makes them look cheap and as though they’ve been sitting waiting for someone to buy them for hours.

I have to admit I’ve never set up a wake-up call in the past as I was terrified I’d have to speak to someone haha.

[Rescuer]

Good travel day although your landing sounds very scary.

We are the same as fuellady with the internal Scottish flight first it’s a mad dash and the only time ds is ever ready first. That’s good you had seats together allocated at online check in. Joe will be over 12 the next time we are back.

I thought the rooms at POFQ were really nice as well, we were top floor building 5 but I’m not sure it would have mattered what building it was as everything was so close.

Great that you all even managed to get to the pool on your first night. I’m impressed.

I forgot all about the wake up call thing - oh well next time...

[Goldia]

Originally Posted by Fuellady

Good start, although I can imagine how frustrated you must have been waiting for every one else to get going in the morning. That never happens to us, as travelling from Aberdeen the flight is always super early, usually around 6.30am so it's always a mad rush and no time for dilly dallying (or 3 hot drinks!)

Nice photos from the air during your circling, not a great finish to the flight though with the Tower of Terror style turbulence It all sounds a bit slow once you landed with long queues before you could get going to POFQ. It was good that you managed a bit of pool time and dinner despite the delays. Your room looks nice too.

Edited to add: Yay, I'm first

See more...

I was getting itchy feet in the morning waiting for it to be time to go to the airport I don't like having to get everyone up at 3am, the kids have done it in the past but it's not fun and the fear that I'm going to sleep through the alarm means I then don't sleep at all. We're lucky we don't have to do the internal flight down first.

For the first 10 minutes of circling it was fun taking photos then I just wanted us to land already! The turbulence was not good.

Pool and the room were great. It's a fab resort.

Originally Posted by collybird

Had to chuckle at your dad stock piling the alcohol, he clearly hadn’t been paying proper attention during the DDP module of Disney School.

I think the food at FQ looks great, and lovely that it is served on real plates with proper cutlery but I do wish they wouldn’t wrap the burgers, breakfast sandwiches etc in that paper, it just makes them look cheap and as though they’ve been sitting waiting for someone to buy them for hours.

I have to admit I’ve never set up a wake-up call in the past as I was terrified I’d have to speak to someone haha.

See more...

Dad gave us some of the little bottles of wine from the plane a day or two before we went to RPR so that we could drink them and they wouldn't have to pack them. You just don't appreciate how much food and drink there is, also how tired you're going to feel and so you don't think 'Ooh, I'll just have a glass of wine' if you're in the room you're sleeping (either at night or napping) or you're getting ready to go out. There's not so much hanging around in the room getting bored!

You should try out the wake up call. Last year we had Mr Incredible waking us up most days (I guess because of the Incredible Summer theme). We've had Mickey in the past too.

Originally Posted by Rescuer

Good travel day although your landing sounds very scary.

We are the same as fuellady with the internal Scottish flight first it’s a mad dash and the only time ds is ever ready first. That’s good you had seats together allocated at online check in. Joe will be over 12 the next time we are back.

I thought the rooms at POFQ were really nice as well, we were top floor building 5 but I’m not sure it would have mattered what building it was as everything was so close.

Great that you all even managed to get to the pool on your first night. I’m impressed.

I forgot all about the wake up call thing - oh well next time...

See more...

I'm sure you will still be sat together, BA have always been pretty good for us. Although I think the outbound journey the kids would be fine on their own, on the night flight they would prefer to be with us I think as you're just so tired even if you manage to sleep a little bit it's not nice to be sitting next to a stranger and trying to sleep.

It was good to get in the pool, it helped to refresh us and keep us awake an extra couple of hours.

[Tkdisney]

Love reading your reports. Can’t wait for the next instalment.

[lumosq102]

Uff that landing - I had one like that on my first flight on my own - utterly terrifying. Sometimes other peoples reactions to it can make it feel even scarier.

sounds like you had a fantastic first day though, and POFQ - such a great resort, and that food hall is fantastic.

Looking forward to seeing your parents first visit to Magic Kingdom, thats so exciting, getting to see the magic for the first time through someone elses eyes

[tomdan]

Loved reading this, only a bit scary with the landing😣 your dad made me laugh with his drink stash 🤣🤣🤣 the rooms look lovely cannot wait for the next instalment

[jothp]

That's a lot of steps considering how much of the day was an aeroplane. I'm looking forward to hearing about your mum and dad's first visit to MK.

[walt4it]

What a great start to the holiday, impressed by your Dad's haul from the flight crew
Your on board food looks 100% better than our BA experience from Heathrow to Miami

Nothing worse than a bumpy approach to an airport. As always so many fab pictures and you are off and running for your trip report