Team Groves are Florida Bound! October 2017 pre-trip

[berniegroves]

So today is 180 days out from my DD's birthday which will be during our holiday.

I want to book Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique for her so was all set to phone up at 12 to try and get a booking.

Well... my husband has taken my phone to work with him! Argh! I want to cry!

[DisneyBelle]

Originally Posted by berniegroves

So today is 180 days out from my DD's birthday which will be during our holiday.

I want to book Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique for her so was all set to phone up at 12 to try and get a booking.

Well... my husband has taken my phone to work with him! Argh! I want to cry!

See more...

Oh no! Did you manage to book it in the end?

[berniegroves]

Originally Posted by DisneyBelle

Oh no! Did you manage to book it in the end?

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lol. Yes we managed it in the end.

I emailed DH and said that either he needed to bring my phone home before 12 or he would need to call Disney. He agreed to call and asked for me to send the details.
Then our wifi went down! Seriously, we have been in this house since January and never had a problem with the internet. But yesterday it decides to fail.

Anyway it came back online just in time and we managed to book it for 1.40pm. So its all good.

[2littleboys]

Yeah, so glad to see this pre-trippie, I loved your last report!

So looking forward to this one, we miss you by a day as we fly home on the 6th

Cant wait to follow along with your adventures

[berniegroves]

Shopping Update:

As we all know, the shopping leading up to a Florida holiday is part of the fun.

So far I haven't bought any clothes for myself. But I have bought a few for DH and quite a lot for both kiddos.

First up though, hand luggage.

If you have been reading my report, you will know that I wanted cabin cases for me and DH and Trunki's for the kids.
We took a trip to the local outlets a couple of weeks back to get the kids shoes. But instead we came out with these beauties!

I love them! We hadn't planned on buying themed cabin cases, but when we saw them we couldn't resist!

Then I ordered Trunki's for M and G and they are both very pleased with them.

Hopefully these will all make the airport and immigration much easier than last year!

I bought some cosmetic cases from the Disney Store. I am not sure what they will be used for, but i'm positive they will come in handy.

Simon has four new tshirts so far, all from Uniqlo. His birthday is in September, so I may buy him a couple of new ones then.

I have eight tshirts for Miley now, and I think that is plenty for her as she also wears a lot of dresses. Seven of these tshirts were from Uniqlo, the Minnie mouse one is from Asda.

I bought her this Animator hoody from the Disney Store and I totally love it! The design on it adorable!

I have got her a few simple summer dresses from H&M, but I love this one from Next, its so pretty. And the two swimming costumes are beautiful.

I need to buy her a few pairs of shorts and if we see a nice Moana tshirt we will probably get that too.
Miley has requested a LOT of character dresses this time, so I have a long list that I will start working my way through to see how many I get done.

I have bought Grayson 12 tshirts so far. I think last time he had 20 or so.

These are all from Uniqlo, Asda or Disney Store.

And a couple from H&M that seemed appropriate. Along with his puffer fish swimming stuff which he loves.

That's it for clothing at the moment. I am sure there will be more to come at some point, along with shoes :-)

Oh and I have discovered a love for Tsum Tsums!

I don't have many yet, and they keeo disappearing all over the house when the kids play with them. But we love them and I think this collection will grow before our trip.

Thanks for reading

[16offtodisney!]

Its soon coming around, we are also fellow October travellers x

[berniegroves]

Originally Posted by 2littleboys

Yeah, so glad to see this pre-trippie, I loved your last report!

So looking forward to this one, we miss you by a day as we fly home on the 6th

Cant wait to follow along with your adventures

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Thank you so much, its always nice to hear people enjoyed my first report.

Oh no, we will be some of those annoying people who are all happy their holiday is just starting when yours is on its last day!
You never know we may see you somewhere on the 6th

Originally Posted by 16offtodisney!

Its soon coming around, we are also fellow October travellers x

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It is coming around really fast! Are you doing a trip report?

[berniegroves]

Trip Update (12/06/2017):

114 days to go!
Eek!

This trip is coming around so quickly. I cannot wait.

I haven’t done an update for a while now and to be fair most of the big stuff was already booked when I started this trip report. But I have booked some ADR’s and a few bits and pieces, so I though an update was due.

As we are staying offsite we have only booked a handful of ADR’s, but its more than we did last year and I am super excited about them!

Crystal Palace – Breakfast:

We have booked this on our first morning in Orlando. I feel like a lot of people have this tradition, but we are jumping on the band wagon as it seems like a great place to start.
Last year we did it on our second morning, but this time I am so excited to get straight in to Magic Kingdom.

For the few people who haven’t been here, it is a buffet breakfast with Winnie the Pooh and friends. Eeyore is my favourite character!
The food is AMAZING! Seriously, it was so good, we all really enjoyed it and cannot wait to go back again!

Tusker House – Breakfast:

I couldn’t get an early morning reservation for Tusker House, so I booked it on our third day in Florida at 10.45 and thought we could use it as a very early lunch.
This is a new one for us. Its again a buffet, but the characters here are Donald, Daisy, Mickey and Goofy.

San Angel Inn – lunch:

We have booked a lunch here for one of our Epcot days.
Again this is a new one for us. But we loved the look of it last time we were in Epcot and said we’d love to try it one day. I checked the menu and both my kids like Mexican food, so we are hoping this will be a hit.

Whispering Canyon Café – lunch:

We LOVED the lunch we had here on our last trip, so we are excited to be visiting again. The family-style platter was awesome and we all really enjoyed it. The kids also loved having our table overloaded with ketchup.

Be Our Guest – lunch:
This was the hardest ADR to get. It took me forever to manage to get a booking on a day we could do and at a reasonable time. But I’m so glad I carried on trying.

This will be the first time we have been here and honestly I am not to worried about the food, I am just really looking forward to seeing inside the castle. And I really want to try the grey stuff because I hear it is delicious.

Trattoria Al Forno – Breakfast:
This is a character breakfast at the restaurant in the Boardwalk resort. During the breakfast you meet Rapunsel, Flynn Ryder, Ariel and Prince Eric.

I’m really looking forward to this as I am interested to see the Boardwalk resort, it’s an area we haven’t been to before and from what I have heard it is really lovely.
And I know Miley and Grayson will both be so excited to meet some of the princes, as normally you just meet the princesses and they both love meeting characters.

Ohanas – dinner:
Another new one for us, but one I have wanted to try for the longest time.

I wasn’t sure whether to book it because the service seems really hit and miss. But I decided to go for it and hope for the best. I REALLY want to try the bread pudding, so I am hoping that the service will be good enough that the meal doesn’t take too long. With Grayson we are limited on the amount of time we can spend in a restaurant before he just goes bonkers! Lol.
Could we have the bread pudding to go?

Chef Mickeys – dinner:

We have this booked for Miley’s birthday meal.
Cinderella’s castle didn’t appeal to us as it is so formal and because it costs so much! As we will be in Magic Kingdom in the day we wanted to book somewhere close by and Donald and Pluto are two of Miley’s favourite characters.

They really loved the character interaction here last time, so I am hoping we have a similar experience this time too.

So that is all of the ADR’s that we have booked. It is actually more than I realised. Lol. Some of them took longer to book, Be Our Guest, Trattoria Al Forno, Tusker House and Ohanas were all pretty tricky and I had to sign up to Touring Plans to send me notifications of spare reservations.
But we got there in the end and I am so excited to try all of the new places we have booked and to visit the ones we loved last time.


Other Disney Bookings:

Pirates League -
We have this booked for the end of our first week.
Grayson LOVES pirates and Pirates of the Carribbean was one of his favourite rides last time, when he was just 2 years old. Lol.
We aren’t sure how old the kids will be by the time we get back to Florida again and we know that they may not believe in the magic so much when they are a few years older. So we wanted to make the most of them being young and we thought this would be a nice thing for them to do together. Miley will have the mermaid package and Grayson the pirate.

I am making Miley a mermaid themed dress to wear and I am planning on trying to make Grayson a pirate outfit. Failing that we will have to buy him one on the day.


Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique -
Following the same logic as above we decided to book BBB for Miley whist she still buys in to the magic of Disney princesses. It is booked for the day of her 6th birthday and so I am hoping this will be a nice treat for her. She doesn’t know about it yet.
My plan is to make her a Rapunsel themed dress, but again we will see how my plans turn out.

We have watched youtube videos of BBB and she seems to prefer the hairstyle with twists in the hair, rather than it all being scraped back. Which I am pleased about.

Mickeys Not So Scary Halloween Party:
I am so excited that we will get to try this on this trip. I am so looking forward to it and hope it will be a lot of fun.

I really need to do some research about this to see what we should try and get done during the evening. I know the kids will want to collect a lot of candy, surprise surprise.
But they really do love meeting characters and I know there will be ones there that you can’t usually meet, like the seven dwarves. So I need to sort out some kind of plan for this so that we don’t just wander around aimlessly.

So that is all of the ADR’s and Disney extras that I have booked at the moment.

We are so excited about this trip and I am looking forward to experiencing all of the magic alongside Miley and Grayson.

[chazb]

Emma, how have I missed this? All your plans sound fab! Your so good doing another trip report, I gave up on mine after day 5 or so. We are not going this year as we had Finley in April and I wanted dim to be a bit older so are going back in may18 with my parents again to Saratoga. I'm so excited, trying to sort out what ADRs we want. You have made me think of doing ohanas or whispering canyon cafe I'm just not sure! I bet your all getting so excited xx

[WileyCoyote]

It looks a fantastic trip. Loads of lovely bookings and restaurants and the villa sounds really nice too. You will be so busy , sounds a lot of fun.
Glad the phone/internet hiccup got resolved so you could get your booking done... Of all the days !