Dole Whip Pre-Trip April 2015!

[*Lauren-J*]

Sooooooo excited that we have finally booked! Back at the start of last year we priced up with charter travel to go for 2 weeks in February 2014 staying at AKL coming in at £4800 including tickets, DDP and $ card. However my OH decided that we should hold off and save some money and do up our house instead!

Fast forward to June last year we ended up buying a new house (forced out our first house by horrid neighbours to one side of our terraced house who made our life a misery on a daily basis with blaring music, swearing, shouting, furniture throwing you name it) we decided we'd be happier to move and upgrade to a more "family home" slighter sooner than in our life plan! Best thing we ever did! Love our new house we move in oct 2014 and have lovely neighbours here!

Anyway enough rambling! Due to not going in feb this year my OH promised we could return in 2015. So a little about us and our up and coming trip.

This is my first proper Florida pre trip which I intend on finishing! It can be off putting when their are so many brilliant ones out there by the likes of NastyNoo, Oh_darling,Lottie89 etc!

So there's me, Lauren 24, (on the right from my best friends wedding yesterday)Midwife by day, WDW obsessed! This will be my 3rd trip to the magic, first went as an adult in 2009 for 17 nights over Xmas and new year, stayed at the raddison celebration, Kissimmee and fell in love with Floridia and WDW! Then went again in August 2011 when Ross's mum kindly treated the family to the trip. Favourite snack without a doubt being a pineapple dole whip/float! Favourite parks toss up between Epcot and magic kingdom. Dare I say it I love illuminations as much as wishes!

And Ross my OH of 7 and a half years, draughtsman, 28 soon to be 29 (looks 16 yet is receding and hates the fact of both! ) This will be his 5th trip to florida! He went twice as a child, unfortunately the first time he went his family had a bad car accident and so since either stays onsite or somewhere with good transport services and not wishing to ever drive there which is understandable. Loves typhoon lagoon and very competitive at toy story mania!
Loves the food but probably not as much as me! I'm a total foody!

So this trip! We just booked on Thursday past with Thomas Cook (had a lovely girl serve us who was a total Florida and WDW enthusiast aswell which was fab! She's going in sept for her 7th visit! )

We are flying with virgin from gatwick on 26th April and plan on staying a night at gatwick airport hilton the night before as we'll be flying down from Aberdeen

We are going to be staying at the universal Hard Rock Hotel in a pool view room for 3 nights from 26th-28th April 2015! We love WWOHP and are roller coaster junkies so can't wait to make use of express passes! And we will be having a trip to the mall millennia to the Cheesecake Factory while we are here also!

And then from 28th April to 12th may we will be staying 14 nights at the Saratoga springs resort! this is my second time onsite, we stayed at the Disney Allstar Music last time, we loved it onsite! And enjoyed looking around SSR and walking to DTD one day so was an easy choice!

We also have the free DDP and $200 gift card. I cannot wait to get planning the ADR's.

One Definate ADR will be the Grand Floridan for afternoon tea! I loved it and had scones and the above cheeseboard! (Loved the butterfly crackers! )

We have literally just booked the hilton gatwick airport for the 25th April the night before we fly and got a double advance payment room for a bargain £58 through hotels.com they have 33% off just now. Chuffed with that! All in our holiday has come to £4912 which I'm very happy with!

Hope you've enjoyed reason so far (I often feel like I'm a thread killer! ) and I will be updating as we get planning!

Well it's now 286 sleeps to go and I'm getting more and more excited by the day! Trying to get OH involved too but he keeps saying it's too far away to be getting 'that' excited!

Since I last posted we have managed to get my error of booking the gatwick airport hilton for the wrong day sorted but at a cost of £20 so my £58 bargain not so much a bargain but better than loosing money completely!

I spent one of my days off crafting making an ittinery planning planner turning it from as above...

To this!

And currently taking advantage of the summer sales looking for some new suitcases as my one from the last 5 years has had many a battering so between two, the above lime green (my favourite colour! )

Or the white (which il then put my lime green luggage strap round! )

Got this wee bargain in tescos for £10 half price! Love the colour and got a lovely jewelled bling silver and bright yellow necklace to wear with it! May be my afternoon tea at the GF garden view tea room outfit!

My project tomorrow after a post nightshift snooze will be to make a 250 day countdown. Bought this 3D sticker off eBay for £2.65 including postage and got a3 black card to put it onto and glitter glue pens to make all the boxes for my countdown! I will be sure to show you the outcome! For now the planning is coming along nicely!

My work in progress countdown! Then will have 200-101 & 100- 0 to stick on the top once they've been crossed off! (Can't wait for that day! )

Just awaiting my Minnie and Mickey 3d fireworks sticker to put at the bottom and go over cross boxes with a silver gel pen!

The finished product! Love my count down!

... And another wee update! Finally chose colours for our magic bands! I was between blue and gray but went for gray as all my jewellery silver or bright colours so will match as well as being magic!

262 days! 5lbs off this week 12 to go! and already buying holiday clothes as a treat! Worried that there will be no summer clothes by the time we leave next April! 😜

The above is my latest purchase for one of my animal kingdom dresses!

... And yet another dress purchased! Ooops! Away to Tenerife for a week on 19th oct so will get to wear some of my new dresses then too! Anyone else love a new holiday wardrobe?!

Also love princess Kate! Definately my idol! So purchased myself a wedding edition Oyster card since iv lost my last one and have a 5 day London trip to visit my friend in a couple of weeks time!

Planning coming along well! Decided on our first 10 days of ADR's as follows:

28/4/14- Dinner- rainforest cafe DTD our first night onsite after our 3 nights at HRH
29/4/14- Lunch- Via Napoli
29/4/14- Dinner- Beaches & Cream (and then snacks on the pontoon we're booking for illuminations!
30/4/14- Lunch- BOG (hopefully!)
30/4/14- Dinner- California Grill
01/5/14- Dinner- Raglan Road
02/5/14- Dinner- Hollywood Brown Derby (fantastic package)
03/5/14- Breakfast- Rainforrest AK
03/5/15- Dinner- Chefs de France
05/5/15- Afternoon tea @ Grand Floridian garden view tea room
05/5/15- Dinner- Narcooses
06/5/15- Dinner- Crossroads at house of blues DTD
07/5/14- Wishes Dessert party

Few more to decide! Cali grill still a ? As we want to watch wishes from somewhere other than main st/ rose garden- would love to hear other peoples preferences!

It's been a while since iv added to this but since then iv booked a wee trip to DLP with my sister! This will be the first time here for both of us!

We are flying from Glasgow to Paris 29/01/15 for 4 nights/5 days staying at sequoia lodge! IM SO EXCITED! So 2 new countdowns were made!

Me and the sis just back from Tenerife. We were there along with Ross and my mum and her partner Ian for his 50th! It was lovely but very hot being 36-38oc! 🔥

So yesterday was our ADR day! It got off to a bit of a rocky start when at 11am list in hand the MDE app wouldn't work I kept trying for 40 min in the end looked up a free phone no and called disney! I'm so glad I did as all were sorted in 10 minutes (other than Rainforrest cafe and house of blues as they haven't renewed their contract with disney or something like that so she said to call again another time!)

I had a lady called Danielle who was a lovely, cheery American! Sorted all the ADR's and told me to have a magical day!

So we have:
Raglan road dinner
Yachtsman steakhouse dinner
Chef mickeys breakfast
BOG dinner
Hollywood Brown Derby dinner as part of fantastic package
Boma at AKL breakfast
Le Cellier dinner
Afternoon Tea at Grand Floridian garden view tea room!
Narcoosees dinner

I'm so happy with all our choices and the next few to be added next week hopefully!

AND... We have booked the illuminations pontoon to watch illuminations on our first full day at WDW! We love Epcot it's our favourite park and unlike the majority we prefer illuminations to wishes! We're so excited for this! So we will have our dinner at 17:00 at yachtsman steakhouse, have a wee wonder then get collected at the yacht club marina half an hour before it starts!

That's all for now! Happy Halloween!

[KittyBlackDog]

Lovely start and YIPPEEE you're going back! Would love to read your trippie. We are planning on going back in August and have just today booked our on site stay for our first week at Saratoga Springs too. We plan on doing HRH towards the end of our 3 weeks so will love to hear what you think of it and the express passes, along with your views on DiagonAlley and the other WWOHP updates

[*Lauren-J*]

Originally Posted by KittyBlackDog

Lovely start and YIPPEEE you're going back! Would love to read your trippie. We are planning on going back in August and have just today booked our on site stay for our first week at Saratoga Springs too. We plan on doing HRH towards the end of our 3 weeks so will love to hear what you think of it and the express passes, along with your views on DiagonAlley and the other WWOHP updates

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Thank you! Aww how exciting! August is a lovely time to go! The weather was perfect and queues quite minimal! Happy planning! I would love to go for 3 weeks but OH only gets 4 weeks off a year because he gets 2 weeks at Xmas and I won't get Xmas and new year together so doubt it will happen! 17 nights will do I suppose :p

[KittyBlackDog]

17nights is fab. Our first trip was 16 nights and our last trip was 19nights you can pack loads in and still make time for rest if you need to

That's a fab rate for the Hilton, bet you're well chuffed!

[lfc_sarah]

Great start!

You look so pretty in your bridesmaid photo!
I look younger than I am too so I feel your OH's pain, I'm not receding though!

Your new house I'm sure will be lovely after your horrendous neighbours!
Looking forward to reading more x

[*Lauren-J*]

Originally Posted by KittyBlackDog

17nights is fab. Our first trip was 16 nights and our last trip was 19nights you can pack loads in and still make time for rest if you need to

That's a fab rate for the Hilton, bet you're well chuffed!

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Yeah we had 17 nights the first time we went and loved it as was settled in and had loads done and still had a full 2 weeks after this! Yeah chuffed with that price as was £80 the other day so glad I held off!

[*Lauren-J*]

Originally Posted by lfc_sarah

Great start!

You look so pretty in your bridesmaid photo!
I look younger than I am too so I feel your OH's pain, I'm not receding though!

Your new house I'm sure will be lovely after your horrendous neighbours!
Looking forward to reading more x

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Aww thank you! Hehe! He's forever getting ID'd! Think the receding bothers him more than the looking young! Yeah we're so much happier, we're good friends already with our new neighbours they're a couple around same age with a 3 year old, nice family! Can't wait to get ittinery planning!

[*Lauren-J*]

I'm a serious idiot! We actually leave on 25th April not 26th and so have just realised I have now booked to non refundable hilton room for the wrong date! been on the phone and have to wait til Monday to see if they'll swap it! Being so far in advance I hope so!

Honestly what kind of person gets their holiday dates wrong denying myself of a day!

[Sparkles1979]

Hi lovey,
I also made an error booking a non refundable room last year, I booked a room for before our stay and for our return. I didn't need the return one as had flight times mixed up. They wouldn't let me cancel it, but allowed me to change that room to another date. So I am sure they will let you swap your days across! Fingers crossed!

Great pre-trippy! I go next May so shall enjoy the countdown with you. I booked for 2 weeks, but later changed my mind and wanted to stay longer, but was getting silly prices! Ah well, live and learn.

What a special job you have. I'll never forget the ladies who helped deliver my 3 children.

Happy planning :-) x

[*Lauren-J*]

Originally Posted by Sparkles1979

Hi lovey,
I also made an error booking a non refundable room last year, I booked a room for before our stay and for our return. I didn't need the return one as had flight times mixed up. They wouldn't let me cancel it, but allowed me to change that room to another date. So I am sure they will let you swap your days across! Fingers crossed!

Great pre-trippy! I go next May so shall enjoy the countdown with you. I booked for 2 weeks, but later changed my mind and wanted to stay longer, but was getting silly prices! Ah well, live and learn.

What a special job you have. I'll never forget the ladies who helped deliver my 3 children.

Happy planning :-) x

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That's good to hear! I feel like an idiot but hopeful that they'll change it! It's not as if we're cancelling completely- they're still getting our custom and price the same for both nights!

Yay! Iv heard April/may is a lovely time to go! Can't wait until our DDD and SDD time but will be here in no time I sure! How long are you now going for?

I indeed have a special job which I love! Very privelidged to be part of the most special time in a woman's life!