Plans Update - 18th May - One week trip, two week notice - May 2018

[The A team]

This trip was not meant to be happening. We have booked two weeks in July / August 2019 and we (well I) were happily planning this. However, as many of us probably are, I was just browsing flight prices with Tui as they are often good in May/ June and I was longingly looking at them dropping into the £300s, constantly wishing we were able to go then, but with two school aged children, we are trying to avoid taking them out of school.

Anyway, I realised that one of these flight dates actually covered half term and only meant missing the Friday before, and I have the week off with the girls. I started wondering if a week would be enough, and if booking just 2 weeks before would be stupid. A quick call to Dave established that yes, he also had nothing in his work diary and could probably take the week off too.When I got home from work, I started looking at packages and these were coming out really good value too. We could get the Grove Resort 1 bedroom and flights for just over £1800 for the 4 of us! We have the money saved due to me now working full time and we have enough time to top it back up before we go on our 2019 trip. I checked the Dibb for info on the resort and found Lisa’s (miss_mouse) video of the resort, it looks beautiful, so…..We decided to just go for it.

We have paid a little more to upgrade to a 2 bedroom apartment and to choose our seats (this was a rookie error as being so close everyone else could also do the same oops) so for just over £2,100 we are off to Florida for a week – in just 14 days time!
Now the dilemma of tickets. We looked at MYW tickets, considered just Universal but in the end went for 7 day Ultimates. This gives us the flexibility of park hopping and also Memory Maker, as well as the added bonus of free Toy Story Magic Bands!

The tickets linked on Saturday morning so I was straight on MDE to see what FP I could get. Being so close, there is nothing for FoP or Na’vi or for 7 Dwarfs but everything else has OK times, not as early as I would normally choose but as this is a bonus trip, I’m happy with what we’ve got.
So, this time in two weeks we will be in our happy place.

As yet, the girls do not know and I’m not sure when we’ll tell them. They are always asking for a surprise, but I think springing it on them at 5am when we would be leaving on the Friday would be too much. We may book a hotel the night before as although the airport is only 1.5 hrs away, I think the 5am start would be too early for us, especially with the time difference the other end, so if we do stay in a hotel, maybe we’ll do the reveal before we travel there after work / school on the Thursday.

We have sorted the ESTAs, I did this before we booked just in case and mine and Dave’s will be fine for 2019 but as the girls need new passports before then, so theirs will need doing again.

We still have to book car hire and car parking and maybe night before hotel as well as shopping for summer clothes.

[smithlane]

Wow a fantastic bargain! How exciting to be going in less than 2 weeks, I'm sure you will all have an amazing time

[The A team]

Originally Posted by smithlane

Wow a fantastic bargain! How exciting to be going in less than 2 weeks, I'm sure you will all have an amazing time

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Thank you, I think I’m kind of organised now!

[The A team]

Quick update on our plans. We have decided to book a hotel at Bristol airport for the night before, so will be leaving home around 7:30pm after telling the girls about the holiday.

They will have a couple of hours to pack from when we tell them, I will have done what I can secretly but they will have things that they want to take that I wont have thought of (the right make up in the case of Amelia).

We’ve booked a hire car, we booked through Virgin Holidays, we could have had a car as part of the Tui package, but the insurance upgrade cost meant it was better to decline the car and book our own separately. We have gone with an Intermediate SUV.

I have done my fast passes and the plans look like this:

25th May - Arrive, food shop, maybe head to DS to collect free magic bands

26th May - Magic Kingdom, it opens at 8 so hoping to be there as early as possible to collect the tickets and link them to Magic Bands as we have a will call voucher. We have FP for BTMR, Splash and Space. Hoping to get to Gaston’s Tavern for the Cinnamon bun as well.
We plan to leave around lunchtime and maybe head over to Polynesian to check this out as we have booked there for 2019 and I’m not sure about it at the moment. Hoping to be convinced. Then back to the hotlel, tea will be somewhere on192, possibly Longhorns.

27th May - Animal Kingdom, this is one of the only days it doesn’t have EMH in the morning, it still opens at 8 though so hoping jet lag is still going strong! I’ve managed to get a FP for FoP at 8:40 am so that is the aim. We will look to head to Na’vi at opening and then after FoP head to our current favourite of Everest as we can’t get a FP for this. We have also FP Dinosaur and Safari. We will leave again around lunchtime and head back to the pool for a bit. Heading out to DS for the evening meal - I really fancy Blaze Pizza.

28th May - We have FP booked at MK for the morning, but I think this might be a day we skip the parks and head out on an airboat ride or to one o the state parks, although with it being Memorial Day, it might all be too busy 🤔. We intend to head to Epcot then for the evening, it is the last day of flower and garden so are expecting it to be busy.

29th May - Hollywood studios, this opens at 9 so a bit of a lie in 🤣. We have FP for Star Tours, RnR and ToT so will head to TSM at opening. I’m planning on getting the updated version of the Carrot Cake cookie here to see how it’s compares to the original. We will leave when we’ve done all that we want, which may be earlier than usual as so much is still not open. As yet, I’ve not made any plans for this evening so we’ll see how we feel. We might try eating at the hotel, or head out to Sweet Tomatoes or Bahama Bay on the 192.

30th May - An Epcot day, we weren’t sure whether to do this or not. We love Epcot World Showcase, particularly at night, but not so much future world. However, it does have Soarin’ and Test Track which we do like so it made the cut. We have a FP for TT so will head to Soarin’ at rope drop. We will probably have lunch in WS before maybe park hopping to somewhere else or having a game of mini golf as the girls love this. We are then intending to return to HS for the fireworks as we missed these in 2016.

31st - Our last full day😢 can only mean MK. We don’t have FP until the evening as we are planning to stay for Happily Ever After so the morning will be spent either visiting a park to do what we’ve missed or at Typhoon Lagoon as this is something else we’ve never done. Our evening FPS are for the 3 mountains.

1st June - Travel home day. But we do have FP booked at AK so will see how we feel as the flight is not until 16:45 so we will have the morning before we have to leave. Hopefully not too sad as we already have 2019 booked up.

So there we have it, the plans have come together quite nicely and the only FP I haven’t got that I would like is Everest. Hopefully the weather will improve before we get there as it seems to be rather wet at the moment. Whatever the weather, it will be fun and better than being at home / work for the week.

[caitlinsmummy]

Oh wow what a bargain! I'm so tempted to do this next year in October!

I can't believe you've managed to plan it all so quickly, I'd be freaking out about having everything planned can't wait to follow you trippie x

[MrsSilverStar]

What a brilliant deal and how exciting that you're going so soon! Looking forward to reading all about it.

[The A team]

Originally Posted by caitlinsmummy

Oh wow what a bargain! I'm so tempted to do this next year in October!

I can't believe you've managed to plan it all so quickly, I'd be freaking out about having everything planned can't wait to follow you trippie x

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I’ve had a few freak out moments! I think as we were already planning 2019 though it helped make things a little easier.

[The A team]

Originally Posted by MrsSilverStar

What a brilliant deal and how exciting that you're going so soon! Looking forward to reading all about it.

See more...

Thank you, I can’t believe that this time next week we will be there!

[candycat75]

So exciting! Not long now!

[Excitedx4]

Fab! Reading this late and looking forward to the trip report 😁