#USAnumber3 - Helen & Andy - Nov2018 - Day 0: Travel Day

[HelenJNT]

#USAnumber3

Well hello there.

If you’ve read some of my trip reports here, then welcome back, and if you’re new here, well…good luck.

This report chronicles our 2018 trip to WDW; our third trip in as many years. If you haven’t read my pre-trip report which details how this holiday came to be, then it’s probably a good place to start. Click here. I’ll wait.

Back again? OK. Cool.

Before I plunge into this, I should probably add a disclaimer here. For the first time in my trip reporting career, I completely slacked off and took zero notes. None at all. I was well intentioned and all that, but it turned out I was having too much fun, or something, so it just fell by the wayside. Then I got back to work, and it was an intense month, so I didn’t have time or the inclination in the evenings to start writing up my notes or starting the report (much to the irritation of a certain few who happily nagged me…you know who you are…).

What we have here is the stuff I can remember - which is going to be…interesting given I can barely remember what I ate for dinner yesterday but seem to have ample room in my brain for obscure lyrics from ‘80’s and ‘90s songs, as will be apparent by the end of this report (I may offer a prize for the person who gets all of the lyrics quiz right).

So, in the words of the legendary (hehe) David Coverdale, “here I go again…

Day -1 Pre-Travel Day

As ever, our pre-travel days aren’t worth an instalment on their own. This day passed much like all other pre-travel days, with a full 8+ hours work for us both. Andy changed jobs earlier in the year and is now office based, which he actually loves but is a massive inconvenience when we had got so used to both of us being at home during the day at least once or twice a week. Still, I was working from home so in between phone calls (which were mainly rubbing it in that I was about to go on holiday for two weeks) I was able to sort a few bits out, such as online check-in and making lists and checking them twice.

The clanging chains of doom

Dramatic maybe but there was a horrid cloud hanging over me all day, knowing that 5pm was the latest cut-off to take our cats to the cattery. This would be the first time they had been on their own holidays, and I was utterly dreading it. We are utterly devoted to our pets and didn’t like the thought of them being locked up for a fortnight. We had been auditioning catteries since the summer and finally opted for the one at our vets practice as we know and like the nurses there and know that it would be the best place for them were anything to go wrong.

So, just before 5pm we packed up the cats and all their luggage and drove the short distance to the cattery. It was really busy there, with loads of people picking up their pets from day surgery and it was ages before we were checked in. The poor animals were in the car, yelling their heads off. There was a slight drama when we couldn’t prove that Sophia and Rocco had in-date vaccinations as they were still under a year old and their inoculations had been done by the breeder’s vet, but luckily the vets were OK with it as we could prove that we had brought them in with all their paperwork to have them all checked over a day or so after we had got them, and this was all on file. Phew.

Finally, we went into the kitty jail pens and got them settled and it was actually not as bad as I thought it was going to be. Sophia and Roc thought the whole thing was a great adventure, and Emu just sat in the corner with her unimpressed face on. The nurse who checked them in was a real no nonsense type and that helped as I knew I was being one of those needy types. Last cuddles were had (with the cats, not the nurse – she was scary) and we left them to it. Horrible.

Welcome to the house of fun


Still, no time to fret as we had to run to Tesco and get some dinner. Andy had a pie and some veg and I went for what I thought was a microwave pasta meal. It was only after Andy’s pie had cooked and the oven had been turned off that I realised my pasta was in fact not microwaveable and needed 30 minutes in the oven. So it ended up being a late dinner.

In between all this, we were turning stuff off around the house, changing the sheets, decanting shampoo and conditioner into smaller bottles, and doing a last minute rearrange of what was in the suitcases. I hadn’t actually unpacked properly from the previous trip – I just washed everything and put it on my hanging packing shelf as I knew I’d want to be taking most of it with me again.

I also completely emptied the fridge and freezer as I’d been meaning to do it for ages (just how many small sandwich bags of mysterious left-over chilli from 2015 does one family need anyway? Answers in the comments please).

I’m pretty sure we watched some TV for an hour or so before going to bed, but I can’t remember what. Probably too het up to pay much attention to it anyway. Oh, I painted my nails too - nothing very interesting though. Think we went to bed at about 11pm in the end, setting an alarm for 05:00….

Day 0 – Travel Day

For I toss and turn, I can’t sleep at night

Unsurprisingly, it was a terrible sleep. I missed having the cats on the bed, I was hallucinating about traffic, missing the flight, all manner of things. Andy was oblivious to it – completely sparked out. I was actually relieved when the alarm went off as I saw every hour beforehand and just wanted to get up and get travel day done with. The thing with doing four transatlantic trips in three years (four, as we went to NYC in 2016 as well) is you don’t have the time to forget the hassles of travel day and you know you just have to get it over and done with – after all, we were off to WDW and the travel element was just a minor inconvenience. But we were flying BA for the first time and I was a little nervous and out of my comfort zone.

Poor Andy has a tough job being married to me sometimes – you might not believe this, but it is true. I am terrible at leaving the house (not like the guy from Game On) as I stress about things not being locked properly or things catching fire. It gets worse as the years go on, especially as our two kittens are indoor cats. Even though we knew the cats were safe in the cattery, it didn’t stop us from performing the turning-things-off ballet (the extended cut).

This year Andy had even gone so far as to make a spreadsheet of every window and plug socket in the house and went round ticking them all off. Don’t judge. I once house-sat for someone and they were quite perplexed when they came home from their holiday and found I had unplugged 99% of the stuff they had left plugged in before they went away. Didn’t manage to put out their bins though, did I? Bad house sitter.

Back to the point. We now have a smaller car these days and we had to play a bit of suitcase Jenga to get everything in, but it finally fit, and we were ready to go. The house was completely locked up, we had remembered to stop our post, and we were as good as we could have been. So, at 06:40, we set off – only ten minutes after the scheduled departure time.

She wore a raspberry valet (sorrynotsorry)

Despite hitting the M25 at prime weekday rush hour, we had a completely incident-free trip to Gatwick. We didn’t get stuck in traffic, my bladder played ball, and we didn’t take a wrong turn anywhere.

Most pleasing. We arrived at 08:10 and headed straight for the valet parking at the South Terminal.

I said this before in my pre-trip report, but valet parking is an absolute no-brainer for us these days. Not because we are to posh to push our cases but because when we’ve booked it, it has always been a clear £20 or so cheaper than Long Stay and it is wonderful not to have to worry about dealing with a bus in the event we get caught in traffic or anything goes wrong. Plus, it’s lovely to get off a long flight and only be steps away from the car.

The South terminal valet parking was different to the North though – this time we were in a queue of cars and they literally just came up and took our keys from us – last year we had at least been directed to a parking space. It was a little odd here, just being turfed out of our car and having to move quickly as there was a queue building up behind us, but it was what it was and, with a quick prayer that our car wouldn’t end up being ragged round Horsham for the next fortnight, we made our escape.

Another suitcase in another hall

We easily located the BA desks in the terminal (in yo face, MCO). It was the one with the massive queue. Whyyyyyyy? It was a Wednesday morning. More or less every time we fly, we always encounter a huge queue at check in. Last year was the only exception. Still, it wasn’t as bad as that particularly memorable moment in 2016 when the entire airport IT had gone down. It turned out that the self bag drop conveyor belts had broken down, so everyone had to queue up to check in their luggage. GAH.

We had been waiting for about 30 minutes when the self-drop conveyors started working again, and people who already had their boarding passes printed off were being pulled out of the queue and sent over to the other side of the room.

We heaved a sigh of relief and went over to the self-drop. I popped my case on to the scale, scanned my pass and printed off the luggage tag. Hurrah! But then – oh no! The display told me that my case didn’t meet BA’s size regulations and I needed to see a member of staff. I could feel panic starting to rise in my throat and had a sudden flashback to when United Airlines had been a bit sniffy about checking in my case a few years ago. Oh no! What if I couldn’t take my case? I mean, I had a couple of pairs of undies and some spare shorts in my hand luggage but that wouldn’t last me a fortnight.

I went off to try and find a BA staff member but there was no-one to be found. Meanwhile, Andy managed to check in his perfect case and it zoomed off down the conveyor. I located a BA staff member sat at an information desk a couple of metres down from where we were and pleaded with her to come and help me as there was no-one else around. She sighed like it was the biggest hassle EVER and came and looked at my case. She said as it was an odd shape (it is a long soft case, not your usual rectangle on wheels), the lasers weren’t letting it through. I had two choices – to get back in the check-in queue again or to take it to the oversized baggage drop-off.

I took one look at the check-in queue which was still about 300 people deep and decided I would take my chances with over-sized baggage. This was fairly stressful, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to have to pay a fine or not. Bloody BA and their bloody lasers – my case was never an issue when we flew Virgin. Humph.

We located oversized baggage, which was weirdly signposted as there were three separate rooms depending on the airline. We went into a little room which was basically like Middle Earth – orange lighting, no windows and two toothless men just sat reading the paper and ignoring us. I asked them if I was in the right place to drop off oversized BA luggage and they just glared at me. Eventually, Toothless #1 heaved himself to his feet and chucked my case onto a little conveyor in the corner, grunting at me. I asked if I needed a baggage receipt or anything and he just ignored me and sat back down again.

Save a prayer for me now

So, we sent up a prayer to the luggage gods that my case would arrive at the other end, and went off to security. It was relatively quiet, and we made it through fairly quickly. Shoes had to come off, and as ever, I was asked to go through the scanner. I always feel like I am doing the paso doble when having to hold that pose. OIe!

We grabbed our stuff from the trays and witnessed a strange argument taking place between a pompous man and a security guard. Transpired the man was far too important to put his empty tray back in the stack so the guard called him out for it. Good. However, it built into a bit of an awkward showdown which we had to step around.

As ever, we had to exit via the shop. I didn’t mind this time though as I needed to stock up on perfume and foundation, so quickly made my way over to the Dior counter. I quickly picked out the foundation I wear, and started looking at the perfume. Quickly, a sales assistant was right on me which I was pleased about as I couldn’t see my usual perfume (Addict eau de parfum). I asked if they had any, and she said that no, they didn’t, as it had all sold out. Oh. Then she informed me that they did have the eau de toilette version if I was interested in that – “exactly the same fragrance, only a lighter version, perfect for holidays”. I asked if I could smell the tester, but I couldn’t as apparently someone had stolen it! Honestly.

Desperate for a sale, the lady offered me 40% off the 100ml perfume seeing as I was buying the foundation as well, and so, trusting her, I bought it. Job done, and I felt rather pleased with myself.

Due to all the hassles with bag drop, we only had less than an hour until our gate was due to be called, and we were both ravenous. The South terminal is tiny compared to the North and our options were a little more limited. We knew Wetherspoons was going to be our best bet due to price and speed, and so we found our way to the pub upstairs. The pub was absolutely rammed, and there were only a few tables free. Undeterred, we made our way to one in the corner (next to a screaming baby…huzzah) and quickly ordered our breakfasts.

I had a standard full English, and Andy had the veggie version. We had an orange juice each and I also had a pint of water as was feeling really thirsty.

The food came really quickly and was devoured in seconds. It was delicious, and I would always pick Wetherspoons over any of the other airport options, especially after a pretty disappointing and overpriced breakfast skillet at Jamie’s Italian one year.

Next up was the usual whistle-stop run of the terminal to pick up last-minute bits. We’d forgotten our neck pillows which haven’t actually been seen since our last holiday, so I popped into Boots to buy another one. Andy didn’t bother as reckoned he wasn’t going to sleep on the plane, HA HA HA.

We then went to WH Smith to get various plane snacks. I am forever disappointed with the lack of decent savoury snacks on offer in there – I detest Pringles and the rest of the options aren’t much better. I bought a couple of small packs of salted popcorn and we also bought two grab bags of Maltesers. Then realised it was buy two, get one free on the sweets so I also picked up some sour Skittles.

We bought 4 x 1 litre bottles of Smart Water and went to pay. I swear the self-checkouts at WH Smith are the worst ones in existence – there are no instructions as to which side to put your stuff, and as it turns out, no sign on it when the card machine is broken, and you can only use cash. Gah. I fed £20 into the beast, didn’t get any change (not that there would have been much), and there was no-one around to ask. Thanks, WH Smith.

The smell of wine and cheap perfume

After a loo trip, there was no time to stop, as it was 10:24 and right on time, our gate had come up, so we made our way to it. It was gate 24 and I had hoped that low number meant it wouldn’t be too far to walk. How wrong I was! It was actually one of the furthest gates (the numbering just appears to be pot luck) and the people conveyors were broken so we trotted for miles.

We sat down at the gate and I opened my perfume purchase. And wouldn’t you know, it was NOT the right one. It smelled nothing like my usual perfume. This is a real first world problem but I really hate the way Dior brand a number of products under the same name in boxes that ALL LOOK THE SAME but the smell is nothing like the original. I’ve come a cropper before with someone promising me the Eau Fraiche smells the same as the EdP (it doesn’t), and now the same thing with the EdT. So even though I’d got 40% off, it was still an expensive mistake to make. I sprayed a tiny bit on my wrist and even though it smelled lovely, it wasn’t my perfume and I realised I was going to have to spend the next 10 or so hours smelling, well, not like me.

BA does this thing where they board you in groups, rather than Virgin, who do it by row. As the departure lounge was noisy and the tannoy was rubbish, no-one could actually hear which group as being called. We were in World Traveller Plus (the BA equivalent of premium economy) and were due to be called in Group Three. As it was, we couldn’t hear the Group Three announcement, and everyone was just starting to form a free-for-all queue at the gate. I wanted to make sure we were on in good time as these days everyone takes a wheely case as their hand luggage and inevitably the luggage racks run out of space quite early during boarding.

We think we hear Group Three being called and there is an awkward moment as we have to push past a load of Group Four folks to get to the front. They don’t seem to want to let us past. Honestly, little things like this just wind me up – calm down people. As we get to the desk at the front, we hear a girl and her mum being upgraded to Upper. Whilst I am quite pleased for them, I’m also super envious and can’t help wondering whether that might have been us if we had got there before them and not been held up by the baying crowds at the back. I guess I’ll never know.

We walk on to the plane and I am pleasantly surprised – in fact, more than pleasantly surprised – I’m thrilled! It’s a brand new plane and it is sparkling!

The World Traveller Plus cabin is a lot bigger than the Virgin one, which is the only thing I was less keen on. On Virgin, it is a 2 x 2 configuration, whereas on BA it is 2 x 4 x 2 so everyone feels far more packed in together. Also, there was no upstairs on this plane. However, the seats are huge and ridiculously comfortable, and I’m pleased to discover that the leg rest pulls up and out to support your calves as well as your feet, meaning no-one needs to recline – it’s kind of like being in the chair at the dentist, only without anyone poking around in your gob.

The TV screens are also much bigger than any I’ve seen before. We’re both so pleased, especially as I had read some less than glowing reviews of BA on here before and had kind of resigned ourselves to being rattled around in a tuna can for 10 hours.

We’re offered some “bubbles” by the cabin crew – cava, I think – and finally, we can relax.

Sat across from us are a family of four, which makes me worry a little as two of the four are toddlers…. But a quick scan of the cabin shows the passengers are mainly pensioners and couples our age, so it looks like it’s going to be an OK flight as long as the toddlers can be seen and not heard.

I'll be where the eagle's flying, higher and higher

Shortly after take-off, drinks and pretzels are served – I have a G&T and Andy has a beer.

Seeing as it is Hallowe’en today, I eschew some of the newer movies and decide to watch The Addams Family, which, believe it or not, I have never seen before. I thoroughly enjoyed it, the movie and the strong gin. Andy is fiddling about with the flight map and reading something on his Kindle. He kept saying he was peeved that the pilot hadn’t done any kind of announcement – I hadn’t even noticed.

Lunch is served. When I did the online check in, I had the option to pre-order the food, which was pretty cool. We both had the Italian Salad (which was neither here nor there, some kind of cous cous), and the fillet of beef.

Well. The food has me in raptures. As I keep saying excitedly to Andy, it is far and away the best plate of plane food I have ever had. I’ve had far worse food at expensive weddings. This was delicious, and despite having seen off a fry up only a few hours previously, I inhaled the lot.

It was beef fillet, perfectly medium rare, with a mushroom herb crumb, garlic dauphinoise potatoes and some delicious gravy. Turns out it is the same food as BA serve in Upper, and you could tell. I could eat it all right now. Stick your rubbery pasta, Virgin, I am converted.

The only two glitches with lunch were that they forgot to serve the bread (this came at the end of the meal – but the rolls were hot at least, compared to the icy cold ones you get with Virgin) and the dessert was meant to be a chocolate orange mousse (according to the menu online when I had pre-ordered) but it turned out to be bloody caramel cheesecake. I had a tiny taste, realised I still don’t like cheesecake, and promptly swapped it with Andy for his Boursin and crackers. I do prefer the little packs of cheddar – I mean, I love Boursin, but I was already garlicy from the potatoes, so this just added to it.

After the meal, I watched the Incredibles 2 which I completely loved. It’s so funny and we missed it at the cinema, so I was glad to get to see it on the plane. It didn’t lose much by being on a smaller screen; the BA screens were pretty good. Mini-Magnums appeared at some point too.

I then listened to a couple of episodes of a crime podcast, but it wasn’t really getting going. I did try for a snooze, but it didn’t happen. I would have thought after a terrible night of no sleep plus two massive meals and a couple of strong drinks that I would have been knocked out, but I think all the stress of the previous couple of days was really fading away, and I was getting properly excited about the holiday.

Woah-oh, we’re halfway there….

The beauty of noise cancelling headphones is that, well, you can’t hear anything else that is going on around you. So as far as I was concerned, the toddlers adjacent to us were an absolute dream and all the other passengers were totally silent. The aforementioned toddlers played the Angry Birds game on the in-flight entertainment all the way through the flight and (its hard to say this without sounding judgemental – I promise I wasn’t) the mum managed to sink about 6 or 7 of the mini bottles of wine during the flight – good on her.

I got up to go to the loo and it was only at this point that I realised that a couple a few rows back from us were surrounded by empty whisky bottles and getting pretty steaming. Steaming, not steamy – two very different things. They were jabbering away about how they were only going to Florida for the night, to attend a Hallowe’en party some friends were throwing, but that because they go all the time, they have tons of air miles and can just go for a few days whenever they feel like it. They were also both chomping feverishly on those smokeless plastic nicotine inhalators so, if you’ve ever wondered if you can use those on a flight, it appears BA are OK with it.

The rest of the flight passed as these things tend to do.

I always seem to spend the last couple of hours flicking around watching TV shows as for some reason I think a few 20 minute shows break it up and make it go a bit faster. I watched some Modern Family (the mad Hallowe’en one where Phil rows in a pumpkin) and then watched a bit of the map.

I also asked one of the cabin crew whether we needed to complete our landing cards and she told me that they weren’t needed any more, so I was quite pleased about that. I did have a massive headache during the flight but they quickly sorted me out with some tablets and I stayed off the booze after that.

With 40 minutes to go, we finally got the pilot’s announcement, and wouldn’t you know, it was a woman! Huzzah! A few of the people in the cabin looked visibly shocked at this and I did wonder if it was why she waited until 40 minutes before landing to announce herself. I hope not – I thought it was the best thing ever. She told us we were going to be landing 20 minutes ahead of schedule which was also pretty flipping magical – don’t think that’s ever happened to us before.

Happily, BA still hold with the convention of letting upper, then premium, then economy off the plane (another side-eye at Virgin) so we got off the plane quite speedily. It felt so funny walking through the MCO corridors again – it was 11 months and two weeks since we had last been in Orlando and Andy and I immediately said to each other that it felt as though we had never been away.

Open the door, and let ‘em in

We knew the Virgin flight had taken off ten minutes before ours, and so were steeling ourselves for a long old time in the immigration hall; after all, it had taken about three hours to get through last year when we were on that same Virgin flight. I did think as we had landed so early, we were going to step into a full immigration hall, but it appears that the Virgin flight had landed early too so there were only 100 or so people in front of us. And, I seem to remember, an extremely large proportion of girls in their early 20s wearing skyscraper heels, making me feel a combination of both underdressed and smug as I shuffled along in my trainers.

The queue went pretty quickly, and in under an hour, we were in front of Miguel, who is without a doubt the best immigration officer we’ve ever had. He was cracking jokes and all sorts. I think I was laughing more at Andy’s fake nervous laugh than I was at Miguel’s stand-up routine, but even so, it was by far one of the most pleasant immigration experiences we have had.

We were in! As we walked over to the luggage carousels, Andy was saying “I hope your case doesn’t take forever…” whereas I would have just settled for it being there at all, given the experience we had had back in Gatwick in Middle Earth. As luck would have it, my case was already there! It had been hauled off the conveyor already and was nestled in with a load of baby buggies and golf clubs. It DID look pretty scraped and scuffed and worse for wear, but given that I thought I would never see it again, I was pretty pleased.

We waited a good 20 minutes or so and there was absolutely no sign of Andy’s case at all. Bearing in mind we’d been off the plane for 90 minutes now, we were both starting to get a little concerned. He took himself off to the loo (for AGES) and finally his case appeared on the carousel. Bit of a shame really as I was looking forward to decking him out in 100% WDW gear for the next fortnight. He was still in the loo, so I tried to wheel three suitcases and both our hand luggage bags across the floor towards the gents’, with limited success - they kept zooming off in completely different directions.

Reunited with our cases and each other, we made our way up the tiny escalator and on to the monorail.

It was about 6pm US time by this point and we were both feeling incredibly awake, all things considered.

The monorail zoomed us over to the main terminal, and we made the usual loo stop – this time forgetting to take a photo of the massive American flag on the wall – a cardinal trip report sin.

Despite saying it felt like we hadn’t been away, we forgot the way to the Magical Express once again. Every year! It’s across the concourse and down two escalators. Two. One day we’ll figure out where the lifts are. Andy then decided he needed the loo again – we’d only been on American soil for a couple of hours and he had already been three times…. But then again, we drank a LOT of water on the flight. We each drank two litres of water, and we had countless other cups every time it was on offer. I genuinely think this helped with our energy levels on landing, if not our bladder levels.

It’s a kind of magic

We checked into the Disney Magical Express and were directed to Row 4, where we waited for 10 minutes or so. It always feels like time is standing still when you’re in this queue as you just want to be on the bus and on your way! I signed into the free airport Wi-Fi and checked my messages and let people know we had arrived safely.

Eventually we were allowed through the doors, and pointed towards our bus. The driver asked where we were going and consulted his list, then promptly said that the Beach Club wasn’t on his route. Oh. He told us to get on anyway. I didn’t see him put our bags on so had a little worry about that, but we were ushered onto the bus so figured it must have all been OK.

The journey went quickly, watching Gus the motorcoach driver on the old video loop, and in no time at all, we were passing under the magical archway. It was just getting dark as we were on the bus, but I managed to snap this anyway:

As it turned out, the first stop was the Yacht Club, where one lady got off, and then we went around the corner and pulled up at the Beach Club. We were the only ones alighting, and our bags had indeed travelled along with us as the driver managed to locate them just fine. The entrance to the Beach Club just looked beautiful – exceeded my expectations. It was all white wood and spotless and I could not believe we were finally here. We both felt very happy and secretly pleased that we weren’t checking into Saratoga Springs after all.

The famed smell of the lobby hit me as we walked through the doors, and I had the biggest grin on my face. I knew what the smell would be like, as a couple of days previously, I had opened a birthday present from my good friends Rachael (RedRach) and Lisa (LisaLollipop) and in it was some of the scented waxes from Maple + Whisky. One of the ones they had chosen was the Beach Club scent, and it was just gorgeous.

We queued up to check in and I have to say, I choked back a bit of a hiccupy sob when the cast member on the desk said “welcome home”. It is no exaggeration when I say it is something of a life-long dream to stay in the Beach Club, and it was all a bit much at that moment. I pulled it together and went through the check-in process, and reconfirmed the pin numbers for our magic bands. The lady also wrote me out a birthday badge without being asked to, so that was a lovely bit of magic.

We were issued with a map to find our room, but we really didn’t need it. We made our way to the lifts in the lobby, and zoomed up to floor 3. No word of a lie, these are the fastest lifts I have ever been in, and I have been to the Empire State Building AND worked in Canary Wharf.

We quickly located room 3620 which was only about 20 metres from the lift, and entered the room.

Not only was our room perfectly located, it was HUGE! Properly enormous; there was so much space.

It had two king sized beds (no bunks this time, yippee), a large built-in wardrobe, an en-suite and patio doors at the end leading to a Juliet balcony.

We weren’t fussed about the fact that it wasn’t a proper balcony as we knew we wouldn’t be out there much.

Our view was of some pretty gardens rather than the lake but that was OK – we were acutely aware we were there on a free upgrade and so there was nothing whatsoever to be disgruntled about.

The only minor niggle was that our room was clearly one half of an adjoining pair. The door was locked tight so it wasn’t an issue, but we were to find out later on that it wasn’t exactly…soundproof.

Andy collapsed on one of the beds, and I set to unpacking. When I say unpacking, I basically took my hanging shelves out of my case and hung them on the rail in the wardrobe, and scattered my toiletries around one of the sinks in the vanity area. Shoes in a pile by the TV cabinet, and done!

I was a little concerned that if I sat down, tiredness might hit me, so I stood up and did the important job of pimping my magic band with some of the stickers I had bought. They were a year old as I had bought Andy some as a stocking filler last Christmas – and obviously bought some for myself too – and I was so happy to finally be applying them to my new band.

We weren’t hungry, but we weren’t quite ready for bed either, so we stashed the valuables in the safe and decided to go and have a wander around the Boardwalk.

The lobby area of the Beach Club is a little confusing as it is basically a long thin room with doors on either side. One set of doors leads to the front of the hotel and the bus stops, and the opposite set leads to the pool and the Boardwalk. NOT ONCE in the entire time we were staying there did I walk towards the correct doors for wherever we were going, and we were constantly disoriented coming back in again, often turning right when we came in when we needed to go left and so on.

Board-Walk This Way

Given the fact that we were preoccupied with, you know, crossing the Atlantic and all, the fact it was Hallowe’en had completely slipped our minds. So, we were a little surprised when we stepped out of the hotel and walked almost smack bang into some ladies dressed as the sisters from Hocus Pocus who were there for a Photopass opportunity, plus lots of other people milling about in fancy dress.

We turned left, and headed towards the entrance to Epcot. We had seen that Hanson were playing that night, as part of the Eat To The Beat line-up and had half-heartedly considered going along but we were a little late and let’s face it, we can only name on Hanson song anyway so decided to sack it and not start our 14 day tickets that night, and carry on walking.

It was very odd strolling round the Boardwalk as it felt, well, like Magaluf. There were lights and lasers and projections everywhere and pop music booming out of every speaker. We felt like little moles coming into the light and it was all a little bewildering. There were people spilling out of all the bars and restaurants, and our glimmer of an idea of going to have a quiet drink in the Abracada-bar was quickly snuffed out as it was heaving.

As we walked past the lawn in front of the Boardwalk hotel, we could see where all the noise was coming from. There was a massive Hallowe’en party going on, with a DJ and magicians, dancers and games and it looked like a complete hoot.

Also, lovely that there was a free-of-charge alternative for guests who weren’t at any of the official Hallowe’en parties. So many kids dressed as pumpkins and high as kites on e-numbers.

However, it was all a bit much for us and we carried on walking. Apparently, the circumference of the Boardwalk is about a mile, and we were starting to feel like it was longer.

It was lovely coming to the end of the route, and seeing the Swan and Dolphin again.

We spent our honeymoon in the Swan and I think at the time we really took the location for granted so it was just wonderful to be back there.

We walked past the Yacht Club ...

...and made our way full circle back into the Beach Club.

We decided to choose and activate our refillable mugs at this point. Andy chose purple and I chose pink, and we were quickly good to go. The drinks machines at the Beach Club are those Coke ones where you can choose a myriad of flavours – I think I went for Sprite Zero (I am always surprised it comes out pink) and Andy went for his favourite Minute Maid Lemonade. I also asked him to grab a handful of Coffeemate pots for the room in case we had only been left the powdered version by Mousekeeping.

We had a quick look at the quick service options, which, confusingly, are located in the Beach Club Marketplace gift shop. This was great as it was so close to our room, but also a bit odd as the place always smelled a little weird – the lovely Beach Club scent does not mix well with that weird toasted cheese flatbread smell and it always made us feel a little icky whenever we entered the shop.

Anyway, given the massively limited selection (flatbreads, or, errr, flatbreads) we decided we didn’t want any of it, and just bought a couple of 1.5 litre bottles of water. We took ourselves back in the magic lifts to our room. We were so happy with where the room was located – we could be from the room to the shop in under a minute and out the front/back door in less than two.

I remember being super pleased that we made it to 22:00 on travel day as we are usually done in and asleep by 20:00. I really do put this down to BA having such pleasant flying conditions, decent food and the fact that we drank at least four litres of water on the flight. We didn’t arrive feeling grotty or fractious, just happy to be there and excited for what lay ahead.

So there we have it – that’s travel day. We made it!

Thanks for reading! Please join us for the next instalment where we visit Epcot and the Magic Kingdom which can now be found here

[Palm trees]

I've read your previous trip reports and am looking forwards to reading this one too! Fab news of the upgrade, what a treat.

[Inky]

Love your trip reports!

[Eccle]

Great travel day, we’re coming home in World Traveller Plus this year hopefully in a refurbished plane based on the seating plan, so it’s good to hear a review of it.

Beach Club looks lovely too

[DISNEYLIZ]

What a great start to the holiday. Well done on the upgrade. Shame about the perfume

[MinnieMrsA]

Brilliant start, loving the lyrics here too! Looking forward to reading more x

[emmabanana]

Great, I’m so pleased you’ve started this, good travel day, loving the 80’s lyrics too!

[2019DisneyEvans]

Looking forward to reading this, thank you for taking the time to write it. Great travel day 😀

[i love jack]

Looking forward to reading another of your reports
Sounds like a great BA experience, and your room looks lovely.
I had to google smell of wine and cheap perfume, couldn’t for the life of me remember what it wAs from! Oh and nice sweater btw

[beth21]

Great start love your reports so honest and funny