212.6 Miles Too Far South - August 2018 (Update 21/7)

[emmabanana]

Great addition to the holiday, nice not to have to drive from the keys straight to the airport 😄

[rosered]

Brilliant way to end the holiday. We were just doing a cruise from Miami and then driving down the keys but then we decided to try and fit in MVMCP and before we knew it we had booked a week at CBR before the cruise!

[DisneyDreamer81]

I'm literally so pleased that you've found a way to add WDW on to your holiday

[sheluk]

Wahooo! And totally sensible decision given that drive from the keys is loooooong xx

[Leyfy]

Originally Posted by emmabanana

Great addition to the holiday, nice not to have to drive from the keys straight to the airport 😄

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Yes, that was definitely stressing me out a bit as I didn't fancy sitting in the car for nearly five hours and then on a flight for eight!

Got to get a bit of Disney in there somewhere

Originally Posted by rosered

Brilliant way to end the holiday. We were just doing a cruise from Miami and then driving down the keys but then we decided to try and fit in MVMCP and before we knew it we had booked a week at CBR before the cruise!

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Ha ha - love it! The 'call of the Mouse' is far too strong when you land in Florida

Originally Posted by DisneyDreamer81

I'm literally so pleased that you've found a way to add WDW on to your holiday

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He he - it just felt so weird going to Florida and NOT doing Disney!

Originally Posted by sheluk

Wahooo! And totally sensible decision given that drive from the keys is loooooong xx

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Yeah, completely! I'm not looking forward to doing the Key West to Orlando drive again, but I'd rather do that than go home!



Thank you for reading, everyone

[Leyfy]

Update 8/4/2018

Eats, Eats, Eats!

Our first stop is the Pelican Grand Beach Hotel in Fort Lauderdale. We will be eating in the hotel restaurant but I've also seen there is a sports bar called 'Bokampers' which is a 20 minute walk away from the hotel. We will probably end up in there as well as it has great reviews and the food looks amazing! They also have this thing called 'The Beast', which has a shouty caption 'TAME THE BEAST IN UNDER 1 HOUR & IT'S FREE'. Of course, I had to google this:

I think it is safe to say we wont be going anywhere near that! A few years ago Phil and I went to the Cowfish at Universal's City Walk (which is now one of my favourite restaurants) and he had a burger called 'The Rise and Swine'

He managed to eat everything but then had an extremely uncomfortable few hours and had to go and sit on the steps outside the restaurant to recover for about ten minutes after we left! He then couldn't look at another burger for almost a year without feeling ill!

After our three nights in Fort Lauderdale, we are then on the cruise. Now, if you've followed our previous trips you'll know that my husband is fond of doing this:

👉

I've been doing quite a lot of watching of videos and reading up about Carnival Cruise lines and found out that you can get one of these:

Even Phil says that may be a step too far, though!

On the Conquest I've booked us a night at the Steakhouse, which is an extra fee of $30pp a night and is booked for the Sunday night of the cruise. The menu in there looks fantastic and we've already picked out what we are having! The rest of the time we will eat at the other non-fee restaurants on board - there looks like a massive choice of different things. Having not cruised before we are just going to take it all in, I think.

When we get back to Florida we will be heading over to Naples. I'd originally booked Trulucks for that night, but thought that probably with the journey and stuff over there (we are going to stop at a Walmart on the way for supplies) we probably will want to just stay at the hotel that evening. So that night will be HBs on the Gulf, which is the hotel restaurant and is also excellent. Then the following night we will be going to Trulucks, which is a steak and seafood place we found on our honeymoon trip. I've been able to book a reservation through Open Table, which I've made for 6.30pm so we can hopefully get back in time for the sunset. We will probably pop into the Old Naples Pub as well, which is quite close to the pier, which I also want to visit.

Our third night in Naples is at the Inn on 5th and we will head over to Pinchers probably at Tin City for something to eat, if nothing else catches our eye.

We then head down to Key West for four days. We'd like to eat at Carolines again, like as did last summer as it was excellent, and I want to find Sarabeth's after being to the New York one in February! Apart from that we'll just go with the flow and see where we fancy when we are there

Then... ONWARDS TO WALT DISNEY WORLD!

Disney Eats

We love our signature restaurants when staying at Walt Disney World, including The Yachtsman, Narcoossee's and California Grill. I am usually the ADR Queen and have them all sorted months in advance! However, being that this is tagged onto the end of the holiday as kind of a last minute addition, we've decided to finish our holiday with the traditional visit to the California Grill, but that will be it.

Plan is to eat at Big Grille Brewing Works on our first night, as I will be shattered from the long drive. You don't need an ADR for there so that's pretty much sorted. Tuesday we will be at Disney Springs and the plan was to go to Lava Lounge. I know it will be quite busy so I've made a reservation at Rainforest Cafe just in case. Wednesday we will be hitting all the pavilions at EPCOT for a drinking/snacking round the world type adventure. Last time we loved Tutto Gusto and their amazing cheese plate, so we will be revisiting that for a bigger snack when we get to Italy. I've been working on my timings to make sure we finish at 9pm for the fireworks and hit everything at the right time as last time we spent a lot of time trekking across the park! This plan will hopefully minimise that:

As you can tell, I've obviously missed all the planning

Thursday the plan says Magic Kingdom! So will will head there for early afternoon and eat at Casey's Corner. We then have the Happily Ever After dessert party booked. Which reminds me - I emailed Disney a week ago with an enquiry about that and they still haven't responded!

Friday, our final full day in what hopefully will be a fab three weeks will finish with California Grill. The fireworks will be different as well I think, as it's the first MNSSHP that evening.

We don't fly until nearly midnight on the Saturday (that's if Norwegian don't mess around with our flights again! ) and so we will finish the holiday with a meal at ESPN.

Phew!

Until next time ...

[Goldia]

Oh wow! You've added in disney. It sounds like you will an awesome trip. That burger look huge I think your DH did well to recover in just 10 minutes on the steps.

[Leyfy]

Originally Posted by Goldia

Oh wow! You've added in disney. It sounds like you will an awesome trip. That burger look huge I think your DH did well to recover in just 10 minutes on the steps.

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He wasn’t able to move for the rest of the night once we finally walked back to the hotel! 🤣

It just felt a bit ‘wrong’ not going to Orlando ... We had to sneak a cheeky few days in, in the end 😊

[smithlane]

Ooh your plans look fab! Nice touch adding on Disney at the end. Looking forward to reading all about it 😃

[Zomax25]

This sounds like a fabulous trip!