Return of the Fab Five - Aug 2017 - Day 1: We know the way (Travel Day)

[rich2820]

Return of the Fab Five - Aug 2017 - Day 1: We know the way (Travel Day)

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It’s now nearly five months since August 2017 and our trip to Florida. Obviously, I intended starting this trip report in September, but for various reasons too dull to mention, over the autumn months I lacked the time, motivation and energy to get on with it, although I have now edited most of the photos. Fortunately, I did take a few brief notes whilst we were away. So, using them, along with my fairly extensive planning notes, and photos to jog my memory, I’ll crack on and make an attempt at this report.

As my memory’s not what it was – I’m in my mid-forties now! – I anticipate this being fairly brief, so I’ll pad it out with photos. Like last time I’m going to summarize each day with a Fab Five – the 5 best things that happened each day. I’m sure all of you Disney fans will get the Fab Five reference, and, of course, we are a fab five ourselves!

Again, each day will share the title of a Disney song that will link to the theme of that day. As I used all of the best ones last time the links will become increasingly tenuous as we go on, but please bear with me.

If you would like a bit of background, and to meet the cast of this trip, why not take a look at my pre-trippie. And you could have a look at our previous trip report from 2014 if you’re interested in how we did things last time around. Just follow the links…

So to day 1 – travel day - and with our flights from Manchester booked for 10.15am I thought we wouldn’t have to leave too early, but certain eager beavers wanted us to leave the house by 5.50am, so a not-so-leisurely start after all. We were booked in at the Manchester airport Meet-and-Greet parking – a misnomer if ever there was one, as we were ‘met’ by a surly parking attendant who directed us into a lane (“Lane 7, Lane 7… Lane 7, OK?”) and then proceeded to repeat this information to us as we got out of the car. “You’re in Lane 7. Don’t forget, Lane 7, OK?” Thanks mate, I’ll never forget that now for as long as I live. At least it gave us something to laugh about after the mild stresses of trying to direct grumpy Dad in the car to the correct car park area. If that was the ‘meet’ I’m not sure when the greet happened, but we handed in our car key and hoped for the best as we surveyed the youths they employed to park our vehicle. ‘Meet-and-Greet’ sounds like it should be a major improvement in terms of convenience but to be honest we’ve found the multi-storey option to be better in the past, and cheaper. We only went for ‘Meet-and-Greet’ because there was a special offer.

We moved swiftly on the airport where we got into the queue for us smug so-and-sos who had completed online check-in with Thomas Cook. However, the self-service weigh-in thing didn’t work so we had to join a queue to speak to a human after all. In fact it seemed that about 50% of those around us were having the same problem, and with only two staff allocated to pick up the problem queue I think it probably took longer than if we’d just joined the standard check-in queue in the first place!

Not to worry, we soon got it over and done with, although I was still grumpy and now more than a little stressed, and then it was on to security. I have a problem with airport security. So much so that it has now become something of a family joke. It’s got so bad now that I might be getting a fear of flying – not because of the whole infeasibility of getting that huge hunk of steel into the air scenario – but because every time I go through security I get taken to one side for ‘extra attention’. And I mean every time! I’d even tried wearing different shorts this time in an attempt to get through without being frisked – but no, “Step this way please sir...” Listen, I know we all want them to be thorough, but man, they are thorough. I felt like we should be exchanging phone numbers after that level of intimacy.

From here it was time for a quick stop to buy a few things that we’d forgotten (!), Starbucks and then onto the flight. This was pretty uneventful (which I guess is want you want in a flight), but with the best part of 9 hours to kill I was able to finish reading ‘Carrying the Fire’ by Michael Collins, which is an excellent book about his experiences as a Gemini and Apollo astronaut, to whet my appetite for our trip to Kennedy Space Centre. I finished it in time to re-watch ‘Rogue One’ so went from science fact to science fiction in one small step (see what I did there!) This was all broken up by our tiny airline meal, which was supposedly ‘created’ by James Martin. It consisted of dry chicken, liquid vegetables and mystery barley gloop. If I were a celebrity chef I’d be ashamed to put my name to that. Dessert wasn’t bad though – caramel cheesecake – even if it was gone in two mouthfuls.


Orlando Airport was a breeze this time (see below) and then it was on to the Magical Express and home to Disney’s Beach Club. So, having said that this is going to be brief I seemed to have managed to waffle on for nearly 1000 words before even getting on to today’s Fab Five. Oops! So anyway, here come the Fab Five:


1. Starbucks

Finally, having checked-in and made it through the ordeal of security we were able to find Starbucks and get some breakfast. For me this is when the holiday starts, and stopping off at this overpriced establishment for coffee and cakes for breakfast has become something of a tradition for us. Although there’s still a long way to go at this point I feel like I can relax a little, having got rid of the checked-in luggage and gone through the ordeal of security and the overly handsy security personel. It was great to finally get some breakfast, having literally just climbed out of bed, got dressed and into the car at stupid o’clock in the morning. The caffeine was particularly appreciated for me being of a grumpy disposition first thing in the morning.


2. Orlando International Airport

I remember the first time we ever arrived at Orlando Airport in 2012 feeling like we’d landed on another planet. MCO just seemed so much more glamorous than any airport we’d experience before – the shuttle, the Hyatt Hotel overlooking the airport terminal and the heat as we stepped outside. This time around it all seemed a little more routine, but there certainly is an advantage to knowing your way around. And we could feel the excitement building as we made our way from immigration to baggage collection to the shuttle, across the terminal and the long walk to the Magical Express.

As we arrived at the immigration hall there were no other flights ahead of us so we didn’t have too long to wait before we saw our monotone, deadly serious immigration officer. Within a few minutes of our joining the queue another flight arrived behind us and the hall was filled with people, so we had a lucky escape. All in all we were through immigration and baggage reclaim in under an hour and on to the final leg of our journey ‘home’.


3. Disney’s Beach Club

Walking into the Beach Club lobby was an amazing feeling after around 14 hours of car, aeroplane and bus travel. The blast of air-con, almost too cold, and the amazing smell, the buzz of activity as people were coming back from the parks or the pool, or preparing for dinner at Cape May Café, and the grandeur and space of the lobby all combined to tell us we’d arrived.

I’d checked in online here as well, and again I think this was a waste of time! They sorted out our room quickly enough, but then took an age to register our Magic Bands. Eventually they handed them over, telling us that they should work in the parks but they couldn’t get them to link to our room door, so they gave us some old-fashioned cards to let us into our room. They told us to come back later to have our bands activated for our room door, which we did, successfully except for Hilary, who had to use a card for the remainder of our holiday. By the way we’d bought some Magic Band skins from MagicYourBand.com prior to our trip and this is what mine looked like:

Hilary and I bought matching Mr. and Mrs. Incredible skins, Beth had an Alice in Wonderland skin and Hannah had a Lilo skin, because they didn’t make Stitch skins. We found these stuck to the Magic Band fairly well at first, and remained stuck even when we were in and out of the pool, but after a few days they did start to come off. They provide 2 skins with every purchase so Beth was able to have an Alice skin for the entire trip, whereas I decided to only use mine for a few days.


4. Hotel room

If you’ve read my pre-trippie you’ll know that a few days prior to our trip I requested a specific room using the TouringPlans.com room request system. This is only available to subscribers of the Touring Plans website and I didn’t hold out too much hope of it working but to our surprise we ended up with a room with a fantastic view. It wasn’t quite our first choice of room, but one that I’d put down as an alternative. This was the view from our (full) balcony:

As you’ll read later on, this time around, for various reasons, some of us ended up spending more time in our room than normal, so having this great room was definitely appreciated.


5. The Boardwalk

I can’t walk around, or even write about, The Boardwalk without finding myself singing ‘Under the Boardwalk’ by the Drifters – there, you’re doing it now. Anyway, after settling into our room, and then a short swim in the amazing Stormalong Bay, we went for a leisurely walk around The Boardwalk, stopping off at the Boardwalk Bakery for something to eat. I had a barbecue pulled pork sandwich, which was pretty good, although I had to wait an age for it to arrive after experiencing some of the slowest service ever. Friendly, but glacial. We sat on a bench looking out over Crescent Lake watching the sun go down and drinking it all in. Our holiday had only just begun and we had so much to look forward to.

[Goldia]

It sounds like you had a great travel day. I'm looking forward to the next update and the rest of our fab fives.

[rich2820]

Originally Posted by Goldia

It sounds like you had a great travel day. I'm looking forward to the next update and the rest of our fab fives.

See more...

Thanks. It did all go pretty smoothly. I've now posted Day 2.

[Gabsnoot]

Hi, I’m really enjoying your report so far. We are off to the Beach a Club for the first time this year so I’ll be keeping an eye out for any top tips

It’s good to know that you had some success with your room request. We’ve used TP for requesting rooms at OKW and Wilderness Lodge previously and got our first choice on both occasions. I wasn’t sure how successful we would be this year with the Beach Club being such a popular resort.

[Gabsnoot]

p.s. I meant to say, I’m really enjoying the Fab 5 aspect.

[moosha]

Brilliant report . I really enjoyed your last trippie and love the way you do a ‘Fab Five’. Looking forward to the rest.

[rich2820]

The room request certainly wasn't a deal-breaker for us, but we were really pleased with the way that it turned out. It was officially a 'garden view' room, but we had a great view. And it wasn't too noisy, despite overlooking the back entrance.

Thanks for commenting.

[rich2820]

Originally Posted by moosha

Brilliant report . I really enjoyed your last trippie and love the way you do a ‘Fab Five’. Looking forward to the rest.

See more...

Thanks very much for commenting again. There will be more coming soon...

[Cinderella]

Love the Boardwalk area!

[yellowrose78]

Great travel day, Beach Club is lovely