#USAnumber3- Helen&Andy Nov 18 - Day 14: Minnie’s Beach Bash Breakfast & travelling home

[HelenJNT]

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Day 14: Minnie’s Beach Bash Breakfast & travelling home

Last day blues. I was super sad to be leaving the ultra comfy beds in the Beach Club. Despite the room being lighter than others we have stayed in, and the fact we were so near to the lift, I slept better on this holiday than I have on others. I don’t know why; we were pretty exhausted going into it as work had been as punishing as ever and it is HARD waiting 'til November for a holiday, but there you go.

It was time to pack up the room. This never takes us long – it doesn’t really matter what goes in where as long as the cases balance. Despite what you might think from all these bags, we hadn’t actually done that much shopping on this trip. I’d bought a few bits here and there, but we hadn’t gone mug-tastic this year as we already had all the Starbucks mugs bar the new Magic Kingdom one, and we had bought the Beach Club resort mug, but that was it for the weighty things – other than two weeks of dirty laundry (sorry Rach).

Despite being allowed more luggage, thanks to going Premium, we’d flown out with a case each, a cabin case of hand luggage, my tiny handbag, and Andy’s rucksack. However, we had a ton of meal credits to trade in for snacks. Last year we’d just taken all this swag on the plane, but we knew now that MCO security don’t like you taking food in your carry-on, so we were going to have to make room in one of the cases for whatever we bought that morning. This meant I needed a larger hand luggage bag. Any excuse!

We’d showered, dressed, packed up our stuff, checked everywhere a million times and said goodbye to the room by 10:45. It had been a great room, apart from the noise of the adjoining door. It was always perfectly clean, and the location really couldn’t have been beaten. Lucky us. Sure, we didn’t have a waterfront view, but these things don’t really matter to us, as we were delighted to have received the upgrade we had got, and I had finally stayed in my dream resort over my 40th birthday. Pretty cool, huh? Contemporary for my 50th?

We took our cases to reception, and, with a heavy heart, paid our final room balance (it wasn’t a lot) and checked out. We had to wheel our cases to the bell hop station out the front, where they were locked away for us.
I’d made us an 10:50 reservation for the breakfast in the hotel, Minnie’s Beach Club Bash. Travel day is always a bit of a lottery from the food perspective, plus we needed to kill some time, so this seemed ideal as we didn’t have to travel anywhere. We were given a pager, and sat in reception, feeling sorry for ourselves.

It wasn’t long before we were called in and shown to our table, which, luckily, unlike earlier in our trip when we visited for dinner, was actually in the main room, not off to the side in a windowless cell. There weren’t many other diners around, I guess as it was at a weird time of day and it was the real tail end of breakfast.

Drinks options were considered, and we both went for mimosas, and coffees – we could have both within the plan so that was great.

Goodness, this restaurant is so 80s! I was half expecting the kids from Stranger Things to appear from behind one of the deckchairs.

I off first to go and scavenge the buffet. As it was the end of breakfast and they don’t do a lunch service at Cape May, it wasn’t the best or most fresh selection, but there was still plenty to be had, and happily, no chewy crab claws this time. There aren’t any real special items worth a specific trip on this buffet but there was plenty of choice with fruit, pastries and the usual fried bits. Also, the place was practically empty.

I managed to salvage a plate of all my favourite breakfast buffet things, the standard eggs, bacon, tater tots, woop woop, and, just for lols, a donut hole.

While Andy was off getting his food, Daisy arrived at the table, and promptly sat down and pretended to have a mimosa with me. She didn’t have a wrangler with her, so clearly word hadn’t spread about last year’s Tusker House incident where I accidentally punched Mickey on the nose.

Donald also arrived seconds later and seemed very sad that I was by myself. Aaaargh, solo character interaction!

And then Minnie turned up so I was having a little party with all three of them!

Luckily Andy arrived back just in time.

After we’d had some photos, I went back for a second helping. As you can see, I came back with a bowl of fruit and a few select items.

I was very happy to see mini choc-chip pancakes on the buffet (for I had missed pancakes on this trip), and the thing that looks like a tramp’s vomit - or worse - is actually the famous banana caramel sauce that you get on the dessert at ‘Ohana. And a piece of French toast. And bacon. And sausage, haha.

Goofy was up next, who was great fun.

And then, Donald was back! He crept up on Andy, which was hilarious.

He’d come back, to bring me a birthday card and a little cake, which he stood over me and watched me blow out the candle. Funny, that in all the meals we’d had on this trip, this was the only one that did anything for my birthday. I don’t know why, as it had been a week ago but there we are.

We honestly had brilliant character interaction here. I think because it was the end of the meal session, and therefore there were hardly any other diners. But the characters spent ages and ages with us and were really outgoing and not scary at all – it was very casual and lots of fun.

If you go at the end of service, you might get lucky as we did and have the characters all to yourself for the duration. Sure, it isn’t wasn’t destination dining food-wise, but if you are staying at the Boardwalk, or have an afternoon planned in Epcot, you couldn’t go wrong here. OK, there’s no Mickey, but we didn’t miss him. And he definitely didn’t miss me, remember how he blanked me at the Garden Grill on Day One?

We settled up, using two table service credits, and paid the tip in cash as we had already checked out so didn’t want anything else going on our room bill that needed to be cleared after we got home.

It was about midday, and our airport bus wasn’t due until 14:20, so we decided to go for a slow wander around the Boardwalk, just to say goodbye to it. We debated going into Epcot as our tickets were still valid, but Andy didn’t want to do anything that was going to make us sweaty as it was boiling out there and we were already in our travel clothes.

We walked, slowly, taking it all in for the last time.

Eventually, we came to the shop on the Boardwalk, where we needed to trade in our dining plan credits for random bad-for-you snacks to take home. The shop here is far bigger than the one in the Beach Club, with more choice. I also needed to buy a bag to transport it in. I’d had my eye on a special seasonal canvas bag, you know, the ones you get for free if you spend over a certain amount, but this posed a problem as I wasn’t actually spending any real cash in here. Oh.

I selected another bag instead, but I really did want the holiday special one so Andy had a quiet word with the cast member and she agreed to put it through for the same price as one of the non-special offer bags, so I got it for $30. Nice.

It took a while to calculate all the credits, but it turned out to be 27, so we filled the new bag with 27 assorted snacks, bars of chocolate, tins of mints, and my favourite spicy snack mix. I love this, it has a real kick to it and it is very munchable.

Mission accomplished.

The bag was fairly heavy, so we made our way back, completing the full circuit of the Boardwalk.

We retrieved our cases from Bell Services, and set about re-packing them slightly to accommodate the snacks in the checked luggage and lobbing a few items in the new bag I had bought in order to make room in the cases.

It was about 45 minutes til our bus, so we became those sad souls who sit in the hotel reception waiting to go home. You always feel smugly sorry for them when you’re still in the thick of your holiday and running through reception on your way to something exciting, but before you know it, it’s your turn.

As expected, and with typical Disney precision, the bus turned up on time and we had to go.

It took a while to get to the airport as there was a pick-up from the Caribbean Beach after us. It was nice to see one of our old resorts actually, and we couldn’t believe what they’d done with the place. The entrance, and reception area looked totally different, and we could see all the building works. It’s impressive – and huge. We quite liked the battered charm of the place when we stayed there in 2016. Andy would be happy to stay there again but I am less sure, as it is so big now, with a whole other complex added now, that I just can’t comprehend how much of a nightmare the bus stops and capacity would be. Sure, they’ve got gondolas now which will be a huge plus, but, well, it just feels like it would be painful getting around or queuing for food.

Anyway, there was some kind of commotion at the Caribbean Beach, where a group who were meant to be on the bus were missing and a search party had to be sent to get them out of their room. We waited there on the bus for a good half hour or so before they finally rocked up, all frazzled and snippy and with stuff spilling out of their arms and cases. Clearly, they were persona non grata with everyone else on the bus. No-one wants to go home, but come on, nice try…

We made it to the airport by 16:00, and checked in without incident. Our flight was at 18:30, which was the earliest one we could get on. On any holiday, we like to be on our way home as quickly as possible on our last day – no point putting it off.

Straight through security, and over to the terminal. We always find MCO a bit weird that all the good shops are on the side before security and there is sod all else on the other side, but we felt we would rather get it all over and done with, so queued up and went through. It wasn’t too bad this time, probably about 30 minutes. I do think travelling on a weekday helps, avoiding the Saturday scrums. Did I mention that? This is the second trip we’ve done where we went Weds-Weds and we find it far preferable. Not only does our trip span over three weeks, so feels longer in itself, it also means two lovely short weeks at work either side. And quieter airports.

We were pleased to see that the new Bahama Breeze had opened up in Departures. I’ve read a lot of trip and food reports on here over the years, and I know how popular Bahama Breeze is with many of you on here so I was excited that we were going to get the chance to check it out, even if it was the airport version so perhaps lacking some of the holiday excitement of eating there of an evening.

We weren’t really hungry so didn’t want main courses, but were feeling snacky, so ordered a couple of beers, and one of the appetisers to share, the spinach and queso dip. Yum, yum, yum. It came with tortilla chips and also plantain chips, both of which were really good, and so we scoffed the lot.

This was a perfectly pleasant way to spend an hour, far more civilised than other occasions where we’ve sat on the grim grinning green non-magical carpet of departures and just waited for our gate to be called.

Our flight was on time, and we were called to the gate, stopping off on the way to spend about $30 on two 1.5L bottles of water and a small bag of popcorn. Airport prices.

There was a real scrum at the gate, as BA were piloting (boom boom) new iris recognition technology where you could scan your boarding pass and passport, and not have to have them manually checked by a member of staff. Naturally, it wasn’t working, and the people at the front of the queue kept being told to step aside, let someone else try, nope, turn it off and on again, try again, nope.

Sigh. Why do we always get held up here? I got chatting to a very annoyed – and possibly a little inebriated - lady who picked me out of the crowd to be the recipient of her rant. She wasn’t happy that they wouldn’t just let us on the plane but then she wasn’t happy about the seats on the plane either – they were in World Traveller Plus like us and I received a full tirade about how the seats were paper thin, not cushioned and like she felt like she was squatting on the floor for the whole flight out. Oh. We’d thought the seats were fine.

Eventually they got the scanner thing working and we were on the plane. It did mean we would be departing late though, so that was a nuisance. I don’t know why they didn’t just open the desk, there were plenty of staff milling around. Thought robotics and AI were meant to make our lives easier?

Once on the plane, we checked out the entertainment…

….no, don’t worry, I didn’t choose this, it just made me laugh.

Drinks came round. I had a G&T, but poor Andy could only have an orange juice as needed to drive at the other end.

The food menu was alright, we both ordered the beef.

It wasn’t as outstanding as the meal we had had on the way out, but it was still a million billion zillion times better than Virgin’s offerings – even if it looks a bit gross here.

I can’t remember what the red wines were, but I asked the cabin crew chap which one was nicer and he said he had no idea so just gave me one of each. Super.

The flight passed slowly. There was a bit of turbulence, which made me regret the wines, and it was a pretty restless trip. I can never sleep on planes for longer than a 20 minute nap, so I was really struggling.

I watched the Alexander McQueen documentary which was riveting but desperately sad, and stayed with me for a long while afterwards.

…and I played Tetris for about three hours straight. By the time we were near to landing, I had beaten Isa, but damn you, RickyP, I couldn’t get near your top score.

Luckily, we had made back some time on the flight, so we landed more or less on time.

It didn’t take long to get through security, and our bags followed shortly after. We went straight to the car valet pick-up, and once again, this was absolutely seamless. We’ve vowed never to do the Long Stay car park ever again – it’s too much hassle when you can walk straight from the terminal to your car in under five minutes, the buses can add a clear hour if you time it wrong – and valet parking is only a few quid more.

Looking at the timing of the photos I was taking, we did pretty well. It was less than an hour from being in the plane on the tarmac to the M25.

And then, yes, of course, back to earth with a bump. Ugghhhjhhh.

It took us well over three hours to get back to the house, which, evidently, was still standing. We dumped our cases and got straight back in the car again to go and collect the mogs from the cattery. It was one of the best moments of my life (probably not an exaggeration) to walk in there and see their little faces again; the Orientals were hanging off the wire of the cage doors, yelling their heads off with delight. Emu was less demonstrative, but I think she was pleased. She’d better have been!

All reunited and time to deal with boring stuff like unpacking the cases, and tackling the EU washing mountain. We’d actually paid to stop our post while we were away as we had locked all access routes to our house, so at least we didn’t have to deal with proper real life stuff like bills and bank statements that day.

Logged into Facebook and immediately wished I hadn’t, as was confronted with this – it was a year to the day since we arrived at Animal Kingdom Lodge in 2017. Way to rub salt into the wound.

I took some photos of some of my purchases, which I don’t think made it into the main narrative of this report.

This is actually a men’s hoody but I love it and wear it all the time. A much better purchase than last year’s Avatar one.

PJ bottoms from Canada-land.

I’d been up for a very long time which is why I couldn’t work out how to take just one photo of this beach towel!

Naps and showers were had, I cooked some dinner, and then, believe it or not, we were off out again!

We had tickets to go and see Rich Hall’s Hoe Down at our local theatre. We both love Rich Hall and had ummed and ahhed about whether we should book tickets or not, knowing it was at the end of what was going to be a very long travel day, but decided to go for it as it was local, and he was only playing one night.

I’m glad we went, it was great fun and we had really good seats. Managed to stay awake too. Was very strange to be back in winter clothes again, not sure how pleased we were about that part. I think I am still wearing the same makeup as I had put on a million hours earlier that day – the previous day – at the Beach Club though, what a minger.

Luckily, the show didn’t go on too late, and before long, we were tucked up in bed (finally having removed my make-up) with three cats cuddled in too. We were both back at work tomorrow, and the dream was over for another year.

Thanks for reading along with me. That’s it! The end of #USAnumber3! Well, not quite. Per previous trip reports, I will do another quick post of highs, lows and what’s next, so stay tuned for that…

[Inky]

Really enjoyed reading along, your cats are gorgeous. You brought some lovely stuff back.

[4fromsuffolk]

Thank you so much for sharing. What a lovely trip you had. I love your Canadian pj’s. Your cats are beautiful!

[jemima2]

Loved the whole report, thanks x

[Rockycat]

I’ve loved reading your trip report, thanks for taking the time to write it, as always it cheered me up 😊 looking forward to the next one.

[Waltdisnae]

Your reports are fabulous, really funny and informative. Thanks for sharing.

[Goldia]

I'm so glad to see you got a last fix of the tater tots before you left. Plus you picked up your bag for all the snacks.

I don't think I'd ever consider going out in the evening after travelling home. I can't believe you stayed awake.

[Floridaagogo]

I do love your reports xx

[prettymiarose]

Great trip & had such a giggle reading along. You’re a fantastic writer.
I’ve picked up lots of great planning tips for next time. Look forward to reading your next TP

[Redrach1903]

You know how I feel about the laundry... I won’t say it

Contemporary for your 50th sounds an excellent plan. Can we come?

Very happy you got some tots on your last day! Haha! What fab character interaction too! Love the birthday cake and card! Such a lovely memory for you!

Glad you got the bag you wanted (too cute) and bonus - you filled it with snacks!

Oh leaving is so sad. I can feel the pain. We did bahama breeze on our way back too!

Seemed like an easy journey home, despite the lack of sleep!

Still can’t believe you went out that night! NUTTERS! Hahahahaha !

Looking forward to the round up post xxx