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Old 25 May 20, 12:29 PM  
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Cool 5-week Split Stay in Florida, Feb/March 2020 - Day 36 & 37: Going Home & Future Plans

Day 36 & 37: Going Home & Future Plans
March 16 & 17, 2020

[-- Trip Index --]

Well, the day had finally come. Our epic 5-week holiday was at its end, and we were traveling home today. If you've been following along with my trip report, you'll remember that nearly a week ago the USA had announced the EU travel ban, and by now, lots of flights were getting cancelled every day. I'd seen flights from Virgin, KLM, Lufthansa, etc, all getting cancelled as the number of people traveling was falling drastically.

Our flight was with United Airlines, and they had announced a few days ago that they would not cancel any flights and stick to their normal schedule until Wednesday March 18, to allow as many people as possible to return home. So this meant our flights were not cancelled and going ahead as planned, something I was very very grateful for!

We all woke up around 7AM after a good night's sleep in the comfy beds. Since we all had showers last night, it was easy to get ready this morning. I got Myla dressed and Michael took her to Landscape of Flavors for one last Mickey Waffles breakfast while I finished the very last packing and sorting of hand luggage. He paid $12 for 2 bananas and 1 kids' Waffle meal - Myla actually told me very excitedly it wasn't a Mickey waffle, she'd gotten Nemo waffles lol!

Packing didn't take long - we'd only had one suitcase open, and it was more a matter of shuffling things around between our backpacks for the journey home. I did online check-in for our flights on the laptop, and once I had the boarding passes loaded up on my phone, I felt myself relax a little, finally allowing myself to believe our flights would NOT get cancelled after all.

Overnight, we'd gotten a letter under the door as well, now officially announcing the closure of all WDW resorts on Friday as well:


Our Magic Express pick-up time was 9:55, so around 9:30AM we left our room and headed to the lobby. We decided to just take our own cases, the walk wasn't too long and all on smooth concrete paths, so the cases rolled along no problem. On the way I took some last photos of the pretty decor - we'd really enjoyed our 1 night here, and with no parks yesterday, I actually did feel we made the most of it lol!


The park hours board in the lobby was a strange sight for sure, at 9:30AM! Everything closed.


It seemed very quiet everywhere - we didn't see a lot of other guests.


I left Michael and Myla with the luggage while I walked back inside to Landscape of Flavors to pick up some breakfast for myself - I hadn't eaten yet and needed something to keep me going. Passing through the shop, I took a photo of this display of Disney Babies - these were Myla's favorite toys, and I took this photo with the idea of letting her pick one for her birthday when we'd come back in 6 months.


From the Grab 'n Go section, I picked up a muffin for myself, and a croissant for Myla for later, $7.44 in total. When I got back to Michael and Myla, they were having a little dance party to the music playing over the speakers lol.


The Magic Express arrived right on time, and us plus 3 other families got on - the bus was already fairly full when we got on. Sad selfie:


Bye bye AoA!


We pulled into Pop Century next to pick up many more guests - the bus was completely full, and the driver actually had to ask if people could put small kids on their laps as 2 people couldn't find a seat. I guess everyone was leaving today, with the parks now officially closed! I was not 100% happy with such a full bus crammed with other guests - no social distancing, obviously. But it was a little too late to do anything about this now... we maybe should have booked a Minnie Van instead, but oh well. I hadn't actually realized the Magic Express bus would be so full!

After the Pop Century pickup, we headed to MCO. There was hardly any traffic on the roads either, which is unheard of in Orlando.


We were at the airport only 30-40 minutes later, and were standing in the United Bag Drop queue before 11AM. I went to one of the little kiosks first to print our boarding passes for both flights and luggage tags, and then we joined the queue to hand the bags over. It was all fairly quick and painless - the airport was actually VERY busy, but the United desks were all very efficient and quick.


With boarding passes in our hands and suitcases dropped off, I felt the last bit of cancellation-anxiety drop away. We had a restroom stop next (Myla still doing SO well using these in spite of the noise no problem now), and she spotted these hand sanitizer stations outside and insisted I take her photo as she posed with them. Do not ask me why she wanted this lol!


We decided to continue to minimize our contact with other people. The airport was very busy, we saw hardly any face masks and everyone was just crowding up in queues etc as normal, so we decided to go straight through security and to our gate, and wait there for our flight instead of the usual shopping etc we'd normally do. We also dropped the stroller off at the Kingdom Strollers desk, this took like 1 minute.


So we were sitting at our gate by 11:30AM when the flight wasn't until 2PM - everything went so smoothly and quickly that we had loads more time than I'd figured. The time seemed to go super slow, but we all occupied ourselves with our phones, iPad for Myla, eating our snacks (after wiping the seats and arm rests down with wipes ), and she also did some coloring.


Around 1PM, Myla and I had one last restroom stop and I changed her and myself out of our shorts and into our travel trousers.

Finally we were boarding, and were in our seats at 13:35. It was a very full flight, not a single seat left, and United were even asking for volunteers to give up their seats to get 125% credit for a future flight! Again, no one was keeping distance while boarding, and I did feel a bit silly wiping down our tray tables and arm rests - did that even matter when we couldn't keep our distance from others?


The plane pushed off about 5 minutes late, and we all waved bye to our beloved Orlando.


The flight to Washington took less than 2 hours, and was unremarkable but fine. The flight crew came around with drinks and oreo cookies, which we all ate. Myla watched some iPad, I listened to some music, and before we knew it, we could see Dulles airport out the window.


Around 15 minutes before landing, Myla decided she was tired, and promptly fell asleep. She slept through the entire landing, like she often does lol.


Waiting to disembark. She's completely out cold.


I carried her off the plane sleeping, and we gently woke her once we were inside Dulles airport. We had around 90 minutes until our Amsterdam flight, and wanted to get something quick to eat as well as give Myla a chance to stretch her legs before another 8 hours on a plane. She was a little confused when she woke up, and sad that she'd missed the landing, but I promised we'd get on another plane in an hour, and she could see the landing tomorrow morning then. (let's see how that goes, shall we?)

Dulles airport was also pretty busy, so again we just headed straight for our gate instead of looking around too much. I took some random photos at the airport, and we let Myla walk herself - here we saw a LOT of people with face masks on! It was around a 10 minute walk from the gate we landed at, to our Amsterdam gate, all inside the same terminal so that was easy enough.

Edited at 01:42 PM.
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Old 25 May 20, 12:30 PM  
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Our Amsterdam gate was on the far end of the C terminal, with several other gates there with international flights. The closer we got to this end, the quieter it got.


I visited Washington DC once, on a day trip during a New York City holiday, and have always wanted to come back. I think we'll definitely visit here when Myla is a little older!


Once we got to our gate, we saw it was very quiet there - there were maybe 30 people waiting, in spite of the flight boarding in less than an hour. Right across from our gate was a flight to Brussels boarding soon, with also very few people waiting. Michael and I took turns getting food - he went to Starbucks for a big bag of nuts for himself, a cappuccino for me, and Myla asked for another croissant - $9 in total. When he was back, I went to the Subway beside our gate and got a Veggie Delite vegan wrap with extra guacamole ($9.37). It was absolutely delicious and I scoffed the lot since all I'd had so far was a muffin and a cookie - I'm normally a bit nervous when we travel so don't normally eat a lot!

Time went really fast while we ate our food. The flight started boarding at 17:30, and we were in our seats by 17:45. Unfortunately Myla doesn't qualify for the early family boarding anymore - they specifically asked for families with kids under 2 only! Not that it mattered too much - it was still super quiet at the gate, I reckon maybe 50 people max? Our seats were at the back of the plane, second last row. Myla and I had 2 seats by the window, and Michael was just across the aisle from us. He then had 3 more seats beside him, and another 2 window ones on the opposite side of the plane.


Michael shared his middle row with one other guy, but we noticed the middle row behind him was totally empty. He asked a flight attendant if anyone was coming, and she said no, he could have it all to himself!


I definitely drew the short straw sitting with Myla again - he was able to stretch out and lie down all flight! Jealous! To give you an idea, this was the amount of seats occupied at 1 minute past 6, when the crew had closed the cabin door and we were about to push off. Just crazy - this 747 was maybe 25% full. I've NEVER been on a flight this quiet. And I was honestly surprised United stuck to their announcement to keep their flight schedule for another 2 days after this day - they must have been flying with near-empty planes on most routes!


Myla and I got ourselves sorted with her favorite blanket, our fluffy socks on (I always get cold feet on planes, and she just wants to do/wear exactly what I do/wear, so I'd been clever enough to bring her her own pair of fluffy socks), and I helped her pick what to watch on the IFE.


Bye bye United States! We shared a roll of mints during take-off, I'm SO lucky that Myla has never yet encountered sore ears on take-off or landing, so she's super relaxed.


About an hour into the flight, near 7PM local time, she started to get a bit tired and snuggled down more.


Dinner was served around this time - my notes say "it was actually pretty nice for plane food!" but I somehow didn't take any photos of it and I don't remember what I had. I think mine was a pasta dish - I think Myla's was too, like a plain kids' pasta with cheese and tomato sauce. She ate a few bites of it, and I had some of it too. Michael had the vegan meal, it was a rice/risotto thing and he said it was DELICIOUS and he'd actually PAY for this if he could order it in a cafe. That's pretty high praise!

The trays were all cleared away pretty quickly and efficiently (upside of an empty plane, the service was truly excellent), and we all tried to sleep after that. Myla and I snuggled up together on my lap and watched Frozen 2 on my seatback with the headphone splitter that comes built-in with her BuddyPhones headset, and she fell asleep about halfway through the movie. I moved her onto her own seat, and dozed myself for a few hours too, listening to music via Spotify on my phone. I find if I keep the seatback movie on, it just keeps me awake, so I turned that off as soon as Myla fell asleep.


A light breakfast of croissants and yogurt was served before we landed - I only ate the yogurt, and put both croissants in my bag since I knew Myla might eat them later. Michael had a vegan breakfast with a salad sandwich and fruit. Myla was still fast asleep as I watched the sun rise on our approach of Amsterdam & the Dutch coast.


I know I had promised Myla another chance to see the plane landing, and I honestly did try to wake her up. But she was once again dead to the world, fast asleep, and wouldn't wake up no matter what I did. Oh well - it was another good and uneventful flight. Sometimes I really can't tell I'm traveling with a toddler, she's SO good on planes!

We landed around 6:30AM Amsterdam time, after a flight of less than 7 hours.

Myla started waking up when I was putting her hoodie and shoes back on for disembarking the plane. She was still super tired and not particularly happy that we weren't in Florida anymore lol, but it was OK, she was too tired to make much of a fuss. I carried her on my hip seat through the airport, while Michael carried all 3 of the backpacks.

Schiphol itself was super quiet, we hardly saw any other passengers. At passport control there was only the little group of people from our flight, no one else. So weird - I fly from Schiphol all the time, and in 25 years, I've NEVER seen it this quiet, not even in the middle of the night! So we were walking to the car with our suitcases only 20 minutes after getting off the plane, a new record.


The P6 Valet Parking was super handy too, so nice to not have to go outside in the cold without our coats. We collected the car without any issues, and were on the road by 7:10AM.


We live around 30 minutes from the airport, but part of this route is over the major A4 motorway, and normally on Monday morning at 7AM, it would be very busy there and the journey would take more like 45 minutes. Not today, wee were home by 7:40, just over an hour after landing!


Myla had fallen asleep in her carseat, so I tucked her right back into her own bed, and did the same for myself. Poor Michael had to go to the supermarket to get some groceries first - because of the lockdown and all the panic buying, there were absolutely 0 online grocery delivery slots for the next 3 weeks. This was really annoying because we felt we should definitely isolate ourselves for the next 14 days since we'd come in close contact with probably thousands of people on our last week in WDW and on the journey home. But in this case we didn't have a choice and Michael had to go to the store himself. He was back 90 minutes later with enough stuff to last us for a week, and crawled into bed beside me - I was fast asleep by then so didn't even hear him.

We all slept till 13:30 before we made ourselves get up. It was a tough afternoon - but we all stayed up until 8 or 9PM before going to bed, and that worked for the jetlag quite well, it didn't bother us too much after the rough first 2 days.

We ended up self-isolating for the next 14 days, didn't leave the house, and saw no one. We never did end up getting sick, to my absolute shock and surprise - I was so sure at the time we'd all get sick, and I was only hoping it'd be mild so we were very very happy when the 14 days were up, and we were all still healthy with not even so much as a cold.

(as a side note, we now also know there's a chance we may have had it already, in late December/early January. There are confirmed cases in France from late December. My nephew (whose uncle travels to France for work twice a week and who he sees all the time) was very very sick a mystery virus in late December, he was on a ventilator for nearly 3 weeks and it took him a long time to recover. We saw him 7 days before he got so ill, and the same day he was admitted to hospital and put on breathing support, we ended up taking Myla to A&E too as she was very ill with pneumonia. She was allowed to go home after an afternoon at the hospital - they gave her oxygen and her blood oxygen levels stabilized, and she recovered OK at home. 2 days after that (so 9 days after we saw my nephew), Michael got really ill with high fever and coughing, and another day after that, I got it. I mentioned this in my pre-trip report - I had very high fevers for a week and constant coughing. When the fever finally broke, I felt super tired and weak for at least 2 weeks after that. My nephew's pediatrician has now told his parents that there's a chance he may have had COVID-19, and they're seeing if they can get him tested for anti-bodies. I never for 1 second thought we may have had it back in March though!)

FUTURE PLANS
I've mentioned a few times in this trip report that we were due to come back to Florida in September. This Feb/March trip was a bit of a budget/last minute thing - it hadn't been planned for very long, and we just wanted to make the most of being able to travel outside of school holidays while we still could (Myla starts school in September). However, the September 2020 trip was supposed to be the big main event. We were celebrating our 5th wedding anniversary and wanted to recreate some of the photos we took on our WDW honeymoon, plus we'd all celebrate our birthdays (Myla, Michael, and I all have birthdays within 2 weeks of each other). This was our itinerary:

Sept 2: fly to Orlando, possibly via Newark or DC again depending on prices
Sept 2 - 5: stay at Old Key West, relax, visit Disney Springs
Sept 5: start of our 14-day Ultimate Tickets, check into Boardwalk Villas
Sept 6: Myla turns 4, Bibbidy Bobbidy Boutique and Crystal Palace for a special birthday meal
Sept 5 - 13: Visit all the Disney parks from the Boardwalk, probably mostly Epcot and HS
Sept 13 - 20: check into Bay Lake Towers @ the Contemporary and spend another week in the parks, I'd celebrate my birthday on the 17th in Epcot
Sept 20: pick up rental car and drive to Atlanta with 1 or 2 stops on the way, check into Atlanta downtown hotel
Sept 21: visit the Georgia Aquarium if the weather looks iffy, or Zoo Atlanta if the weather is good. Maybe a little loop on the Atlanta Streetcar, or a similar hop on-hop off tour bus too.
Sept 22-29: leave Atlanta and drive to Maggie Valley, check into our mountain cabin for the week. Explore the area and the south side of Smokey Mountains National Park with leisurely drives and short hikes (Myla can't really walk that far yet), including Clingman's Dome, Oconaluftee Visitor Center etc etc. Michael would celebrate his birthday this week too.
Sept 29-Oct 6: drive to Gatlinburg and check into our mountain cabin in the area. Explore the area and sights, including at least 1 day at Dollywood, Cades Cove, Sugarlands Visitor Center, Laurel Falls, etc etc.
Oct 6: fly home (I'd seen really good flights from Knoxville McGee Tyson Airport with a stop in Chicago to Amsterdam)

Sounds really good right? So far, we only had our DVC Disney stays booked. I was supposed to book the flights and mountain cabins the week we got back from this trip. I obviously held off, but was still hopeful that I could maybe book everything when the parks reopened in April. Ha. Ha. By late April I knew we weren't going, and yesterday we officially cancelled everything. I rented the DVC points privately, and luckily the owner is really nice and understanding, and is trying to sell our reservations on so we can hopefully recoup some of $3400 USD we'd paid so far. Absolutely gutted to have to cancel this trip - we won't be able to just move this to next year. Myla starts school in September when she turns 4, and we'd gotten permission from her school to just let her start a month later, in October. But we can't just take her out of school for a full month next year. So if we want to go for a full 4 weeks, our only option will be the summer holidays next year, or else 14 days in May (when she has 2 weeks off school). We'll see - our family business has taken a hard hit in the past 2 months too, so for right now we won't be booking any expensive holidays as it's just not financially responsible. I think at the very most, we will consider booking just a WDW trip for August 2021 if free dining is ever released. If not, we'll most likely stay in Europe next summer, and just drive the car to Austria or France, where we've had great holidays in past years too.

I really wanted to end this trip report looking forward to our next great holiday. It's a bit of an anti climax that there isn't one planned! I am feeling a bit down about it, but I find it hard to believe at the same time that the situation won't be improved by next year - so I hope that I'll be back with a new pre-trip report at some point in 2020! I've really enjoyed writing all this out and sharing everything we did, and I know it'll be worth all the effort when I get to read this back in years to come. I hope it'll be useful to others planning trips with toddlers, and want to thank everyone for sticking with me, reading along, and leaving comments & likes! Really appreciate it, thank you all!

Edited at 12:42 PM.
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Old 25 May 20, 12:46 PM  
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Rabel
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Thank you for posting. I have really enjoyed reading your reports, it sounds like you had an amazing time despite all of the shut downs. Myla is a little star. Hopefully you will be able to go back soon
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Old 25 May 20, 12:54 PM  
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I feel at a loss as to what to do now - I've absolutely loved reading your trippie. Thank you for all the time and effort you put into it. One question though, of all the places you stayed on this trip - which was your favourite?
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Old 25 May 20, 01:14 PM  
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Originally Posted by Em4owen View Post
I feel at a loss as to what to do now - I've absolutely loved reading your trippie. Thank you for all the time and effort you put into it. One question though, of all the places you stayed on this trip - which was your favourite?
Hmm - tough one! You'll know we had no major complaints or problems with any of the places we stayed at! We loved Old Key West - I think I'd pick that as our favorite. The vibe there was just so us, and the pool with big sandy playground was just right for Myla's age. We really loved AKL too, but we'd only return there for a few nights to do Animal Kingdom park, and then move to somewhere more central for the rest of the time. OKW is the perfect compromise for us with a vacation vibe at the resort, not too far away from everywhere, and great facilities for young kids.

That said, I have a feeling Boardwalk and Contemporay would have been big hits too if we'd been going there in September, we love being able to walk to a park, and our stay at the Beach Club in 2015 is still one of our faves ever!

But out of this trip, yes I think Old Key West is the surprise winner (if you'd asked me in advance, I would have said there's no way the Poly can beat OKW... ).
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Old 25 May 20, 01:23 PM  
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Thanks for posting. Really enjoyed reading along and learning more about the different resorts. Lots of great tips noted for when we do finally get to go back
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Old 25 May 20, 01:36 PM  
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What a absolutely fabulous trippie, I have enjoyed reading it so much during the lockdown so thank you for all your time and effort doing it. Hopefully you will be able to go again soon.
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Old 25 May 20, 01:59 PM  
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Thanks for the trip report. Great read. Hopefully we will all be back in our favourite place soon. We are meant to be going 8th October, I’m not feeling confident at the moment.
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Old 25 May 20, 02:06 PM  
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Fab trip! We were going August, but rescheduled to October 21 now, brilliant that you stayed at so many different hotels and the villa x
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Old 25 May 20, 02:36 PM  
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Thanks for writing this trippie. I have really enjoyed reading it. It gave me something to look forward to while we have been in lockdown. Fingers crossed everything settles down and you will have a countdown sooner rather than later xx
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