Brett, Jo & Marceline's... Blah, Blah, Blah... January 2017 Pre-Trip Report

[Happyhaunt1000]

INDEX

Hello, hello, hello… and welcome to the Pre-Trip Report for what will be Team Harding's first visit to Walt Disney World as a trio! No longer will it be ‘Brett & Jo’s...’ blah, blah, blah… from now on it's 'Brett, Jo & Marceline’s...' blah, blah, blah! If you don't know who me and Jo are, but you feel inclined to find out more, the links to our previous Trip Reports are in my signature below.

So here's a quick summary of the line up for Team Harding's January 2017 WDW holiday:

Me (Brett)
A 41yr old HR Manager.
I'm never happier than when I'm in WDW with Jo... and now that we have Marceline, I know that feeling will only be stronger. Like a lot of people, WDW really is my spiritual home.


ENJOYING OURSELVES AT THE TWICKENHAM NFL GAME

Jo
33yrs old, works for the NHS but is currently on Maternity Leave.
ADRs, FP+, flights, hotels... if there's booking to be done, Jo's the one doing it (and don't let her fool you into thinking she doesn't love every second of it!) Her love of Disney knows no bounds and she can't wait to get back to WDW to have a whole heap of new adventures with Team Harding.

Marceline
At the time of writing this 7 months old, but she’ll be 9 months old when we travel.
I'm always describing Marceline as having 'nosy eyes'... cos she's interested in absolutely EVERYTHING! Obviously, she won't remember her first WDW trip, but we sure as hell will.


WHY PUT THE FOOD IN YOUR MOUTH WHEN YOU CAN HAVE MORE FUN PUTTING IT ON YOUR FACE

So, a couple of weeks before our last trip to WDW Jo found out she was pregnant and it threw us a little as some of the plans we’d made had to be tweaked. But even though we didn't ride any of the major E-Ticket coasters or attractions, it really didn't diminish the amount of fun we had. Looking back at the TR, I realise what an absolute legend Jo was for the amount she got done whilst being in the early stages of pregnancy.

Before the new Team Harding member had arrived we were already talking about when we’d next be able to get out to WDW again. As I mentioned, Jo is the boss when it comes to booking things, so without further ado... let me hand over to her so she can tell you all about how this holiday came to be.

Hello everyone After a bit of deliberation and many questions put to the rest of the DADC, we decided January would be a good time for the baby’s first trip, as it’s a bit cooler and shouldn’t be ridiculously busy. After that decision was made, we just had to sit and wait for the Free Dining offer with Disney, find some flights and we were good to go(!)

A few days before Easter we had an email from Virgin Holidays advertising their sale, so paid a visit to our usual Virgin concession in Debenhams and ended up booking a Fly-Drive with them for the dates we’d settled on - Saturday 20th January to Saturday 4th February 2017. We have no intention of using a car whilst we’re out there, but the Fly-Drive was actually cheaper than booking the flights direct with Virgin Atlantic, and at that stage we only had to pay a deposit rather than the full cost. We confirmed it would be easy to add an infant to the booking once she was born, and went on our merry way to wait for April to roll around so we could book our accommodation with Disney.

But we didn’t actually book the hotel with free dining as soon as it was released… I wanted to wait until the baby was born so we could just book for the three of us straight off rather than having to call and amend the booking within the space of a couple of weeks. Well, in theory that’s what we were going to do, but four days after my due date, I had been having a few twinges for a couple of days, and to make myself feel better decided to pull the trigger and book two weeks at Saratoga Springs, along with free dining plan, Memory Maker, $200 gift card and 14 Day Ultimate tickets for each of us... you know, the usual!



As it turned out, about ten hours later Marceline was born… so we had two things to be super excited for on this day! (Obviously, the birth of our first child was way more important that booking a new WDW trip… but hey, it was still exciting )

Now we had a date of birth for baby Harding (her name was already decided long before she was born) we popped back to Debenhams to add her to the flight (her ticket costs nearly £200 even though she doesn't get a seat!) and called Disney to add her name to the accommodation.

Everything was ticking along nicely, YouTube videos were watched by the hundred, ADRs were planned and the excitement was building… until about 11.30pm, one night in the middle of August. I decided that was a good time to log into the Manage My Booking part of Virgin Atlantic’s site, and ‘have a look’. One thing jumped out at me… Marceline wasn’t on the booking. We’d had all the confirmations from Virgin Holidays that she’d been added (three months prior) but for some reason, she wasn’t showing on the booking on Virgin Atlantic’s site. Then something else caught my eye… our outbound flight date was showing as Sunday 21st January, i.e. not the date we’d actually booked! I then did a bit of digging, and it turned out there was no flight from Gatwick to Orlando on Saturday 20th! What the flip!

The first Brett knew about all of this was the following morning when I said to him as soon as his eyes were open, “we need to go to Debenhams now!”

So off we went to find out what was going on… and Lindsay, the Virgin agent, didn’t have a clue! On their system, Marceline was on the booking, and all three of us were flying out to Orlando from Gatwick on Saturday 20th January. She did the same as me and checked for flights from LGW to MCO on 20th, and it came back with nothing... so she said it looked like VA had cancelled the Saturday flight and just bumped everyone onto the next one, which was the following day. We told her we wanted to either be moved onto the Friday flight, giving us an extra day, or cancel the booking altogether so we could book flights with another airline. As it was a Sunday, the department Lindsay needed to speak to was closed, so we had to leave it with her.

That afternoon I had a look at alternative flights and found if we booked with Virgin Atlantic direct (flying out on the Friday) it would now be £290 cheaper.

So after a bit of back and forth on the phone and by email with Lindsay, we opted to cancel, get our deposit back and book the same flights she was going to put us on anyway, but with a saving of nearly £300… which is lucky, as that paid for the extra night at Saratoga Springs!

And now I'll hand you back to Brett...

So as Jo mentioned, while all this was going on, our ADR booking day came around and we had a fair idea of places where we wanted to eat. To be honest, we didn't really take full advantage of the dining plan when we were last at WDW because we were unsure of how Jo would be feeling due to the pregnancy. We vowed on our next visit we wouldn't have an abundance of table and quick service credits left like we did in 2015! But we were now faced with a different problem. That problem was not knowing how a 9-month-old baby was going to be while in WDW!

We didn't want to book a whole bunch of ADRs only to have to cancel them for one reason or another. While I'm sure Marceline will be absolutely fine(!) while we're out there, it was decided that we needed to err on the side of caution and not go ADR crazy. So... with that in mind we looked at the list we had scribbled down and talked about what ones we really wanted to do. And from that discussion, the following list was agreed upon:

Be Our Guest - This was the only place I got no say in. Jo was adamant she wanted to eat breakfast here, and after she showed me what was on offer I was swayed.

Boma - The only ADR we booked in 2015 that has made it onto the ADR list for 2017. Regardless of the fact that my giblets were injured last time we ate here (as detailed in Day 2 of the last TR) we both really enjoyed it and wanted to eat here again.

California Grill - In a total of 13 holidays to WDW, neither of us have eaten here, regardless of the glowing reviews. We decided that 2017 was going to change all that, and we've booked an early evening ADR.

Chef Mickey's - We're not big on character interaction, but we'd be truly horrible parents if we didn't include just one character meal for Marceline, and figured the Fab Five at breakfast was the way to go about it.

Flying Fish - After watching a DISUnplugged dining review video, we knew we had to eat here. It has a new head chef and a new menu... and everything looks amazing... and I mean EVERYTHING! Go hunt this video down and watch it if you don't believe me.

'Ohana - Like California Grill, this is another restaurant we've never been to but should have visited at least once during our numerous trips.

Considering we're at WDW for 15 days... six ADRs isn't a lot, but we figure that seeing as we're going in late January, booking a reservation a couple of days before (or even on the day) shouldn't be too tricky. We've booked six we didn't want to miss and I'm sure that before we fly out to Orlando we'll have added in one or two more.

In early October we realised we needed to get our butts in gear and get Marceline her first passport. We had waited 'til her hair had grown a little bit... and it was now long enough that it no longer looked like wisps of spiders web! We took her to the local Snappy Snaps to get her photos done and thankfully it only took the woman in the shop a couple of attempts to get a decent shot we could use... I think she took four photos and she used the second one she had taken. With photos done and forms filled out (very kindly counter-signed by fellow Dibber and DADC member slow.jo, AKA Nips, AKA Jo Sear), we only had to wait three weeks until we received the passport.


IF ONLY EVERYONE'S PASSPORT PHOTO LOOKED AS GOOD AS THIS!



On the day of posting this, we've got 56 days 'til we arrive in WDW and as you'll all no doubt know, the window to book Fastpasses opened four days ago. At about 10pm on Sunday 20th Nov (the day before we could book our FPs) it occurred to us that we hadn't done any sort of itinerary, or even looked at the park hours or Extra Magic Hours for while we're there! The only thing we did discuss prior to Sunday night was that we see ourselves spending the majority of the holiday walking around the Magic Kingdom and Epcot. Even if we're not riding anything, just being in those parks will be enough to keep us happy.

I quickly renewed my membership to Touring Plans and noticed almost immediately that the predicted crowd levels were pretty low and we both thought that it shouldn't be difficult to get the FPs we wanted. While I was at work, Jo logged onto the My Disney Experience app and started booking FPs. For some reason, it wasn't showing some of the days towards the end of our trip, but when she logged in later in the day, everything was there.

We had no problem booking any of the attractions at the times we wanted. In fact, it seemed like everything was on offer at whatever time we wanted it. I won't bother running through everything we booked as there's no point. We realised it was pointless booking FPs for attractions we could take Marceline on as most of them will have short wait times, and we should really just book FPs for attractions the two of us wanted to do. Unfortunately, those attractions are the ones we'll have to do child swap for, so it means riding alone. If I'm honest, I'm a little sad that Jo and I will be doing most of our favourite attractions on our own while the other one sits with Marceline. I'm just hoping Marceline's legs keep growing at the rate they are because she'll be able to go on Splash Mountain with us by the time she's 2yrs old!

We've been looking online for advice about the 'child swap' facility and how it actually works. Nowhere seems to give a definitive answer as to how it works. Sure there's info on the Disney website, but from what I've heard/read unofficially, the way it's explained on the official site isn't technically how it works in the parks. I thought that if you did a child swap, you queue together (to a certain point, and if the ride allows it) then one parent rides whilst the other stays by the side of the loading area with the child, then when they return, the one who had been waiting gets to ride.

What I'm reading on the Disney site is saying that one waits outside the attraction with the child... then when the other parent has done their ride and returned, the other one joins the Fastpass queue... meaning that we're queuing twice the amount of time everyone else is to get on. I get that we'll probably have Fastpasses anyway... but if a FP line is 30 minutes, we're waiting over an hour for both of us to ride! For a place that wants to be fair to everyone, that seems pretty unfair. So on that note... if anyone who's been recently and used child swap could let us know how it worked for them, and what they had to do, we'd really appreciate it

I think as PTRs go... that's pretty much it for us. It's now just a case of getting Christmas out of the way and beginning a 20-day countdown in the New Year.

And as if a trip to WDW in 56 days' time wasn't exciting enough, we may or may not have recently booked a spur-of-the-moment late November 2017 trip to WDW to see the Christmas decorations.

Ok... there's no 'may not' about it... we totally have... BUT... that's something to be discussed later in 2017. Let's first enjoy our January trip before we start revealing details of what's on the horizon for late 2017.

Also... we might try vlogging this trip. It's an idea we've discussed for a while and seeing as we already have about a million photos of the Castle or Spaceship Earth, we thought it might be fun to record a lot more video footage and possibly play around with and edit what we get and see if there's some good stuff we could put online. (Don't hold me to this... we'll obviously see how it goes when we're out there.)

Before I go I'd like to apologise for the dullness of this PTR. I personally always find PTRs hard to write as it's basically like a long list of booking details. It's rare that something interesting or exciting happens. I did consider blatantly stealing Wizzo's format, but I couldn't bring myself to do it... so you got this instead *hangs head in shame*

But don't worry... I'm sure the TR will be chock-full of interesting incidents and escapades. After all... what could go wrong when two hard-partying, alcohol-loving theme park commandos have to reign in their drinking, change their attitudes to how parks are done and take a 9-month-old on a nine-hour long flight to a destination designed to excite and stimulate children! Especially when one of them has a hair-trigger temper and isn't afraid to tell people what he thinks, while the other rolls her eyes and gets embarrassed at the whole situation! Like I say... what could go wrong?

If you see us in the parks, come and say hi!



Thanks for reading, and remember...

I love you byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee xxx

[christybell]

Well thats a posh last photo... beautiful of course... arrghhh so excited for a potential vlog...although still disappointed I am not part of #DADC Marceline is growing up sooooo fast is so lovely and sounds like she is going to have Jo's legs

I cant believe you have never been to 'Ohana...our only must do restaurant even OOP.

Great to have you back...looking forward to reading along

[JenD1]

Looking forward to The Rants of Brett (unless fatherhood has tamed you...?). Bring it on.



PS Marceline is adorable

[Dogwalker]

OK, firstly those are without doubt the best passport photos ever!
You've got a great list of ADRs but another one I would suggest and you would easily get one last minute is the Skipper Canteen in MK
Hope someone pipes up with some good child swop advice

[HEMANCLOFTY]

Yay! Can't wait to see / read all about Marceline's first visit 😀

[Guest]

Looking forward to this. X

[Davy Crockett]

Very excited that you have written your PTR! So looking forward to your adventures as a family and the many stories to follow. Exciting times ahead! Absolutely love Ohana too.

[Guest]

Looking forward to the report! Enjoy your first trip to wdw as a family of 3.

[Jedi Princess]

Looking forward to your trip report, and reading all about Marceline's first visit.

[Twinklestar1]

Great planning - how exciting a trip for three ! Hope you have a great time and I look forward to the trip report x