The family visit - Indy and Disney - April '16

[MHM]

Pre-trip report

Hello everyone. I thought I would have a go at writing a trip report for our upcoming holiday. This is my first attempt at something like this so please go easy on me! I'm also sitting in the car (waiting for a teething toddler to finish napping) typing this on my phone so please excuse any mistakes!

I'm Victoria, I' m 32 and the planner/organiser of this trip (and most other things in our house). When I'm not at work or looking after my lovely family, I'm usually holiday planning! This will be my fifth trip with WDW, my last visit was in 2006.
My partner Rob is 36 and despite being an American, raised in Chicago, he has never been to Florida! He didn't even visit the DisneyQuest in Chicago which was briefly there in his teenage years! He did visit Tokyo Disney while studying out there (a long time ago), and has been to DLP once.
Madeleine is 5. She is a very girly girl who loves frozen but is also into TMNT and Star Wars! We took her to DLP when she was 2 and visited New York last October but this will be her first Florida trip. And she doesn't know we are going yet! She is in year one at school and doing well. She is a very kind, lovely girl who has always been very well behaved, unlike...
Harriet will turn two while we are away. She is a very strong willed little madam who absolutely loves Elmo and Cookie Monster so we will be visiting Busch Gardens. She hates being confined to a car seat and spent her last two long haul flights trying to take her clothes off and run down the aisle naked. 😳

I've been planning this trip for ages (before I had kids really!). We had committed to visiting Robs family this year and as we are saving to buy a house, multiple transatlantic flights are not an option (either for the bank balance or my sanity!), so I made an executive decision to combine the trips into one. Originally we were looking at going for three weeks in the summer but it was proving too difficult for Rob to get the time off, so we have ended up with a two week trip over the Easter hols. This isn't as long as I wanted, but I'd rather go now than leave it and regret not taking the girls while they are young. The compromise on time has meant we (I) have been very focused on planning the 'essentials' and I am already starting a plan for next time!😉

So the plan, we fly next weekend. Madeleine knows we will be visiting her grandparents and cousins (who she hasn't yet been able to meet) in the holidays but she hasn't really twigged as to what that involves. We will be getting a taxi to Heathrow which should only take about 35-40 minutes and then flying via Detroit to Indianapolis. I'm slightly concerned about the connection as we only have 95 minutes to disembark the first flight, clear immigration, collect our bags (and car seats) and then clear customs before rechecking our bags and getting to the gate. We are experienced travellers (Rob and I frequently have to fly for work and Madeleine has flown many more miles than I had by the time I was 20!) but I'm not confident that we will make it on to our scheduled flight. I've spoken to Delta and they confirmed that we would just be moved onto the next available flight but I can see this being a long day.

Sorry, I'm waffling. We will try to tire out the girls in the excellent family lounge at Heathrow T3, hopefully without losing Teddy, as happened when Madeleine and I were flying from there in December 2013. We realised just as our gate was called and spent the next 20 minutes frantically running around the airport in search of the bear that she has had since she was born - I was 5 months pregnant and we must have been quite a sight! 😭. Thankfully, Teddy managed to 'find his way to Nanny and Grandad's' before we returned 🤐😉

We then have a week in Indy, staying with his Mom and stepdad, with brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents all visiting. Some of the things planned for this week include:
The Indianapolis children's museum, which is the largest in the world and currently has a TMNT exhibition!
The Indianapolis zoo
The Eiteljorg museum of Native American art
Shopping!
Bowling, swimming, parks, mini golf and Chuck E Cheeses!
Maybe a baseball or basketball game if we can get tickets
Lots of good food - Indianapolis has great foodie restaurants but I am particularly looking forward to Mug and Bun, which is a proper drive in!
Lots of quality extended family time.

We had been considering a visit to Chicago for a day or two to show the girls where their Dad used to live (and where we met) but I think that might have to wait for another trip.

We will then fly from Indianapolis to Tampa and collect a car for a week of character meets, swimming, sun, food and rides. We will head straight from the airport to Busch Gardens where our main aim is immersing ourselves in the Sesame Street safari of fun. I had wanted to do the Dine with Elmo but they are not currently running it so we will have lunch on the flight and then stop for dinner after BG. We then have the drive to WDW where we are staying at the Best Western LBV for 8 nights. Originally we were planning to rent DVC points but it didn't work out, more for the 'next time' plan!

We plan to visit all of the Disney parks, do some mini golf and also squeeze in a visit to Seaworld and Universal as well. I have every day planned in detail but we will deviate from the plan as necessary. So far I have only bought WDW tickets (to link for FP+) so we may cancel the planned visits to Universal and/or Seaworld if we want more mouse time. The current plan is:
Saturday - Magic Kingdom
Sunday - Seaworld (night booked at RPR)
Monday - Universal / IoA
Tuesday - Magic Kingdom
Wednesday - Hollywood Studios
Thursday - Animal Kingdom
Friday - Epcot
Saturday - fly home 😞

We have various FP+ booked and ADRs at Crystal Palace, Be Our Guest, Hollywood and Vine (fantasmic package) and the Illuminations Desert Party on Harriet's birthday.

At some point in this week we are likely to be joined by Robs dad, who hasn't confirmed any plans or booked flights as yet... 🙄🤔

Our flight home is also via Detroit. Originally leaving MCO at 6pm, Delta changed the flight times meaning we would only have 21 minutes to connect! We are booked on Virgin flight numbers on Delta flights, but we made the mistake of booking via an online agent (TravelUp) who were pants and have taken a lot of chasing to get us moved onto another flight so now we leave MCO at 4pm and then have about 3 hours to have dinner in Detroit airport.

The DIBB has been a great help in my planning as a lot seems to have changed in the last 10 years. So thank you to everyone who has taken the time to share their holidays and contribute to the mine of information, it has given me lots of help for this holiday, as well as more in the future!

[Big Donald 1983]

Hope you have a great time, seems like a great trip!