Beers, Ears and Thirty Years: Ben and Libby’s Flying Visit *Update (16/4) 2 days to go!

[scottishgirl1]

Lovely update, all very exciting and your Birman baby is beautiful!

[helenlovesdestr]

Loved your last trip report! You sure have been busy since your honeymoon! Looking forward to the next trippie - I’m sure there’s nothing like waking up at Disney on your birthday.

[janewah]

So excited for you both! Can't wait to read along. Also, I need that phone case in my life x

[margyloveswdw]

Sounds like it will be a fab trip!

Pleaseeeeee finish your wedding trippie... :-)

[Momofboys]

Oh so pleased to have stumbled on this gem! and not long to wait either, fab!

[a11mark]

looks great, have a good time you two.

[oh_darling]

Originally Posted by Disney Bear

So excited for you, so excited to read your report...and definitely a little jealous 😃

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Thank you! Aww hehe don't be jelly, your turn soon! xxx

Originally Posted by yellowrose78

Brilliant update

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Thank you! xxxx

Originally Posted by caj

You're such experts you'll get it sorted in time. Plans pfffff!

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Hahaha love this! It's true, we worry far too much hahah! xxxx

Originally Posted by DisneyDreamer81

Oh my word what bargain flights! And a bargain hotel too! Loving your work

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I know, so cheap right!? Insanity! Thank you xxxx

[oh_darling]

Originally Posted by scottishgirl1

Lovely update, all very exciting and your Birman baby is beautiful!

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Thanks so much! I'm biased but I totally agree, she's perfect! xxxx

Originally Posted by rachey_101

Thought I would sneak back on the Dibb and YOU HAVE A PRE-TRIPPY! Wooo!

Your bargain trip just reminds me of your first Orlando holiday in 2011 when you stayed offsite, back when it all began eh?

Believe me, when you have kids ‘it’s not out of your system’ ahah! You’ll be planning a trip in your maternity leave I bet 🤣. I planned it, it never happened haha!

So excited for you and Benj! You certainly have had a few life changes recently and I absolutely love when Ben said ‘plan away’ when you got inheritance money, ah bless him!

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Oh hello my love! Long time no Dibb! Yes back to where it all began hahaha, slumming it! Well not really but it's no Grand Flo is it

Thanks so much lovely, yes lots of changes but all good and now I'm thinking we really need this holiday! Work has been manic but we're so close I can nearly taste it! Nice to see you back and hope you and your little family is well xxxxx

Originally Posted by helenlovesdestr

Loved your last trip report! You sure have been busy since your honeymoon! Looking forward to the next trippie - I’m sure there’s nothing like waking up at Disney on your birthday.

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Thanks so much! Yes we really have been busy, but it's been wonderful overall! Awww yes he's so excited to celebrate his birthday there bless him, it's so cute to see! Thank you for reading along and commenting xxxxx

[oh_darling]

Originally Posted by janewah

So excited for you both! Can't wait to read along. Also, I need that phone case in my life x

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Thank you so much! Hahaha isn't it amazing, I love it! xxx

Originally Posted by margyloveswdw

Sounds like it will be a fab trip!

Pleaseeeeee finish your wedding trippie... :-)

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Arghhhh I'm so sorry! I absolutely am going to finish it I promise, I just need to make time! But it will be finished at some point!

Originally Posted by Momofboys

Oh so pleased to have stumbled on this gem! and not long to wait either, fab!

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Hi hi hi, welcome! Not long at all eeeekk! xxxx

Originally Posted by a11mark

looks great, have a good time you two.

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Thank you so much! xxxx

[oh_darling]

Plans!

Okay so we left off having covered the essentials; flights, hotel and a detailed description of the food at Golden Corral. Before we get onto more plans, I forgot to mention a couple of bits to do with our flights. Firstly, the dates we actually fly! Ha. We’re on the early Virgin flight on Thursday 19th, flying back Thursday 26th Also! We booked on Skyscanner with Travelup after reading extensive reviews and reassuring ourselves they wouldn’t run off with our money. They totes didn’t and our flight was instantly accessible on the Virgin website. So Travelup = thumbs up!

Thirdly! We aren’t 100% sure what’s happened but we think we requested a vegetarian (lacto-ovo) meal for Benj right when we booked it which does sound like something we’d do. Except, when I log in now, I have a seat number allocated but Ben doesn’t!? And has to pay for a seat if he wants to choose? But I got allocated a seat there and a seat back, for no charge? Which I don’t recall choosing!? Is it me or is that weird. Can anyone shed any light on what’s going on here? We never pay to pick our seats but now I’m worried we won’t be sat together as something’s gone a bit odd! It also doesn’t mention that Ben has a veggie meal booked and I can’t see an option to choose it or change it. I think we chose it when we booked, as in with Travelup maybe!? Ee gads it was so long ago I really can’t remember!

Oof I’ve got meself all worked up. I’m sure it’ll be fine. Moving on!

The Plan

Here we go. The plan. Now, as I think we all know, we’re normally your standard 14 day Ultimates kinda couple (apart from those two amazing trips when we had Annual Passes #goals) plus 2 day Universal tickets. 14-21 glorious days filled with theme park after theme park, the odd shopping day and maybe 1 pool morning if we can even squeeze it in. This trip, however, is very different.

It’s a budget trip. We can’t afford 7 day Disney tickets, plus staying off-site and only for a week we didn’t want to be trekking back and forth for full Disney days every day with no mid-afternoon naps (quel dommage). So this trip is more of a relaxed one. 7 days isn’t a long time and we early on made the decision to do just 2 theme parks. Benj said from day 1 he wanted to go to Epcot on his birthday, and OBVIOUSLY we’re goin to the MK because ain’t no party like an MK party.



2 days, 2 theme parks, $200 hahahah eek. Not cost effective but a lot cheaper than 14 day Ultimates we won’t use. We’ve already bought our MYW tickets and they’re linked to our MDE EXCITEMENT! It’ll be tough not going to AK (HS not so much at the mo amirittttiite) but we’re hopefully going next year and we’ll stay on site and have lots of AK days therefore lots of chances to get FoP FP which hopefully will be a tad easier in a year’s time!? I don’t know though! So yes. Only 2 Disney days is harsh man, but you gotta do what you gotta do. Our motto for these 2 days is go hard or go home, and we indeed will be going extremely hard. Park open til park close, but I’ll get onto the specifics when we get to daily plans! No spoilers!

Which brings me on nicely to our Fastpasses. Benj made our Epcot ones (we’ll be at Epcot all day on the 21st!)



And they went extremely smoothly - here’s what we’re looking at:



OBVS we’re going straight to Soarin’ in the morning we’re not absolute maniacs, Mission Space is strategically planned to be enjoyed post Soarin’ and Livin with the land and hopefully Nemo too as they’re all nearby. Frozen was Ben’s pick, a mid-afternoon pause in the wine and beer fuelled festivities of our Drinking around the World.



Oooohhhhh this is gonna be a GOOD DAY.

Magic Kingdom FPs were slightly less smooth. First of all we woke up hungover at our friends’ house after an unbelievably rowdy cocktail evening all ready to make our FPs, only to find we were an hour early because the clocks had changed and we’d forgotten. We were back in Southampton and needed to drive home, and we were going to wait the hour but we both felt so horrific we had to just abandon our plans and start driving home. You know when you feel so awful you just need to be in your bed. Like, right that second. That’s where we were.



So, I had to do our MK FPs in the car as Ben was driving, right as we were driving through the section of the M3 that doesn’t have any signal. Oh my god was it stressful. Not only was I hangin out my bottom but my MDE wasn’t refreshing quickly enough, people were stealing all the good times right from under my nose, and looking at my phone screen for any longer than about 10 seconds made me feel like I was going to throw up. It really was not ideal FP booking conditions. However, I managed to more or less get what we want, just a bit later. Here’s the line-up:



Again, method in our madness here, we’re going straight to Big Thunder then sliding on over to Fantasyland to smash Peter Pan (that came out wrong…) Belle et al before the crowds hit. We aren’t too fussed about doing Mine Train which I think has worked in our favour too. No EMH here, it’s just us and the rest of the daytrippers sooooo 9am starts here we are!

Overall though I think the FP booking was a success.

As well as our 2 theme park days we’re also planning to visit Disney Springs a couple of times because we just flippin love it. Honestly, it’s just the best place ever.



I can’t wait to wander round all the little shops (mainly that awesome home shop and Francesca’s for the gorge jewellery)



Stop in at a bar or two and then gorge my face at Blaze. Eeeeeeepp!

We’re doing a monorail resort bar crawl which I’m so excited for too, we’re going to go and say hi to our beautiful Pav yay!



On Sunday we’re going to the Lake Eola Farmer’s Market and a general explore of downtown Orlando and some of the shops/bars there. The Farmer’s Market is every Sunday and has stalls and food trucks and looks super cute!

We’re also finally visiting Old Town for a browse around the shops there as it looks absolutely our kind of place with some quite frankly hilarious sounding shops and bars, so we’re really excited for this. We’ll also be visiting the Premium Outlets as I need to get me some Yankee Candles STAT.



In between all this there’ll be lots of amazing FOOD, cocktails and hopefully slightly more pool time/downtime/relaxation that we normally get! In all honestly we’re both super psyched to be staying on I-Drive, feel like we haven’t been there in so long and we’re excited to have all the restaurants and stuff going on right on our doorstep! We loved Clarion Inn LBV and the whole LBV/Crossroads area but it was a bit of a trek to the restaurants and I felt like we got the cardboard pizza from the hotel way too often as it was the only convenient option. So I’m looking forward to getting back late from somewhere and being able to grab some proper food and by proper food I obviously mean pizza.



Which brings me onto…

FOOD! We’ve got a bangin line up I think, due to this being a Budget Trip it’s mainly mid-range restaurants and cheaper options but I’m okay with that. It’s Benji’s birthday trip and he isn’t a $200 California Grill dinner kind of man, he’s a $200s worth of drinks in Epcot kind of man and that is fine by me! Here’s what’s on the line up thus far:

Yard House

We’re planning to go here for our first night and we’re super excited for it! It’s in the new IDrive 360 bit, I heard a review of the restaurant on a podcast and got mega excited as it’s got a whole veggie menu with Gardein products (American Quorn style meatless products) yay!





We’ve chosen it for our first night as while we’re looking forward to it, it won’t be a disaster if we’re mega tired and just share a couple of apps. As it’s such a short trip though, we really do need to acclimatise quickly and stay up late the first night so as to try and get our body clocks on Orlando time. This will be super tough for me as I’m notorious for wanting to get into bed at about 7.30 when we get there, but I need to push though. We thought going out to dinner rather than the usual eating pizza in bed will help us. Hopefully.

Bahama Breeze

We’ve been here once before and weren’t huge fans but we think we ordered the wrong things and had a bad server too who really rushed us. We were after a nice-ish restaurant and this has got a couple of awesome sounding veggie options which are few and far between in chain restaurants! So we’re gonna go for it I’ve got my eyes on the Lobster Mac n Cheese:



and Benj fancies the Jackfruit Tacos!



Chuy’s

Aahhhh, Chuy’s. This might seem kinda random, and it is, but I promise you there’s a story. When we were thinking about staying on the 192 thanks to the crazy cheap (except not cheap, just crazy) prices we thought we were getting on TravelSupermarket, we earmarked Chuy’s as a potential fantastic night out. Then we moved our sights over to I-Drive and we thought the Chuy’s dream was over as I’m not sure it’s worth an Uber ride if I’m brutally honest. BUT THEN, I was listening to a now extinct podcast called ‘The Trip’ from the Disunplugged team and Craig mentioned there was a Chuy’s on I Drive! I literally called Benj from my car as I was driving home and told him because I was so excited. So Chuy’s is back on the list! It’s essentially a cheap Mexican restaurant but we want to go there for 3 very important reasons:

1. They serve chips and dips out the back of a Cadillac
2. The entire restaurant is a shrine to Elvis
3. They serve chips and dips out the back of a Cadillac

I mean need I say more!?







Blaze

OMG BLAZE. Famously ‘the best pizza I’ve ever eaten’ and trust me I’ve eaten a LOT of pizza, it’s my favourite food. We enjoyed it so much back on our honeymoon in 2016 that we went for lunch 2 days in a row haha! I’m so psyched to get a pizza with ALL THE CHEESE ON and sit outside with my love enjoying it It’s so cheap here too which is awesome for us this trip! Cannot WAIT!



Sweet Tomatoes

I think we all remember how much I LOVE this restaurant and we’re making a special trip over to the Crossroads ST’s for lunch one day so I can get me some Joan’s Broccoli Madness and basically just live my best life.





The Plaza

Our one ADR of the entire trip! And it’s a bit random haha! Basically we wanted a cheap option for our MK day to give us somewhere we could go and sit down in the air con for a bit and enjoy a rest as we’ll have been in the park aaalllll the livelong day. We looked at all the MK restaurants and nearby resort options too, and The Plaza seems like a great hidden gem that actually has a couple of nice veggie options. Burgers and bottomless milkshakes!? Sign me up!





It’s really cheap too, like the cost of some of the cheaper menu items is what I’d pay at Pecos Bills! (we’re going to Pecos Bills for lunch that day mmmmm) so I think we’re both looking forward to this. Again it goes back to us not being able to go back to our hotel mid-afternoon and I think it’ll be a nice rest in the evening before the fireworks

I think these are the main players; obviously we’ll be sampling MANY F&G fest treats during our Epcot day; we don’t have dinner planned as we’re hoping to try lots of snacks and don’t want to be full up. Benj also wants to go to Jellyrolls after too if we’re still standing and I’m excited to get some late night snacks back on I Drive if we do manage to stay out! Our last night is also a bit up in the air as we aren’t sure what we want to do; we’ve pencilled in Olive Garden as we love that Italian dreamhouse, but we think we might want to head back over to Disney Springs or a Disney resort or something, so it’s quite fluid. In a nutshell though, those are our eating plans.

We also have drinking plans! There’s lots of lovely bars we want to try, especially at Disney Springs; the new Paddlefish rooftop terrace being my number one pick, plus the Moonshine Bar at Homecomin’ and of course our old faithful, Dockside Margs. I honestly don’t think there are many better things in life than lounging in an Adirondack chair at DM’s with a Rum Runner in hand, an acoustic musician playing in front of us and the sun shining in the sky. Ahhhhhh. 1 week!

And with that I’m going to call it a day! Next update will include clothes and daily plans! xxxxx