Tuck your elbows in - a September / October trip report - travel day

[lumosq102]

Wednesday 20 September & Thursday 21 September

Starting with a quick trip to our pre travel day...

We’re a little picture light here, but that will change once we hit the World!

I had sensibly taken the day off today whilst R headed into work under strict instructions to get home promptly. I had had my usually long pre trip day the last couple of days (7am starts in hopes that I could clear the decks before switching off totally for the next 2 1/2 weeks), and poor R had another early start today before we headed off to the airport.

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I had a morning appointment with my hairdresser & spent the afternoon sorting out my carry on luggage and spending as much time with Jasmine as I could before we left her – the longest we have been apart since she came to us from the Qatar cat rescue last December. Sob.

See that face - who would want to leave that face?

R’S parents would be staying at the flat to look after her & arrived mid afternoon, whilst I was still sorting my camera equipment out for my carry on… before we knew it R was home and we were eating a quick selection of foods from our local Japanese restaurant (Sushi for R, Teriaki tofu & fried rice for me – no photos as I’m a bad TR writer) before we were saying kwaherini to Jasmine & R’s parents and hopping in a taxi down to Gatwick Airport.

It's about an hour and a half from our little north London enclave down to Gatwick, we pulled up to the Premier Inn at 10pm. Checking in was a breeze thanks to their electronic check in booths & we were soon dragging way too much luggage up to our room.

We booked a twin room & were confronted by a double bed & a single bed. I won the imaginary coin toss and got the double, R got the single.

Something entirely new happened whilst we were in the room. We were told off for being too loud. Really. A phone call came up from reception to tell us that one of our neighbours had complained about the noise. We were quietly watching a documentary whilst getting settled down for the night, so for future reference – the walls are very thin in the Premier Inn!

And so to bed, for tomorrow we were going home ☺


Day 1 – travel day!

Oh the day was finally upon us. Time to go back to the magic.

We had a lovely slow start, possible the latest start either of us had had in weeks thanks to the headache of long days at work both of us had been enjoying / enduring.

So, off we went downstairs to grab a leisurely breakfast in the Premier Inn restaurant which is such a good deal – and much nicer than what we usually eat at Jamie’s’ Italian in the airport. We both had a varied selection of items from the hot buffet, including the ever important hash browns and coffee. Lots and lots of coffee.

A quick trip back up to the room to grab our suitcases. Still too many suitcases - three large, 2 cabin sized, plus handbags – we don’t travel light, and we had a fourth case nestled within one of the large cases. Spoiler – that fourth case will be fully utilised on the way back.

We took the short walk over the road to the North Terminal and proceeded to get a little lost. The last time we flew from the North Terminal we flew with BA. Our flight last year had been with Virgin over at the South Terminal & we started going on autopilot until we realised that everything was a little turned around. Blast. After a quick consultation with a map we were soon speaking with one of Virgin’s lovely check in staff and sending our luggage – all very underweight – off to the plane. Good luck luggage! I was a little nervous after one of my suitcases had a zip malfunction that morning and had visions of the case arriving on the belt in MCO wide open with clothing strewn about. Hopefully that would not come to pass – but we will see in a few hours.

One of the benefits of Premium Economy is that you get to go through the express security line through to departures. Liquids and laptops ready to go, we were through in a jiffy, picking up our bags and stacking everyone else’s trays (seriously – why on earth can’t people put their tray in the collection area at the end? Makes it quicker for all of us) at the end.

After a little wander around duty free, and a few purchases at the Clinique stand it was time to settle in with a drink. After all, it might have been 10:20 in the morning, but it was an airport where all timezones become one and morning drinking is not only accepted but encouraged.



2 espresso martinis in the Jamie’s Italian bar it was, whilst we people watched a group of young chaps on what was certainly not their first beer. Thankfully they were not Orlando bound so our flight wouldn’t be enjoying their rowdy communication style for 9 hours. Shame.

I caught up with a couple of last work emails, R called the parentals to check in, and before we know it we were taking that last run around WH Smiths to buy magazines that would sit idle in the seat back pocket and we were heading down to the departure gate. Now I hadn’t been able to check in online the day before which is apparently done as a random security check. Obviously check in went absolutely fine, but once we were heading down to the plane I got to enjoy a second security check where my carry on case was opened up and they took away my laptop to be scanned. No big deal, they were all very nice and helpful but didn’t help my usual pre boarding anxiety that manifests itself as a desire to be sat in my seat as quickly as possible.

We had booked seats 17A &C, 2 rows in from the exit which I hoped would help us get off the plane quicker in MCO, but also turned out to be super seats all round. We were quickly settled in with the aforementioned magazines tucked into the seat back pockets and carry on cases up into the overhead compartments, ready for their swift removal on the other side.



A steward was quickly passing by with sparking wine for me, orange juice for R, and we were off, our flight leaving the gate at a perfectly respectable 1.04pm for a 1.00pm departure time. Not at all bad.

After the usual tour of the inflight entertainment (and a few games of tetris) I settled on Big Little Lies for the flight. R started with the first episode of Twin Peaks. Now if you haven’t already seen Big Little Lies (I was rather late to the party) run don’t walk. It kept me occupied for the whole flight & after my rave reviews R soon switched over too and managed to get the full series in too. Absolutely brilliant television & I need to rewatch on a proper screen sometime soon. All washed down with pretzels and a gin and tonic.



Lunch was a mixed bag. Mine always comes first as I’m vegetarian, and today was no different. Unfortunately Virgin in their infinite wisdom had allocated me a vegan meal and my heavens was this a pile of slop. I’ll usually eat whatever on a plane, knowing that their food isn’t exactly haut cuisine, but this was vile. I did gamely attempt a second mouthful, but it was inedible. It was attempting to be a gnocci dish with a pepper, tomato and olive sauce. In execution it was mushy gritty balls of undercooked dough with a very poorly seasoned sauce. Poor vegan travellers. Thankfully our steward was sympathetic and promised to see if he could find me something else & see if there was a spare vegetarian meal that was being offered in the cabin – spinach and ricotta cannalloni.





Whilst I was enjoying my white wine (quite nice actually – Charles Meras Chardonay / Viognier blend from France) R was eating her beef bourgeon with veg and mash with the red wine (Fachada Malbec – this got rave reviews). The beef wasn’t great, but not terrible. She did kindly give me some of her salad which hadn’t made it to me due to the dairy content. It had some kind of creamy walnut dressing that was rather lovely.



Then back comes out lovely steward. The Spinach Cannelloni and I were not to be, but he was carrying with him a vegetarian meal from economy. I have never been so happy to see a paneer curry. It was delicious – a slightly spicy spinach dish, rice and a paneer curry. And with that I was a happy snowman. Or traveller. Whatever.



R enjoyed her pudding – a white chocolate and hazelnut cheesecake & a soft cheese with crackers. I got crackers and a rather unfortunate fruit salad. Vegetarians always get the short straw with on board puds unfortunately.

We settled back in to our inflight entertainment, enjoyed the usual mini Fab ice lolly and were soon coasting down the eastern seaboard to Florida. At this stage I had finished Big Little Lies and was over inflight entertainment, putting on an album (F.F.S., the Franz Ferdinand and Sparks collaboration that was played a lot on my last journey to Florida too. Super album) and obsessively alternating between the sky map and the view out of the window in that slightly tense eagerness that descends as you get closer and closer to MCO and the start of your holiday.





Afternoon tea was uninspired for me – a dry wrap, some rather lovely olives and a really poor pot of fruit (apple slices and dry orange segments). Our steward kindly gave me some of the cake available to the rest of the cabin when he saw what I had, and I quickly tucked in before taking a photo. R had already gobbled hers down, along with a chicken sandwich, before I had time to take a photo.



It was an exceptionally smooth flight with only a couple of minor bumps along the way & we (finally! ) touched down at 3.48pm, a little ahead of our scheduled arrival of 4.15pm.

Now those carefully planned seats by the exit paid off and we were the second group of people off the flight (years of business travel has made me a disembarking ninja) and quickly being seen by the good people of immigration who kindly let us in to the country. Phew.

Luggage collected (and not broken) and steered up the escalators and with thanks to a handy tool found in Gatwick airport luggage store that attached my little case to a big case I was able to steer three cases at once, avoiding the hassle of secondary luggage collection. Nope, no time for that – we were on a mission for the evening. We had plans.

Now how is it that the corridor to the Magical Express seems to be so long when you are going to catch the bus? We did our usual mad dash down the corridor and squabbled about which line to go in. I already had a magic band on (a selection were in my bag from previous trips – you need a full selection for outfit coordination after all) so it was a case of a quick tap and we were being directed on to our lane. It was a new lane to us – we were staying at a resort that we hadn’t stayed at before, in an area that we hadn’t stayed in so the whole journey was different.

We were loaded on to a coach pretty swiftly and had left MCO by 5.15pm on a cruise line bus. Love those faux round windows. Now we got the usual videos and the journey was vaguely the same (although the game of spot the tree downed by the hurricane was new) until I realised that we were going through a gate that we don’t normally go through, entering onto Walt Disney World property over by Pop Century where the first set of guests disembarked, then Art of Animation. Both resorts looked really lovely & larger than life.

Then on to Coronado Springs which we had gone through before on our way to Beach Club, but by golly this place looks different at the moment. There is no hiding from the construction on the way in, the whole place looks like it is under construction which, really, it is. If you have a stay upcoming I’d probably think about getting reassigned to another resort unless you have that uber deal where you get $x per night credited to your room. And if you are a first timer, forget it. This is not where you should be getting your first Walt Disney World experience. It’s a mess.

Now we only had 1 stop left – Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge – Kidani Village. Finally. Yup, there were a few downed trees on the way in, but by golly this is one beautiful resort.

We were quickly dragging our suitcases away from the coach (after tipping the driver, of course) and on to check in just after 7pm.

The cast member at check in was just lovely. We were jetlagged messes. She sorted out our new magic bands, gave us tiaras (since we’re from England, she said. Sweetie) and we were off to our room. I had requested a room on a low floor for the animal spotting and close to the lobby as the corridors at Kidani are legendary for the never ending walk back to the lobby / bus stops. We were in room 7300 – 1 floor up from the lobby and the first room facing the savannah. It was absolutely what we wanted and just gorgeous.



This is from the app - fantastic new feature that shows you your room info - no more forgotten room numbers!

For those that may not be familiar with DVC properties, the studios generally consist of 1 queen size bed, a sofa bed, kitchenette and bathroom. The studios at Kidani have a reputation of being a little pokey. They are smaller than their sister rooms over at Jambo House (those rooms were retrofitted from standard hotel rooms, Kidani was purpose built afterwards as DVC units), however we were quite surprised at how roomy they were. Here’s a few badly aimed photos that show just how jetlagged I was, but also give you an idea of the room layout.











The bathroom was super well laid out, firstly there is a pocket door that separates the bathroom from the rest of the studio which is a bit of a rare feature in WDW hotel rooms. Then the bathroom itself has 2 inner doors, one leading to the bath / shower, the other leading to the toilet. So sensible.

R takes the sofa bed for she is a good friend (and I have a dodgy back). I never did taken any picture of this pulled out, but it’s a good size, just under a queen but a little shorter. Thankfully we’re both pretty short so that doesn’t effect us! The sofa bed here was ok, not the best of the DVC sofa beds, but not the worst either.

Now, the important bit. The view. This was what we booked the room for and it did not disappoint. Animals! Right outside our balcony! Happy campers were we.



Right, so, we’re in the room and we’ve dumped our luggage (an achievement – in excitement we left one of the cases in the hall. Stupid). We’re hot sweaty messes but there is no time to freshen up, time to get moving and over to our evening activities.



Jet lagged R

By 7pm we were at the bus stop, a delightfully short walk from our room (seriously the best location we could have asked for), and by 7.20pm we were at Animal Kingdom park.



Sunset at the bus stop - what a sight.

Our first stop was guest services to activate our annual passes. Now we bought our AP’s back in February when we heard the prices were about to go up. DVC members have a nice perk that they can buy the Gold annual pass, only available to Florida state residents and DVC members. We paid $539 back in February, but just after it went up as we had heard… to $559. Yup, that panic was worth it.

The lovely cast member that was activating our annual passes was aware that DVC had just opened another special offer. For the price of a Gold pass, DVC members could buy the Platinum Plus pass – the one with no block out dates and includes the water parks and ESPN (10 visits, still have no idea what is in the ESPN area). Without prompting, she upgraded our passes accordingly. Hurrah for Eliza!

And with that, we were in! No time for photos, we had an hour 20 in the park and a lot to get though. We zipped up to the tree of life and then did what we very rarely do & headed right instead of left, passing Rivers of Light that was in full swing but we had 1 place we wanted to start, we needed to go see our favourite Disco yeti.



Jet lagged Everest riders

Thanks to thousands of people watching Rivers of Light there was barely a wait at Expedition Everest, and we were off and on to a whole new world – Pandora.



Walking into Pandora at night was mindblowing. Even with the wake up call delivered by Everest my poor little brain couldn’t cope with the sensory overload, and my camera wasn’t feeling much better.

First up, Na’vi River Journey. We managed to get a fast pass for this today but not Flight of Passage & when we got to the ride entrance we were rather relieved that we had. The queue was still at 90 minutes and by this point it was about 8.15pm. With fast pass we were on in about 10 minutes and were quickly travelling the rivers of Pandora.



As an introduction to the rides of Pandora it was fabulous. The details were amazing, it was alive with animals, bugs great and small, glowing flowers and glimpses of Na’vi through the woods, coming to a crescendo with the shaman of song at the end. That animatronic was magnificent. The movement is so fluid, the facial expressions so real… absolutely astonishing work.













And if that wasn’t enough for my poor jetlagged brain, it was 8.50pm so we had enough time to scoot over to the other side of the land and get in line for Flight of Passage before the line closed at park closing.



As the fast pass entrance closed at 9pm the line moved pretty quickly but we were able to see all of the elements of the queue which was just gorgeous – a must do, even if you are waiting an age.



















After 30 minutes of steady queuing we made it to the first of the pre show rooms. There are 2 pre show areas before you get to the ride itself, setting up the story rather nicely but this does add a little time to the overall experience.

It was then time to ride a banshee. And there went the last of my brain cells dribbling out of my ears. The seats are super comfortable, the harnesses are not as claustrophobic as I feared they might be and the experience is glorious. Now keep in mind I have never seen Avatar. I still have no intention of seeing Avatar. This ride is magic. Feeling the banshee beneath you, the wind, the occasional splash of water, the smells… utterly glorious.

We were the last group to go in and by the time we stumbled out it was just after 10pm. We were exhausted and Pandora (well, the valley of Mo’ara) was deserted. We stumbled though, taking a few pictures as I went as who can resist this?













We sort of had a notion earlier that evening that we would swing by the Sanaa bar on the way back to our room as it was just 2 floors below us and we do love their food… but that was not to be. As soon as we sat on the bus back to the resort we were done.



Jet lag in photo form.





Last people in the park.

Done but starving. So we hit the little gift shop where I can only imagine we looked like a pair of drunks, slurring our words and walking rather unsteadily… frozen pizza for R, cheese straws and crunchy Cheetos for me. Microwavable pizza does not inspire my appetite…

By midnight we were tucked into our beds with visions of psychedelic planets dancing in our heads, ready for 16 days of magic and adventure ahead.

Day 2- Magic & Classics

[Pussycat Doll]

Sounds like a great day, you have more stamina than me that's for sure!

[Goldia]

What a great start! I love an espresso martini, you are totally right there is a different time zone for airports.

The room at AKL looks fab and you made it to AK even though you were worn out. Wow!

Oh and you are right I loved Big Little Lies, my TV highlight of the year.

[Jockey]

Lovely start...well done for hitting the parks too!

[Jockey]

Lovely day!

[disneypars]

Great start!

[Helen & LittleD]

What a amazing travel day, we've yet to make it out anywhere after we arrive so well done :-)
Looking forward to reading the rest

[Waltdisnae]

Brilliant start - FOP at the end of the day sounds great, with a deserted pandora an extra bonus. Looking forward to reading more.

[lumosq102]

Originally Posted by Pussycat Doll

Sounds like a great day, you have more stamina than me that's for sure!

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We're both just very stubborn!

Originally Posted by Goldia

What a great start! I love an espresso martini, you are totally right there is a different time zone for airports.

The room at AKL looks fab and you made it to AK even though you were worn out. Wow!

Oh and you are right I loved Big Little Lies, my TV highlight of the year.

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never a bad time for an espresso martini!

I still haven't rewatched Big Little Lies and they're already filming the next season... must get on that

Originally Posted by Jockey

Lovely start...well done for hitting the parks too!

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thank you!

Originally Posted by disneypars

Great start!

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Thank you!

Originally Posted by Helen & LittleD

What a amazing travel day, we've yet to make it out anywhere after we arrive so well done :-)
Looking forward to reading the rest

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We try very hard to get straight on Orlando time, it doesn't always work, but we're stubborn and give it our best shot.

The one and only time we did the dining plan (a massive mistake for how we eat) we started our holiday with a reservation at Narcoosees to meet my finely organised plan of how to use up all those credits. I almost fell asleep in my main course. Now as long as we keep moving we are good to go.

Originally Posted by Waltdisnae

Brilliant start - FOP at the end of the day sounds great, with a deserted pandora an extra bonus. Looking forward to reading more.

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Thank you! I'd highly recommend doing FoP at the end of the night. The queue is just so gorgeous its really worth the effort, and then you come out to a deserted Pandora. It doesn't get any better

[Unexpectedpenny]

A brilliant start. Pandora looks so beautiful and FOP on your first day, amazing.

I’m a big Sparks fan so always listen to F.F.S on the plane too!