We're going back to Florida. What happens next will SHOCK YOU!

[neilhd]

Guess who's back. Back again.
Neil is back. Tell your friends.
Guess who's back, guess who's back, guess who's back, guess who's back.

I've created a monster.
Nobody wants to read trippies no more they want YouTube I'm chopped liver.
But if you want reading this is what I'll give ya.
A little bit of me, mixed with a few pictures.

Ok that’s enough M&M. I wrote the lyrics for most rap artists of the 90s, as you've by now probably guessed. Snoopy Dog, The Ice Cubes, Puff the Magic Daddy - all me.

So. We're going on a holiday, it's gonna be a good one. What a great idea! We're not scared!
(I also ghost-wrote for Michael Rosen, obviously).

Ok, I'll get on with it.

Oh, sorry about the clickbait title, I'm just trying to fit in with how things are on the Internet these days!

It's been 3 years since we last went to our favourite place. I'm talking about Bahama Breeze of course, although it's convenient that Disney built a theme park near it and allows us to kill two birds with one stone. Incidentally, don't you think that's a weird phrase? I mean have you ever tried to kill even a single bird with a stone? You'd have to be really good at throwing - surely there are easier ways of killing birds?

Sorry, I'm digressing again. I tend to do that. Get used to it.

The past couple of years we've spent road-tripping around Canada and the USA. There are trip reports for those ("The Amazing Race" and "The Amazing Race Series 2") in the General Trip reports section (and linked in my sig). We loved those trips. They made such a change from a Florida holiday and were absolutely awesome. I can see us doing more of them in the future for sure.

But after a couple of years off, we were itching to go back to Florida for what will be our 7th trip, and the ten-year anniversary of our first. Ten years! There was no Potter, no Avatar. Fantasyland was tiny, Hollywood Studios actually had some rides in it, and Frozen was an aisle in Sainsbury's. If you went to a bar or restaurant and asked for a glass of Prosecco, nobody would have known what you were on about. How things have changed!

Let me introduce you to the cast for this holiday:

Neil (Me, duh) - Will have turned 40 by the time we go, yet still staying as good-looking, youthful, slim and healthy as ever (compared to an elderly, diseased hippopotamus anyway).
Ele (DW) - 41. Still radiant and beautiful, even when not being compared to wild animals.
Joe (DS) - Will be 12 at the time of going, and only a couple of months shy of being a teenager. What happened to the little 2 year old we took on our first trip?! He's now taller than Ele and catching me up quickly.
Jess (DD) - Somehow will be turning 22 whilst we are there. 22! She has a job, a car and everything now. She was 11 when we first went. I demand a recount. Jess has recently turned <whisper> Vegetarian. The rewriting of the will is in-progress. Of course we will still visit the same meaty restaurants. I don't mind if she goes hungry.
Jordan (Jess's long-term boyfriend, lives in our house). 22 by the time we go. His first visit.

This is Ele, Joe and I, at the American side of Niagara Falls last year:

And this is Jess and Jordan leaving for their first holiday together to NYC for her 21st:

And, for the third time now, we've managed to persuade these two to come along (well, persuade the first one, the second one helped with the persuading).

Saffron (Ele's sister) - 40-something. Still scared of rides.
Anise (Saff's daughter, our niece, Joe/Jess's cousin) - Will be 13 when we go (6 months older than Joe). Also still scared of rides. It's worth getting one more use out of the "yes, I have a Niece called Anise" joke. If you are expecting new jokes you will be disappointed, as usual. Incidentally my sister is due to give birth to a baby boy pretty much the day we get back. I've told her she'd better name him Anephew!

There is a good chance that we're trying to cram one more "kids" holiday down the throats of Joe and Anise before they turn into cynical, grumpy teenagers forever. It may be too late though…

Further to this gang of reprobates, we also have coming Dave and Kirsty, who are friends of Saffron and us, and their daughter Abi, who is the same age as Anise (they went to primary school together). They came with us in 2013. We are flying together (separate bookings but same flight), and are staying near each other, but I'm not sure if we'll be doing everything together every day - I suspect not.

This trip has come about with the use of what can only be described as Jedi mind tricks. I shall explain with some history, and some boring detail:

In January 2017, Ele turned 40. We celebrated that by ditching the kids and heading to NYC, just the 2 of us, in business class (thanks to Avios) for 5 nights. Clearly, for my own 40th, I should get a similar trip. We decided against going to NYC again (as much as we love it there), and picked Las Vegas instead as we've never been. The plan was to use our Avios (and BA 2-4-1 voucher) for this as we could then go business class again - and maybe even first class, because I'm more special and deserve more than she got.

However, as my birthday is near the school summer holidays (I'll remind you all nearer the time so you can buy me gifts), I said how about we change that plan, go a week later when the school holidays start, and go to Florida instead. After all, it's my favourite place in the world and where better to celebrate my big birthday - albeit a week late? We could possibly still use our Avios and 2-4-1 voucher for this, and then buy one further ticket in Club World for Joe.

Ele thought this was a good idea. Joe thought so too, obviously. It was just going to be the 3 of us at this point. I then thought about it some more and realised that if I wasn't there for my actual birthday, then we might as well go later in August when it is much less busy. We did the first week of school holidays in 2015 and it was mega-busy everywhere. Late August is much better. But you guys all know that already.

I also realised that doing this with Avios is pretty unlikely to happen. The availability will be very hard to get for this route in school holidays, and to buy an extra business-class ticket will be really expensive - probably more than just buying 3 economy tickets.

When we came back from 2017's road trip, we decided that we'd want Jess to come as she hadn't come on either of the road trips. We'd spoken to her about it previously and she'd been on the fence as we weren't paying for her and she is saving for a deposit for a house. In the end we really wanted her to come, so we said we'd pay her plane ticket if she paid her park tickets and most of her spends. She agreed to this. Jordan (her boyfriend) was also really keen to come (they went to NYC by themselves for Jess's 21st in August 2017 which was his first time properly abroad, and he's heard us going on and on about Florida for several years now…). Jess wouldn't go without him anyway. By this time Saff had agreed to come as well.

So now we were now not only going nowhere near my birthday, but were never going to use the Avios and 2-4-1 voucher. The obvious thing to do was to therefore go to Vegas for my birthday anyway! So we're doing that, Ele and I, in July, staying 5 nights at The Venetian. 1 holiday has thus become 2 in what appears to be a series of small alterations to the original plan. If I'd suggested both trips from the outset it never would have worked. Jedi mind tricks, see.

Digressing again. Let's get back to Florida and I'll talk about how we found flights, in excruciating detail, because you lot are all weird and like stuff like that.

Once we knew how many were coming, we could start to make some plans. We fixed the date for the last couple of weeks of August, but allowed ourselves a couple of days of flexibility. I had a suspicion that leaving on Sunday 19th August would be cheaper, as it nearly always drops at that date. The only downside to that date is we land on Monday 3rd September, which is technically the date school starts. However, both Joe's and Anise's schools always have an inset day or two, and then a day when only Year 7s go, with main school usually starting on Wednesday or Thursday. Of course, the schools hadn't published that yet (they have now confirmed it though). I would have preferred leaving on a day earlier so that I could squeeze in an extra day, but would have to see on the prices.

So I began my flight search. I fixed an upper price of £750pp direct. Anything at or below that price, direct, with suitable flight times and luggage etc. would get booked immediately. I had permission from the group to just find it and book it up to that price without checking with everyone first. The 355-day mark came around for our earlier possible dates but everything was a bit expensive. I had high hopes for the BA fly-drives but they weren't in range, and Norwegian were a little pricey, too. As you may have gathered - I'm an early booker.

As in previous years I wrote some software (well, modified what I'd already done) to search flights for me several times per day and email me the results. This is a benefit of being a software engineer for an online travel agency! You might think that working there I'd get cheap flights. You'd be wrong.

We were forced into MCO. I would choose TPA personally if given the choice (and I'd do MIA again for the right price), but with 7 people and 7 suitcases, I'm not going to risk not getting everything into the car. From MCO it's not an issue - a taxi or Uber from the airport is inexpensive if we have to stick a couple of people in one. From TPA, it's a very large expense and logistically quite a bit trickier.

In early September 2017 our Sunday departure dates became available (although not yet for the return date we needed), and the price on the flydrives did indeed look a bit lower and therefore a lot more promising. I put everyone on standby and a few days later, when the return date came out, I woke up early and it came out as expected and I hit the button, booking Sunday-Sunday. It's a day less than I originally wanted (14 rather than 15 nights), but MUCH cheaper. In the end, the flights, seat selection (just normal seats - it became a bit expensive doing extra leg-room, even though I really wanted it), and 7-seat Mini Van hire came out at £760 per person as a BA FlyDrive (the flydrive was actually cheaper than just the flight-only price).

The only downside was the Mini Van. I've only ever had SUVs, which are cool. Mini Vans are just parent-mobiles. I could have upgraded to a Suburban or something, but it was very expensive to do so. But of course, we won't fit 7 + luggage in the mini van, so in the new year when the sales were on I called and asked about upgrading. It was £180 for a Suburban. Hmm, for that price I can just do a taxi each way and deal with the hassle. I then called again in April and it was only £100. At that price, I'll take it!

If we ignore the seat selection and value the car at £700 (which is what the Avis app says for my booking), it works out at just under £630pp for the flights. I'm happy with that. That's BA direct flights to MCO, with luggage, in school holidays. Not too bad if you ask me. Best bit about fly drives is it's deposit only which saved my credit card from a battering - temporarily at least!

Anyway, now we could relax. Finding flights is the worst thing as the entire holiday hinges on being able to actually get there! And I don't need to tell any of you how tricky it can be, and how quick you have to act, if you don't want to spend a fortune (or less of a fortune anyway).

Told you it was excruciating detail.

Next task though, accommodation. Oh yes, we're not done yet!

When we thought it was just 3 of us going we had considered an on-site stay for the first time. With 7 of us this was now out of the question. A villa was the only realistic answer. And really, a 4-bed, 3-bath one. We need a room for Ele and I, one for Jess and Jordan, one for Joe and Anise, and one for Saff (or as an alternative, one for Anise and Saff, and one for Joe). Saff was happy to use a sofa-bed if it would make things significantly cheaper. 3 baths is necessary I think, to avoid congestion in the morning. Congestion leads to slowness in getting ready. Slowness leads to late arrivals at the parks. Late arrivals at the parks leads to anger (mine). Anger leads to the Dark Side…

I put a villa request on The Dibb but didn't get any responses. I looked at a million villas on Homeaway that basically all looked exactly the same. Everyone in our party wanted a private pool, but also to have access to a nice communal pool. Ruling out the villas that say "10 minutes from Disney!" but are actually in Haines City or Davenport (10 minutes if you drive at 120mph at 3am and ignore all the red lights), I looked mainly around the Formosa Gardens area. But I couldn't find anything we all liked. At least not within the amount I was wanting to spend, which was around £1500. I was happy to pay that much by myself, and Saff said she'd contribute anything on top of that (within reason!).

Eventually I discovered the new Storey Lake resort. This is situated off the W Osceola Parkway - by the 192/535 junction, near Lake Buena Vista. We've stayed in this area before (at Fantasy World Resort) and rate it very highly for getting around and being near to important stuff (like World Center Drive and Bahama Breeze).

The units here are townhouses rather than villas (or at least the ones that I could afford were). They are all brand new - construction is still ongoing around the resort but I don't expect that to make much difference as they are doing it in stages. They are highly modern and nicely equipped. The lounge/diner/kitchen looks a little small perhaps, but the bedrooms are fine. It has a small splash pool out back and a really nice communal pool, with slides and a lazy river, which only opened in August 2017. I don't know how much time we'll actually get to use those things though! I think I would have preferred a bigger private pool, but this was a good compromise. We booked it, via Airbnb, for about £1750 for the 2 weeks. We've never had a place with our own pool before, so this is reasonably exciting.

Dave and Kirsty originally booked a room with Airbnb in the same resort, but it got cancelled, so they've booked into Fantasy World Resort, which is really close by. That would have been my first choice resort, having stayed there in 2013, but they are all 2 bedrooms and too small for our group of 7.

And with that done, we've got Flights, Car Hire and Accommodation sorted. I booked us a couple of nights at the Hard Rock Hotel via my work (I actually do get a discount on that) which worked out quite reasonable. I've had better rates in the past booking a travel agent rate directly with HRH but that doesn't seem to be giving good rates at the moment. I might try again with that at some point.

Now there's a long period of waiting, really, although it's already been 7 months since we booked. I'll eventually buy park tickets and try and do fast passes, but that's about all there is to do. We're old hands by now - we've done this before enough times to mostly know what we're doing. I need to catch up on the latest developments of course, so have bought a new Brits Guide for some light reading. My main worry now is how to get fast passes for Flights of Passage at Animal Kingdom!.

Of course my Itinerary has changed several times already. I thought I had got it completely worked out, but then Disney released the park hours and it transpires that on the day I had for Magic Kingdom (rated a 2 out of 10 on Touring Plans for that day) the park closes at 6pm. This is because there's likely to be a MNSSHP happening. Can I just point out that we are talking about AUGUST here. It is OVER 2 MONTHS until Halloween. Why on earth do they need to do Halloween stuff that early? Perhaps it's something to do with charging everybody in the park - who already has a paid-for park ticket - an extra $75 to stay in the park after 6pm. Unlike non-party days, when you can do that for free. Hmm, extracting more money from people for nothing? Doesn't sounds like Disney at all… It's really annoying that after spending thousands on park tickets I am basically kicked out. I guess that does explain why the park level was lower on that day though as the early closing makes it less attractive to visit. That change really messed up my schedule, but after a lot of back and forth about what to do, I've decided to stick with MK on that day. The lower crowds mean we should get done what we want to do, and we'll try and go for an evening on a different day, too. We probably wouldn't have stayed much beyond 6pm anyway. Also, my Epcot day turned out to be EMH in the morning which basically translates as "abandon all hope of getting on Soarin' at rope drop". But then Stu pointed out the historic wait times feature on here and that, combined with the predicted wait levels on Touring Plans, seem to suggest that actually it'll be fine, so I've left that as-is, too.

Both of these decisions may turn out to be massive mistakes, but with a few immovable things in the trip, it's actually really hard to get it done on days when the parks aren't rated more highly for crowd levels.

As a final bit of good news, I found out that my good friend Naomi and her family will be in Disney the same time we are. They are Canadian (they live in Ottawa but she lived here for a few years in the 1990s which is how I know her). We last saw them in 2016 - for the first time in over a decade - when we stopped off in Ottawa on our road trip. They are also huge Disney nuts and go there several times per year - they usually drive down from Ottawa (takes about 23 hours I'm told - they do it non-stop! Although this time they are breaking with tradition and are flying down). They are onsite as they have DVC. So we will be able to see them again, which is great! The current plan is to spend a day together at a water park, and maybe visit the Top of the World Lounge at Bay Lake Tower for the fireworks if they can get us in. I've also booked for us all to go to Whispering Canyon for dinner one night for some ketchup fun.

So, the countdown is on. Let the games begin!

[Gezzs]

Fantastic intro! Made me laugh out loud.

[Guest]

Sounds like an amazing trip! I will be looking out for updates!

And I only clicked because of the title, which I think is the best I've ever seen

[Mexy02]

Looking forward to this report

[mossyflossy]

Had a good laugh at the click bait title, Neil, but your trippies are excellent anyway so I clicked on because of you, not your title, ahhh.

For FOP we didn't get FPs last August but we got to the entrance gates at 7.35am for a 9am park opening, stayed to the left turnstiles, then to the right as the CM walked the line through, and we were on and off by 9.25am. So honestly don't stress about it (it is amazing BTW).

Can't wait to read the main event down the line...

Cannot believe 10 years have gone by...

[Fuellady]

Yup, the clickbait title worked on me! I'm glad it did though, great read. I really like the look of Storey Lake, considering it for our next trip. All of the bookings came together nicely, waiting game for you now.

[Melbatb]

Well I don't usually comment on Florida reports but I’ll make an exception for you

Sounds like a great trip! It will certainly be a busy summer with Vegas and Florida!

[Gill H]

Sounds fun! Will be looking out for this one.

[Taffy1959]

Loving this pre trip report it really made me chuckle a few times.

Looking forward to the actual trip report

[smithlane]

Brilliant intro, laugh out loud funny. Really looking forward to reading all about it. May see you in Bahama Breeze out there!