"A Tale of Two Cities" DC/Florida September 2016 Pre-Trip Report - UPDATE!

[soraia]

"A Tale of Two Cities" Pre-Trip Report - September 2016

Hello fellow dibbers! I have been toying with writing this report for some time. We are off to the good old US of A again in September but with a little 4 day trip to Washington DC before moving on to the land of the mouse – I wasn't sure if people would be interested in a trip report that wasn't just about Florida but I realised today is the 5 month mark so I would just write this pre trippie and go from there! So please let me know dibbers – multi city trip report DC/Florida yay or nay?

This will be the 4th time we go to Florida together as a group of friends (2011, 2013 and 2015) and it works great as we are a really close group that have known each other since school, but we now all mostly live in different cities (and in some case, different countries!) so the trips also serve the purpose of being fun reunion trips.

Time to meet the cast!

Soraia – Me! Disney lover. Chief planner and spreadsheet enthusiast. Love good food and a good cocktail (or two...); firm believer that planning the trip is half the fun.

Bernie & Tig – Old friends of mine who have been on every Florida trip with me and will once again be joining me on this trip. They are just the best but moved to Denmark for work a few years ago so I miss them terribly. Bernie is once again my second in command with regards to planning and when in Florida, he can be found spending most of his time in the Japan shop at Epcot or on the search for cheesecake and sundaes. Or some bizarre combination of the two. Tig is easy going and happy to go with the flow, but is a champion shopper and is possibly one of the most photogenic people I know!

Kieren – Another converted Florida-ite and old friend. Yes, I know that "Florida-ite" is not a word. It should be! Kieren has come the last 2 trips in 2013 and 2015 and will once again be joining us this year. Thrill ride seeker. Selfie stick enthusiast. Doesn't share food. Orlando Magic cheerleader fan. Unashamed Frozen obsessive who can often be found joining the hoards of little girls in line to meet Anna & Elsa.

David & Thara – Good friends of ours who were part of our very first group trip back in 2011 but have been unable to join us since then due to “small” things like buying a house and hosting the wedding of the century last year. They will be joining us once again and it will be just over 1 year since their wedding so a mini disney anniversary! Here's a few from the aforementioned wedding of the century we were all part of last summer Good times!

So, what's the deal?

Our last Florida trip was in April 2015 and our trips tend to be every 18 months so we had already briefly discussed going back in September/October time. We decided to go for early September as prices were slightly better and we were hoping for the parks to be a bit quieter (fingers crossed!) so that settled it and we decided on Florida from 7th - 17th September 2016.

I met up with Bernie & Tig over Christmas time and they mentioned they had decided to go to Washington DC for 4 days before heading to Orlando and did I want to join them. Hell yeah! It seemed like a perfect mix between a bit of city culture and then heading to my favourite place in the world!

Soooo, Bernie, Tig & I will be flying out to Washington DC on Saturday 3rd September for 4 nights. They are flying from Denmark and I will be flying with Virgin from London Heathrow. Luckily, we managed to find flights that land within 5 minutes of each other at Washington Dulles Airport so we are keeping our fingers crossed for no delays and a swift meeting in the baggage area so we can head to the hotel together.

We will be staying at the Sofitel Lafayette Square which looks to be a lovely hotel in a great location just a few blocks away from the White House.

We are hoping to be able to get on a special tour of the White House – Bernie has sent off applications for all 3 of us to a senator but we will only know if we have been successful around 2 weeks before the trip. Fingers crossed!

Apart from that we are planning on visting all the monuments and memorials that make up the National Mall, as well as the US Capitol building.

We will also be visiting some of the Smithsonian Museums (Air & Space, Museum of Natural History and American History Museum) and we also want to spend a morning at Arlington Cemetery.

Finally, we want to spend a more easy going afternoon over at Georgetown (I'm dying to try a famous Georgetown Cupcake!) sitting by the water having a glass of vino and doing some shopping.

We will be in Washington DC over the labor day weekend so we hope it isn't too crowded. Supposedly most locals go out of town during labor day so DC is fairly quiet but we'll see. Really looking forward to soaking up some culture and having a different start to the trip.

We'll be flying to Orlando on Wednesday 7th September and meeting up with Kieren. We'll then be heading to the Hard Rock Hotel for our first 4 nights. Kieren is a huge fan of everything Hard Rock related (Hotel, Cafe etc) and has visited loads of the Hard Rock Hotels around the world although never actually stayed at the one in Universal. He is some sort of super duper special VIP member. During our last trip we visited HRH just to have a look around and vowed we would stay next time so it was really a no brainer! We're also looking forward to taking advantage of the FOLP of course

Our first night dinner will be Bubba Gump - one of Kieren's favourites! I will be getting a Landrys card soon. I've never been there myself so have been reading the menu religiously and keep changing my mind about what I want to eat

Our first few days will be a bit more easy going. David & Thara are only able to join us on the Friday 9th September and we want to really experience everything in the parks with them so we will be holding off visting Universal & IOA until they arrive. We might pop in for a little bit here and there but we won't be having our first full park day until Saturday.

On our first full day in Orlando we will be visiting Florida Mall for shopping galore (as an aside - OMG I can't wait to visit Carlo's Bakery so I can get my hands on one of these babies...)

We will also be visiting Mall at Millenia and of course that means a trip to the Cheesecake Factory is on the cards! YES!

Dinner that night will be The Melting Pot on International Drive.

I'm ridiculously excited to be going to The Melting Pot. I LOVE fondue (whatever the type – cheese, meat, chocolate – it's all great!). In the past The Melting Pot has always been a part of Magical Dining Month in September (select restaurants do 3 course meals for $33) so we are hoping this will be the case again this year.

We are still undecided on what to do on Friday. David & Thara will only be arriving in the afternoon so we are currently torn between having a completely chilled day by the pool and then exploring city walk, or having a wander down I Drive and possibly having a go on the Orlando Eye/Mini Golf/Dave & Busters with lunch at Olive Garden before heading back to HRH for pool time and cocktails. The only thing we do know is that dinner will be at Margaritaville and I can already taste those margaritas. Woooooo...

As mentioned, Saturday & Sunday will be dedicated solely to Universal & IOA. We will be doing lunch at Mythos on one of those days and Saturday dinner will be at Cowfish which we are looking forward to.

After our 4 nights onsite at Universal we will be moving to SSR on the afternoon of Sunday 11th September for our last 6 nights in Orlando. We will be staying in a 2 bed villa (Bernie, Tig, Kieren & I) and Deluxe Studio (David & Thara) and we are all on the dining plan with ultimate tickets and $100 gift card.

We are going to request Congress Park and also to have our rooms close to each other so fingers crossed - would be great to be able to walk to Disney Springs. We will be heading to Wolfgang Puck Express for our first meal onsite on Sunday!

Currently the plan looks like this:

Monday 12th September
Take it easy in the morning and have some pool time. Something I haven't mentioned up to now is that unbelievably, in all of our prior trips to Orlando we have never once been in the pool as we have been so focused on parks. This year we plan on having a lot more downtime and cocktails!
We will be heading to Hollywood Studios around 15:00 and have an ADR at Mama Melrose at 15:45 as part of the Fantasmic Dining Packge. After that we will do rides and will catch Fantasmic at 20:30. Bernie, Tig & Kieren are all MASSIVE Star Wars fans so we are keeping everything crossed that Symphony in the Stars will still be going on in September. What do you dibbers think are the chances of that?

Tuesday 13th September
Animal Kingdom day
The boys are keen to have a go at the Kitchen Sink at Beaches & Cream after AK so that will probably be where we head after AK. I'm just not entirely sure whether we need to make an ADR for that or if we can just walk up? I'm sure a kind dibber will advise
Dinner will be at one of our favourites – Yachtsman Steakhouse! That bread with the garlic... yummmm!

Wednesday 14th September
Shopping Day
We will be going to Premium Outlets and potentially Lake Buena Vista Factory Stores and end the day at another one of our favourite offsite restaurants – Bahama Breeze.

Thursday 15th September
Magic Kingdom Day
I have managed to get an ADR for lunch at Be Our Guest which none of us have ever been to so we are all looking forward to that.
Gutted that Big Thunder Mountain will be closed for refurb as it was also closed last time we went in April 2015 and it is most of our favourite ride! Oh well...
We will be having a late dinner at California Grill – ADR booked for 20:55 so we're hoping to get there just in time for Wishes and we can have dinner afterwards. I will keep checking MDE and see whether I can get a slightly earlier time but if not, no big deal. We went to California Grill last trip on my birthday and it was one of the best meals I have ever had so I can't wait to eat there again! Some pics from last year...

Friday 16th September
Our last full day
Another later start as we will have had a late night yesterday so some more pool time in the morning and we will then head over to Epcot at around 14:00 for a late lunch around the world sampling all the delicious Food & Wine Festival goodies. This is one of the things I am most excited about! As if that food wasn't enough, we have a dinner ADR at Teppan Edo at 20:00 which we're hoping ties in well with Illuminations at 22:00

So that's it! I'm sorry for the ridiculously long post but what can I say? I'm very excited! There is going to be a lot of moving around between Washington DC/Universal onsite/Disney onsite as well as people arriving at different times but we are so looking forward to our trip away and September can't come fast enough!

I hope you've enjoyed this pre-trippie and will wait to see what everyone thinks of a multi city trip report!

Thanks for reading!

UPDATE in post #17

[thebig40]

Ooh, loving the two city report! Sounds amazing and great to be going with friends.

[EJSakaAnna]

Definitely yay! I've just started off my 3 city report & no one has complained yet so I say write away . Sounds like a great plan, looking forward to reading along!

[DLS1005]

Sounds like an amazing trip! Looking forward to your report!

[Stephaniesays]

Hi Soraia

Sounds great, me and my bf will be there at the same time and our plan also is to go to HS on the 12th and AK on the 13th so may even cross paths! We're newbies though so we'll be the ones looking confused arguing over the map.

Not too long to go!

[soraia]

Originally Posted by EJSakaAnna

Definitely yay! I've just started off my 3 city report & no one has complained yet so I say write away . Sounds like a great plan, looking forward to reading along!

See more...

Ooh that is great! Will definitely be subscribing to your trippie and getting some inspiration for DC! How was your trip?

[soraia]

Originally Posted by Stephaniesays

Hi Soraia

Sounds great, me and my bf will be there at the same time and our plan also is to go to HS on the 12th and AK on the 13th so may even cross paths! We're newbies though so we'll be the ones looking confused arguing over the map.

Not too long to go!

See more...

Yay! Not too long indeed Is this your first trip to Florida?

If I see anyone arguing over a map I will pop over and say hello

[Stephaniesays]

Originally Posted by soraia

Yay! Not too long indeed Is this your first trip to Florida?

If I see anyone arguing over a map I will pop over and say hello

See more...

It is indeed our first trip (well I went when I was nine but as I am 27 now I'm not sure that counts), it's all I can talk about, think I'm driving the other half mad with the crazy planning ... I have a feeling it won't be our last trip somehow.

Have a great time, I look forward to reading your report!

[soraia]

Oh I know how that is - it's all you can talk about and you can start to sense everyone else is getting increasingly bored about hearing every single detail haha

Thanks a lot, I hope you and your fella have a fabulous time as well! Who knows, we might bump into each other over there

[soraia]

Originally Posted by thebig40

Ooh, loving the two city report! Sounds amazing and great to be going with friends.

See more...

Thank you - we're so excited