The "It's a long way to go for a handbag!" Tour Nov/Dec 15 Pre-Trip Report [Updated 17/10]

[rens]

I'm from Liverpool originally...is it safe to assume that you haven't met many other Grimsby Town fans since living there?


Really enjoyed reading about your plans and the end of November sounds like a great time to visit. The story behind your TR title is a lovely tribute to Jenn's Grandma

[grimslaa]

Originally Posted by EJSakaAnna

Happy double digit dance day !

How exciting to be taking Jenn for her first visit at Christmas time. I would love to go at that time of the year, determined that one year we will! Plans sound good so far, looking forward to your report

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Thank you! Just caught up on your plans, they sound amazing so far!

Originally Posted by lovedisney89

Great start to your pre-trippy

Lovely story about Jenn's Grandma and the Michael Kors bag. Being a fan of the brand myself I would totally justify going all that way for a handbag or two...

Look forward to reading more

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Thanks! Jenn is adamant she'll only buy one bag! I guess we'll see what happens when there's a shop full of them for her to choose from

Originally Posted by rens

I'm from Liverpool originally...is it safe to assume that you haven't met many other Grimsby Town fans since living there?


Really enjoyed reading about your plans and the end of November sounds like a great time to visit. The story behind your TR title is a lovely tribute to Jenn's Grandma

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Thank you! End of Nov/early December seems like it will be quiet but the weather should still be good and dry! Don't think I've met any Grimsby fans up here!

[Jesslydevie1]

Can't wait to see a Xmas trip,I would love to go once at Christmas , love some of the bars on and around bold street myself , particularly leaf and shipping forecast , can't wait to read more .

[grimslaa]

Originally Posted by Jesslydevie1

Can't wait to see a Xmas trip,I would love to go once at Christmas , love some of the bars on and around bold street myself , particularly leaf and shipping forecast , can't wait to read more .

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Thanks for reading It's an even more amazing place at Xmas! Can't wait to see the Jingle Cruise! Love Leaf for breakfast, but have never been for drinks later on.

[grimslaa]

***Update***

Food is quite an important part of the trip to us, as we're both foodies who enjoy going out to eat and having nice food at home too. One thing I should mention is that Jenn has an egg allergy, so we will be contending with that and have so far found there to be loads of information about Disney. They seem great in terms of the level of help they offer, however I still need to email them to get them to help with the reservations we have made! I'm really looking forward to having the full range of restaurants on Disney property and at Universal available to eat at as with it just being the 2 of us we don’t have to cater for anybody else’s requirements or restrictions (bar Jenn’s allergy of course).

As we're on the QSDP, we haven't got many ADRS or many plans to eat anywhere specifically. There are a few quick service places that we want to eat at and will hit them as we pass them in the parks! Although we did have a dilemma regarding the dining plan, whether we should have got it at all and if so, should we have the QSDP or the full DDP?

As you all know, we decided to go with the QSDP but I thought I'd explain our decision making process as it may be helpful for some of you! The initial thoughts centred on whether the dining plan actually offered value for money for its cost. We tried to figure out a cost of how much money we'd expect to pay for food on a daily basis, and read a view articles about this. This guide from the Disney Tourist Blog disneytouristblog/disney-dining-plan/ is pretty comprehensive in terms of the strengths/weaknesses of the dining plan.

The general consensus online seems to be that to get true value on the dining plan you need to get the most expensive things on the menu in order to use it to its maximum potential. However our final decision was based more on the comfort of having 2 meals a day paid for as part of our tickets/hotel package.

With that decision made, we then had to decide between the QSDP that came 'free' with our package staying at Coronado Springs or upgrading to the DDP. Again, you guys know we went with the QSDP and I touched on the reason why earlier. We felt that the time you'd spend having a full table service meal everyday would take more time away from experiencing the park than what we would be willing to. If you think when you go out for food, you're there for at least an hour for just 2 courses and throw in more time for a 3rd course. Plus we didn't feel that we'd want to have a 'sit down' meal every day.

Our ADRs

That being said, we have booked a few ADRs for the table service places that we wanted to go to! We decided that the best way for us to choose the restaurants that we wanted to make reservations at was for the both of us to look through the menus and do a little reading, create our own lists and then go from there!

Our ADRs start on our first morning when we visit the Magic Kingdom where we have a 08:35 breakfast reservation at... Be Our Guest!

This was a unanimous choice, mainly based on the theming as Jenn in particular loves Beauty and the Beast. The hard part was choosing what meal we wanted to eat there as they had just announced that they'd be doing breakfast when we were making a list of our choices! Jenn wasn't sold on the dinner options, so that was ruled out and whilst we both liked the sound of the lunch menu it didn't stand out to us. Whereas the breakfast menu did, so that's what we've gone for!

The 2nd reservation we have is on the 1st December and is part of our Candlelight Processional package. There are a number of restaurants that you can eat at as part of the package to secure you seat for the performance, and of that list the menu that stood out most as a venue befitting the special night we wanted this to be was Chefs de France. So we've got relatively early dinner slot there at 16:50

We're then up early the next morning and heading over to the Contemporary for an 08:05 breakfast ADR at Chef Mickey's! We both really wanted to go here as it's an easy way for us to meet and get pictures with the big 5 characters, and I'm also really looking forward to going in to the Contemporary after only previously passing through on the monorail.

5 days later on the 7th December we're back at the Contemporary for a 19:30 reservation at the California Grill. I was really keen on going here prior to discussing plans with Jenn, so I was really pleased that she wanted to eat here too! We're really looking forward to being able to watch Wishes from the terrace, and are planning to have a few drinks there during the evening

Our final ADR is another breakfast selection and was largely my selection, but fortunately Jenn was happy to eat here. On the 10th, we have a 08:05 reservation at Tusker House at Animal Kingdom. I've read really good reviews about here so wanted to give it a go, plus getting in to the park early means that we can head over to Kilimanjaro Safaris when we've finished to hopefully catch the animals whilst they're active!

Going to leave it here for now! Thanks for reading guys. Only 89 days to go now...

[grimslaa]

Just a mini-update to let you guys know of some other things that we've sorted this week.

We had a productive Wednesday evening which saw us book and purchase the last few 'big' bits for the holiday!

The first thing was the mundane, yet necessary, purchase of travel insurance. I should state here that Jenn suffers from anxiety and is currently taking medication for this (I've asked her permission to discuss this!) so we expected that our insurance quotes would be higher than that standard ones you get from price comparison websites.

Places such as Go Compare and MoneySuperMarket gave us expensive quotes for what seemed like not very good cover, so I swerved those and looked elsewhere. I went on to the AA website as they're website says they give discount to members. We declared Jenn's anxiety and got an annual quote for the both of us of £216.71

However this was a fair quote and offered better cover than the companies we'd already looked at. Plus the policy covers us worldwide for the next year. Even if we only did this Florida trip, I thought that £7 a day each wasn't *that* bad!

On to more fun things that we booked, we also purchased tickets to Cirque Du Soleil for the 10th December! We're on Row F and paid $210 for both tickets. Soooo excited to see this!

We also bought our Memory Maker on the pre-purchase rate. Going to take advantage of this and get as many pictures as possible! Slightly disappointed that it's digital only though, and we can't get any official prints for ride photos!

Just as a quick note, I'm at my family home this weekend so have been digging out old photos from Florida for when I was little for a non-planning related update in the future!

Thanks for reading guys! I'll hopefully have another update soon!

[Guest]

hi

Just had a quick read through, Im jealous of your cirque tickets, i would love to go

Memory maker is fab too,

x

[grimslaa]

Originally Posted by Dory17

hi

Just had a quick read through, Im jealous of your cirque tickets, i would love to go

Memory maker is fab too,

x

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Thanks for reading!

Cirque was absolutely amazing when I saw it 4 years ago, I think they've added new elements since then so really looking forward to it.

Memory Maker looks really cool. Hoping to use to get loads of photos of the 2 of us that aren't just selfies

[grimslaa]

Wow! Doesn’t time fly when you’re counting down to a holiday/when life gets in the way! It's been over a month since my last update! Since early September, Jenn has passed another accounting exam and is now an Advanced DIP (whatever that is!). We also passed the 60 days milestone on our countdown which means we've booked Fastpasses, but that's for another update. For now, back to food!

As we're on the QSDP we're quite excited to eat at several QS places, although we don't have any definite plans to eat at any specific quick service places. However we do have our eyes on a few places that we would like to try, and I imagine we'll get to most of those places! At some point during the planning of our ADRs, we were discussing what our options for quick services places where and Jenn was asking what the variety of food would be like. This lead to a perusal of the Disney World website to view menus of various places, however we felt this was a little in vain as we needed to check which places accepted the QSDP!

This lead to finding the Disney PDF file for the QSDP for 2015 that lists all the places accepted across property and other info such as what constitutes a snack (which will now be slightly outdated). We were looking through the list when Jenn suggested that we print 2 copies of the lists off, and each go through the menus for the places we'd realistically be able to get to (Non-monorail or non-Epcot area hotels were not considered).

This is my list

And this is Jenn's list

You’ll be able to notice that we’ve highlighted the same places quite a lot. Jenn has put a little asterisk next to the places that she’s most excited to try!

I'm really looking forward to Sunshine Seasons at EPCOT as the last time I went I'd picked out what I wanted, only to be told by my Dad that there was nothing for my brothers so had to go elsewhere. There's loads of options here, and I've not got my heart set on anything in particular (yet). Jenn is really looking forward to eating at Katsura Grill in the Japan pavilion of the World Showcase for the sushi. She's a big fan of sushi, but doesn't get to eat it much as I'm not a big fan

Jenn is also really keen to eat at the ABC Commissary over at Hollywood Studios for their Asian salad. I'm keen to eat at Pecos Bills and Tortuga Tavern following the changes to their menus that have been announce recently, particularly Tortuga Tavern as I'm a big fan of BBQ. We may have to give Pecos Bills a miss, unless it's really quiet, as their allergy menu doesn't leave many option for Jenn with her egg allergy. I'm also looking forward to the Earl of Sandwich, which may be dinner on our first night but we've not really decided what we're doing after we check in yet!

I've got my heart set on getting snacks that are also unfortunately not very friendly with Jenn's allergy. Although I'm aware my list isn't as extensive as others. In no specific order there is:

• Ice cream from Artisans des Glaces;
• Carrot cake cookie from the Writer's Stop;
• Anything from the Boardwalk Bakery; and
• A Cinnamon Bun from Gaston's Tavern

I also want to get something Les Halles de Boulangerie in the France Pavilion at EPCOT which would've been unfriendly to Jenn, until we found at that Macarons are made with egg whites so she can eat them!

As I'm typing we're about to do the online check in for our hotel, and as we've done our Fastpasses for days that we'll definitely be at Disney I'm hoping to get another post up soon! Anyway, thanks for reading guys