Two Poorly Girls and a Proposal: April 19th - May 3rd, 2023

[Greysamaze]

Introductions and Planning

Hello and welcome to my first ever trip report! I’ve been following trip reports on here for years now and am finally writing my own. This is going to be a very in-depth report, with as much clarity into our experience; what we paid, what worked for us, and what didn’t, as I can muster/remember! I want to be as honest as possible so I can hopefully help first timers (or even those who are more experienced) understand more about coming to WDW from England.



This first post is going to be an introduction and a planning report! It started off as just an introduction, but I got carried away, so you get a double whammy! Here we go.



My name is Georgia, I’m 26 and live in Leicester, England. My favourite things in life are Taylor Swift, cats, and my girlfriend. I work in customer service, which is where I should be right now but, luckily for both of us, I have tonsillitis which is giving me the break I needed to start writing this! I grew up as a Disney kid where I visited WDW and DLP multiple times and cruised with Disney. I also visited DL and DCA in 2019. My first cruise was when I was 13, and I immediately decided I wanted to work for DCL – which I did! I got hired with Disney in the November of 2019, when I boarded the Disney Magic as a Youth Activities Counselor. This was not destined to last long. For a multitude of reasons related to the job, my mental health took a sharp decline, and I was signed off sick in the January – however, for those who noticed the date, I wouldn’t have been able to finish my contract anyway due to the pandemic. So, I guess it was destiny.




With me on this trip is my girlfriend, Harriet. She is 25, likes gardening and pretending she isn’t a Taylor Swift fan, is autistic (this will become important later), has wonky thumbs (will also be important later) and is a librarian. Harriet and I have been together for five years. We’ve both spent extended amounts of time in America whilst working at summer camps (I’ve done four years, Harriet has done two) and love travelling. We live together with our three cats, Maggie, Amber and Simon.




Now, Harriet did not grow up as a Disney kid. In fact, it took a whole lot of convincing and begging to get her to come to WDW with me on our first trip together in 2020 – even though she had visited DL and DCA for a day each in 2019 after working at summer camp in Colorado. We had planned a trip for when my first contract on DCL ended due to the free employee tickets, which was exactly what we did – apart from, when we arrived at the main gate it turns out that you can’t use your free tickets when you’re signed off sick (even if it’s for mental health and Disney is supposed to be the happiest place on earth?!), so we ended up having to shell out. We stayed at a cheap hotel on I95 and caught their shuttle bus to the parks at 7am every morning, stayed in the parks all day, and caught the shuttle bus back at 11pm every night for 10 days straight. Looking back now, I have no idea how we did this.



However, this first trip ignited something in Harriet, and she was hooked. As soon as we got back, it was all she would talk about. She scoured Youtube watching all and any videos she could find, subscribed to any vloggers we both clicked with (honourable mentions: Adam Hattan, Cheers Ears, Mammoth Club – although at this point Molly was still with Allears – and The Holgates). However, it was the pandemic: our last day in the parks had just so happened to be the last day the parks were open before they closed for the first time. We had a long wait until we could even think about returning. Not to mention, we were both now unemployed, I had just lost my dream job and felt like I had no direction in my life, and she was in the process of being diagnosed with both autism and ADHD. It wasn’t looking good.



Flash forward to January of last year (2022). We both had stable jobs and it was winter, so we had the travel bug. On a whim, we booked 3 days in DLP for around £800 total (hotel and park tickets) for April. Admittedly, we didn’t really think this through. It was ever so slightly out of our budget – had it been one more month away we could’ve done it, but not with only two pay days in between booking and leaving – and that was without budgeting for travel and food. We cancelled this probably two days later, but it had lit the torch within us both that we would get a Disney fix soon. So, I kept looking at DLP but it is just so expensive! For a four day trip during warmer months it is almost £2,000 – and that’s without travel and food! So we went on a little pricing trip and headed over to WDW website and priced up two weeks over several different months. We narrowed down the months we would want to do and those which were cheapest and found the earliest date at the cheapest available price: April 19th.



Then we had to pick a hotel. Harriet had never stayed on property, so at first I don’t think she fully understood the implications of different hotels – off to Youtube we went! We watched resort tour after resort tour and narrowed it down to Pop Century, Coronado Springs or Port Orleans French Quarter. I was leaning towards Pop or POFQ, but Harriet seemed to like Coronado Springs. I was put off by this because of the large bus loop, and the bus being the only method of transportation (I know POFQ has the boat only to DS, but it counts for something, right?!). However, CS was the first on site resort I stayed at, and so the romantic in me thought it would be sweet for it to also be Harriet’s first on site resort. However, for reasons I can’t quite remember now (probably the Skyliner and the price difference) we ended up picking Pop.



We were good and excited and sorted for about a month: then Disney announced their UK deals which they usually release in April. They were offering a $200 gift card, free tickets to cirque if you stayed at a deluxe, a certain amount of dining credit per night depending on the level of your hotel, included memory maker and 14 day Disney Magic ticket (park hopping and water parks included) ticket for the price of 7 day. We already had the latter two included in our original booking, but we couldn’t turn down a gift card and dining credit! So, we had a quick stop back at the drawing board to decide whether we wanted to upgrade to a moderate resort to get slightly more dining credit. However, this would have cost $300 more, which is about the same amount we would’ve got in extra dining credit, so it didn’t really make sense to swap hotels. Then we had to wait for the deal to be released and re-book our holiday, then email Disney to ask them to move the deposit from the first booking over to the second booking, and to cancel the first booking. This was easy, thanks to Disney’s customer service!



I know some people are interested in the price breakdowns of trips, so here is ours as written on our invoice. And this way you can also see everything that was included:



Accommodation rental: £2,450

Dining credit $36 per night: £0 (this worked out to $504)

$200 Disney Spending money: £0

Magical Extras: £0

Memory Maker: £0

shopDisney Online Discount: £0

14 for 7 Disney Magic Ticket (10-99): £489 x2 = £978

EARmail: £0



Total: £3,428.



This obviously doesn’t include travel. We flew with Virgin Atlantic. Our booking was for April 19th at 1pm, which would arrive at MCO at 5:25pm. Our return flight was for May 3rd at 5:45pm, which would arrive to Heathrow at 7:30am on the 4th. More on this later, but the total price for both of our tickets was £1,077.72.



We can get from our house to Heathrow in about two and a half hours on the train, however, to make sure we got there on time for the flight we probably would’ve allowed four hours for this journey on the day of travelling, which would’ve made for a very early start. Therefore, we chose to book a night at the Holiday Inn Express at Terminal 4. The price for this was £92.65.



We also had to get our train tickets to London! The price for both of us was £98.09. We booked Mears Connect to take us to Pop: $32. We booked travel insurance: £49.70.



And so, the grand total of our trip before we arrived (and this is my first time actually adding this all up too!): £4,771.42! Whew!



Ok, enough about planning. Let’s go to Disney!

 

[Greysamaze]

The Chapters!

Before:
Introductions and Planning

Travel Days:
April 18th - Pre-travel Day
April 19th - The Airport
April 19th - The Plane
April 19th - The Arrival

WDW:
April 20th - Day 1: Magic Kingdom! (Pt 1)
April 20th - Day 1: Magic Kingdom! (Pt 2)
April 21st - Day 2: EPCOT! (Pt 1)
April 21st - Day 2: EPCOT! (Pt 2)
April 22nd - Day 3: Resort Hop & The Big Day (Pt 1)
April 22nd - Day 3: Resort Hop & The Big Day (Pt 2)

 

[Sacahara]

Following along!

 

[Woth2982]

Joining in! I am American, but my dads family all comes from Leicester!

 

[Greysamaze]

April 18th, 2023



The handy thing about my job is that I get to work from home every other week. As luck would have it, the week we left was not my wfh week. The other handy thing about my job is that one of my team leaders is fairly lenient and as long as you’re good at your job and a hard worker, he’ll let you switch this up. And so, two weeks before we left, I asked if I could work from home on the 17th and 18th, and on the 5th of May after we got back. He said yes. Score.



As most people on this site can probably imagine, those two days were torture. Harriet had spent the week prior doing all the laundry and packing for herself, so all that was left to do was my packing. I was adamant that I didn’t want her to ‘help’ me pack for two reasons: 1) I like packing! It’s fun. 2) I was trying to hide a ring.



Full disclosure: Harriet knew about the ring. As I mentioned before, Harriet is autistic. She doesn’t enjoy surprises, even if they’re happy surprises. We’d been talking about getting engaged for about a year: I’d asked her to show me some rings that she liked, I’d openly measured her finger to figure out what size I would need, and the day I bought the ring I told her that I had purchased one. I hadn’t told her explicitly that I was going to propose at Disney but I assumed (and I just asked her to confirm) that she knew it was going to happen at some point on our holiday.



Once I’d finished work and packing at 4:15pm, we turned our attention to the cats. We’ve only left them once before: we got someone to come in and check on them, feed them and change their litter once per day for four days when we went to my parents’ for Christmas. This didn’t go well – simply because the person didn’t change their litter. We had considered this period a tester for whilst we were in Florida – we wanted to see if that person would be reliable enough to do the same for two weeks, or if we would have to put them in a cattery. I’m sure you can work out the answer for yourselves.





Harriet’s brother and dad came to help us take the cats to the cattery (neither of us drive) and they then dropped us off at the train station afterward. We had a super off peak train ticket which means we could only travel after 6:30pm, so we had to wait for two trains to go first – but they’re every 10 minutes from Leicester, so this was fine. On the train we had our picnic dinner that we’d packed: sandwiches, veggie sticks, crisps, dip. Pretty standard fare.






The train to Leicester takes an hour and goes straight to St Pancras. From here we switched over to the tube at King’s Cross and got on the Piccadilly line to Heathrow Terminal 4. This took just over an hour. On the tube I started reading a new book I’d gotten: Who Cooked the Last Supper: A Women’s History of the World. Let me tell you – this is a must read! It’s about how much of women’s contributions have been erased from history going back to when we were nomads and cave dwellers, and it is mind blowing! It also got me thinking a lot about Spaceship Earth, and I made a point to look at all the animatronics and was so, so disappointed when I realised that over 90% of them are male.



Sorry, back to the trip!



We arrived at the Holiday Inn Express just after 9pm and check-in was easy. Now, in my last post I said I would talk about the flights again, and here we are. We got an email about a month before we left that our flight times had been changed: it had been pushed back from 1pm to 3:40pm – we would now land at 8pm instead of 5:25pm. So our hotel was unnecessary – or so we thought. It turned out that, had we travelled on the morning of the 19th for our now-later flight, we would’ve had to get peak train tickets which would’ve cost us another £40 each. Our hotel had only cost £92, so we’d only lost out on £12 – plus, breakfast was included with the hotel. Therefore, if we could eat about £12 worth of food (which isn’t hard, considering the price of everything in London), we would’ve broke even.



The real issue with the pushing back of the flight were the implications once we landed. We weren’t worried about the time of our Mears Connect, we knew they would take us no matter what time we showed up, but we had planned to run to the grocery store on our first night and stock up on essentials (bagels, snacks, breakfast and lunch foods) so we wouldn’t be eating so much in the parks. This now made it impossible, and so we had to factor that into our day 1 plans instead.



Anyway. The hotel. We checked in and the receptionist kind of looked at us weird, then asked if we were aware that we’d booked a double-bed room. I said yes, and he asked if we were sure that this was what we wanted, or if we wanted two beds? I assured him that we wanted a double bed. Trust me, mister, we are pros at sharing beds when we travel – so much so that we even do it when we’re at home!



I then asked if it would be possible for us to get a late checkout, seeing as we were now at the airport that we didn’t need to arrive at until 1pm. I had previously emailed to ask and had been told that it would depend on availability, and that there could be an additional hourly charge. He asked if we were IHG members, to which I said no. He explained that if I became a member by ticking a box on the check-in form I’d just filled in, we could check out as late as we wanted for no extra fee. Needless to say, I checked the box. He sorted out a 1pm checkout for us. Perfect.



The hotel was kind of weird. First of all, it was all inside. They had a courtyard thing with some fake grass so they were going for outside vibes, but it was dark. Also, it was two hotels in one. In the picture below you can see the half-oval thing – this is where the check-in desks were. However, one side (the side we were on) was for Holiday Inn Express, and the other is for the Crowne Plaza. All rooms on our side of the elevator shaft in the middle (with the fancy green lights going up it) were Holiday Inn, all the rooms on the right side belonged to the Crowne Plaza. I would be interested to see just how different the rooms for the Crowne Plaza were, but you’re definitely not paying for a view!






We found our room easily and poked around, but by this time we were fairly tired! We set our alarms for 9am (breakfast was until 10am) and settled down for the night.

 

[grapefruitjellybean]

Thanks for sharing, I can’t wait to hear about the proposal.
Side note - people are dumb and ignorant. I’m sorry the hotel person was weird about the bed. Like, mind your own business. I travel with my sister and close friends all the time, we always book a King room because they are usually nicer and have more space. But that’s no one else’s business.

 

[Jack Kerouac]

Thank you for sharing! I'm optimistic your girlfriend said yes, so I too am excited to hear about the proposal. I love how detailed you are in your trip reports.

My oldest son has ADHD, so I'm also looking forward to hearing more about your (hopefully) fiancé's experience during this trip, even though my son is quite a bit younger (he's 8). We went for the first time as a family in April 2022. My oldest had some rough days early on during the trip, but by the end, he was the best behaved of his brothers.

I'll be following your reports. Thanks again!

 

[Sajchinook2015]

Following

 

[Greysamaze]

Thanks for sharing, I can’t wait to hear about the proposal.
Side note - people are dumb and ignorant. I’m sorry the hotel person was weird about the bed. Like, mind your own business. I travel with my sister and close friends all the time, we always book a King room because they are usually nicer and have more space. But that’s no one else’s business.

Hello! It's definitely an unconventional proposal, so there will be a lot about it!
I definitely agree with what you're saying about travelling with other women. I don't think there's ever been a time when I've travelled with another woman where I haven't shared a bed - that's partly why I found it so strange that he was asking. Surely they must get two women who are sharing a bed all the time!

 

[Greysamaze]

Thank you for sharing! I'm optimistic your girlfriend said yes, so I too am excited to hear about the proposal. I love how detailed you are in your trip reports.

My oldest son has ADHD, so I'm also looking forward to hearing more about your (hopefully) fiancé's experience during this trip, even though my son is quite a bit younger (he's 8). We went for the first time as a family in April 2022. My oldest had some rough days early on during the trip, but by the end, he was the best behaved of his brothers.

I'll be following your reports. Thanks again!

Hi! Thank's for coming along!
I'm going to be talking a lot about Harriet's experience, and I read each post to her before uploading it to make sure I'm saying the right thing, so hopefully this will help you. We took breaks every day, which I think really helped, and used DAS for the first time ever. I'm going to go into a lot of detail regarding this as, no matter how hard I researched, I really didn't know what I was getting myself in for - in a positive way!

 

[ThreeBoyMama]

Following along! I also just have to randomly comment that my name is Amber, and when I was little we had an orange tabby named Simon and a golden retriever named Maggie

 

[Greysamaze]

April 19th - The Airport



We both woke up before our alarm (surprise). Harriet had woken up around 6am, and I woke up about 7:30am. We hung around in the room for a bit before heading down to breakfast just before 9am. At check-in they’d had a chart of how busy it got at breakfast and 7am-8:30am had been their ‘red zone’, so we’d been trying to avoid this.



We got down there and it wasn’t too bad: probably a quarter of the tables were empty. I did a scout of the foods available whilst Harriet followed me before we headed back to the beginning. It was a standard English value breakfast buffet: mini boxes of cereal, muesli, yogurt, green apples and unripe bananas, beans, sausages, bacon, scrambled eggs, bread, rolls, croissants and mini muffins. There was one of those cool toasters where you put a slice of bread in, wait three years for it to roll through and drop down the bottom, only to find that it’s burned to a crisp. Those who have spent a lot of time in Europe will be familiar with these.



After both grabbing a plate of hot food, I also grabbed a coffee. Now, I must fill you in on my coffee story. I’m 26, and hate the stuff: the smell makes me nauseous, and the taste is just… unpleasant? However, Harriet loves it. She always talks about how she wants to go on coffee dates but can’t because I don’t like coffee (also not big on tea, or hot drinks in general). I try her coffee every time she gets a different one, but they all taste the same to me. The only ‘coffee’ I’ve been able to drink is Iced Capps from Tim Hortons, but somehow no one seems to count these as legitimate coffees?! However, in an effort to appease her, and knowing I would need some serious caffeine injections to survive the coming weeks ahead, we took a trip to TK Maxx where they have several different 0 sugar, 0 calorie coffee syrups. I purchased a caramel one and we headed to our nearest Pret A Manger. Knowing that a hot drink wouldn’t do anything for me we got an iced latte with oat milk (cow milk hurts my tummy – and freaks me out a bit) and I added some of the syrup. It was a success! Therefore, I’m now a caramel coffee drinker. I even packed a washing up liquid bottle (it was the only small bottle I could find, and I thoroughly rinsed it) of syrup in my hold bag so I would be prepared once we got to the states.



Back to the breakfast. I got a coffee from the machine, certain I could conquer it, took one sip and was repulsed. It was hot, there was no caramel syrup in it, and it (probably) had cows milk in. I should’ve known better, I know, but I got ahead of myself.







The food itself was mediocre. The eggs were the powdered variety, the sausage was incredibly salty, the bacon was meh. I don’t even remember what the beans were like, so I guess they were the highlight if I don’t have a complaint to make about them. Admittedly, possibly one of the reasons I didn’t really care for the food was because, the night before, my wisdom tooth had decided that this was the ideal time to start coming through and I was very uncomfortable.



Before going down to breakfast I had told myself that I was going to make a sausage sandwich to take to the airport, but the sausages were so disappointing that I didn’t even do that! Instead, we grabbed (well, I grabbed for us as Harriet was too chicken) a croissant and a mini muffin each. I also got four pots of porridge to take to Florida in an attempt to get another two free breakfasts out of the hotel. Remember, we had £12 worth of food which we needed to either consume or take with us in order to break even!







After our lacklustre breakfast we went back up to the room. Harriet showered and I then braided her hair, and she posed for a few moody shots at the window. We left the hotel around 11:30am despite having another hour and a half until our late checkout time.







We had to get from our hotel in Terminal 4 to Terminal 3, which meant catching a train. I’d googled it and maps had told me we would have to get back on the Piccadilly line, but when we got down there it turned out there was a different option: a free journey on the new and sparkly Elizabeth line! Neither Harriet nor I have been to London since this line opened, so it was a new experience for both of us. I was surprised by how spacious it felt! The picture below doesn’t really do it justice, so just imagine.







I had been able to check Harriet in the day before online, but the Virgin Atlantic app said that I had to do mine in person. We tried to check in at the kiosks, and it said it had checked me in, but no boarding passes appeared, and the app still said I wasn’t ready to go. Still, we went to bag drop and – shocker! – I wasn’t checked in. Not really sure what was going on with it, but the lady checked me in quickly and we dropped our bags: mine was 16KG and Harriet’s was 18KG. When I was given my boarding pass, it became clear why I wasn’t able to check in online: I had the dreaded SSSS stamped on my boarding pass. For those who don’t know, this stands for Secondary Security Screening Selection, which basically means that at every point in the journey I could be stopped for a secondary check.



We had also found out that we got the bulkhead seats that I’d emailed Virgin about several months ago! These are the seats at the front of the plane which mean that you get significantly more room, and they’re reserved for those with medical needs. Harriet’s ADHD means that she struggles with staying still for extended (or even normal) periods of time, and we knew that this extra space would benefit her, so it was great to find out that we’d been lucky enough to get them.



Security was easy and took less than five minutes. So much for my extra security screening! We hastened through duty free, paused at the watches and pretended we were rich enough to buy them, and then emerged out into the main lounge. By this point my wisdom tooth was really bothering me and so we went to Boots and I grabbed some mouth numbing gel. We then wondered round all the shops before we found a Pret. As this was the location of my first iced latte, so I figured it would be safe to get another one here – although this time I was going to have to shell out and pay for a shot of their syrup as mine was checked.



There was a long line, which we waited in, and once we got to the front we got some bad news: no iced drinks! Instead, they directed us over to Caffe Nero. I’ve tried coffee from here before and have never liked it, so I was nervous, but desperate! Due to our daytime flight, we had decided to stay awake the whole time and hit the ground running in the hopes that we could beat jetlag that way.



Oat milk iced latte with a caramel shot in hand, we found a seat. The coffee was gross – and by that, I mean it tasted like coffee, but I downed it. We ate our stolen croissants and muffins and waited the hour and a half left until our gate was announced.

 

[Greysamaze]

April 19th – The Plane



Our gate was announced as number 17, and so we sped toward it. Because Virgin was aware of Harriet’s diagnoses we could’ve boarded the plane first, but I asked Harriet and she was happy to wait. It also meant less time in confinement, so this was probably the right decision! I was anxious that the overhead bins would fill up, but this turned out to not be an issue.







Harriet spent a while looking at the plane. We were on the Lady Emmaline. It’s a newer plane, but definitely not the newest. The pilots were in the cockpit and were waving at the children and posing for photos! It was very sweet.







We were boarding group 8 of 9. We got on and discovered that our part of the plane was less than half full! We also found out just how much leg room the bulkhead seats got us! It was fantastic.













Because we didn’t have any seats in front of us, our TVs and tables pulled from inside the arm rest. However, as we would soon find out, none of the TVs on our row (it was a row of three with only us two sitting in it) had working headphone jacks! As I said before, our part of the plane had loads of empty seats which we probably could’ve switched to, but we didn’t want to give up the extra room our assigned seats gave us.







We taxied to the runway and spent a while in line. Harriet was trying to take a timelapse of our take off for her dad who had never flown before. In the end, she had about seven videos because we spent so long stopping and starting in the queue to the runway! But once we were there, we got in the air quickly. And we got the first wonky thumb pic of the trip!







They came round with snacks and a drink quickly. We got a little bag of salted pretzels (I don’t like pretzels, so Harriet got two bags) and cokes all round. It wasn’t long after that and we were being served dinner! The choices were spinach and ricotta pasta or jerk chicken and rice. I 100% made the wrong choice. I don’t know about you guys but whenever I think of spinach and ricotta pasta, my mind goes to cannelloni. I had vastly overestimated Virgin Atlantic. Instead, we got bowtie pasta in a green and fairly tasteless sauce. There was a pesto, mozzarella, tomato and rocket side salad, the standard bread roll and cheese and crackers and a little chocolate pudding.







I don’t know how I’m sounding like a pickier eater than Harriet in this trip report – which I promise you, is entirely not the case – but somehow, we encountered all the foods I don’t like in this first 24 hours. Plus, my mouth hurt! Cut me some slack.



Let me break this dinner down for you: I hate pesto, don’t like rocket and the pasta was boring AF. I ate the tomato slices out of the salad and put the baby mozzarella balls into the pasta in an effort to spice it up a little. Those two bites were the best of a bad bunch. The best part about dinner was (obviously) the dessert. Those little pots of chocolate ganache are like little sunspots on a miserable flight!



Without TVs to watch, Harriet and I spent most of the flight chatting, reading, playing cards and Harriet did about three-million-word searches. We also played on our Switch. Harriet beat me to Mario Kart several times. But, most importantly, we pounded cokes like there was no tomorrow and stayed awake!



At some point we got an ice lolly. I was looking forward to this; on vlogs we watched others got mini Magnums or Twisters or other fun ice creams. Ours was frozen apple puree!!!!!!







We got a snack right before we landed. This consisted of two very, very sad sandwiches – cream cheese and red pepper, and cheddar – a warm scone (which was actually amazing!!) with jam and cream and a little chocolate bite thing. Save for the sandwiches, this was ok.







I took a picture of this but was so hungry that the sandwiches had been downed by both of us before we remembered to document it. We both regretted our earlier decision to not take a sausage sandwich from the hotel. This is a choice I will not make the mistake of making again! Anyway, when this came round, we only had an hour left to go.



Due to the bulkhead seats, once we landed, we were the first ones off the flight (beside upper class and premium economy)! This turned out to be a godsend, as we then spent almost two hours in line at security. I can’t imagine how long the wait would’ve been had we been in our original seats which were the last row of the plane! The wait was especially annoying because, once we’d been called forward, the man asked us one whole question (1!!!!!!!) and waved us through. We were at his desk-thing for probably 40 seconds!



Next: the monorail! Harriet got the prime seat.





Note: too many pics! Will be continued in my next post.

 

[Greysamaze]

April 19th - The Arrival

After getting out to the main terminal, we headed down to where Mears Connect was. After years of getting the Magical Express I was convinced that I could get down there without following any directions. And I did it! Until Harriet realised we were a floor above the one we needed to be on. But still, I knew where I was going. That counts, right!?



We checked into Mears and got in line. Our wait here ended up being just over 35 minutes, but at this point in the day it honestly felt like it was over two hours.



A bus arrived and they called the Saratoga Springs line, which had all of 3 people in it whilst ours probably had over 20. Then, they called forward the two people in Caribbean Beach. Then, they piled us on too. And then, once all of us were on, they kept coming! They ended up pulling every line onto our one bus, which made me anxious. We were both hungry and exhausted and wanted to get to our hotel. Harriet didn’t really have a grasp on how big Disney property was and how long it would take us to go to each hotel, so she was more relaxed, but by this point I could barely sit still! We had a big day planned for tomorrow; I was hungry and on edge.







We set off at 10pm. Our first stop was Saratoga Springs. I’d never been here before and it looked beautiful at night! Next, Port Orleans French Quarter. The two girls sat behind us were the only ones to get off here and I was so, so jealous. Whilst stopped here I opened Maps on my phone and started tracking our route. We were close to Pop, but there were several resorts we could go to between POFQ and there.



By this time, it was around 10:35pm and I was even more nervous: the food court closed at 11pm and all I wanted was Disney chicken tenders! This may sound silly, but my last meal before debarking the Magic when I worked there was chicken tenders, and England really doesn’t do fried chicken like America. This meant a lot to me. And I was losing my mind, naturally.

Pop was our next stop!! And thank god for that!! We got off the bus at 10:52pm. It took two minutes for the driver to grab our bags: 10:56pm. I hauled booty to the food court, grabbed my tenders, a cup of mac and cheese for Harriet and two resort mugs – Harriet got the 100 purple mug, and I got a green Pixar one. I did it. Mission accomplished. We both filled our mugs and then focussed on what was really important; finding our room!



I had used Touringplans to request a room before we arrived and had asked for the 60s or 50s section but had specified building 3 as I assumed we wouldn’t be lucky enough to get one in the 60s section. I was wrong! We were building 5, on the second floor, room 5217. This was on the back side of the building, overlooking the lake, and it was so, so peaceful. We waddled up there with our bags and food and mugs (it took us a while) and I used my phone to open the door. Worth noting at this point: Harriet had plans to buy a Magicband, I was going to use my Apple watch for my park entry and rely on her to open our room door.



I was desperate for the toilet, and then desperate for my food. So desperate, that I completely forgot about taking room pics. Good thing I had Harriet! She took pics whilst I collapsed at our little table. Unfortunately, by this point our food was cold, but neither of us really cared.















Peep my photographer in the mirror!



The room had an adjoining door, this only caused problems twice: our first night a family came in around 4am and had a baby who woke me up once, and another night we had a different family whose kids were running around for hours. This family stayed for several nights and woke me up so frequently that I ended up putting a towel under the door. Luckily, this seemed to fix my problems!



Back to the trip at hand: we ate and then unpacked, and Harriet showered, and started looking ahead to tomorrow. Magic Kingdom! We got into bed, and I set my alarm for 7:30am in order to get to the park for opening. We weren’t worried about Tron on our first day (and had read reports that on opening day the VQ was open for five hours before they were all taken).



In total, we’d been awake for 21 hours and had just six hours to sleep in order to be up for the next day. Good luck, us!

 

[ThreeBoyMama]

Wow, that was a lonnnng day! Glad you managed to grab your chicken tenders just in the nick of time

 

[footballmouse]

 

[BroadwayHermione5]

Just started following along! What a long travel day (also that second family at Pop after the first night I would’ve given a small complaint to the front desk. The second night I would’ve gone insane. I understand it’s Disney but there is no reason to be that rude).

 

[MamaMouse0920]

Wow! I am exhausted just reading about your travel day, I don't know how you two managed it! Can't wait to read more!

 

[suse66]

Joining in for all the fun! What a jam packed travel day you had!

 

[Mich123]

Enjoying your report! Love all the details!