Hey everyone I thought i would get started on my first ever Trip Report whilst it's all still fresh in my head, and before i get crazy busy with uni work( i start teacher training for post compulsory education on Wednesday, eeek!)
I suppose i should start with a whose who this trip is slightly different than usual for me, I usually come with my family but its just me (Mel) and my fiance (Matty) (I can't get used to typing that yet!) this is my 5th trip and Matty's second. Believe it or not this is my first trip actually staying on site
. I have been dying to do it for years and have been counting down since we booked last November.
Our trip dates were 06/09/14-20/09/14 and we stayed at the Art of Animation resort in the little mermaid section, i was far too excited about this the little mermaid was one of my favourites when i was a kid. we also decided to go with the dining plan. Being from the UK we are lucky to be able to get the 14 day ultimate tickets for quite a reasonable price, so naturally we had to have two of those.
so I think that's all the background info, hope you all enjoy my TR
day one
We were up at 6AM to get to Manchester Airport, luckily it's only like a 20 min trip from where we live, don't ask me how, but I actually slept well that NEVER happens the night before I go on holiday. It must have been all the rushing around getting everything ready for both the holiday and going back to University. We had a pretty uneventful time getting through security, as there have been some issues with increased wait times with the new security measures in place in the UK (my folks were at the same airport heading to Greece the same day, and they queued outside the Airport it was that bad)
We flew with Thomas Cook this year it worked out like £400 cheaper than flying with virgin so it was a no brainer really, plus we have noticed a drop in standards with virgin atlantic since we first flew with them. overall we were glad we did, their new planes actually have legroom! Matty is pretty tall so he usually takes my legroom as well as his own!
The only problem is there was very little to watch or listen to and if you wanted the premium channels you had to pay, that was kind of stingy but not the end of the world.
a big bonus for me was the food was actually edible! being a vegetarian/ pescatarian for well over 10 years now i have been served some dreadful and actually unidentifiable options on planes.
after a pretty decent but tiring 9 hour flight we just wanted to get to the hotel to shower and get a change of clothes. we cleared customs/ immigration in record time, those little machine / kiosk things they have installed at MCO have really helped speed things up. Next up was the part that I was a little nervous about. Thomas Cook didn't seem to have a clue about how to get on the magical express from the airport, first we were told we needed to see our rep and get coupons, then we were told we didn't need Coupons but to see them anyway, then a third employee told us to just get straight on the bus, so helpful
turns out we just had to present them with the paperwork and the disney magical express peeps did the rest. I wish we had a picture of us when it was our turn to get on the bus we were just so excited! we loved that officer peabody does the safety announcements on the bus, I literally yelled at the screen when i saw it was him.
when we pulled up at our resort we were just blown away with the look and scale of the place, literally i still can't describe stepping in to the reception for the first time. i just had to pinch myself to check it was real! we picked up our bands( you don't get them posted to you on the UK, or get a choice of color) I was praying mine wasn't pink, i hate pink and always have done, so the thought of having to wear it for two weeks didn't appeal! luckily we both just got grey. we picked up our resort mugs and headed out to find our room.
we were like kids at christmas looking at all the decoration along the way, the lion king section is really cute
When I got to the little mermaid section i was pretty much beside myself. it's so well done. my fiance was worried the resort may look a little too garish or childlike, but it exceeded both our expectations, and mine were pretty high! the garden areas are immaculate.
we were actually in the Ariel section, yay!
and this was the view from our room
It may sound weird, but we preferred this to looking out over the pool it was much more peaceful and private. we also requested the top floor, we live in a middle floor apartment so it was nice to have a break from hearing people above you, or them and their home gym in our neighbours case
we found our room with little difficulty, it was amazing opening the door for the first time, the details in the little mermaid rooms were so cool! i wanted to take home most of it, matty did threaten to check my bags on the way out just in case. like this
or this
It was safe to say i loved the room, and i think i had matty converted. I just couldn't believe we were there! its been kind of a long year with waiting to go back to university, then in February i had a very nasty accident at work which i'm still recovering from, so counting down to this trip has been keeping me sane!
so we had a quick shower and let the folks back home know we had got there safely, then it was time for downtown disney
we headed straight for splitsville, we were starving after the long flight so we got cracking on those dining credits. we ate there last year on our last day and loved it. We had been talking about eating there for ages and it didn't disappoint. I had the margherita pizza and matty had the pulled pork burger, we shared a side of loaded fries( with no bacon) sorry we took no pics of this one, our hunger pangs were just too strong! we also had brownies for dessert. we forgot how large american portions are, so were basically in a food coma by this point.
we had started to look round the shops and then jetlag kicked in big time, so we caught the bus back to the hotel and turned in for the night.
stay tuned for day 2....
I suppose i should start with a whose who this trip is slightly different than usual for me, I usually come with my family but its just me (Mel) and my fiance (Matty) (I can't get used to typing that yet!) this is my 5th trip and Matty's second. Believe it or not this is my first trip actually staying on site
. I have been dying to do it for years and have been counting down since we booked last November.Our trip dates were 06/09/14-20/09/14 and we stayed at the Art of Animation resort in the little mermaid section, i was far too excited about this the little mermaid was one of my favourites when i was a kid. we also decided to go with the dining plan. Being from the UK we are lucky to be able to get the 14 day ultimate tickets for quite a reasonable price, so naturally we had to have two of those
.so I think that's all the background info, hope you all enjoy my TR
day one
We were up at 6AM to get to Manchester Airport, luckily it's only like a 20 min trip from where we live, don't ask me how, but I actually slept well that NEVER happens the night before I go on holiday. It must have been all the rushing around getting everything ready for both the holiday and going back to University. We had a pretty uneventful time getting through security, as there have been some issues with increased wait times with the new security measures in place in the UK (my folks were at the same airport heading to Greece the same day, and they queued outside the Airport it was that bad)
We flew with Thomas Cook this year it worked out like £400 cheaper than flying with virgin so it was a no brainer really, plus we have noticed a drop in standards with virgin atlantic since we first flew with them. overall we were glad we did, their new planes actually have legroom! Matty is pretty tall so he usually takes my legroom as well as his own!
The only problem is there was very little to watch or listen to and if you wanted the premium channels you had to pay, that was kind of stingy but not the end of the world.
a big bonus for me was the food was actually edible! being a vegetarian/ pescatarian for well over 10 years now i have been served some dreadful and actually unidentifiable options on planes.
after a pretty decent but tiring 9 hour flight we just wanted to get to the hotel to shower and get a change of clothes. we cleared customs/ immigration in record time, those little machine / kiosk things they have installed at MCO have really helped speed things up. Next up was the part that I was a little nervous about. Thomas Cook didn't seem to have a clue about how to get on the magical express from the airport, first we were told we needed to see our rep and get coupons, then we were told we didn't need Coupons but to see them anyway, then a third employee told us to just get straight on the bus, so helpful
turns out we just had to present them with the paperwork and the disney magical express peeps did the rest. I wish we had a picture of us when it was our turn to get on the bus we were just so excited! we loved that officer peabody does the safety announcements on the bus, I literally yelled at the screen when i saw it was him
.when we pulled up at our resort we were just blown away with the look and scale of the place, literally i still can't describe stepping in to the reception for the first time. i just had to pinch myself to check it was real! we picked up our bands( you don't get them posted to you on the UK, or get a choice of color) I was praying mine wasn't pink, i hate pink and always have done, so the thought of having to wear it for two weeks didn't appeal! luckily we both just got grey. we picked up our resort mugs and headed out to find our room.
we were like kids at christmas looking at all the decoration along the way, the lion king section is really cute
When I got to the little mermaid section i was pretty much beside myself. it's so well done. my fiance was worried the resort may look a little too garish or childlike, but it exceeded both our expectations, and mine were pretty high! the garden areas are immaculate.
we were actually in the Ariel section, yay!
and this was the view from our room
It may sound weird, but we preferred this to looking out over the pool it was much more peaceful and private. we also requested the top floor, we live in a middle floor apartment so it was nice to have a break from hearing people above you, or them and their home gym in our neighbours case
we found our room with little difficulty, it was amazing opening the door for the first time, the details in the little mermaid rooms were so cool! i wanted to take home most of it, matty did threaten to check my bags on the way out just in case. like this
or this
It was safe to say i loved the room, and i think i had matty converted. I just couldn't believe we were there! its been kind of a long year with waiting to go back to university, then in February i had a very nasty accident at work which i'm still recovering from, so counting down to this trip has been keeping me sane!
so we had a quick shower and let the folks back home know we had got there safely, then it was time for downtown disney
we headed straight for splitsville, we were starving after the long flight so we got cracking on those dining credits
. we ate there last year on our last day and loved it. We had been talking about eating there for ages and it didn't disappoint. I had the margherita pizza and matty had the pulled pork burger, we shared a side of loaded fries( with no bacon) sorry we took no pics of this one, our hunger pangs were just too strong! we also had brownies for dessert. we forgot how large american portions are, so were basically in a food coma by this point.we had started to look round the shops and then jetlag kicked in big time, so we caught the bus back to the hotel and turned in for the night.
stay tuned for day 2....
.
. mains were just ok, the highlights for me were the mac n cheese and the sweet potato fries from the kids menu! we were just finishing up mains when a new family were seated next to us, they were part of a Brazilian tour group that's when things got interesting. Their son kept trying to climb over the safety barrier into living with the land, some of the adults were clearly already loaded, and they would not stay sat down! they kept getting up every 2 seconds so we were trying to eat dessert with butts in our faces thanks to the close proximity of the tables! needless to say we ate up as quickly as we could and got the heck out of there! I think it was the second worst dining experience we ever had at WDW. The food was pretty ho-hum too so we won't be returning!