Trip Report Absolutely Magical Honeymoon! (19/9 - 3/10)

I can finally begin writing this report!

We've got lots of great moments to come, tears, surprises, 'being chosen' and fantastic food. I hope you join us! Let me know if you have any questions at all.

Here is the pre-trip for anyone needing to know the details.

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Leaving day! 19th September

We'd been off for a couple of days already from work so we fortunately had time to prepare ourselves, I was already half packed and had been for a week so when we woke up early morning, 4am prior to leaving i was in a good place. Kelly however, was not. She had lots to pack. We'd already dropped our house rabbit (Ralph, named after Wreck it Ralph!) a couple days before so this morning was plain sailing for me. Although i always hated that feeling of leaving the flat for the final time, why do we convince ourselves we left something turned on or haven't packed something?!

The journey to our friends house was about an hour and we were able to see her before she went to work, which was a nice final touch. She was kind enough to let us park at her house for the two weeks! Saving us the EXPENSIVE cost of airport parking

This would Kelly's first time on a flight outside of Europe so she wasn't sure how she would find such a long flight. I had my Nintendo Switch in hand and had already planned my movies. After some brief turbulence the flight was pretty straightforward, though neither of us got much sleep.

Here's a couple of us catching each other out on the flight...

REVENGE:

We arrived at MCO roughly 3pm, which we thought was quite a tired looking airport! Not how the London ones look... anyway, and there was practically no queue for the MDE! The first thing that hit us, and quite literally, was the humidity. We stepped outside and onto the coach and that brief moment alone was an eye-opener!

Note: I was also very, very paranoid about getting prickly heat on this trip. I'd had it a couple of times in recent years, one of them basically made me a nightmare to be around and i basically ruined the second half of the holiday because of the pain and how uncomfortable i was.

However, i'd been taking my tablets and this time travelled with allergy specific lotion spray (Spoiler, it worked and it was absolutely brilliant!)

We were the first stop on our MDE, score!

The feeling when you see the sign for the first time, is just brilliant. This was my first time since being a kid, i only remember certain things - first time for Kelly and it was just special.

I don't want to make these posts too long, it might prove difficult reading and this is my first report! So once we arrived at Old Key West, were greeted and welcomed home we retired to our newly refurbished room before a lovely meal to finish the day at Olivia's.

I had the Caesar salad and the slow cooked prime rib! Picture below. Yes it really was that big, my first experience of 'portion size'! The veg poking out at the bottom like that makes me laugh!

And that was that for our first day and we finish this first part with our first resort entry photo...

Tomorrow, Magic Kingdom!!

 

[officialtom]

Thank you for formatting the dates properly!!

Hope you enjoyed OKW. We stayed there 3 years ago and really liked how quiet it was.

 

[SlumanBee]

Thank you for formatting the dates properly!!

Hope you enjoyed OKW. We stayed there 3 years ago and really liked how quiet it was.

Hi Tom!

We absolutely loved OKW during our stay - perfect for us and gave our honeymoon a great balance. Lots of refurbed rooms now!

 

[Rista1313]

Can't wait to read all about your trip!

 

[LittleTuna12]

Looking forward to reading your report!

 

[SlumanBee]

I've realised it's been a few days and at this rate will finish this in 2019!

Day Two: Magic Kingdom

Fortunately, we had no issues with jetlag the following morning! Result!

We were located in building 56 at OKW and the bus stop was right outside. We caught an early bus and made our way to Magic Kingdom. I spent the whole time once we arrived looking at Kel’s face and how she was reacting. It was more magical than I remember. It was very easy getting in and our first look at the castle was just incredible.

We decided to queue outside Adventureland as we had fastpasses for Peter Pan at 9.40, so I calculated we had time for two rides before then! So we settled on a couple of busy ones. Pirates of the Caribbean and Thunder Mountain because they were so close together. Pirates was decent and a nice easy start to the day as was Big Thunder Mountain. Peter Pan took me by surprise actually, we both really enjoyed how colourful it was and the bit where you go over London, was really special. It looked fantastic.

I really didn't anticipate the camera on this one...

Crystal Palace

We had a very late breakfast booked in at the Crystal Palace (how beautiful does it look) with Pooh and friends, our first of a few character meals – something I had been looking forward to! Kelly’s favourite is Pooh bear so that was really special. Here’s one of us…

The food was fine, nothing special and was our first use of the DDP but I loved the building and the character interactions were just brilliant. We were also collecting some autographs and when Tigger came over I realised I didn’t have the page ready, I went to open the book…and he wouldn’t let me. Like, he literally slammed it shut. I thought it was a mistake and tried again and still he wouldn’t let me! He then swiped the pen, turned round and signed the front of the book . Kelly’s face was an absolute picture! It was hilarious and so in character of Tigger being a nuisance. He stole the show!

After breakfast we had our Fastpass for Splash Mountain, one of my favourite rides from memory. And it did not disappoint. We caught the festival of fantasy parade which was great because we saw a few characters you can’t meet or see (to my knowledge) so just seeing them involved was a bonus. At this point we did cancel our later FP for SDMT, the only FP we had for it (this comes up later and was a bad mistake…) We also had a Mickey Ice Cream Sandwich here, how good are they?!

We then went on It’s a Small World, Buzz (I won and will go on to win every shooting game during the two weeks!) and agreed we were feeling it a bit so went home for a mid-afternoon nap with plans to return for the show in the evening…

We arrived back at MK and had a QS dinner Columbia Harbor House which was really nice and just what we needed (although we didn't like the crisps/chips thing all the parks did, that felt pretty cheap) this was a bit of a rush moment as the sun set. Just as we left we heard the show starting and expertly made our way through the crowds to our hopeful spot.

Happily Ever After absolutely blew my mind. I knew the type of thing to expect but it just looked and sounded unbelievable. Our faces must have lit up in the glow of fireworks soaring overhead. We even got a tangled moment in there with the lanterns, our favourite Disney song and as me and Kel held hands on Main Street I looked at her and realised she was crying. She was absolutely absorbing every moment and the lights illuminated the tears on her cheeks. It absolutely got her and was an emotional moment for us both actually. We couldn’t talk about anything else on the bus ride back and we were both absolutely blown away by our first day at Magic Kingdom.

Kel took this amazing photo at MK and i wanted to share it. Tomorrow AK.

 

[slipperalwaysfits]

Following along! What a wonderful way to honeymoon! Glad you had a fantastic first day!

 

[SlumanBee]

Animal Kingdom! - 21st September, 2018

Opening this day with a lovely photo that Kelly took on one of the bridges. Lots of photos here! INCOMING

So, when I wrote out the plans we weren’t actually going to do Flight of Passage here, I had managed to get two fast passes for later on in our trip. However, Kel had become all excited about FOP and so I agreed that we could rope drop and just queue up. We both decided we were happy to do that.

The bus gods were in our favour and we made it just as the park opened. The queue was incredible for that time of day considering how long it had been open. However I knew what to expect and told Kel we would be in for a wait, we both didn’t care, I’d been studying queue time apps for weeks…

It was incredibly humid at AK, as we would find out it always was so we treated ourselves to an early morning mickey ice cream sandwich. This would go on to be one of our favourite snacks! It was absolutely delicious.

Pandora is beautiful and an amazing addition to animal kingdom, you’d think it had been there for many, many years.

Onto the main event. Where do you start with Flight of Passage? The ride is absolutely incredible. We waited a bit over an hour and needless to say it was worth the wait. I don’t want to spoil anything but the build-up was great and is a good way to move people from the queue and doing something before the actual ride. The ride itself is really special. I was blown away.

We had our Safari FP that morning too, and got to see lots of different animals – as you’d expect. It's a good length and you get plenty of photo opportunities. However the ride was incredibly bumpy and I definitely enjoyed the areas where the jeep was stationary!

We then went on Dinosaur, or as I remember it ‘Countdown to Extinction’ – there’s a famous family picture from my first experience on this ride where my Mum basically was hidden from the photo. She was as far down as the seat would allow her. Luckily with our FP, the queue was very short and we were in! They waved us goodbye, the cart went to move and then – boom. The power was off. All the lights went out and we were stuck! In the next 15-20 minutes they tried 3 times to restore power and the running of the ride. Eventually we were back underway! (We’d later get stuck during a ride in Universal and not an old ride either…) The ride is quite dated but the dinosaurs still look great to me, just a really fun ride. Kel's face here really cracks me up!

Tusker House was our lunch booking and bringing with it, more Disney characters! The food here was good, buffet based and a prawn curry option was particularly tasty . We had a great time interacting with the characters and made friends with a Mexican family next to us – all taking photos for each other. We loved it. From this point on every meet and greet was obsessed with Kel’s wedding ring, Mickey doing it first here…

River Rapids was our next stop but the queue time was definitely wrong, and then some of the queue was getting frustrated with lots of FP people getting in and we weren't moving. This was a bit of a shame, and actually - wasn't a big fan of the rapids! (Especially when we later got to compare them to Universal!)

We had decided to go back after our final fast pass of the day, River Journey. Queue time with Fastpass was less than twenty minutes and we flew on. The colours are fantastic and it really felt alive, I loved the leaves overhead that you could see animal shadows. The animatronic was amazing and definitely the best I’ve seen to date. I wouldn’t like to queue like FOP for this but it finished our day nicely.

On the way out we had a chance to meet with Timone, and so the trend of wedding ring appreciation continued!

I hope you'll agree it is a brilliant photo!