Preface:
Who: Laurence (me, myself and I), Gaëtan (my towering above me half-brother) and Henk (a good friend of us/WDW deal searcher/...)
When: 1 August 2022 - 16 August 2022
Where: August 1st -> Hampton inn Hotels Orlando// August 2nd - August 12th -> CBR // August 12th - August 15th -> AirBnB.
Why: Like many of us "Revenge travel" might be a good wording. We have been planning this trip since 2019 one year after my first visit to WDW. Of course C-XIX has been a pain in the but since a couple of months, we Belgians, are again welcome in the Most Magical place on earth (for us Magicians)!
To note: Probably will use dates as dd/mm/yyyy and other metric specialties!
Another note: I am in no way a pro in photography (I leave this up to other members here). All photos are or from my camera roll or slightly edited by Henk on his phone.
DAY minus 7 - end of July 2022
I don't think I need to tell anyone here on the forum how excited we were to FINALLY travel to WDW let alone my brother who by any means had not traveled by plane since approx. 12 years ago). I received daily text messages, mostly in capslock, going from : "ARE WE THERE YET"; "DO I NEED 12 T-SHIRTS???" to "Can I borrow you toothpaste on holiday?". As I am the big sister (Gaetan is 19 and I way past 33 and 6 months), he regularly texted me for for a variety of things that for me sometimes make zero sense or 100% sense
BUT.. (insert drama music)
European airlines would not be European airlines if our first flight from Dusseldorf to Frankfurt would not be cancelled 1 week before departure. I was already scanning the Dusseldorf Airport website for quite a while because I read everywhere that airlines were cancelling flights just to cut-back on the costs.. Came to my surprise (not) that yes, our local flight was cancelled and we needed to take the train from Dusseldorf to Frankfurt.
All fine by me, meaning that the chances of losing our luggage during the transfer would now be impossible or at least minimalized to a human (involuntary) mistake! Halleluja! We received our confirmations that instead of boarding our first flight at 9 AM we now should take the train at 9.08 AM.
DAY 0 - 01/08/2022
As Anna would say "it's Coronation day!!" for me it was a night with little sleep, a room that was just to hot to fall asleep in and mindless scrolling on Tik-Tok hoping that at some point, I would fall asleep but alas with little to no sleep but full of adrenaline, I rose from the bed 30 minutes before the alarm was supposed to go off. Welcome to 4 AM Laurence! Wakey Wakey!
I got dressed, prepared some breakfast because even though my brother will only rise from his beauty sleep 30 min before departure (teenagers..), I knew he would be hungry by the moment he graces himself in the car for the drive to Dusseldorf. Small sidenote: Gaëtan (and Henk), by my opinion, have a bottomless stomachs. Gaëtan could have eaten all the sandwiches (6 in total) that I prepared but I snagged two before the Teenager Tornado passed.
Here is us, at 5.25 AM waiting for Henk to pick us up from the apartment my Mom and I live in:
Yes, I look like a minion next to him and this is also the plain truth. The boy is towering above me! As we also read in the newspapers that we should make sure that our plain black/brown suitcases are "noticeable", I added some fluorescent stickers on our suitcases and went to a local Samsonite store to pick up personalized name tags. We DID not look tired even though I only slept maybe 2/3 hours?
We, off camera, weighted our suitcases (19 KG and 20 KG) and we were off to our pick-up point where Henk was picking us up!
Driving to Dusseldorf was uneventful, light rain but the music was full on Disney. Gaëtan and that point was already past his 4 sandwiches with local cheese and fast asleep (again)...
He woke just in time to board the train to Dusseldorf:
Ha that sweater will be long gone by the time we hit Orlando. Train ride was uneventful but we passed time in already looking at the MDE app and contemplating what we would be doing in 10 hours from now!
All well arrived in Frankfurt and what I feared and read in the newspapers of calamities at check-in, Border control, etc. etc. None if was present the day we flew to Orlando! We were passed check-in/security/passport control/second control all in 30 minutes. Meaning we largely over estimated our time but OK, better this than running for our flight (btw: I don't run, for nothing... not even rope-drop!)
Given the amount of bags of Minnie visible on this picture you could already expect a full flight to Orlando. We sat ourselves at the gate 2 hours before departure given that the Frankfurt Airport does not offer that much entertainment on their international gates. I bought some Dorito's and a Coke zero and installed myself next to the other boys. Henk was taking a small nap and Gaëtan and I shared the bag of chips. 30 minutes before boarding the crew announced that the plane was still being cleaned and we would depart with an hour delay. No biggie, all fine as long as you don't cancel our flight last minute, I really could not care less. This day was already a no-park day so we did not had anything to lose.
Final Departure: 3 PM
Henk did us a superb favor by checking us in on the last row on the left side of the airplane giving Gaëtan enough space to stretch his legs. Timer on the screen mentioned 10 hours- to MCO.
Flight was uneventful, I watched 3 movies (Gucci thing movie, re-watched Casanova (absolutely LOVE this Movie) and The Eyes of Tammy Faye). The first 7 hours flew by but we didn't care about the 10 hours, we were so excited that we kept ourselves busy. Didn't take a picture of the meals on board but they were on-par with what to expect on a long haul flight. Had a pasta dish (penne with tomato saus), small salad, piece of bread and a dessert but all very tasteful. Did not order any alcohol but stayed on my go to drink (coke zero).
The 10 hours literally flew by and by the last 20 minutes, Gaëtan was also on the right side of the plane to see the launching pad of NASA. His first remark of the Orlando area was also that there was a lot of green flora and a lot of lakes
!
Now, seated at the back is all fun and nice for leg space and a quick bathroom break BUT if you want to get to your destination and pass the border control, being on row 56 does not play in your advantage
. All that efficiency at the German airport felt like a dream when waiting for over an hour in a semi-damp queue waiting to do a full check on our Belgian Background.
What I found strange is that, the Officer pre-sorting the queue towards the different border check booths, told us that our whole party could go as one towards a control booth yet the officer there would "make an exception" of treating us as one household given that we do not live on the same address. Maybe this is just me but we assumed that as we all are on one ESTA, we would also be "checked" as one group. Anyway, he asked us our whereabouts, took my fingerprints, the ones from Gaëtan (not those from Henk) and we were good to go! And good news, my Airtag also mentioned that 'BagT Laurence" was also spotted at MCO Airport. Halleluja!
We left the moment when we could park hop and went to Epcot. My godchild was bumped she couldn’t ride Guardians a third time because the virtual queues were (off course) already closed for that day.
.. so far my morning attempt to eat a "healthy" thing 
