1 Wedding, 2 weeks, 3 parties, 4 parks - a Jun 11 TR

[Tiggeriffic79]

This is my 1st TR so please be patient . I'm a semi-lurker on these boards, but we had such a wonderful trip I wanted to share.

This trip almost never came, as DH was made redundant not long before we were set to go, but thanks to forward planning, frugal saving and maybe some pixie dust here and there we made it, and boy did we need it.

Our original plans included an on site stay at a value resort and a Disney Fairytale Wedding at Sea Breeze Point, on The Boardwalk with all the trimmings.... but it wasn't going to be. The trip was all paid for, but there was no way our savings could pay for the whole of the wedding... BUT we still got married in a very Disney way.... And you'll just have to read on to see how

The other members of the trip were staying off-site, so the decision was made to stay off-site too. It made better financial sense..... Plus they offered free
breakfast, who can refuse free breakfast?!

We were staying at The Marriott Village SpringHill Suites, Lake Bryant, for two weeks (7 - 21 June). Flying over from the UK, with a total of 8 people, 6 adults and 2 children.

Sooo... Who are 'we'?

Party 1:
Well there's Me! They call me Bee (not my actual name, but they do call me Bee ) I'm a 28 yr old mature student currently studying for my degree in childhood, although prior to this I was a serving member of the British Armed Forces, I was released on a compassionate discharge, but that's a whole other story. I'm the Disney nut in our family, even before having children I owned all
the DVD's and could recite them....and own countless Winnie the Pooh plushes. Talking of Pooh, I have become a little Pooh sized since leaving the forces . This would be my second trip to Orlando, the first when I was an early teen. I don't remember much of that trip, I think my parents squeezed so much in my brain melted. We did it ALL in two short weeks. MK, Epcot, MGM, the 2 water parks (AK wasn't quite ready although was pretty close I think), universal, busch gardens, sea world, nassa, Everglades tour, there was definitely some mall days in there too. Thankfully this trip wasn't so hectic..... It was just Disney all the way!!

Next up is my wonderful new DH, J.... for ease of reference I'll lengthen it to Jay (again not his real name, but what he gets called). Jay is my sugar daddy at 32 lol he is a trained car body sprayer by trade... but with the economy as it is no-one wants their car re-sprayed or touched up, so jobs are scarce. Following my lead however, Jay is also now a student (starting Sept) to become a mechanical engineer. This man lives and breaths cars..... and not that fussed about Disney, but he humors me. This would be Jay's first time to Disney.

We have two beautiful daughters, the eldest we shall call Ariel (as this is what she kept being called through out the holiday). Ariel is 7, she has a few learning difficulties that effect her behaviour a lot at home..... this trip was a breath of fresh air for Ariel, it was as if she was transformed, freed. This turned out to be HER trip.... and watching her experience, and see and wonder was just well.... Magical

Our youngest can best be described as.... Stitch. So that's what we shall call her. Stitch is 2, and is fairly advanced for her age. She is a mini tornado who goes from playful pet stitch , to angry scary alien stitch just as quickly as the 'real' one. She needs answers to everything, and often isn't satisfied then. Her favourite past time is holding an audience.... through singing/dancing/general talking, she's only quiet when she's sleeping. Stitch is also the spoilt baby of the family, and she knows it.

We had 2 other parties with us.....

Party 2:
My parents. My mum 59, known as Nanni, and my father 64, known as Taid. They live pretty close to us, and our girls are extremely close to them. We see them several times a week, they also helped out a lot with childcare before Jay got made redundant.

Party 3:
MIL and BIL (Jay's family). MIL is around the same age as my parents (Jay doesn't know?!) known as grandma, and BIL 29, Seth. They live approx. 3-4hours away by car and we don't see them often at all.

 

[Tiggeriffic79]

Index

Days 0 and 1 - flight of wonder

Day 2 Part 1 - an interesting journey

 

[OhMari]

Hi,
Welcome to the Trip Report board.

I'll teach you how to index.

Up in the right hand corner is a number. After you complete your post to the thread, go to that number and click on it. Then copy the URL and come back to the 2nd post and press edit. Then you can copy it to the 2 post of your thread. To change the URL from the hodpodge of symbols and letters, before you paste and link, hyper-link the code and give it a name.

Can't wait to read your TR.

OhMari

 

[Tiggeriffic79]

Hi,
Welcome to the Trip Report board.

I'll teach you how to index.

Up in the right hand corner is a number. After you complete your post to the thread, go to that number and click on it. Then copy the URL and come back to the 2nd post and press edit. Then you can copy it to the 2 post of your thread. To change the URL from the hodpodge of symbols and letters, before you paste and link, hyper-link the code and give it a name.

Can't wait to read your TR.

OhMari

Yaay my first reader thanks for the advice about the indexing, I shall attempt it now

edit: it worked thank you

 

[Tiggeriffic79]

Day 0 - Monday June 6

********** Warning **********
The following post is a little dull... But it's all part of the journey, and at the time it was exiting lol

We live approx. 2 hours from the airport by car and needed to be at the airport at 6am on the Tuesday morning, which would have meant leaving home pretty early to allow time to pack the car, and then park the car at the airport. Because of this we decided to stay in a hotel the night before. So we got one more day of holiday :cheer: Having left our dogs with their sitters in the morning, We left our home town at lunch time. we had 4 adults 2 children, 5 large suitcases and 6 pieces of hand luggage to squeeze into my parents car.... No mean feat I can tell you. We had to borrow a trailer for the suitcases :/

The journey was uneventful.... and we arrived at the airport without any delays.

We'd decided to do day before check-in, which went without a hitch. Found our hotel, and settled down for the evening. I think we had a Pizza Hut for dinner.

Pretty boring humdrum day.... But at least we were that bit closer to Disney.

Day 1 - Tuesday June 7

We woke up pretty early, because of our check in the day before we didn't need to be at the airport so early, but we still got there 3 hours before Grandma and Seth joined us the night before too, and so we all travelled to
the car parking together... And then on to the airport.

Check in was pretty basic for us... We literally just had to pick up our boarding cards. We'd also been lucky with seating, each vacation had been booked separately for each party, at different times, in different ta offices, but we were lucky enough to be seated with my parents in 3 rows of 2. MIL and BIL hadn't done day before check in, so didn't get seated with us

We'd brought breakfast with us... So we all went down to the seating of the arrivals lounge to waste some time. This was also the first time the girls were allowed to open up their hand luggage to see what surprises Mummy had packed. (So as to save a little on toys and souvenirs I had been buying a lot of Disney items in the months running up to the holiday.)

In Ariel's she had a plush Bullseye, some Lego's, a Toy Story colouring book and pencils and a new DS game. As well as the toys she already had, woody, Jessie, buzz, Mr Potato head (do you see a theme emerging? ) etc.

In Stitch's she had some Winnie the Pooh Lego Duplo's, an Igglepiggle figurine (from a pre-school programme over here called 'In The Night Garden', her very favourite programme), a tinkerbelle colouring book and pencils and an 'I Spy' game. Again, as well as some pre-existing toys.

After playing around a bit we went through security into the gate area. Our wait in departures wasn't too long and we were soon boarding our 9hr trans-Atlantic flight.

The flight went well, so well that we landed in Orlando Sanford a half hour early. We landed at 12:30pm local time, and were hit by the heat as soon as we stepped off the plane.

Immigration went easily and we sailed through to baggage claim.... Jay and I collected everyone's luggage..... and waited... and waited..... MIL and BIL eventually came through, they'd been some of the last off the plane. There was no sign of my parents however...... I looked back into the immigration area and it seemed empty.... We started to move to a seating area, and my parents emerged. My mother had been stopped and questioned as she didn't match up to the bio-metric data they held for the person on her passport!!! She had not long been to WDW the previous year with my sister and nephew..... Luckily she managed to prove her identity and that she wasn't an illegal alien.... and we were soon teasing her about it as we exited the airport.

We caught our coach transfers to the hotel without too much difficulty, the journey took around an hour. After a couple of drop offs we finally reached our hotel.

We were staying in the SpringHill Suites, along with my parents, but for whatever reason MIL and BIL had booked to stay in the Courtyard. If you've never been to the Marriott Village, it's basically three Marriott hotels (SpringHill Suites, Courtyard and Fairfield Inn) located to form a circle around
a central fountain within a gated compound. Also within the compound is a short pedestrian mall (between the Fairfield and Courtyard) the mall has a small games arcade, gift shop and food hall. Beyond the mall in the parking lot is a Golden Corral and a Bahama Breeze. Shuttle pick-up is also at the edge of the mall.

We checked in and were given a first floor room... right next door to my parents, which over the course of the holiday proved invaluable. The rooms are large and very comfortable with an armchair, couch, flat screen tv,
writing desk and mini kitchen (with fridge and microwave). The bathroom and two queen beds are separated by a slight divide.

We had initially planned to hit the MK for a couple of hours (closing was at 1am), but we all agreed that we were pretty tired and headed to the Golden Corral for dinner, followed by bed. Jay and I had an early start in the morning anyway.....

 

[OhMari]

I didn't know International flights landed in Sanford.

Your kids are so cute. I have 2 red heads and 2 blonds.

Glad you figured out my directions. I am horrible at giving directions. I know what I want to say, but I have a hard time typing it out correctly.

 

[IheartDDuck]

I'm joining!

What cuties you have! Ariel's hair is just beautiful.

Can't wait to hear more.

 

[Tiggeriffic79]

I didn't know International flights landed in Sanford.

Your kids are so cute. I have 2 red heads and 2 blonds.

Glad you figured out my directions. I am horrible at giving directions. I know what I want to say, but I have a hard time typing it out correctly.

I don't think there are many flights in and out, but it seems to be the only one our tour operator flys to.

Thank you, they are pretty cute. Do you find your blondes have a worse temper than the red? (quashing the flamey red head temper theory) our blondy definitely has the worst temper of the 2.

Your directions were great.... Thank you again

I'm joining!

What cuties you have! Ariel's hair is just beautiful.

Can't wait to hear more.

Yaay. Welcome along

Thank you, she does have lovely hair and had comments all vacation

 

[Tiggeriffic79]

Day 2 Part 1 Wednesday 8 June

Today was and exiting day for two reasons........ You'll just have to read won't you

As I said in my last instalment Jay and I had to be up and out early, we had a very important date and we couldn't be late

Thankfully breakfast serving began at 6.30am and we were there at that time. I'd arranged the night before for the girls to have breakfast with my parents, so at 6.30am all I had to do was knock their door and hand them over, Nanni would dress them and was also going to take them to the pool in our absence.

Breakfast at the Suites is great. It's an all you can eat buffet with plenty of juices, coffee, tea, milk, fruit, bagels, cereals, bread for toast, yoghurts, waffle irons to make your own waffles with syrup, muffins and there was also 2 daily hot options (sausage meat, eggs, hash etc).

We quickly ate our choices and were ready and waiting for our 7.15am pick-up by 7am. Luckily our town car driver was already outside and we were soon on our way to our destination.

I'd booked the town car before leaving the UK via the Mears website and pre-paid $46 for a return journey at booking. I remember thinking at the time it seemed to be good value for the distance..... Yeah ... Around 5-10 minutes into our journey the driver starts getting a bit antsy and starts muttering to her self... She starts telling us that the journey should cost $40-$50 ..... We both looked at each other puzzled, and told her thats what we had paid..... She seemed relieved by this and you could see a weight lifting... She then asked us to remind her to give us her card for the return journey when we were ready..... Ummmm we've already booked a return time and paid..... Que the return of the weight, she was straight on her phone and was getting politely agitated with 'the office'. We started to feel a little un-comfortable too. It turns out that at booking Mears had quoted the price of a single journey for a return journey... We were a little panicked as we only had $10 on us.... Thankfully Mears assured her that they would honour their mistake, and pay her the difference. (her fare read $23, so they covered the remaining $23) Phew.... (we tipped her our $10)

Panic over we reached our destination......

The Osceola County Courthouse.... We were going to get our marriage licence The courthouse didn't open until 8am and I think we were allowed through the doors before then. We got our licence fairly quickly and were out of the courthouse before 8.30, our pick-up wasn't until 9.30am so we went to sit in the really pretty tree filled courtyard and got a little giddy and exited. There are three courthouses surrounding the courtyard and each was soooo pretty, the hour went pretty quick.

Our journey back wasn't very eventful.... In fact the (different) driver didn't
utter two words to us until just before we got back and she almost got lost It seems she had been given the other half of our pre-paid fare, and her only comment was 'That's a low fare for the distance' We were back by 10am, which was ideal as the last morning shuttle left at 10.15am.

The Village offers 12 seater shuttles buses to each of the parks, excluding the 2 water parks and DTD. They have three in the morning, 8.15am, 9.15am and 10.15am and the return shuttles run every hour from 6pm - 11pm (exact times depended on park... Epcot return shuttles went at xx.45, MK xx.15 etc etc.). I think usually there is a cost involved, but they were included in our holiday package for free. The drivers were excellent and really got to know you, by the end Ariel and one particular driver growled like lions and high fiver each time they saw each other

We met up with the rest and made our way to the shuttle.... Where would we go first?


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I'll break there as the next bit has lotssssssssss of photos and it's 11pm here.