Lets just do everything... Sept 2015 TR WDW, USO, HHN, CBBR - updated 31/10 Day 6

[BagOLaughs]

Hello everyone!

I had such fun doing my last trip report to Tokyo Disneyland that I decided to do another one for a trip that I've just returned from.

We did a load during this trip including *inhale* all four Disney parks, both Disney water parks, Food and Wine 2015, Universal Studio's, Islands of Adventure and Halloween Horror Nights 2015 all while staying at Cabana Bay Beach Resort... *breathe*

Plus shopping in the premium outlets, Pro Bass Shop and shooting at Oak Ridge Gun Range.

ALSO! A big life changing event happened during this trip! Does that sound like enough? Yes? Good... I love photo heavy reports so expect that from me for the most part.

Jump down to the contents here: Click me for contents

A bit of background for you. On this trip is myself. Rachel. I'm the Disney mad one. I have so much Disney in my house its ridiculous. Even if its subtle most things I own have a tie to Disney. This is me... HI!



I love Disney and I like to collect Disney pins. I like to purchase ones which reflect a trip or are special edition. This trip my goal was to buy a pin from each Disney park which had to have the name of the park on it. I also wanted the special edition pin for the 20th Food and Wine.

However much I love Disney, I admit I do also have a dark side which I got to explore some more this trip as we’d booked tickets for HHN 25.

That’s enough about me now onto my partner in crime. This is Martin.



He isn’t obsessed with Disney like me but he puts up with it. As far as I can understand he actually very much enjoys our trips to WDW but he’d never actually say that. He doesn’t buy very many souvenirs while on holiday but he does eat a copious amount of ice cream.

Trip background.

We booked this trip February 2015 through Virgin Holidays for 14 nights, flying from Gatwick, staying at Cabana Bay Beach Resort with free 14 day Universal/IOA tickets. We booked our Disney tickets in March 2015 before the price hike from Undercover tourist.



We got 4 day park hoppers with the water park fun and more additions. We got these because we really wanted to visit Typhoon Lagoon and buying the addition was cheaper than buying a one day water park ticket. As you can see we got Donald and Goofy.

The final set of tickets we purchased before leaving were our HHN tickets when they were released in August. We had two rush of fear passes as this covered all the HHN dates that we were in Orlando for. Brilliant & very good value for money.

The day we left I was working. My manager kindly allowed me to leave an hour at 4pm early so I arrived back at the flat. Did my final load of packing and dragged our luggage and my boyfriend into the car. We drove the 2 hour drive down to my mum’s and stayed the night there.

The next morning we left my mums house at 7:30am and made our way to Gatwick. Our flight was at 1pm however to get to Gatwick from my mums you must travel along the dreaded M25… dun dun dun. However before we even got onto the M25 my mums Mini decided that it had a problem with the tire sensor… uh oh! We started formulating plans on how Martin and I were going to make it to Gatwick. She could drop us off at Reading and we could get the train… but then I had a brain wave. There were 3 adults and a lot of luggage in a mini. Maybe the tires just needed pumping up.

We pulled over into the garage, pumped up the tires and sure enough everything was perfect after that. Phew!

We got to Gatwick with plenty of time to spare. Checked in our bags (19kg of a 23kg allowance, that will be full of stuff on the way back for sure!) and headed through security. We had a cheeky Nando’s.



We then boarded our plane. It was pretty full but we were so happy to be jetting off again, back to heat, amazing food and amazing sights.

Bye rainy England!



We're off to Orlando!

 

[BagOLaughs]

Contents

• Day 1 - Welcome to Orlando... Did we leave England?
  
• Day 1 - Home for the next 2 weeks
  
• Day 1 - Exploring the Cabana Bay resort

• Day 2 - Its raining so lets do water rides!
  
• Day 2 - Hogsmede and buttery buttery beer
• Day 2 - Diagon alley and I've found my new pet
  
• Day 2 - Universal Studios 2: theme park harder!
• Day 2 - We are a cartoon hero's, oh woh oh
• Day 2 - From Islands to Studio's
• Day 2 - Destroy all humans
• Day 2 - a whole load of Harry Potter photos (I'm not joking)

• Day 3 - Its time for Africa!
  
• Day 3 - Animals, lots and lots of animals
  
• Day 2 - you guessed it more animals (and a surprise)
• Day 3 - more baby animals, awwwww
• Day 3 - just a few more pictures of babies...
• Day 3 - another expedition? thats the 4th one today!
  
• Day 3 - Flights of Wonder
  
• Day 3 - getting wet.
• Day 3 - Hollywood Studios
• Day 3 - Star Wars and Starry Sky's
• Day 3 - Chillin' with my mate Steven
• Day 3 - One man's dream and a huge ice cream!
• Day 3 - Fantasmic!
• Day 3 - the horror... the horror!
• Day 3 - Creepy, spooky fun!

• Day 4 – Saturday Shopping
• Day 4 - Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace
• Day 4 - Jack, Jack, he's our man... er clown... er undead clown?
• Day 4 - everyone say... hell yea Jack!
• Day 4 - The Wizard chainsaw massacre
• Day 4 - An *excellent* end to the evening

• Day 5 - A rootin' Shootin' good time
• Day 5 - A shop for the rootin' shootin' type
• Day 5 - shrimp is the fruit of the sea
• Day 5 - You can boil it, fry it, bake it, BBQ it....
• Day 5 - snooping in the hard rock café

• Day 6 - The day which changed our lives for ever!
• Day 6 - count down to life changing event....
• Day 6 - 7DMT while counting down…
• Day 6 - Grim grinning ghosts on our countdown…
• Day 6 - We need to eat before we get to the countdown's end...
• Day 6 - Character time!
• Day 6 - The life changing event!
• Day 6 – How long did it take to get on the Jungle cruise?!!
• Day 6 - finally takes its toll..

• Day 7 - the morning after the night before
• Day 7 - blood, blood blood...
  

 

[TheMaxRebo]

um, yeah, I'd say that qualifies as a full schedule!

... plus a nice tease of a life changing event to boot!

 

[BagOLaughs]

Day 1 - Welcome to Orlando... Did we leave England?

When I left off from my last post we had just taken off from London Gatwick and the last photo showed a cold and grey sky. Remember that, it will be important in a minute.

It was a good flight although we where hoping to have three seats to ourselves but someone was sat on the aisle seat, darn! I watched 3 movies on this flight - Inside Out, Pitch Perfect 2 and Spy. I'd seen Inside Out at the cinema and it was as amazing as I remember. Pitch Perfect 2 was meh but I'd seen the 1st movie on the flight to Orlando in 2013 so it seemed right to watch it. Spy was so funny! I was laughing to myself and probably getting a couple of strange looks.


We were still on the ground in the photo above (obviously).

Its always sunny up here at 32,000 feet!



Martin's happy because he's been fed. As you can see we were in economy and it was pretty packed!



9 hours later and it was time to land. I'm afraid I don't have many pictures of the airport because well, we were so excited to be in Orlando. When we were coming into land the sky was grey and it was raining.



I was a little disappointed because it looked so much like the sky we'd left behind in the UK. I was very tired however and I hoped that the weather would cheer up a bit for the next two weeks. We landed at 5.05pm.

We boarded the first ride of the holiday, the little monorail and headed to passport control.



We used the self serve kiosks at immigration. Martin got though but I got a big cross through my piece of paper which the kiosk spits out... uh oh. I headed to see the officer. He took my finger prints again and asked a load of questions but then my passport was stamped and I was in. Whoo Hoo!

Next stop to pick up the hire car. I got a company discount with Hertz (I don't work for Hertz but my company uses them for trips) so everything was paid upfront. However the woman was really pushy with trying to get us a bigger car and to pay for a tank of gas upfront. "this car won't be big enough for you" she said... I told her repeatedly that I didn't want the more expensive and bigger car or to pay for the tank upfront and was finally given the keys.

Turns out our car we were given was more than big enough for two adults and two suitcases with loads of room to spare!!! Hello little car friend, you're going to be our form of transport for the next 14 days.



The sharp eyed of you will notice I actually took this photo when we were dropping the car off. The whole holiday I kept saying I must remember to take a photo of the car and it was Martin that reminded me right at the end of the holiday to do it.

I'd brought my phone holder for the car and downloaded some Florida maps for my phone based Sat Nav but it turned out we really didn't need it. The drive to Universal was easy! 20 minutes later we were seeing this sign however you may notice the large amount of cars in front of us.



There was a huge queue down the 439 as everyone was turning into Hollywood way. My heart sank and I was panicking that the traffic into the hotel would always be this bad because of people getting to the park.

As it turned out I need not have worried. The Wednesday we arrived, the check-in girl told us, was a team member preview of Halloween horror nights which is why the traffic was so bad. We didn't have any issues with this road again. In fact we didn't have any issues with traffic at all the entire holiday except this one time. yey!

After about 30 mins of sitting in traffic we saw this!





It was about 7pm by now and the line for check-in was non existent. We checked in and was told we'd been upgraded to a family suite with a kitchenette and living room and also had a pool view room too. I hadn't paid for either of these things so this really made me feel so happy and special after the nightmare in the traffic.

Parking was $12 a day and we were in the Castaway building. We used our room keys to swipe into the car park and we could park right next to our building. I'd requested we be as high as possible and we were on floor 3 which was perfect. This was the view from our room.



Next up - Room Pictures

 

[BagOLaughs]

Day 1 - Home for the next 2 weeks

The room was amazing. The reason we'd chosen Cabana Bay Beach Resort was because of all the positive things written on boards like the Dis, so I had pretty high expectations for this hotel already. It totally blew me away and I can truthfully say I could not find one bad thing to say about this hotel. Not one thing.

First up the view when you enter the room.



Then if you close the door and turn 180° there is the little kitchenette.


The window looks into the living room area. (yes that's a Duffy on the sofa)


Two huge queen beds. These beds were so comfy it was like sleeping on a cloud made of marshmallows.


Our bathroom was split into three and we had two sinks. One was in the vanity area directly in front. The toilet was in a separate room to the left of this sink.

And then the shower and 2nd sink is to the right. Good shower, decent water pressure and hot. I didn't have any issues here.


The toiletries in the bathroom were so CUTE! I loved the retro design of the V05 and zest.



At the end of the bedroom was this little closet area. This was so useful to hide away the suitcases so we could really unpack this holiday.



The information pack was cute and our little key holder was super cute too.



And finally a picture of both of us just to prove we where there!



Next up - exploring the resort and sleep.

 

[BagOLaughs]

Day 1 - exploring the resort

A short post this one but before we went to sleep we decided to explore the resort and I had something to buy.

Here is Martin showing off the Swizzle lounge which is the inside bar opposite the check-in area.


A quick shot of the central tree thingy. Love this. And reception in the background.


A wide shot of the whole of reception with me in it. I was so happy to be finally checked in and enjoying myself.


The thing we'd gone to buy was one of the amazing Cabana Bay Beach Towels. I loved these the minute I saw them online and I knew I had to get one for Martin to replace the old Beach Towel he'd had for years. So a little surprise for him.

Finally one last photo from my camera this time before we headed in to sleep.



Next up - Our 1st day in Islands of Adventure and its raining so why not get drenched on water rides?!

 

[NikkiMouse]

Sounds like a full on trip!

Looking for ideas for our next trip specifically HHN as that's going to be a new one for us. I'm already having nightmares about Freddie!

Cabana Bay Beach Resort looks really nice. Did you get a chance to use the kitchenette?

Love a picture heavy trip report!

 

[BagOLaughs]

Cabana Bay Beach Resort looks really nice. Did you get a chance to use the kitchenette?

Hey Nikki, nice to have you along! We did use the kitchenette most mornings for breakfast. The only bit we didn't use was the coffee machine as neither of us drinks coffee. But we definitely used all the shelve space for our food.

You get given a fridge, coffee maker and microwave. Plastic plates, bowl and cutlery. There is no washing up liquid so we got some from walmart to clean our resort mugs.

Your trip sounds exciting! This year was my 1st time at HHN too and it was absulotely amazing. Probably the 2nd best thing about this trip (the 1st best thing you'll have to wait until day 5 to see)

Good luck planning!

 

[jandlinz]

Joining in. Looks like a fun two weeks!

 

[BagOLaughs]

Joining in. Looks like a fun two weeks!

Oh hi jandlinz! Nice of you to join. It sure was a crazy fun two weeks!

 

[schumigirl]

Hey Rachel........

Nice to see you've made a start on trip report!!

I may miss the Disney parts out though...........lol.......but looking forward to the rest of the trip with Universal. Glad you had such a nice trip and enjoyed CBay.........I know you won't take this personally as I don't like anything about CBay.......but glad you liked it.....lots of folks have only good things to say about it........nice you got an upgrade too.....always good!!

Looking forward to your horror nights experience too.......we loved it this year and thought it was the best one for years

 

[Cando86]

Count me in!!! 14 days, how amazing!

That resort looks fantastic - I'd love to stay over on the dark side one day, haha!

Looking forward to reading more!

 

[JustCor]

Following along. Looks like a lot of fun!

 

[Threeboysandachickie]

Looks like a great arrival day!! Who doesn't love a cheeky Nandos!!!

 

[dixonsontour]

Great start and great upgrade

 

[BagOLaughs]

I thought I'd replied to everyone but I can't see my posts anymore so I'll do it again.

um, yeah, I'd say that qualifies as a full schedule!

... plus a nice tease of a life changing event to boot!

Hey MaxRebo thanks for following along. It sure was a busy schedule and probably a bit too much. But it was all amazing!

Count me in!!! 14 days, how amazing!

That resort looks fantastic - I'd love to stay over on the dark side one day, haha!

Looking forward to reading more!

Thanks very much Cando, its nice to have you along. Resort was amazing and I'd recommend it. It was really easy drive to get to Disney which you'll see in a later post.

Following along. Looks like a lot of fun!

Welcome JustCor, its lovely to have you!

Looks like a great arrival day!! Who doesn't love a cheeky Nandos!!!

Hello, Threeboysandachickie (great user name, are you the chickie?) its great to have you follow along. The whole travel part of the trip was pretty good except that last 1/2 mile to Universal. I really dislike traffic.

Great start and great upgrade

Thank you very much dixonstour. Welcome!

Hey Rachel........

Nice to see you've made a start on trip report!!

I may miss the Disney parts out though...........lol.......but looking forward to the rest of the trip with Universal. Glad you had such a nice trip and enjoyed CBay.........I know you won't take this personally as I don't like anything about CBay.......but glad you liked it.....lots of folks have only good things to say about it........nice you got an upgrade too.....always good!!

Looking forward to your horror nights experience too.......we loved it this year and thought it was the best one for years

Haha I've got no issues with you skipping out on the Disney. There will be a lot of Universal content to read don't worry and the contents will be clearly labelled

Why didn't you like CBBR? Each to their own I say but I'm interested as to why it doesn't tickle your fancy. Is it the theme, layout or something else?

 

[schumigirl]

Haha I've got no issues with you skipping out on the Disney. There will be a lot of Universal content to read don't worry and the contents will be clearly labelled

Why didn't you like CBBR? Each to their own I say but I'm interested as to why it doesn't tickle your fancy. Is it the theme, layout or something else?

At the risk of being lambasted by fans of the place.........and I do agree....each to their own.....I think it reminds me of a British 70`s senior school design, minus the colour of course, Butlins holiday camp....ala stalag 17 and its just too brash and tacky (sorry )....so just about everything.....lol....... I also don't like PBH if that makes a difference........It`s pretty.......but, I always feel it`s a kinda lights are on but no-one`s home type of place.

But I know lot`s of folk that love it and had a really good time there.......but it`s not for me. It`s amazing how some folk take it personally when you say you don`t like something.......I had one woman almost recoil in horror in the parks when she asked when we were moving to Disney (they had one night at CB) I told her we had no interest in Disney, hadn`t gone for years and had no intention of going back......lol.......again, each to their own. She didn`t get it........Not knocking Disney, just not interested in it. Universal for us........

But looking forward to reading all about it Rachel.........honest

 

[BagOLaughs]

But I know lot`s of folk that love it and had a really good time there.......but it`s not for me. It`s amazing how some folk take it personally when you say you don`t like something.......I had one woman almost recoil in horror in the parks when she asked when we were moving to Disney (they had one night at CB) I told her we had no interest in Disney, hadn`t gone for years and had no intention of going back......lol.......again, each to their own. She didn`t get it........Not knocking Disney, just not interested in it. Universal for us........

bwahaha! That story made me laugh so hard. I swear people act in such strange ways sometimes. Orlando is massive and there is so much to do, this is one of the reasons I love it so much.

 

[livingthedream]

What I wouldn't give to have 14 days of holidays in a row! That sounds like heaven!

I'm along for the ride, and love your pics so far! Keep up the good work!

 

[BagOLaughs]

What I wouldn't give to have 14 days of holidays in a row! That sounds like heaven!

I'm along for the ride, and love your pics so far! Keep up the good work!

Hey livingthedream thanks for following along. 14 days is bliss I must admit. I once did a 7 night trip to Orlando but it was too short. By the time we'd got our bodies into USA time it was time to leave.