15 day May trip. 3 generations recuperate at the Swan. Updated 08/01

[StevePWales]

Hi everyone,

I've been lurking on DIS and many of the other WDW planning sites for years - and have finally decided I should stop lurking and start contributing.
I'm still pretty new to the format and conventions of these trip reports - so please shout at me if I miss something out !


The Cast
I believe it is traditional to say a little about the travellers at the start of the report - so who are we ?

I am a 'recently turned 40' (still can't get used to that age not starting with a 3) father of two girls. We live in South Wales in the UK. Hopefully, by the magic of the internet, a picture of us will appear here :

Until recently I was a product manager for a software company, but I've now given that up to look after my girls full time.

My girls are twins, who are unsurprisingly both 6 ("and a half" if you ask them). They are both bright and mature for their age, with completely different personalities. DD1 (on the right in the photo) is 30 minutes older, serious, contemplative, fun, and not at all fond of any rides involving darkness (although she is mellowing in her old age).
DD2 likes playing the younger sibling, and is silly, bouncy and fearless when it comes to rides. Her favourite ride is Tower of Terror, and she enjoyed Space Mountain far more than her father.

There's a very important person sadly missing from this trip report. My beloved wife, and devoted mother to my girls, died in March this year after a brave 3 year battle with breast cancer. My wife was a primary school teacher, who loved teaching her classes of 8 year olds, and has given our kids a fantastic start in life by unleashing her educational energies on them when she was unable to work due to illness.

She was the one who uncovered my suppressed love for all things Disney after convincing me to take us all to Disneyland Paris. We then spent 14 wonderful nights in Wilderness Lodge 2 years ago, during a period when her illness was apparently under control.

The last two years have been tough for the family, and this vacation was intended to be a part of the healing process for the kids (and myself). Despite all that had happened over the previous months we had a wonderful time, albeit tinged with sadness for myself, and came back home ready to face the future.

My original plan was for just myself and the children to travel, but as I planned the trip I began to worry about how this would work. I remembered all the rides that sat two per seat, and worried about how the girls would cope if I could not sit with them on some of the rides. There were also the usual fears about losing the kids in the parks - only multiplied because I had never travelled with the children before without my wife being there to help keep an eye on them.

After much deliberation I decided to ask my father to come with us. He was super-excited (possibly more than the kids), and very glad to be able to help. I had to make it clear to him that we would need some time to ourselves during the trip, and things worked out very well. He is a very young 'late 60s', and loves his grand-daughters greatly.

I think that completes the cast of characters, so now onto the script/plan........

 

[Plum85]

I can't wait to hear about your trip. So sorry for your loss.

 

[StevePWales]

The Script (aka. the plan)

I decided to go for 15 nights this trip, rather than the regular 14. This would allow us to make full use of our 14 day ultimate disney tickets.
I believe these tickets are only available in the UK, and give unlimited access to all the disney parks, plus the water parks and disney quest - and probably other stuff that we didn't use too.
They work out much better value than the 'magic your way' tickets that we could get in the US.
I believe they are designed to fit better with the standard european vacation of 14 nights.

We would be flying British Airways from London Gatwick to MCO.
For our last trip we flew Virgin Atlantic, and actually arrived into Miami as it worked out far cheaper to do this and then drive up with a stopover than flying direct.
I quite enjoyed the mini-road trip last time, but was glad that we would not have the extra logistical hassle this time around.

Dates were 19th May 2012 to 3rd June 2012. These were chosen to allow us to see the end of Flower and Garden, and take in Star Wars weekends.

I had originally planned to stay off property for this trip.
We stayed in Wilderness Lodge for our previous visit, and absolutely loved it - but the price adds up very quickly when you are planning to stay for 15 nights !

I had actually booked the Buena Vista palace at Downtown Disney, but ended up cancelling this as I decided it was worth paying a bit more and staying at....

...The WDW Swan. I had never been attracted to this hotel before, as previously we really enjoyed being close to Magic Kingdom.
We were surprised last trip how much the kids enjoyed Epcot and HS, and the Swan is available for a significantly lower price than the other 'deluxes'.

I had arranged a few advanced dining reservations, but the plan was to eat out of the park more in order to reduce costs.
We benefited from the free disney dining plan for our last trip, but this time I would be paying myself - and those menus suddenly looked a lot pricier.


I had come up with an initial itinerary, using the excellent crowd calendar from EasyWDW.
The beauty of staying for 15 nights is that you can be pretty flexible about what to do on each day, so if you get burnout after a few days (which we did) then it's ok to throw the plan away and make it up as you go along.

Anyway, enough of the preamble, don't want to give away all of the excitement.

On to the performance....

 

[StevePWales]

And, forgot to say Thanks Plum85 for joining the fun.

 

[ShortStuff]

Looking forward to your adventures!! Your girls are adorable!! I am so sorry for your loss and I hope you got some pixie dust along the way, to help with the healing!

Yea for Grandpa going with you!! I would think that would have been wonderful for all of you!

Looking forward to more!m

 

[StevePWales]

Welcome ShortStuff.
Grandpa is still talking about the vacation - think he would be taking grandma there this summer if she could stand the long flight and the heat !

 

[StevePWales]

Day 1

This was looking like being a very long day of travelling, but I was hoping all the excitement of the children would get us through without too much exhaustion.
We live in South Wales, so we had around a 3 hour drive to get to London Gatwick airport for our early afternoon flight.
After an early start, and a quick detour to pick up Grandad, who lives in the same village as us, we hit the road.
The traffic was kind to us and we arrived at the airport in plenty of time. Dropped off the car at the valet parking (highly recommended by the way if you are flying from LGW) and were checked in and through security with about 90 m inutes to spare before departure.
Quick meal of sushi and sandwiches and in what seemed like no time we were ready to head to our gate and board.

(Excuse the quality of some of these photos by the way. I normally lug my DSLR around, but didn't want to dig it out of the backpack at the airport - so the cellphone had to suffice.)

We were flying on a 777 rather than a 747 this time - can't say it made much difference.

British Airways were not quite the same as Virgin. There was nothing particularly bad, just that Virgin did everything that little bit better.

30 minutes into the flight and the girls are writing postcards to their friends back home already.
DD1's postcard ends "It was a long, hot ,tiring trip" in this photo - and she is spot on.
The flight seemed far longer than I remember it last time. The in-flight entertainment was not as good, and both girls seemed to be a little unwell with high temperatures and lots of trips to the restroom.
As ever the girls were not able to sleep on the flight - although they did both get very sleepy about 15 minutes before landing !

The time difference meant that by the time we were landing our bodyclock was telling us that is was 11pm, well past the kids usual bedtime.
The excitement was keeping us going for now - just have to hope we get a smooth trip through customs and immigration.........

Which of course we didn't. I suppose it could have been worse, we had a wait of around an hour to get through immigration, and this was only leavened slightly by a minor celebrity spot in the line in front of us (Mikael Silvestre, ex Manchester United player on vacation with his family).
Another 30 minutes spent waiting for grandad to pick up his rental car (we had Budget Fastbreak so didn't need to wait).
We finally got the girls into our rental car, a GMC Terrain - which was pretty similar to the Jeep Cherokee we had expected, at 1am by our bodyclock - or 8pm Orlando time.

I managed to make a few wrong turns on the drive from MCo to the Swan, despite our GPS unit with US maps.
Probably a combination of being super-tired and getting used to the new car.
The girls were asleep within 5 minutes of getting in the car, and they took a lot of rousing once we arrived at the Swan around 45 minutes later.
We valet parked the car (another expense that quickly adds up over the course of a 15 night stay) and checked in.
We finally arrived in our room, and got the girls into bed (and asleep about 30 seconds later) at about 2:30am bodyclock or 9:30pm ET

I unpacked, as I was excited to finally be in Florida, before collapsing about 3:30am (bodyclock) - dreaming of a an early start for breakfast at Ohana and Rope drop at MK

Next up... The First Real day - and we finally get to have some fun !

 

[Plum85]

Great update - looking forward to hearing more!

 

[bjakmom]

I'm thinking of a trip for Memorial Day weekend of 2013 for our 2nd SWW - we were also at the Dolphin this year the first weekend of June and LOVED it.
Can't wait to hear about your trip and how the crowds were that first weekend !

 

[StevePWales]

Thanks for reading bjakmom.
Crowds were not too bad for the whole vacation - although HS during SWW was the busiest - will try and get some pics on of crowd levels during SWW.

 

[ShortStuff]

Welcome ShortStuff.
Grandpa is still talking about the vacation - think he would be taking grandma there this summer if she could stand the long flight and the heat !

Fall, late October or early Spring is much nicer weather wise!! Your girls seemed like real troopers during the long flight!

Being a Grandma, I cherish the vacation memories with my grand sons!! I bet this was a huge treat for your Dad! Do you have different agendas later in the trip, leading to needing 2 cars? This sounds interesting!!

Looking forward to your first 'real' day!!!

 

[StevePWales]

Grandad certainly did cherish the time with his granddaughters.
The two cars was required as we were booked into two different hotels !

Me and the girls were in the Swan, but Grandad didn't want to spend quite as much on accomodation. He was able to get 15 nights in the Hilton Orlando Bonnet Creek for around $1500 less than the equivalent stay at the Swan.

I was quite glad as this meant the girls and I could spend time on our own some evenings, whilst still enjoying the benefit of my father's help during most of our time in the parks.

I probably should have prepped him better as he fell for the trick at Budget car rental of paying for an upgrade - when the likelihood was that they just didn't have any of the class he booked. He was happy with his rental anyway - and the Hilton was probably a better hotel than the Swan in every respect apart from location and character meals.