My trip report.......may/june 2007

[aaronandterri]

Well before i start id like to apologise for my terrible spelling....it can be a little woobbly..

In May/ june i went with my DH, my parents and my 4 children, to florida for just over 2 weeks.

ill start .............

We had booked to stay at the Softiel, at the airport so it was around 12 on sunday 20th May, we stopped to collect my parents, it must have been a whole 5 minutes we were there when Alex my youngest(nearly 2), decides hes going to trip (on a hallway hes walked in 10000000times before and never fell......) and hit his head on the french doors, there was blood everywhere, heres me first aid tranied and my legs buckled beneath me, we took him to A and E, my dad had to drive as i couldnt, i was still shaky, well, away we came again around 2 hours later all stitched up, what a start eh.............

We finally arrived at the airport around 4 ish and it was lovely, we had 2 family rooms booked which were great, id reccommend this hotel to anyone.

We had dinner in the hotel that night, was nice but very expensive!

Our flight was due to leave at midday the next day, it was delayed by nearly 4 hours, which was a bit of a pain, but we got there eventually!

Flight was ok....L O N G , but with 4 kids u can imagne!, the infant care chair that they supply is good, Alex seemed happy in it, usual rubbish for food but hey what do u excpect in air?? Virgin staff were all helpful.

now weve flown to Sanford before, but this was our first with Virgin to Orlando, its definatly easier other end at sanford, what a hassle, they give u ur bags back only to walk 20 yards and have to lose them again to take a monorail to other side to collect them again!!

Eventually arrived at our first destination our friends villa in venetian bay village, very late and all very tired, kids faired amazingly well considering what a long day it had been, we all slept till 11 the next day!

Our first few days we took it easy didnt do much, needed to adjust to time diffrence, except lay around and use pool, and went shopping for bits at walmart,, had a huge one round the corner it was great!


will write some more later!......................better go do dinner

 

[Shane]

Great Start!

How is your Sons head, did it need many stitches?

Orlando International is much much bigger and Sanford and I have to agree, the "Get bags, walk 20yards, Give bags away" is a bit annoying (But a nicer airport I found)

Looking forward to the rest

 

[irongirlof12]

Kids have great timing don't they?

looking forward to the next bit, any photo's?

 

[GemmaPixie]

Looking forward to reading more. Will there be any pictures?? Gemma loves pictures! lol

 

[mark&sue]

We love the sofitel hotel.

Looking forward to hearing more.

and especially for Gemma, here is a photo of the Sofitel upstairs bar area

Susan

 

[natalielongstaff]

great start to your reports

 

[GemmaPixie]

WOW Susan thanks- that hotel look so so nice! And yay- you understand the lovage of photos! lol

 

[lisaj]

looking forward to more.

 

[jockey]

Looking forward to hearing more. The infant care chair from VA is great!

 

[Minniespal]

Excellent start

 

[Donaldduck66]

Great start. Hope your son's head is OK.

 

[wilma-bride]

Great start to your reviews. Hope your DS' head is OK.

 

[aaronandterri]

It took ages to heal, he wouldnt leave it alone!!!

but hes ok now.

i will finish this and add pics, but ive been feeling rotten all week, with this cold, so havent been able to, soon ..........

 

[aaronandterri]

23rd May - Downtown disney and disneyquest

We visited downtown today for a look around, we went early for when it opened at 10.30, it was very quiet!

Had the most wonerful chocolate covered Giant strawberries, yummy (at that time of morning i know!)
Kids spent a fortune in the record shop, cds etc, way cheap!

We went in disneyquest, the lift totally freaked my 4 year old out, we hadnt been before and no one warned us! so be warned !!

It was a bit of a pain not being allowed to bring the babies buggy in, hes nearly two and doesnt walk very far, (well not in the same direction as you anyhow!) and we had to carry a whack of stuff and chase him around- not fun

Kids enjoyed it though, they went on an interactive pirates ride, except jack (4) who was scared, and they went on Aladdin and the raft ride, and loads of arcade games, me i just ran around after The baby!

Pherhaps it would have been wise to come without him here next time,
Jack was upset because being a huge Buzz fan was not old or tall enough at 4 to ride this (think they wouldnt theme buzz stuff with such a height restriction!) so that upset him for a while.

We had lunch on the food level, suprisingly good actually, dad enjoyed his chillie cheese and chips, and some wrap thing, kids had chicken tenders and chips, portions were so huge i should have got them one to share.

Jack fell asleep across the chairs during dinner, so i stayed with him for around 45 minutes while the others went off toplay some more, to be honest for id say under 5s or so there isnt a whole lot there for them, and even the area aimed at younger guests wasnt that great, with much the little ones could do, they could have done with an area designed at younger ones rearly.

Will definatly go back, but when the boys are older!
(Promise to add pics to this, just need to sort them all out!)

coming next ......

24th May - Our first day at disney Magic kingdom!

 

[irongirlof12]

nice to hear about Disney Quest, shame you had to ditch the pushchair.
Hope you are feeling a bit better now

 

[aaronandterri]

24th May - Our first day at disney Magic kingdom!

We headed for magic kingdom today, firts stop was guest services where we got my son his gac(he has autism ) , no problems there, apparently we were still on computer from last time.

Then straight onto Buzz lightyear ride, my son had gone on about nothing else for weeks , hes buzz mad!!

Even the baby went on this one!, did a few of the other rides, including Philar Magic, my mum loved this one!, the baby couldnt quite get the 3d glasses though.

We had a cs lunch at cosmic rays, ribs and chicken was what we mostlty ate, and food was good.Nice to sit down out of the heat.

The boys enjoyed the racing cars! boys will be boys eh!, and we did some shopping,Took advantage of the photopass photographrers around the place, and posed for the tink shots outside magic kingdom(ive ordered the disk so i can add these when they turn up!)have some other good ones as well.

We went in the monsters inc show , but i was not very impressed, it wasnt very good.

Had a wonderful ice cream near splash mountain, and went on that twice, it was nice as mum could wait in shaded play area under the bridge and let alex run around and play as well.Kids went on some more of the smaller rides.

I must say in my first whole day in the park, we did not see one year of a million dreams people, or anyone walking around with ears or laynards etc.(actually i think we only saw 2 in the whole time we were there)

It had been a rearly hot day , we left around 5 and had dinner at TGI fridays on the way back to villa.
The baby slept through the whole thing and we had to take his away in a take away box!
my dad ordered potato skins for starter and there was enough to feed a whole army there was 10 of the hugest ones you had even seen, for a starter! wow lesson learned, stsrters are to share lol.

 

[Chilly]

keep it coming

 

[aaronandterri]

25th May - universal park island of adventures

We had a day today where we had no real plans, so we decided to try universal, we have not been before so this was new to us.We had got a rearly good deal on some tix with kids free aswell, cool eh!

Dads knee was playing up so we was thinking of hiring him an ECV (never again!!), we rang Universal guest services, and they said they had one at isle of adventures, and this sort of made our descision on which park to go to for us! they put it to one side for us.

Its a bit of a rearly long walk though from car parks through the downtown area and to the park!, even longer than disney!
As we walked past the dining booth we decided to make ressies for planet hollywood for that evening , so we could stop after the parks.

WELL when we got in there they didnt know anything about our ECV, arrgghhhh, and there was none left, as i was talking this over with manager, someone brought one back, great i thought we can have that one , it was only around 11.30, so battery couldnt be trhat bad, but apparently not, theres a policy that says they have to charge for 3 hours before they can go out again. anyway annoyed just a little, i went over to guest services where they promptly sorted it all out in next to no time, and also gave us front of line passes!

So off we went , kids went on a couple of the kids rides, including some water aeroplane things, based on cat and hat one fish two fish , but i got soaked! It was set to music that told you when to go up down etc so not to get too wet, but of course i was with jack and when they said up he went down and etc, you can imagne!!!
We went on cat and the hat, but it was a bit pants and kept on stopping and starting, once for ages, bit boring rearly, kids enjoyed the high in the sky train ride, and carousel though.

we was all a bit peckish, so we stopped in the food area in the circus tent area that the train goes through, near to cat in hat ride, it was the worst meal we had all holiday, waited ages and ages and ages to be served, then food wasnt all that hot or edible, no wonder they sell the food deal so cheap if thats the normal standard, no one would bother to go back!

Anyhow onwards, we walked up and the men and older kids, went on posidens fury while we chilled with the younger ones, they have these great fans that spray a mist on you and a fountain that squirts water it was hot so they played in that, only problem there was the time share blokes kept bugging us,!!

We took kids on the flying unicorn, a tame rolercoaster, they loved it so three times later, we finally talked them into something else, had a look round the dinosaur place, and went on jurassic park, now we didnt read the write up properly for this and took jack (4) on this, and thought it was just like a river rapids ride, just as i was reassuring him it was ok, and the scary dinosaur wasnt real, the boat dropped into the middle of nowhere, OMG, he was so scared, i felt soooooooo bad, he never quite got over that and was wary of all other rides(bad mummy eh!!)

Now after going on and on about spiderman for days, we take him over there, trying to cheer him up, but he was still too shook up and wouldnt go on it, so we waited for them, it was my Dad Who hated this one he hates heights and apparently it has this bit where they shoot up , he was as white as a sheet when he got off, i was like why didnt u just shut your eyes, or take off 3d glasses DUh, BUT HE MUST OF BEN MORE SHOOK UP THAN WE REALISED, AS WHEN WE WERE LOOKING ROUND THE SHOP there was this almighty crash and i look round and hes only gone and knocked down a whole table display of glasses mugs etc, OMG i didnt know if i should run and hide pretend not to know him or go see if he was ok!!

Well drama over and we made our way roumd last few bits, now in a bit of hurry cos dinner was booked.

We had a great meal at planet hollywood, but we was all knackered by then, no one could manage pudding!
But id definatly recoommend the place, it was lovely.

 

[Chilly]

Sounds like a day and a half at IOA. Looking forward to reading more.

 

[arieljasmine]

Enjoying your trip reports so far, thanks very much for sharing them with us.

Laur's