THE FINISHED AT LAST TRIP REPORT - Day 1 – Oh sugar .

[Poohshoney]

30 November - Day 1 – Oh sugar…….

We flew via the UK last time. It was the cheapest way. It had meant staying overnight but I was ecstatic – a chance to stock up on all I missed and watch undubbed telly! Going was great, coming back was deathly. Six hours stopover at Gatwick after 9 hours on a plane when your body knows it’s the middle of the night = no fun! We looked at the flights this time – yikes, they’d changed the times, it would be an e-i-g-h-t hour stopover. Nooooo… So we looked into flying via elsewhere. We’d always said we’d never want to change in the US because of all the customs palaver. Then Debbie from the Yayas mailed me that NWA had some good deals going (thankyou Debbie!). We looked, we booked! And instead of mourning the loss of WHSmiths, etc, I started getting all excited about changing planes in Detroit. A new adventure!
Then the excitement barometer boiled over. My friend and major knitting buddy Jennifer lives near Detroit. We’d mailed, we’d phoned, we’d laughed together, we’d exasperated together, but we’d never actually met. We weren’t even sure if we’d be able to with the new security rules but we both knew – it would be a brave airport that tried stopping us!

Up early and off early had seemed fair enough when we booked. Come the evening before though, Roland kept setting the alarm earlier and earlier, convinced we wouldn’t make it. And would the taxi arrive on time ‘cos it was a bit early for the trams? What if we missed the train? This was Roland worrying. Me and the alien still didn’t believe we were really going. The truth hit me at 1:10 am, a great time to wake up with excitement. Befitting my newly regained status as a Disneyholic, I got up at three and started surfing for any new and vital info. Well, you never know, do you? But by 6, we were both fed and scrubbed and locking the front door ‘cos the taxi HAD arrived.

A little aside here. Note to taxi driver: peppermint does not hide the smell of alcohol. Note to Powers That Be: taxi drivers that think it does, shouldn’t be able to start their cars. I tell you, if I were in charge, there’d be some new rules in this universe.

The roads were empty, I tried not to worry or inhale too much alky peppermint. A nice surprise was that as it was the first Advent Sunday, Christmas lights had appeared everywhere overnight. Very pretty!

Weird moment – another taxi driver asked ours where the railway station was. Aren’t they supposed to know that sort of thing? I endeared myself to our driver by stage whispering that to Roland. Give the bloke credit, he might not understand peppermint but he had a nice smile and played some good music. Note to self: do not try headbanging on two hours sleep.

We got to the station in one piece and to my amazement, it was VERY busy. I think a lot of people were in there between the clubs closing and the first bus/train. There was one girl in THE shortest shorts I've ever seen. I showed my age. Ok, so she had the legs for them, but you’d think her mother would have stopped her leaving the house in them, wouldn’t you? I felt frozen just looking at her.

The first leg of the journey successfully completed, we went to buy the tickets for the next one. There was quite a queue but it moved quickly and it all went smoothly till we tried to leave. Listen, I'm 5´ 2”, ok? (And I happen to be one of the tallest females in my family at that!) Only Germans tend to be just a wee bit taller. I couldn’t get out of the booking office. I wasn’t tall enough to activate the automatic doors. It was sooo embarrassing. We had to back up and go through another door so Roland could trigger them, whilst a man walked effortlessly through the door I couldn’t open. I felt such a fool.

Ooooh but it was cold on that platform. Course, I showed Roland up by jigging around all over the place. But what really warmed me up was the last minute dash to another platform, announced 5 mins before the train was due. Why does that always happen? There aren’t THAT many trains at that time of morning, you’d think they’d have it all under control. We sprinted round, arriving just before the train. On we jumped, me showing Roland why he’d married me. Everyone else saw reservation tickets and kept going. I READ the tickets – they were for a stop after the airport! I was just about to sit down when the student type across decided my seat was a good place to dump his bag. Nooo. I pointed out to him, smiling as sweetly as you can whilst glowering at someone, that that was my seat and he moved his bag. Very quickly too, I do a mean scowl. We made ourselves comfy and I did what I always do, I fell asleep on Roland’s shoulder. So don’t ask me about the journey, all I know is it passed in the blink of an eye.

Roland started to relax a little when we arrived at the airport safely and in good time. Only a little though. And he was right. We went to the KLM/NWA desk, got in the line, watched two nice ladies asking people lots of questions and eavesdropped a bit. We decided we hoped the family in front of us wouldn’t be on our plane. Then it was our turn: nice smiley lady took my passport and started asking me questions. When were you married? When did you move to Germany? Have you ever been to America before? Nice easy questions, even after no sleep. Then came the hard one – can you prove you live here? Course I can, I have a residency permit. Oh sugar….. it’s in my other bag. The one I didn’t bring. Oh sugar….. She disappeared for a minute or two, with my passport – yikes! I couldn’t look Roland in the eye. Do you know the worst bit? I've had that permit, on and off, for 24 years and NEVER have I had to show it to anyone. I've even tried to on occasion but not a soul was ever interested in it. Oh sweet irony of life. Thankfully, the nice lady reappeared and all was well. We all received little stickers on the backs of our passports with little squiggles on them. Mine had an extra hieroglyph. I spent several hours agonizing about what might have happened – or might not have happened. But it was ok, we were going to be allowed to leave. And I'll never ever do that again, promise! Roland wondered whether we’d have the same problem entering the US or re-entering Germany. I tried hard not to think about that.

We had a nice married moment at check in. The lady asked us who packed the bags. Roland said we did, I said I did. Made her smile! The time up to boarding was as boring as ever. I loathe Frankfurt airport, though I know people who like it. It’s sterile and the shops, the few there are at Terminal 2, are utterly boring. The only thing it’s going for it is a McDonald’s, which says it all, really.

At the gate, security was the tightest we’d ever seen it. By the time we got on the plane, us and/or our passports and boarding cards had been checked five times. Well, six for me. I decided as soon as I sat down at the gate that I needed the loo. Like you do. Lovely smiley lady let me out again as long as I left my boarding card with her. I asked whether I had to queue up again and she said yes, then no, I could come straight back to her. I walked up to her, smiled, she nudged me and winked and gave me my boarding card back. It completely mystified the mile long queue and I could feel the daggers in my back as I strolled through. I just love doing things like that! I managed not to shout that I had a Fastpass, though I was tempted. One airport crisis per flight is my limit.

I'd gone to the bother and expense of phoning NWA and reserving all our seats before we left. We didn’t get a single one of them. I do so like wasting money on transatlantic phone calls, don’t you? Thankfully, we managed a window seat for Roland on every flight so it worked out ok in the end.
I was worried about how far back we were going to be as I get travel sick but we ended up liking the seats a lot and it wasn’t too bumpy. We were very close to the back, just where the middle rows of 4 turned into 3 seats so we had more room next to us. But the very best bit was there were only 2 seats by the window. No disturbing someone every two minutes because I needed the loo – again. The second best thing was the seat-back tellies. Oh joy!!! We were promised them the previous year on BA but didn’t get them. I was ecstatic. But we hadn’t gone far when the steward announced that there was a fault and we had to turn them off so they could repair them, it’d take about 30 mins. Twenty-odd minutes later they told everyone to quit turning them back on again, they’d tell us when we could use them again. They never did. I saw most people watching again about an hour later so I turned mine back on and finished watching Freaky Friday, then played a computer game. The steward apologised at the end of the flight for the problems and that we hadn’t been able to use them. Weird. The only problem I'd had was that they kept telling me to turn it off..

The cabin crew weren’t exactly unfriendly, they were just a bit brusque and none too smiley. The food was the weirdest I've ever had. Sort of Japanese but not quite. I couldn’t cut the chicken lump, too many sinews. That’s all I remember of the food going, which says a lot, I likes my grub. The only other problem we came across was well beyond NWA’s fault. Turbulence. Pretty bad it was too. I was beginning to feel a lovely shade of green when I remembered all the advice I'd read for Mission:Space. Focus on the screen, don’t look to the side. So I focussed on my telly and do you know what, it worked! I started to feel more in control of my stomach, and then I fell asleep. Roland said the pilot announced we were going to fly higher to avoid it but he watched the altimeter and we never moved so much as a foot. Good con job there! By the time I woke up again, it was all over so I went back to my computer game.

After a 9+ hours flight, we landed in Detroit and faced the next part of the transport challenge – immigration and changing planes. We joined the shortest queue. You’ve guessed, haven’t you? It took the longest time to move. Everyone else was racing through, we got a bloke who was taking his job VERY seriously. The man at the front was getting all sorts of third degree questioning. When he took his phone out to call someone to prove he was visiting them I muttered `move to the next one, NOW!´ out of the corner of my mouth. Roland started to ask something but a quick exchange of non-verbal married communication and we were both sauntering to the next queue, trying to look anything but suspicious. A very nice man asked us some pertinent questions and we were through, breathing sighs of relief. Which was more than could be said for the man with the phone, poor bloke.

Right, gimme my suitcase!!! We’d got 1 hour and 51 minutes between planes and it was my turn to start worrying. I'm a late starter. I spent a frantic ten minutes or so checking my watch every 20 seconds, but then the first suitcase arrived. But not the second. I don’t know exactly how long it took, but it seemed like an eternity. When it did appear, I was happily distracted anyway. There was a Labrador sniffer dog; I grew up with a Labby and just adore them. He obviously loved his job, judging by all the tail thumping. I kept wanting to shout `sniff me!´ but there are limits, even when a Labby’s involved.

Ok, so we’ve got the suitcases - what next? We dashed after the rest of the herd and saw a big sign saying connecting flights. Ooooh, that’s us! With difficulty we handed our suitcases up to a large gentleman and watched him effortlessly push them through an x-ray machine. Errrm, what next? We hung about like two lemons wondering what we should do. Large gentleman asked us if we could see our suitcases on the table. It felt like a trick question so we were completely thrown. Took two more goes before we told him no, we’d only just given them to him. His mate came over and beamed at us “That’d be the two cases going to Orlando, right? They went through aaaages ago!” And then they laughed. But it was with us, not at us, they were just so lovely. We decided we LIKED Detroit airport. So, with an hour and twenty mins to our flight, we went to explore it!

We liked it even more then. It reminded us of Stansted near London, which we like, but even better as it seemed cosier and not so echoy. (Which my ‘puter says isn’t a word but I'm using it anyway). It had the same ingredients as Frankfurt airport but came across as a zillion times warmer and friendlier. And the shops were so much more inviting! We were both quite tired so we just moved slowly but surely to the next gate. Once we got there, I volunteered to go looking for a bottle of water. I'm SUCH a kind person. Shop!!! I resisted buying any books, couldn’t find the magazines I was looking for, they didn’t sell crispy M&Ms ( I adore these, they’ve just started selling them here, bliss!) and the socks I fell in love with were too big but I still had such a nice time in there. I emerged, with a bottle of water and a big smile on my face to find Roland was worried about us having to check in. We have a system; whoever’s language it is gets to sort out all the problems, so off I toddled. Yep, we were all booked in. Again, not the seats we’d reserved but a window seat for Roland so that was ok. And the stewardess still had traces of her original Scottish accent, I really liked Detroit airport!

The next leg was about three hours. This is a mind blower for me. In an hour and a half, I'm in London or Paris or Amsterdam, etc. It seems weird to sit in a plane for so long, and yet still be in the same country. Jennifer and I laugh a lot about how distances are different here and there. I like it best when she says how near something is – only five hours. Wow…

I hadn’t been able to eat the sandwiches on the previous flight (I have allergy problems) and I'd been loathe to stop anywhere in the airport in case I made us miss the plane. (Married guilt complex) So I dug my sesame crispbreads out. The man next to me was very understanding as the crumbs flew. They served what looked like wonderful sandwiches on the plane but I was a bit wary of them. We did get more buttered pretzels though. The funny
thing about them is, we reckon the first one tastes horrible but by the end of the packet, they’ve grown on you. We got them on every leg so we felt that we’d scientifically proved our theory. Course, why we’d continue eating something we thought tasted horrible is a different experiment. The It’s Free experiment.

One genuine complaint here. I wish now I'd said more at the time. The loos. We were very impressed with them on the journey to Detroit, they were kept ever so clean. The one loo we were allowed to use flying to Orlando wasn’t too bad either. Yep, one loo for all the cheapo passengers. Course, the handful of people in first class got two, but we were pointedly and repeatedly told they were ONLY for first class. Even though one of ours was broken. The queue was constant. I let a littlie go in front of me at one time as she’d waited so long. Her mum was ever so pleased, apparently her cornflakes at breakfast hadn’t agreed with her, poor thing.

The highlight of the flight was realising that the woman across had a dog with her!!! Heavens to Aunt Betsy, you don’t get that in Europe! I wondered why she was stuffing bits of sandwich into the bag on her lap when this little head appeared. I sooo wanted to help but as there were three people plus an aisle between us, I couldn’t think of anything I could do that wouldn’t get me thrown off the plane. Life can be so uncooperative.

Landing at MCO was a dream. The dreamiest bit was that because we’d already gone through immigration in Detroit, we could saunter off the plane like the real Americans and go straight to baggage claim. We’d had trouble with our suitcases last year – by the time we got through all the immigration checks, we thought one of the cases had been nicked. Not a happy memory. This time we breezed through everything and boarded the monorail in no time.
Note to MCO: please could your monorail have a CM on it telling people to move down the train? What is it about the doors? Do they have tourist magnets in them? And could the CMs also say something about not moving yourself whilst leaving your enormous bags in front of the doors? Just a thought. Help solve the unemployment crisis and prevent passenger bruises and/or nervous breakdowns. I'm all for both of those.

We’d hired a car last year but after much consideration, we’d decided not to this year. We weren’t planning on going off-site like last year (which had been nice but we’d spent all our time comparing everything to WDW and Disney always won) so it had seemed a waste of money that could be better spent. After weighing everything up, we’d decided to splash out on Tiffany Town Car. A very wise decision it was too!
The only thing we hadn’t agreed on was the grocery stop. I wanted, Roland didn’t. This surprised me, as he is very keen on saving pennies when possible and buying stuff at the supermarket is cheaper than Disney and that was my main argument. Well, I said it was the main one. Actually, I had raisin bran (can’t get it here) and bagels with cream cheese deprivation symptoms. You have to live through those deprivation symptoms to appreciate how really bad they can be. We eventually decided we would stop. This decision was helped greatly by me being the one doing the booking.

We’d landed pretty much on time and when we got to baggage claim, there was our TTC man waiting for us. Success! Nice man he was too, I think his name was Jose. It definitely began with a J. I'm useless at names… He asked how we were, we said tired. He wasn’t very sympathetic, till we mentioned coming from Germany. That put it into perspective! We made his life fairly difficult by rescheduling the time of our return pick up every five minutes but he smiled through it all. I thought he’d have a trolley for our luggage but as the car was literally a minute’s walk away, he just took mine and let Roland lug his own. Being the shorter more delicate one of us (yeah, right!) has its advantages occasionally. I might not get doors to open but I'm always the one picked to be helped.

As to my hard fought for grocery stop… I was too tired. Roland said we would be, I thought saving money would perk me up a bit. Suddenly, breakfast in the food court seemed a much saner idea. Funnily enough, Jose didn’t have any note of a grocery stop anyway so his plans weren’t changed. Roland asked me three times if I was sure, but I was. If I was only half as tired as I felt, I would be a dangerous thing to have behind a shopping trolley. We discussed calling at Gooding’s sometime but we never did and we still never regretted our decision.

The car was very nice and Roland thoroughly enjoyed just relaxing into the leather whilst somebody else did the hard work. (He’s our driver, I can’t.) I thoroughly enjoyed not being the map-reader. It’s not one of my better talents, though Roland’s an excellent driver. And remarkably patient with me every time I point back to the turn-offs we should have taken.
In no time at all, we were pulling into Riverside. My, but it was good to be back!

The reception area was almost empty so I dared hope that check in was going to be a doddle. We’d encountered our best CMs at Riverside last year, which is one of the reasons we’d chosen to come back. We went up to the young girl doing nothing, Amanda I think her name was, and checked in. I’d requested a quiet non-smoking top-floor mansion room so I asked if that was what we’d got. I emphasised the word quiet. Now I knew it was on our reservation as I'd got Paula to double check. Amanda said it was the first she’d heard of it and thankyou for telling her. She spent ages doing pretty little but eventually said that was what we’d got. We both got the impression that Amanda, who was very very young, was trying to seem important and hadn’t actually changed a thing. Fair enough though, I've no problem with that. What I did have a problem with was our room. Since when did across from the ice machine, diagonally opposite a generator, count as quiet?
But I knew what to do. Grab the phone. The lady I got said she couldn’t put me through to reception, there was no phone there, could she help? I nicely said that we’d prefer a quieter room if one was available and in the twinkling of an eye, we were assigned a lovely room slightly further from the noises. The funny thing was, when I got back to Amanda for a key change, she said she knew all about it as they’d just rung her. Very strange.

Our new room in Arcadian House was only about four doors away from last year’s room. We were very happy. I know that Magnolia Terrace is the most popular request but we like AH, facing away from the river. Shortish walk to the bus stop, quiet, pretty trees and a fountain when you come out in the morning, always seems sunny, etc. But what we like best is the walk to the amenities. Along the river, past the other mansions. It’s probably Roland’s favourite bit of the hotel, if not the holiday. In short, we felt like we were home and we felt happy!
The room was a nice surprise, too. Last year’s had been a bit shabby but this one had been spruced up a bit and now had a hairdryer. Actually, the best bit of the hairdryer was the light. It was a lovely little nightlight when I needed the loo (again) in the night.

Can’t finish today’s report without my main gripe. We ended our extremely long day (20+ hours from door to door) with chicken strips at the food court. Nope no gripe there, we were happy as Larry with them, delicious! They’re up there with raisin bran and cream cheese bagels on my missing dreadfully list. The gripe was the weather – who turned the cold on??? We’re in Florida, we come from Germany, we should be laughing! Instead, I was wearing my fleece, jacket and gloves and I was still shivering. I was sorely tempted to wear the woolly hat I'd brought for MVMCP but I felt a fool as it was. As soon as we were back in the room, I doubled Disney’s heating bill. I still hadn’t warmed up when I drifted off to sleep but I was smiling anyway. If I'm going to be cold, there’s still no better place to be it than Mouseland!

 

[Pootle]

Put me down as someone who understands the 'It's Free' concept of nutrition BUT who prefers Frankfurt airport to Stansted any day! And I stayed in Arcadian House, PO for a few days last year too. Great report - look forward to the rest.

 

[Poohshoney]

Hi Moira! Did you like Arcadian House as much as we did? We liked it the first time and were so happy to be back!
Soooo, what do you like about FRA more than Stanstead? Our friend Mike says he loves FRA but I'm never sure if he's winding me up! Maybe if they put a WHSmiths in there I'd like it more!

 

[WDWfan uk]

Loved your interesting and fun report but oh! These long journeys - definitely not my fave part of the holiday and your journey is longer than ours !

We went out there on December 13th and had some VERY cold nights! They covered the plants with sheets to protect them from the cold!

(We live 10 minutes away from Stansted Airport! It's a pity they don't fly to Florida from there!)

 

[Poohshoney]

Hi Shirley - you helped me join the Dis!!!

I'm with you on Stansted, I'd love to fly from there. And I'm glad we didn't go when you did! But I suppose I'd rather have cold Disneyworld than cold Germany...

 

[Mrs Dazzle]

Hi Carol - how nice to "see" you and Roland again

I shall be treating myself to reading your trippies when I've got some peace and quiet here

Annie -x-