The Return of the Mummy (and some of the rest of the family) episode 1

jubileegirl

Mouseketeer
Joined
Jan 23, 2004
Messages
211
Cast:-
The Mummy, me, Alison
The Daddy, John
The youngest child, Chloe who’s 15

Extras (staying at home this time):-
Peter, the eldest child, and Rachel his girlfriend
Amy, the eldest daughter
Freddie, the accident-prone cat

Synopsis - we're from the UK so hope it's OK to post here!
Having realised that only Chloe would be coming on holiday with us this year, we decided that a trip to Florida was the best thing to do to keep her happy but give us a fun time too. We’d been to Orlando three times before and John was slightly less than enthusiastic about another visit. Please don’t think he’s an old misery –he just says he likes to come back home feeling that he’s had a complete rest and he’s not a huge theme-park fan anyway, so a compromise was made! We would spend 6 nights in Orlando and the rest of the time visiting other places. We also decided to book everything ourselves through the Internet to see if we could do it cheaper that way.
So…….
we booked our flights with Iberia Airlines to Miami via Madrid (the cheapest we could find),
2 nights at the Holiday Inn South Beach in Miami
4 nights at the Clarion Maingate in Kissimmee
2 nights at the Royal Pacific Hotel at Universal
1 night at the Bahia Cabana Resort, Fort Lauderdale and…
5 nights at the Angelina, Key West

When I say ‘we’ actually I did all the searching and just yelled for John to come and see and bring his credit card along now and then! He was very trusting but I was a bit nervous about making some big mistake and it’s weird to have a few thousand pounds worth of holiday all contained in a few printed e-mails!

Oh yes, we booked our Disney tickets through Ticketmania via Mouseavers.com and the US tickets through another internet place but I can’t remember the name! Our car came from Alamo via Yescarhire

From looking at our itinerary you can probably see that John was NOT going to have his restful holiday with all that driving but we booked a convertible which got him a little bit excited.

So on to Day One

We left home late afternoon and had probably reached Reading by the time I relaxed and stopped worrying about whether Amy would be OK on her own, what would happen if the cat broke its leg again, and so on. Why do we do it? You’d think having someone in the house would stop the ‘have I left the iron on’ paranoia but instead I was thinking ‘will Amy leave the iron on?’ And that would be worse because the house would burn down with Amy in it.
Anyway, we checked in at the Comfort Inn near Heathrow around 7 pm. We had a fairly big room, one double bed and a single for Chloe which was kind of up on a stage at the end of the room. We thought of asking for some curtains and getting her to put on a production of Les Miserables to entertain us but ended up all lying on the double bed eating chocolate, drinking wine/coke and watching Coronation Street (who needs Disney?!?)
Does anyone remember Yves Rocher cosmetics – they were always advertised in glossy magazines and you could buy loads of tubes and pots of stuff for a song and then had to buy something each month I think. .Well, that’s what the Comfort Inn uses in its bathrooms! Talk about nostalgia – I used their stuff all the time back in the ‘70’s and the smell just took me back to Glamrock and Abba and Multi-Coloured Swapshop.
But I digress, as well as showing my age………
We did try to have an early night but the room was really hot and we were all excited about the next day. I dozed most of the night, got disturbed a few times by people closing doors and footsteps outside the room, but I didn’t mind, just wondered where they were off to on holiday (although for all I knew it could have been a lady of the night doing her business!) Also Chloe mumbles in her sleep but you can’t quite make out what she’s saying – very frustrating! She also went to the loo and of course fell off the stage!
In the end I decided to get up as it was 4 o’clock and our wake-up call was for four-fifteen. And besides, I had a date with Yves Rocher in the shower!
 
Thanks for your report. Look forward to hearing the next instalment. I remember Yves Rocher...beautiful products!

How did you find stay off-site at WDW? Would you recommend it? Are there disadvantages to staying off-site eg park hopping access to theme parks.

How was your transport eg parking, finding your way around?
I'm from Australia and was unsure whether hiring a car would be feasible, if we don't know the area.
 
We've never stayed onsite so can't give a fair comparison - but we've always enjoyed having a car and the flexibility to explore further, and you can certainly save some money staying in a non-Disney hotel. With us it was maybe a financial decision and if we could afford it easilt then i think I'd love an on-site holiday.

Whereabouts in Sydney do you live? My husband's Australian from Northern NSW but we lived in Caringbah/Cronulla for a few years!
 
Hi jubileegirl, nice to hear from a fellow aussie resident. Thanks for the feedback. I'm from the eastern suburbs in Sydney - Bronte.


This is our first time in Orlando. We have 5 nights total - not much time but hoping to squeeze in both areas (WDW & Universal) in this short time. I'm in a bit of a dilemma as to what is the best mode of transport for us. I do not want to find out we when we get there we're wasting time waiting for transport. Our budget is also a consideration. I love the idea of staying on-site but if we have to pay to travel from park to park, maybe we should rent a car.

How did you find parking? Did you have to pay a parking fee?
 

cjeong - hi again!
If you only have 5 days then you would probably be fine without a car as you'd probably only want to visit the theme parks. The Disney resort has amazing link ups from all the hotels to all the parks - bus, boat, monorail. If you could afford it you should stay in one of the hotels very near to one of the parks. E.g the Boardwalk and the Yacht and Beach Club (also the Swan and Dolphin) are between Epcot and MGM and you can travel by boat to and from those parks as well as bus.
Also if you're planning to visit Universal too, their onsite hotels are good and you can use your room key to get front-of-the-line- access on the rides!!!
You'll find loads more about all this on here if you have an hour or two to search! Happy planning!!

I've also PM'd you about something helpful!
 





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