Bermuda trip is on...

Well after a short deliberation we have booked our trip to Bermuda.  It was all very easy using the Internet in the comfort of our own home to sort out the accommodation and flights.  We will be flying direct to Bermuda from Gatwick, this was by far the best option.  Indirect flights were no cheaper, but took considerably longer that the seven and a half hours we will have to endure.  We are going for 8 days, rather than the 7 that were originally planned.  The cost of flights were much cheaper the day after the day we were going to return.  The cost of accommodation for the extra night is less that the additional cost of the flight, so it was an easy decision - a cheaper holiday and an extra day.

The accommodation again proved very straight forward, once we had made a decision.  We will be close to our friends and staying in an area which we know.

We were surprised by the cost of the holiday.  The total cost is coming in at not much more as we would pay for a week in the Mediterranean.

We visited Bermuda last year (for which I kept a journal, so may publish details later) and spent a lot of time on the north (or east) side of the island.  We visited St Georges and Hamilton as well as the Crystal Caves, Gibbs Lighthouse and the Zoo, Aquarium and Museam.  We visited Horseshoe bay beach (it was packed with people from a couple of cruise ships that were in the docks), Tabacco Bay (which was absolutely wonderful) but our beach of choice was Shelly Bay.  Shelly Bay was close to where we were staying.  It was a gently sloping beach which stays shallow for miles.  Although, there was little vegetation on the sea floor, or rocks for that matter, there are still plenty of fish to see.  The beach was very quite. It did not have the facilities of the other beaches, but frankly we didn't miss them.

This leaves us with the west side of the island left to explore.  We have not visited the Royal Dockyard or taken a ferry.  There are still lots of beaches to be tried.  I would like to do some kayaking around the coves as well as go snorkelling by a shipwreck.

This trip has diverted our attention from the forthcoming Disney Adventure, but now that all is booked it's back to the final preperations for Florida.

Bermuda accommodation...

We have sorted out the flights, although we still have to book them.  This will be done after booking the accommodation, as it is easier to cancel.  Initially we had a short list of 3 places that looked to suit the bill.  We contacted our friend in Bermuda and on his advice narrowed the choice down to two.  This is now where our problem lies, making a decision.   As you would expect both properties have their pros and cons...

One is close to our friend house, the other is very close to a number of attactions.  One is more central, but the other has the bus stop right outside the door. One has two bedrooms, the other sleeps 5 but has only one bedroom. Both have excellent reviews.  Decisions, decisions!

At least, with the benefit of Internet, there is a host of information available to help make a choice.

I always struggled with travel brouchers, there was minimal amount of information, the information supplied by the people trying to sell you the holiday and a number of small pictures.  The pictures were always the same a view of the hotel and pool.  They all looked the same after a while.  The information about prices was not very helpful.  By the time supplements and costs of flying the price you ended up paying was much higher.

I remember a holiday to Westendorf in the Austrian Tyrol, where the broucher showed a foot high hedge outside the hotel.  Upon arrival the hedge turned out to be more like 12 foot.  It was a great hotel and we did enjoy the holiday, but it did make me suspicious about the age of the photographs used.

The cost of flying from local airports can make a huge difference to the cost of a trip.  Living in South Wales there is the local airport, Cardiff, but there is another airport relatively close in Bristol.  There is not a lot of difference in the time it takes to get to either airport.  However it is often much cheaper to fly from Bristol.  It always pays to check out alternatives.

Time to start packing?

When is the right time to start packing to go on a trip? A number of people I know start packing up to a month in advance.  As items come out of the laundry, they are set aside for packing or if space is at a premium they go straight into the case. The same also applies for new purchases required for the trip.  I'm sorry, but this is just not me.

I pack the night before we travel.  If I were to pack in any further advance I would have forgotten what I had packed and would either end up starting again or forgetting to take something.  The night before travelling, everything I am going to take gets laid out.  I can ensure that everything I need is there and then I pack.

As I normally travel using a rucksack all clothes are tightly rolled and every inch is utilised.  When packing like this, having to unpack and repack to check that I haven't forgotten anything is no fun at all.  Hence packing the night before travel.  The reason I generally travel with a rucksack goes back to a weekend visit to Berlin, to see a concert. On the last day I was out of the accommodation by 10am and my flight was not until 4pm.  I spent the day going around the city sightseeing, lugging a suitcase.  This was not a real chore and slowed me down a lot.  This taught me a valuable lesson in travelling light.  Sticking a rucksack on your back is much easier and you have both hands free.  Interestingly, very few airports have baggage systems that can handle all the straps on a ruck strap, so once having checked-in, you are then directed to the over-sized baggage drop-off.  At the other end the rucksack is easily identifiable on the belt at the baggage return, unlike all these cases that look alike.

Recently, for longer trips I have been using a larger case.  I can get about 12-15kg in my rucksack, but 23kg in the case.  Taking the case ensures that I don't have to do any clothes washing during my travels, which I don't really want to do if I am enjoying my holiday and I don't really have the time if I am there on business. The case also allows some spare room for gifts or souvenirs that I may wish to bring back.

I also try to travel with minimal hand luggage.  All I take is a camera, a book, iPad or computer, some wet wipes and my travel documentation.  I never really understand those who take large bags onto a plane.  I suppose each to their own.

Bermuda Flights

The research into flights to Bermuda didn't take as long as I would have imagined. (In the past I haven't done much research into our trips, I have just nodded at appropriate point, when being talked at and the paid for the trip).

As it is our thoughts were either a direct flight (London Gatwick) or to fly via the USA. There does not seem to much difference in the price, but the journey times are vastly different.  To fly from London to Bermuda direct takes about 7 hours, with an arrival time of 18:30 (local time).  To fly via the USA we would fly late morning to arrive late afternoon or early evening.  However, virtually all the flights from the USA to Bermuda arrive in the morning, so we would have to have an overnight stay.

We did notice, on our last to Bermuda, that there are a lot of flights into the airport in the morning, but only one arrival/departure in the evening. The flight to the UK.

Well that's the flights sorted out.  The accommodation is proving to be that straight forward, but more on that later.

Travel money...

The big question is how much to take and in what form? Gone are the days you would take a couple of hundred dollars in cash and a larger sum in travellers cheques.  On our last trip we got rid of the last of our travellers cheques from previous trips and the server was not sure if they could take them.

The last couple of visits we have taken some cash and used a pre-paid travel card.  The card has been great and we pay for most things using it.  It comes with an app that allows you to keep track of your spending.  In most cases using the travel money card, you don't even need to sign for purchases.  This I find a little worrying as if it were to be lost or stolen it could be easily used with no real checks.  The card does come with a pin, but this has never worked on any card reader in a shop in the USA.   The card can be topped up and on-line or in the travel agents shop.  The exchange rate is the standard tourist exchange rate, which at the moment is not great.

This year, however, we now have a credit card which is designed to be used abroad.  There is no exchange commission fee or "we buy, we sell" rates. (On a trip to China, I exchanged £300 to Chinnese RMB at a local exchange and upon returning exchanged the remaining cash back to pounds Stirling.  As the trip was a business trip I worked out how much this had cost for calculating expenses.  It turned out to be £27!).  The other advantages of using the credit card are that the exchange rate used is that which the banks use which is better than the tourist rate.  Once again the card comes with an app that allow us to track our spending.

As we will be using a credit card, we can link this to our Magicbands and have all Disney purchases charged to our room.  This will be handy as we can just go out with a small amount of cash and not have to worry about having the credit/travel cards being lost or stolen. This will also be handy for visits to the water parks.

It will be interesting to see how this works out, but it does kind of remove the "How much do I take?" question.  We will just get some dollars in cash for small items and tips.  The question now becomes "Can we keep our spending to our pre-defined limit?". This may not be that easy given all the temptations at Disney World!

Where to next?

While we are making the final plans for our Great Mickey Adventure, our thoughts are turning to "Where to next?".  There are several trips in the offing for the rest of the year.  These are mostly work related, but we use these trips as a means of planning places of interest for future holidays.

The Railway Trail, Bermuda

As it turns out, we are starting to plan our next trip before we actually leave for Disney.  An opportunity has arisen for us to fit in a trip to Bermuda, before the end of summer.  We have visited Bermuda before, but we still have a lot to explore.  As it is we also have a local contact, which will,help with the planning.

This trip will be booked independently, rather than as a package.  This will mean a lot of research into flights and accommodation.

Shelly Bay, Bermuda

Tickets are here..

With around four weeks to go, the tickets for our Great Mickey Adventure have arrived.  The pack contains lots of addition items such as luggage tags and helpful hints book.  This makes the holiday seem all the more real and it has raised the excitement level by a few more points.

I will have to have a read of the helpful hints book to see just how useful this actually is.  The first item we saw related to the breakfast experience at the Ankerhaus restaurant as a good way to meet all the Disney princesses without having to queue.  This has been highlighted in our research, particularly on YouTube videos. Most of these videos also recommend booking the breakfast as soon as you can as it gets booked up well ahead.  We took this advice and have already booked.  Is Disney telling us this hint only four weeks before departure really helpful?  After all we have been able to make reservations at Disney restaurants for the last five months.

The other surprise was that we are entitled to $200 Disney dollars.  We thought that this would be on the Magibands for us to spend.  It seems not.  We have a voucher, which we need to cash in at customer services at Disney Springs.  As we had not planned to go there in the first few days, selecting to go to the parks to make the most of the early opening hours because of our jet lag, we will have to wait before we can take advantage of our free Disney dollars.

Thoughts on Disney.

Writing a blog about travel makes you think about a myriad of things, raising many questions.  One that struck me was "Is going to Disney World really the actions of a free sprit traveller?"  I have to confess that I was one of these people who thought that Disney was not for me.  I was very reluctant on my first visit to Disney, but I was persuaded to go.  Now I am a complete covert. I love it, but possibly not for the reasons most people would think.  I should point out that am not big on Disney movies.

Firstly travel is about new experiences and a trip to Disney is a real experience.

There are many aspects that make a Disney holiday an experience that should not be missed.  The first thing that hits you is the scale of the place.  It is huge (47 sq miles)!  But not only is it big in area, but the whole operation is phenomenally big.  The first real impression of how big things are is when you first arrive at the car park for the parks. This is also where you first realise the organisation behind the enterprise.  There is a whole army of parking attendants to guide you to your parking bay.  The car park is so large that some of the attendants get around using Segways.  There are generally "trains" then to get you from the car park to the park entrance.

The thing that you notice next is how immaculate the parks are.  They are generally spotlessly clean. The planted areas are a mass of colour and manicured within an inch of their lives.

One of my dreads before visiting Disney was the though of queuing for hours to spend two minutes in a ride.  With a judicious use of Fastpasses and getting to the parks early keeps queuing to a minimum.  But that is only half of the story. Because of the potential length of the queues there is generally a fair trek between the ride entrance and getting on the ride, Disney has provided lots to see to on the way to build up the excitement for the attraction ahead.  The amount of thought that has gone into the whole thing is amazing.  At the end of each ride is a retail experience based around the ride (not to mention to see a photograph of you on the ride, which can be yours for a not too small fee).  The range of the merchandise available beggars belief.  It all adds to the experience.

As an engineer, I really love and appreciate the work that has gone into design, manufacture and maintenance of these rides.  My favourite engineering feat is the wave machine in Typhoon Lagoon which throws out a 5 foot wave every 90 seconds.

The different themed areas of the parks are incredible and the best example of what I mean is best illustrated by Epcot - Around the World.  This is a representation of the world according to Disney.  It is all very twee.  I have visited several of the countries (and live in one) represented and they are nothing like this Disney vision.  I don't have a problem with this as I look at it as entertainment but it is interesting to see the cliched views of these countries.

The staff in the parks are, on the whole, very friendly and helpful.  It is marketed after all as the happiest place on earth.

I am also impressed that there are people there from all over the world. In researching this trip I could not believe the number of people who have blogs completely dedicated to Disney World and who are making a living from it.

Disney may not be everyone's cup of tea, but an awful lot of people love it and as I started with it is a real experience.

Disney Dining Plan.....the saga continues

We managed to book the Rainbow Cafe at Animal Kingdom after all. The only time we could book was at 8pm, but as the park is open until 10pm that evening it is not a problem.  Now there are the other six days to go.

We ended up booking T-Rex, Nine Dragons and the Correl Reef and then left a couple of days free to play it by ear (and hopefully find somewhere).

It was amazing (to me at least) that on a Monday six weeks from now there were over 40 -Disney restaurants which were fully booked.  The essence of a Disney holiday, particularly with the Dining package is clearly to plan ahead and make the bookings as early as you can.

Frozen Parade (2015)

The Disney web-site allow multiple options for searching for restaurants of all sorts.  You can search by date and time or type of meal (breakfast, lunch or dinner).  Searching by type is a slightly better option as it will give a range of times available, which may not appear if you sea have by time alone. There a numerous filters that can be applied, these also can help narrow the options down particularly if you know which location you want to search.  The search system is a little slow at times.  Sometimes links did not work and you are greeted with a picture of Stitch with the message that someone ate this page.  We suffered a number of system not working properly type messages.  But with a little bit of persistence and quite a bit of time we got there.

Magic Kingdom Parade (2015)

There were a lot of places we would have liked to have eaten at, but hay, we are only there for two weeks and as one YouTube informed us "You can eat breakfast, lunch and dinner everyday for four months without having the same meal twice".

Past visits to see Mickey.

As the planning progresses, we spent yesterday evening looking over the video that was shot on our last visit to see Mickey in 2015. We stayed at the Riverside Resort Port Orleans.  Although not our first visit, it was the first time that we had stayed at a Disney resort.  We had a great time.  There was so much more to do and see than what had been on offer at the non-Disney hotels we had stayed in previously.  Although the holiday was more than we would have paid before we felt it was reasonably good value for money.  In previous visits we had a hire car and the cost of insurance and parking ($15 a day at that time) helped offset the additional cost of staying at Disney.  Our only regret was that we had not booked a little earlier and taken advantage of the free dining plan.  We are planning to take advantage of this this time around.  There are a number of new attractions we are looking forward to trying.  There will be some old favourites that we will miss (Shark reef and Mission Space (closed for refurbishment)).

Blizzard Beach (2015)

Night Time in the Park (2015)

Epcot (July 2015)

The videos brought back happy memories and we had a good laugh watching them.  It has whetted our appetite for our visit.

Disney Dining Plan 2....

We have planned out half of our table service meals for most of the first week.  We need to sort out the second of our two weeks.  We are starting to panic, that everything will be booked up or we will be left with poor time slots.  Tonight we sat down to have a strategy meeting to plan the rest of our meals for table service.  After an hour and a half we have only managed to make one booking.  The process is very slow.  We know our plan for the parks and where we will be on any given day.  The next step is to check our options for restaurants,  check the menu and then check availability.

Animal Kingdom (2015)

We tried to book dinner at the Rain Forrest Cafe in Animal Kingdom.  This appears to be fully booked up and we still have five weeks to go.  But then doing a search by time suggests that there are some slots at 8pm. So we head back to the booking web page and try for those slots to be given the message that there was difficulties with the booking system at the moment. A message we are getting all to familiar with.

We tried to book the T-Rex restaurant in Disney Springs (for after a day at Typhoon Lagoon),  once again no joy - no slots available.  But this was not the message we were given...oh no!  Firstly, there was there are no slots between 6 - 8pm so we tried 5pm. The reply was that there was no slots between 3 - 5pm.  So for each time we tried we were given a message back that there was no availablity in a time period.  It took us about 15 minutes to work out that there were no slots available.  One simple message telling us this would have helped save our sanity.

All was not lost, as we did manage to book a dining package with VIP seating for the parade in Magic Kingdom.

We will try again tomorrow. Only 6 more bookings to go.

Disney dining plan.

Having now limited my research on YouTube, I am now concentrating on food and the Disnay Dining Plan.  The more I have watched the more confused I am getting.  The first videos I watched concentrated were on "Is the Disney Dining Plan value for money?".  I am not sure why? as the Dining Plan was included in our booking for free.  Value for money isn't that much of an issue as making sure that we minimise the additional cost for food.  Our last visit to Disney World staying in the port Orleans Riverside we spent over £1,500 on food.  This visit we are on the standard dining plan, which gives us a table service meal, a quick service meal and two snacks per nights stay.  I had initial concerns that we would have to buy breakfast, but with the free drinks mug and a snack that will do us. 

The next approach was on reviews of restaurants.  This was very hit or miss.  Some people loved  certain restaurants and others hated them.  It was very difficult to get any kind of consensus. There one or two that had universally good reviews - Be My Guest for example.

Now I am looking at videos along the lines of  "What I ate on my Disney World trip".  These have caused my head to hurt. What I have learnt so far is;

1. There are an awful lots of places to eat. As well as all the parks their is Disney Springs and all the resorts.
2. There are a huge range of snacks/meals available.
3. Not everything is available everywhere
4. Some of the snacks are the size of a meal.
5. There is something to suit everyone.
6. You could spend all your holiday, travelling around Disney just to get to through a list of meals or snacks.
7. In certain restaurants there seems to be a very limited choice for vegetarians. (There is one in our party that we need to consider).

My research has allayed my fears (we have one kid who is quite fussy and likes plain food and the other is a grazer and one of the party is a vegetarian) that we will not go hungry.   Rather than going crazy trying to plan our snacks and Quick Serve meals, I have formulated a plan that we will all make out a list of things we would like to try and we will work through the list as and when we are in the vicinity.

As for the Table Service meals we have booked the main ones we wish to do, particularly the meet the characters, and will book the rest over the next week or so.  The only problem now is that there is such a choice we may not be able to fit it all in in two weeks.  Ah well, I suppose that will be another Disney World holiday in the forthcoming years!

Excitement is building....

Watching YouTube videos with the kids, telling them  "This is where were are staying", " This is what the room will look like", "This is the pool", etc.   This results in lots of questions from them looking for more detail.  This is building the excitement for everyone.

As for me I am doing a lot of research on YouTube into the hotel facilities, the park attractions and the places to eat.  There are an unbelievable number of videos on Disney world covering just about every conceivable aspect of holidaying there.  As you would expect the quality of the video and their contents vary considerably.  That's what you would expect from YouTube.  I have learnt a lot, both good (we should get two snacks with the dining plan, we were only expecting one) and some not so good things (they have shut the swimming with sharks in Typhoon Lagoon).  I love watching YouTube it is a great tool for information and learning, as long as you watch enough videos to get a proper consensus. With a trip to Disney World you have to do your research as it is so big and there is so much to do and see and I am now finding out there are a huge range of places to eat.  The first problem I came across with researching with YouTube is the age of some of the videos.  They can be 6 years old and completely out of date and the information is no longer valid.  This becomes more of problem after the first video and then the second and subsequent videos load and play automatically.

I then kept an eye on the dates and looked for videos shot in the last few months.  Then a second more serious consideration arose as it struck me - Doing research is fine, but there is a fine line to be walked here. 

 By this I mean information gathering is fine, but one of the best aspects of travel and holidays is discovering new things.  With things like YouTube it is all too easy to cross the line and leave no room for surprise when you actually get there.  I was tempted to find out about the new area based on the Avatar movie, but pulled back.  This is something new for Animal Kingdom and I would prefer to discover what's in store once I am there on the ground (or in the air, as I suspect that there will be some form of ride that will get you off the ground).  As from now my research will be limited and the videos that I will show the kids will be vetted, so that there is some awe and wonder in this holiday.

Epcot (2015)