Day Eight - Premium Outlets \ Animal Kingdom

Today we escaped Disney for some retail therapy and headed to the Premium Outlet on Vine Road. As the sky was overcast this seemed like a good day to hit the shops.  We got the bus from the hotel to Disney Springs and then a taxi from there to the Premium Outlets.

Upon arrival we headed straight to the Disney Outlet shop.  The offerings here are much cheaper than the parks.  Much of the merchandise is out of date i.e. pins with 2016 on them. There is also products that obviously didn't sell (the store was full of seating pads for sitting on for the wait for parades).  Then there are the end of line items.

We browsed the shops looking for any bargain, but they seem few and far between. Or more to point there is nothing we really need.  In the end we bought a couple on items for our next adventure.  We met up with a friend who was also visiting Orlando and who we will also be seeing in Bermuda in a few weeks time. There are times when it seems like a small world - perhaps Disney was right all along.  I peeled off to a nearby supermarket, while the rest continued shopping.  It is always handy to get some snacks in.

After we all met up again it was time to return to the safe enclosure that is Disney.  It was strange to be using cash and cards after a week of just flashing your Magicband. We did a bit more looking around Disney Springs.  These new shops hold no interest, so we are looking mostly for Disney momentos. The taxi to the Premium Outlet cost $22 and on the way back only $11.  On the way we started from the Cirques de Soliel and headed down and around on to the I4.  On the way back we took the direct route along Hotel Plaza Boulevard.  Both trips were on the meter.

A brief break and a quick change and we are off to Animal Kingdom for a busy night culminating in the Rivers of Light show.  This is a new show for us as it was under construction when we visited last.

Our first ride of the day is our old favourite Expedition Everest.  The standby time is a very reasonable 25 minutes, but we had fast passes. Time for tea, I really wanted to try the flame grill barbeque, but there was no vegetarian option, so we went to Dino Land for burgers.

This worked well as when we exited there was only a 5 minute wait for the Dinosaur ride. We took the chance to do the Primeval Whirl ride.  This is not a particularly high ride, but it is high enough to make me uncomfortable. I have no head for heights.

We then made our way to Pandora for the Flight of Passage ride.  This had been really difficult to get fast passes for.  We arrived, and the first thing is a warning that this not suitable for those with a fear of heights.  I wasn't going to miss this, but if it got too bad I could always close my eyes.  The preamble builds the anticipation nicely, before the ride begins. I won't go into detail, so as not to spoil the experience.  The ride was phenomenal.  It really was an immersive experience. As for the height, well you are firmly fixed to a seat.

I am so glad we did the Pandora rides in the order we did.   The Na'vi river ride was pretty unimpressive and if taken after the Flight of Passage would have been a real anticlimax.

In the store in Pandora the must have item was a toy Banshee, like the one you ride in the Flight of Passage.  These were, pardon the pun, flying of the shelf.  At $65 each not cheap.

Pandora by night is so much better than by day.  As in the movie.  We took the opportunity to get several photographs taken by the Disney photographers.

We had a quick snack and then made our way around Africa and into Asia for the River of Light show.  The feelings on this were mixed. It probably didn't help that it was hot and sticky and by this stage we were all tired.

It was time to head for the bus to the hotel.  The bus was full of young children asleep.

Typically British obsession with the weather.  It was pleasantly warm today and quite overcast. This meant no thunderstorms.  Good weather for the kind of day we had. I hope we see some sun again.

Day Seven - Epcot

After several early starts, we had a long lie.  We decided upon breakfast in the market place in the neighboring Beach Club Resort.  This was our first foray into the Beach Club.  This seemed a much busier hotel with more families.  This backed up by the numbers getting on and off the Disney buses.  Breakfast was tasty with Mickey Waffles and bacon and a platter with sausage, bacon, egg, biscuit (more like a scone) waffle and potato.

After breakfast it was off to the pool.  The kids could play about until their hearts were content. The adults could relax and play with the kids as suited.  This lasted until 1:30pm, when the sky darkened.  There was a flash of lightening and the pool was immediately cleared. Shortly afterwards the rain started.  Back to the room for a shower and change. So we are ready to go on our next trip when the rain abates.

The thunderstorms are intense and quite spectacular.

In previous visits the thunder showers were later the day and worked out well for splitting the day.  This visit we are having to change our plans depending on what the weather is doing.  This is no real problem as there are plenty of options.

The rain has become a constant drizzle, going from being enough to need a coat (or poncho) to just putting up with it. We entered Epcot between the UK and France ( no not in the middle of the English Channel) and headed towards France.  We were off round the world.  We headed to Morocco.  There were some tasty looking offerings for snacks that were savory rather than sweet.  We bypassed Japan as we had been around earlier in this visit and we were a little peckish.  Next stop was USA where we had to try some Funnel Cake.  It was hot and stringy and covered in icing sugar.  We all dived in.  Next we went to Italy.  It was by this point that there were many people on a drink around the world challenge. A good number seemed quite young and a number were clearly celebrating their 21st and \or graduation.  Some were quite noisy and were obviously playing drinking games.  You have to wonder, if this really fits with family image that Disney portrays.  Then again the price of the drinks must make this a good earner, on top of this you have the souvenir glasses.  How long will alcohol be allowed in Epcot or will they need to impose some sort of limit to the number of drinks? The few could spoil things for the many.

After Italy came Germany.  Once again alcohol was at the forefront as this seems to be what Germany is most famous for. 

Next comes Norway, famous now for Frozen. As we had breakfast here earlier in the week we passed straight through.  On to China.  The pavilion where a the souvenirs are actually made in the country being represented. They are all considerable cheaper in the country of origin.  They had a troupe of Chinese acrobats to entertain.  The didn't have much of a space to perform in, but they were quite good.  We then took in the 360° film presentation on China.  It started in Shanghai and the tallest building on the Pudong side of the river was the ??? Tower.  This is now dwarfed by several other buildings and shows the age of the presentation.

Lastly, we went to Mexico, home of Tequila and Margaritas.  We did the ride and headed out.  The kids had wanted to try burrito, but there didn't seem to be any on offer. 

Most of our visits to Epcot so far had been after thunderstorms and Test Track had been closed.  It had been closed most of the day.  As we wandered past we could hear cars on the track above.  This was the test before the attraction being opened.  We were lucky enough to get straight in as the reopened the ride.

Our dinner reservation was in The Nine Dragon restaurant.  The meal was really good, one if the best so far on this trip.  I had the Kowloon spare ribs in hosin sauce, cabbage and noodles.

After our meal there was a short wait until the illuminations reflections of earth fireworks display.  We had read that the bridge in Italy was a good place to view the fireworks from, so we made our way there and found a spot.  As the park wasn't very busy, there were lots of spaces. This was indeed a good spot as in the distance we could see another firework display. This must have been the Magic Kingdom. Disney do spectacular firework displays.

On our way back to the hotel, we saw some of the fireworks from Hollywood Studios to the soundtrack of Star Wars.  Three displays for the price of one.

A tangle of wires...

I do not know what the collective noun is for cables, but a tangle seems to fit the bill.  In the past, I can never remember this being a problem.  In early holidays the only "gadget" that went on holiday was a camera and this was generally a mechanical affair.  There may be some batteries to be involved for flash bulbs (for younger readers you will need to look this up,in Google).  The first gadget that came on trips was a digital camera, this was a 2 megapixel state of the art camera.  It required 4 AA batteries and went through them with alarming speed.  This required a compact flash card, which you could easily fill in a two week holiday.  The only cable required was for downloading the pictures.  As laptops were like bricks, these stayed at home so therefore so did the cables.  This all changed for us in 2004 when we discovered wi-fi in San Francisco.  It was everywhere and best of all it was free. On returning home to the UK we explored wi-fi further.  It was possible to set up a home network, but it was not generally available and the few outlets that had it, charged for using it.  We are often a good few years behind the USA in these things.

The next handy gadget to go on holiday was an IPod touch.  This required a cable to recharge the built-in battery.  The plus side was that it provided a camera as well as internet access.  It has to be said that I used to be quite au fait with technology, but phones were always a mystery to me.  My first mobile phone was a Nokia, with a keypad and a little green screen.  I am now on my third phone and at last it is a smart phone.  I say smart, it is mildly clever - my usage does not warrant a high end phone. So now I need to take cables for the phone.  The IPod is still handy, but has been largely superseded by an IPad. This has proved particularly useful, with features such as FaceTime for keeping in touch with home.  The thing is that this is no longer just me as the whole family now has all this technology.  The result is that we have a case full of wires, chargers and adapter plugs.  This is not helped by the fact that the technology all have different plugs.  The IPhone and IPads have two different plugs, depending upon age.  The kids tablets and Android phones have yet another plug (micro-usb) and the video camera has yet another (mini-usb).

Is all this technology really necessary?  Well in the most part, yes. Everything is on-line these days.  All the Disney restaurant bookings need to be done on-line, (with Deposits). The itinerary of Fastpasses and restaurant times is on the My Disney app.  The wait times are all on-line, which is much better than traipsing across a park to find a 3 hour wait at the end. We can access all sorts of useful information using the Internet for life outside Disney.  Then there is the entertainment value to keep the kids amused while we have some quite time.  Yes, we have some quite time, after tramping around the park from my ours we return to the hotel for a little break before getting changed and going out for the next round.  With the Disney photo package included in our package we can review all the photographs on-line.

The day they closed Epcot

I am a big fan of Wolfstone, a Scottish band who play folk music with bagpipes, electric guitars and an electric fiddle.

I was in America, the Epcot Pavilion when I heard, in the distance, music not dissimilar to Wolfstone.  It was very faint and I had to concentrate to make sure my ears were not playing tricks on me. 

On returning to our hotel, we checked out the "What's On" pamphlet we had picked up in the park.  The only thing that fitted the bill was Off Kilter at the Canadian Pavilion.  I wanted to hear more.  Checking out our schedule, we had nothing planned for our last day in Orlando and checking the schedule Off Kilter were due to play that day.  Trip on!

We got up and ready and left to get to Epcot.  In the car enroute, signs by the roadside indicated that Epcot was closed that day (17th July 2002).  This was only the third day that the park had closed since opening in 1982. I couldn't believe it!

The problem was linked to a local electric substation.

Luckily, we have visited Disney several times since and I managed to see Off Kilter and not surprisingly became a big fan.  I was very disappointed when Disney cancelled them.  The lumberjack show I'd a poor second behind the energy of Off Kilter.  At least there are plenty of clips of Off Kilter on YouTube, to remind me of those visits and the day I didn't see them.

Disney and YouTube

I have mentioned before that I did quite a bit of research into the Great Mickey Adventure using YouTube and it has been very helpful.  I did also warn of the danger of going over the top with watching videos to extent the adventure is lost as you have seen it all before (without the experience). Today I was on YouTube and there were pages and pages of suggested videos all dedicated to Disney.  There are lots of My Disney Holiday or vlogs, there were review of everything you could imagine, there were lists of best, worst or just lists, walk throughs, what to pack, top tips, Disney history, Disney news and it just goes on and on.  It was endless.  There was a video on how much it would cost to stay at Disney for a year (unsurprisingly it's a lot). There were videos on how to get kicked out of Disney, but given the cost of entry why would you even try?  One video seemed to suggest that the participants were trying to get locked in one of the parks for the night - again Why? Some video were little more than mobile phone footage (without the use of a selfie-stick as they are banned from the parks) with little or no editing, whereas others have a high production effort.

At the end of all this I have come to the conclusion that you can get too much of a good thing. People have posted these videos with the best of intention, but there is a real danger that a holiday could be completely spoiled as it is no longer journey of discovery.

Are we in danger of doing the same with blogs?  If the aim is to encourage and help fellow travellers then all well and good, but we don't want to provide experience by proxy.

I am keen to create a video record of our holidays, but I don't let it interfere with the holiday.  I edit the footage to give flavour of our experience and this has a limited to release to members of my immediate family only.  I want these to be a record for our children for when they are older and childhood memories start to fade.

The Check List.

The idea of travelling at the drop of a hat sounds ideal.  To be able to drop everything and head off on an adventure seems like the way to live and the more often the better.  However, this does not seem to be the way of the world (certainly not mine).  There are so many things that need organising and planning that hours of time are spent on the trip before I even leave my front door.  In our case here is a check list of things we have had to do or are yet to complete.

1. Book the hotel. (After hours of research and comparisons. Done well in advance to take advantage of the Disney deal.)
2. Book the flights. (We booked the hotel so far in advance that we had to wait for the flights to become available for our return date. More research and comparison.)
3. Book a hotel at the airport.  (Flight is early morning so we need to travel the night before.)
4. Book airport car parking.
5. Book pets into pet boarding.
6. Travel insurance (included with house insurance but need details).
7. Create an itinerary for trip. This is needed to plan meals and takes advantage of extra Disney hours.
8. Book Fastpasses. (Starts 60 days before departure).
9. Make reservations for meals on Disney Dining Plan (starts 180 days before departure).
10. Organise Esta's for the visa waver scheme.
11. Complete API forms.
12. On-line check-in.
13. Exchange cash.
14. Top up money travel card.
15. Sort out emergency telephone numbers (insurance, bank cards, etc).

Now that all that is organised the only things left to do are to make sure we have all the essentials that we need to pack and then actually get there.  The packing is not as it used to be, where there was a panic if something had been forgotten. Now for any items that we have failed to pack we either do without or buy another locally.

The only real essential is the travel documents such as passports.  Much of the other documentation is    on-line.  It is never very clear whether or not this needs to printed out or not.  In a recent flight booking, they suggested printing out the e-tickets as some countries require a physical return ticket to prove that you intend to leave the country.