The Roberts Girls Food and Wine/new experiences Pre trip

Hi!

And welcome to another pre trip report for 2017!! A little introduction we are the terrible twosome me Amy 28 " Disney obsessed and getting worse by the minute! Mam (Sue) sadly not 28.......Disney obsessed but reins me in when I have crazy ideas like "let's go to Disney for the weekend?!" this is us below!

IMG_6332 by Amy Roberts, on Flickr

So this trip is a complete new experience for us so a little back story when Auntie and Uncle heard about the Flower and Garden Festival and being huge green fingered people they really wanted to visit, me and mam decided we couldn't not see the Food and Wine festival soo........2 trips 2 years running it was! We wanted to originally save a bit of money so we booked Caribbean Beach, personally I wasn't keen on the idea but we also wanted to upgrade to the dining plan so it made sense at the time.

We were originally booked for 10 nights but realised we were due to arrive on 1st October and EPCOT was celebrating its 35th Anniversary on that day so we thought we had no flights booked so we would change the booking by a day.....nope no availability unless we went deluxe which was super pricy so we looked into DVC points for 1 or 2 nights and only managed to get Boardwalk Preferred room for 2 nights!!! How perfect! All we had to do now was change CBR to 9 night and add dining plan....I kept putting this off because I still wasn't all too happy about staying at CBR to start with then came the announcement of all the works at CBR so that was it I wasn't staying we decided to swap to POR our good old faithful and upgrade to dining plan " well rang Disney and we could upgrade for an additional PS100 or something to Saratoga Springs WITH the dining plan upgraded " it was going to cost us an extra PS300 to upgrade the dining plan so we jumped at the opportunity!

So to recap we have 2 nights in the Boardwalk and 9 nights in Saratoga Springs!! To say we are excited is an understatement!!!

So now onto the plans:

Friday 29th September

Pack the car up, drive to Manchester (staying at the premier inn again), have some food and get some rest for the next day!

Saturday 30th September

Fly out of Manchester airport 10.30am hopefully land at MCO 2.30pm (if I actually land around this time I'll be so happy we have NEVER landed at the right time!) head to the Magical Express to THE BOARDWALK!!!!! Hoping for a room overlooking The Boardwalk or maybe the Village Green, probably get some food from The Boardwalk somewhere we won't go far and either watch fireworks from the balcony (fingers crossed) or find somewhere on the ground to watch either EPCOT or HS fireworks (if anyone has any tips on where to stand etc. please feel free to pass them on we feel like newbies this trip!)

Sunday 1st October

HAPPY 35th BIRTHDAY EPCOT!!!

So no doubt we will be up early this morning jet lag and all that so we will either grab something to eat at the resort or walk to EPCOT (I never thought I'd get to say that!) and go to Les Halles for some breakfast either way I'll be going into the park from International Gateway and heading up to France just to see what It's like before World Showcase opens we have never done it before! We won't stay long as we have FP for Soarin, Living with the Land and Spaceship Earth, we will probably snack a bit round the booths but not much because we will head out of the park to Disney Springs we have an ADR for Paddlefish on the Magical Dining Month (3 courses for $35 how can you turn that down!) so we will head out for that but then back to EPCOT to finish off the night with the birthday park before taking our walk back to our room!

Monday 2nd October " Moving Day

So we say goodbye to The Boardwalk (sob) and move to Saratoga Springs (yay!) luckily Alamo have a car pick up at the Dolphin so I'll head over and pick our car up while we make sure we have everything and check out, drive straight over to Saratoga Springs I'm hoping we might get there and the room will be ready " I know I'm asking for a lot! if not we will leave the bags there and head off to the shops, quick stop at Premium Outlets before stocking up at Walmart and heading back to Saratoga which by then the room should be ready, we are hopefully going to head to EPCOT to see American Authors on Eat to the Beat and graze food booths " make a mental note do not leave via International Gateway you aren't at The Boardwalk anymore haha

Tuesday 3rd October

Have a little later start and head over to Disney Springs collect our gift cards and grab some lunch before making our way to Animal Kingdom we have FP for Flight of Passage (YIPPEE!!!!!!!) Kilimanjaro Safaris and Expedition Everest, we also have Rivers of Light dining package at Tiffins " very excited about this!

Wednesday 4th October

Finally making it to the Magic Kingdom! We have FP for Big Thunder Mountain, Peter Pan's Flight and 7 Dwarfs Mine Train hoping to get lunch at Columbia Harbour House but other than that we have no firm plans for the day

Thursday 5th October

We have a free morning but heading to Hollywood Studios about lunchtime FP for Toy Story, Star Tours and Tower of Terror and in the middle we have Fantasmic Dining Package at Mama Melrose again new experience (have been to both Mama Melrose and Fantasmic before but never on a package together)

Friday 6th October

Magic Kingdom again for us FP for Big Thunder Mountain, Haunted Mansion and 7 Dwarfs Mine Train and we also have Festival of Fantasy dining for Tony's, we are excited to try this as the viewing location we have done before when you could FP and it's an amazing location so can't wait to do it again! Think we are planning EPCOT for the evening " so many booths so little time!

Saturday 7th October

Hollywood Studios during the day no FP as we have them for later on but hoping to do the shows etc see what we can get on standby then off to Magic Kingdom FP for Pirates of the Caribbean, Big Thunder Mountain and 7 Dwarfs Mine Train we also have an ADR for Be our Guest on the evening we love this place for breakfast and lunch so hoping Dinner is just as good! We are hoping we will be out in time to get a decent spot for Happily Ever After I'm so excited and anxious to see this as I loved wishes so much and I've heard mixed reviews, I've avoided all pictures and videos so it's a brand new experience for us

Sunday 8th October

We are heading to Disney Springs for Raglan Road Brunch I'm really excited to try this! We are hoping to try out a "Minnie Van" to get us to Animal Kingdom where we have FP for Flight of Passage, Kilimanjaro Safaris and Expedition Everest, I don't know if we will stay at Animal Kingdom through to the evening or move on to somewhere else the world is our oyster!

Monday 9th October

Our penultimate park day is always EPCOT FP currently for Character Spot and Soarin thinking about booking Mission Space but I'm on the fence, we are heading to Disney Springs this evening for dinner at Paradiso 37 very excited to eat here and maybe a cocktail or 2 may be consumed......

Tuesday 10th October

Last park day " how did that happen! Only 1 place to go and that's Magic Kingdom FP for Big Thunder Mountain, Under the Sea and 7 Dwarfs Mine Train we also have Be Our Guest booked for Lunch, ending the parks portion of the trip with EPCOT making a mad dash around the park to eat all we want to eat! Have a little drink and watch the fireworks, it's a bit of a tradition now!

Wednesday 11th October

Hometime we will check out and get a taxi or something over to the Virgin check in and hand the bags in before heading to Homecomin' for a final farewell meal picked up by the Tragical Express and back to MCO ready for our overnight flight back to the UK

Thanks for taking the time to read this and if anybody is in the same place at the same time etc we would love to meet up with you!