Well, its exciting times here at Oh Orlando towers. We’ve had the the park tickets, and “extras” and we’ve linked them to the relevant apps. It was a glorious moment knowing that the tickets are there in “virtual’’ and physical form. Makes us wanna run to a plane right now and get on it!!! Massive thanks to Orlando Attraction Tickets for sending them so quickly, and they sent us a veritable bag full of money saving packages and deals to help us while we are there. Gotta say they are one of the good guys of the ticket world. You get the actual park ready tickets, not a ‘code’ you have to redeem at the parks when you arrive. For the WDW tickets, Mr Oh has opted for the Expedition Everest ticket, and Mrs Oh has gone for the Dumbo picture one. The Universal tickets are, as ever, plain with just your name and signature on it. We sometimes wish there was a more exciting looking card as they are a great keepsake – take note bigwigs at Universal Studios.
The linking of the passes was simplicity itself, with the WDW passes we simply popped the numbers into the screen and voila! Add our names and away we go. We also linked a payment card as well, so we are able to make “ADR’ or a ‘advance dining reservations’ and also mobile order food while we are there to save waiting in line to order. We just order from our phone and pick up our lunch from the quick order point. We’re looking at booking the Garden Grill restaurant in Epcot for breakfast one day. Hopefully we will be able to sort this in the next day or so. We also are looking at the California Bar and Grill for a brunch/lunch meal, this will allow us to re visit the bar at night and watch the fireworks from the veranda with a nice cold drink. (Really looking forward to that).
The Universal tickets were a doddle to link as well, they now have an app that is very similar to the My Disney Experience App. It lets you add tickets, a payment card and as with WDW, pre-order food so you can bypass the normal queues and just swoop in and pick it up. Nice! Universal have needed this app for a while and we are glad to say it’s really well made and easy to use. It has interactive maps and times for the attractions and shows where all the toilets and food places are – what more did you need to know? The one thing Universal don’t do are free Fastpasses, as we have mentioned before, you have to purchase these at the parks. We are looking at this based on the time of year we are going this time, but what Universal do is a ‘virtual queue’. This lets you queue without queuing as you do this with the aid of the App. So, for example you pop to Hagrids new ride and there is a 2 hour queue, tap into the app or device at the ride and you can go on your merry way till its time to join the ride. They currently use this system at Volcano Bay water park too. Brilliant bit of kit.
Popping back to the Garden Grill restaurant for a moment, this is situated in the ‘land’ section of Epcot, nearby to Soarin’ the ride. The restaurant itself is quite well known fir being the one that revolves. We’ve always loved the look of this place and it’s a Character Dining experience where you can meet Mickey, Chip and Dale and Pluto. It’s the classic hash browns, scrambled eggs and ubiquitous Mickey waffles. Oh…and a ton of sticky buns! (Mr Oh starts doing the happy dance of the sticky bun!! He does love a bun with a brew!). The whole restaurant takes about an hour to do a complete revolution, so you get to see the ride Living with the Land. If we aren’t able to secure our Garden Grill reservation at the time we want, we may go for Topolino’s at the Riviera Resort for our character dining experience. We will keep you posted on that and more about it in this weekend’s blog.
Now we have the tickets we can also start planning our Fastpasses for WDW for the rides we want to go on the most. If we had to list them here we would take a whole blog just listing them. BUT here’s a few we wanna hit! We are really REALLY looking forward to Millennium Falcon, Smugglers Run, the brand new Rise of the Resistance and the absolutely fantastic Slinky Dog!! This is a kid friendly coaster, but it is mega fun for kids of all ages.
We hope this little snapshot of our planning helps you all! If you ever want to know anything at all please feel free to comment and ask us any questions. We love to help and its the main reason we started the blog. See you all at the weekend!
theohorlando.blog 