Seen it…booked it….

Well it’s been a full on weekend in the Oh! Orlando household, birthday celebrations for Tracey on Thursday, lots of work at both of our jobs (me at JLR and Tracey with her Holistic and Sports Massage Therapy) and trying to find time for sorting social media etc!

Birthday celebrations – some nice food, a couple of cheeky drinkies, some shopping and loads of cards and presents for Tracey (cos she’s a bit spoiled and has loads and loads of friends and family – lucky).

Of course Tracey had a few days off to relax on her birthday, and decided to start looking at the hotel situation in Orlando. To our delight she managed to snag the very hotel we were booked into this year. We were waiting for their diary to come up with dates available for July next year and when she checked on Thursday – low and behold their diary was indeed up and running for our dates at the end of July next year. We have been in email contact with the wonderful customer service team at the hotel since this year’s trip was cancelled and they were so helpful and super responsive and super quick in refunding our cash, even though we hadn’t actually asked for it back. They said that their 2021 Summer diary was not open yet so they didn’t intend to hold our money until we could rebook – just what we have come to expect from our cousins across the pond – customer service being their number one priority. Of course this is part of the reason we have rebooked the same hotel – we trust them to deliver on the promises their website makes. Also, it is in the exact place we want to stay.

For those of you in the UK who are reading this and maybe not frequent travellers to Orlando, or maybe you have only been once or twice and aren’t really up to speed with the options for your trips, basically if you stay in a Disney Resort Hotel you get certain perks against not staying on property, and the same can be said of the Universal Resorts. We’ve covered these options extensively in previous blogs so we won’t completely rake over old ground, but please do give us a shout if you would like further information about any of the options. You can expect early park entry, priority booking for dining plans, and in the pre-Covid world Fastpasses, and in the post-Covid world access to the Park Reservation System. Also free transportation is available to and from resorts and parks etc. If being totally immersed in a Disney Resort is not for you, or the cost is more than you are prepared to pay there’s another option, which is the one we have chosen, and that is to stay in a hotel which is not owned by Disney but is on Disney property – in this case the Holiday Inn at Disney Springs.

Perfectly situated for us to walk into Disney Springs in an evening and have ourselves a lovely meal, or just a wander and soak up some atmosphere, a bit of shopping maybe, a glorious glass of ice cold Italian wine or a frose at Wine Bar George (we absolutely cannot wait to be back there – we’d move in if they’d let us), a fun rampage through the World of Disney giant merchandise store (cue Tracey buying enough new “ears” to fill her entire case), and even a nice after dinner stroll with a giant s’mores or gelato. It’s all good and we cannot wait to stay there. The hotel itself has the facilities we need and want, and it looks great and the review are excellent.

We’ve managed to book it for the same price it had been for Summer 2020 so absolutely no complaints there.

Now to the perks of staying there, obviously modified for current operating restrictions. Currently no Disney transportation is available but we are hopeful that will have be resolved by Summer 2021 (keeping everything crossed here!). In any case we do have a hire car so it’s not the end of the world. Also, with Fastpasses currently not being used either, there isn’t the usual 60 days out booking option you get with staying in a hotel on Disney property. However, as usual, once you have linked your booking to you MyDisney Experience account, you are free to reserve your days in the parks – and that is exactly what we are about to do. This very afternoon – I know!! – the excitement. We are feeling full on Disney here at the Oh! Orlando homestead today.

Linking the hotel to your MyDisney account is a doddle, click on the button to link your resort, type in your booking reference number, and that’s it. Job done! So our resort reservation is now showing on our MyDisney account and we are a couple of happy bunnnies! Hooray for us.

Right – onto the Park Reservation System. Again for those of you who don’t know, Fastpasses are out, Park Reservation Days are in. Basically you need to go onto the MyDisney Experience website and actually pre-book your park visits in advance. No exceptions, whether you’re a Uk visitor, an Orlando resident, an Annual Passholder or just a flying couple of days visitor from out of town, you HAVE to book your park visits. There are still currently no on the day ticket purchases and park entries available and this is because Disney are controlling the numbers of visitors into the parks to ensure social distancing and to keep queue times/spaces manageable. Universal are also controlling numbers but theirs is on a first come first served basis, so get there early to guarantee entry. Their attendance levels are still low during the week but it’s starting to perk up quite considerably on a weekend, due to Floridians travelling at the weekend when they are off work, so a Saturday or Sunday in Universal at the moment is pretty busy, and that’s a good thing we think overall.

Over in the Walt Disney World theme parks Hollywood Studios remains the busiest by far crowd level wise. We think mostly due to Toy Story Land and also the Star Wars attractions and land, which is the newest addition area of the park. Queue times still seem very manageable and managing your day will help that – it pays to plan guys. Check out Molly from Allearsnet for some excellent planning and tips and tricks (team fiddlefaddle) and also the fabulous guys at Ear to Ear Magic for their in-park videos showing just how low the crowds are. They have been doing some fabulous live feeds from the parks so if you need a Disney or Universal fix you couldn’t do better than settling down with Chris and Susan to cheer your day up.

Right – back to the Park Reservation System. Once the hotel booking is confirmed and linked we have access to the Park Reservation System. So this afternoon our job is to book all of those days in. We figure that even though it’s well in advance, and things may well change long before we travel, it’s easier to modify our existing bookings than miss out on days in the parks because we left it too late and there are no slots left on that date for us. Highly unlikely we know but still. We have made a rough plan of how we want to spend our days, and this is mostly so that we get to fit everything in that we want to do. We do Disney and Universal, but we also like the water parks, and we want to go to the newest one, the H2O Island, when we next visit, we always go to Boggy Creek and go on an airboat ride, we like to shop, ride the Starflyer and the Orlando Eye and just about everything else we can do. We don’t like to waste a minute, and when we say waste, we don’t call sitting in a lovely restaurant in Disney Springs or City Walk eating some wonderful food, having a drink or two and people watching wasted time. It’s all part of the plan, and we actually plan complete relaxation times. So – away we go booking our park days. If by any chance they change things up, and you are allowed to park hop, or other restrictions are lifted, we’ll amend our existing bookings.

We have just filmed this week’s vlog, and have also filmed the park reservation system and how it works, so for any of the UK visitors who would like some reassurance about how the system works and what to do, please check out our You Tube channel for this week’s film, which shows us in our full (fifty odd year old desperately trying to press the right button, making sure we have our reading glasses on etc etc!!) glory booking our days in the parks.

What a busy week it has been – birthday, presents, day out in Birmingham for food, drinkies and shopping, and our hotel re-booked and confirmed for 2021. And now our Disney Park Days also booked. The Universal park days are going to be an early start to make sure we’re get in. I’ve scheduled all of the Universal days as weekdays as recommended by Rixflix due to the heavier crowds at the weekends. But then again, of course, as we know from 2020, anything could change any day. Things are constantly evolving and all we can do is make the best plans we have with the information we currently have. Incidentally our 14 day Universal and Walt Disney World tickets purchased from Orlando Attraction Tickets are good until late next year – so thankfully aside from a quick email to Orlando Attraction Tickets and their almost immediate confirmation that the tickets were good for 2021 without having to re-book or refund or mess around, we haven’t had to do a thing with those – they are still in fact linked to our MyDisneyExperience account ready and waiting.

Let’s all keep everything crossed that 2021 is a year of plans coming together rather than being cancelled. In the meantime we will cross our fingers and hold our breath (not literally of course as we have re-started our countdown at 328 days and that’s a long time to hold your breath!) in the hope that we are all fit and well and the world is in a much better place ready for us all to get back to what we love best – and in our case that’s being in Orlando. Fingers crossed also that the good folks at Dial-a-Flight are on the case with getting us a decent deal on our flights – a couple more weeks will see the Summer 2021 flight releases and prices, so we are hoping for good things and we have to get there either way, so Glen and Taylor might be in for a bit of a search!

Have a great week all – stay safe, believe in Disney Magic and Universal wonder and be happy. We sure will be, we are happy and grateful and we have a sneaky little trip booked for our wedding anniversary – not abroad so hopefully no cancellation issues although I have probably jinxed it now by telling you all about it!

Until next week folks – you be good.