Park news and gossip….

Hello from a wet and rainy U.K. Normal service has been resumed weather wise here. Wind, rain and a bit more rain for good measure… hey ho, it can’t be sunny all the time can it?? (We wish!). A very British Autumn has arrived.

This week’s blog is a bit of a mixed bag, news wise. We’ve got good news, sad news and really exciting news. A bit of a roller coaster ride really. (Again, we wish!).

Let’s start with the good news, attendance is up at ALL the theme parks in Orlando. The numbers of folks visiting each week look like they are going up and the parks are reaching capacity quicker each week. (WDW have allocations for each park and these are getting booked really quickly so that’s good!) We love to see the parks looking more ‘normal’ and everyone still staying safe.

The sad news over in Orlando (and also California) was the announcement of the huge lay offs at WDW and Disneyland California. Just on 28,000 in total!! Anyway you look at this it’s an absolute disaster for all involved. Our hearts go out to all the cast members who are affected by this. We hope that we can soon see them getting back to business with the company. Disneyland California has yet to re-open, although it has at least been discussed this week, so something will hopefully be happening. Along with all the fantastic musicians, domestic staff, chefs, table staff, greeters, and heaven knows who else are now out of a job with the Disney companies, there is of course also the knock-on effect the lack of tourists to Orlando is having on the tourism industry. Lots of people facing very uncertain futures – again, it’s the same in lots of parts of the world right now. We can only hope things get back to a more normal as soon as possible so that everyone can go back to doing what they do best. Every single cast member at WDW and every other place we have been in Orlando really do make our holiday – they are all fantastic and we hope things improve soon. We know that things are hard ALL over the world right now and not just in Florida. We see a lot of the same smiling talented faces at the resort hotels and parks every time we visit and we are sad to think that some of those splendid faces will not be there on our next visit. If you can spare a few minutes, or some cash, please do check out some of the links we’ll post below to try and help some of the cast members affected.

On to the other more encouraging and happier news. Over at the Polynesian Resort they have started the renovation of certain parts of it and we cannot wait to visit here again Tonga Toast anyone?! There’s a brilliant vibe around this resort. It’s a great way to spend a few hours just wandering about taking in all the details. This is something that both Disney and Universal do so well. You think you have spotted all the details then more and more jump out at you.

The new footbridge from the Grand Floridian is nearly complete. This will be a boon to the people staying there as they can simply wander over to the Magic Kingdom on a sunny day. What better way to start the day than a stroll to the House of the Mouse?? This has been needed for some time and is a welcome addition to the Grand Floridian Resort.

WDW have also started to renovate the toll plaza. This is getting a much needed coat of paint. It is looking like it will be a similar colour scheme as the newly painted Cinderella Castle. We think this will look awesome. We have only seen vids and photos of the new castle colour so far but we love it and we were fans of it from day one. Cannot wait to see it in the Floridian sunshine for the first time.

Over in Universal they had a little bit of an announcement…. they finally told the world they were building a new Roller Coaster….. really??? On their Twitter feed they have so far said it was a Churro stand, a drinks station at one point even saying “coaster?….what coaster??” The amount of misdirection that they have done on their feed is epic! But it was finally announced as ‘’Jurassic World, Velocicoaster” and boy does it look epic! There was a lot of speculation that the name would be the Velocicoaster and now it has finally been confirmed. There is a virtual rendering of the ride on Universal’s social media and we’ve watched it loads! We’ve shared it on our own social media pages so pop over and take a look. We absolutely cannot wait to ride it.

What have we been up to? Crikey we’ve been busy… what with work and jobs on the house and planning our next adventure and all the research for the blog and vlog its a wonder we have any spare time….and what spare time we have we spend watching loads of other peoples vlogs. We love watching the Orlando vlogs, makes us a little ‘’homesick’’ we actually we’re laughing at ourselves the other day, we were a little early for a lunch with a friend and we found a video on YouTube “A Drive through Orlando I-drive in 4K”. It was great! We sat there in silence in the car watching the beautiful sights of I-Drive roll by…we didn’t want to get out the car for our lunch. We wished ourselves there!

Some of our faves are in NO particular order are Ear to Ear Magic, RIx Flix, Allears.net and Tim Tracker. We are slightly obsessed with the content of these vids. We hoover them up. The social media aspect of the Orlando bloggers and vloggers is a passion of ours. We love that everyone supports each other, the sisters at the Duo podcast are always a pleasure to listen to them. And the Universally speaking guys always have a great Insta page as some local to us wizards and Walt. They have a great insta page and a YouTube channel.

What we love is the interaction with these channels. We always watch the live streams and comment on what’s happening, and it’s always great when we get a “shout out” back from the people filming. It’s the next best thing to being there. Well, to us it is.

We’ve got a lot happening in the near future, planning etc for the next adventure and learning to film and edit the stuff. So here’s hoping you all stay safe, keep ya distance, wash ya hands and wear that mask and we’ll all get through this. Take care and catch up with you all soon!

The emails to help are: castmemberpantry@gmail.com

And wdwcastandhospitalitypetsinneed@aol.com. Please do all you can.