Blog – Page 2 – Dani & The Laulings

Dani & The Laulings do Harmony of the Seas Western Caribbean from Fort Lauderdale

I don’t like cruises. Yes, I said it. I don’t like so many people packed in one place or buffet restaurants or bumping in to the same annoying people all the time. So how on earth did we end up doing this trip I hear you ask? Well daddy Lauling’s parents did a lot of cruises with him and the young Laulings really enjoyed the one we did in 2011. So I agreed on their request, as long as we went Royal suite class!

I go through the restaurants, activities and shows that are on the Harmony of the seas in a separate blog and focus on our itinerary in this one.

Prior to the cruise

Our cruise left on a Sunday and Easter break started on a Friday, so we flew out Friday morning from Newark to Fort Lauderdale to spend a day and a half at the beach before joining our cruise. I picked the Grand Pelican Beach Resort for two reasons; 1) it’s one of only a handful that are actually on the beach; most of them are across the road, meaning you have to trek over a busy street to get there and 2) because it is the only hotel with a lazy river. We took a Mears car from the airport because they provide car seats and I didn’t want to lug one around for our youngest Lauling. The main downside of the hotel is it’s not near any restaurants, so I did feel a bit isolated without a car. It was fine for 2 nights, but if you are staying for longer bring car seats so you can use taxis to get around, or rent a car.

Check in was pretty quick and our room was ready when we arrived around lunch time, which was a pleasant surprise. We had a deluxe ocean view room, which was on floor 7. You enter in to the master bedroom which has the bathroom off it. While it only had one bathroom there were 2 sinks which helped get everyone washed and teeth brushed in the morning. Through the other side of the bedroom was the living area which had a sofa bed and exited on to the balcony. We opted for 2 Queen beds and had the boys sleep in the same room as us, just so we didn’t have to open and close the sofa bed. My only complaints were 1) there were rocking chairs outside our room and people had a habit of sitting out there talking at midnight. Daddy Lauling and I tag teamed a few times to ask people to move on, and 2) there were only 2 elevators and sometimes you had to wait quite a while to get one.

The pool wasn’t huge, but was warm and big enough. The Laulings adored the lazy river, and first thing in the morning, we had it to ourselves! We never had trouble getting a ring for it, although the Laulings actually preferred just letting it carry them along without the ring.

It was a very windy day when we arrived, so the waves were quite rough and the sand was blowing everywhere so we didn’t spend very long on the beach, and day 2 the Laulings just wanted to be in the pool, but the loungers were plentiful with beach hands there to help set you up. There was also bean bag games on the beach.

There is a main restaurant and the bar restaurant. We ate dinner at the restaurant one night and lunch there twice, and the menu was pretty much the same. The food was good and the service was fine, but definitely you couldn’t have eaten there every day. Breakfast you had a choice of buffet or a la carte. For dinner the first night we ate at the small hotel next door, which was very informal and was more like a café, but at least was a change of scenery.

Day 1 Embarkment day

Mears did let us down a bit this day because they were 30 minutes late picking us up (11 am instead of 10.30). While they did contact us, there was no offer of a discount for the inconvenience and the operator kept telling me we would still make the boat in plenty of time, which I was of course aware of, but was hoping to board earlier than the masses. The traffic getting in to the port was bad, and took at least an hour for us to get from the hotel to the boat. We dropped our tagged luggage off and checked in. We were supposed to have priority boarding but got funneled in to regular boarding; that said there was virtually no one there so it was a pretty quick process

Lauling tip: You must check in through the Royal Caribbean app at least 3 days in advance of the cruise starting and take pictures of each of your party.

When we got up to the boat, it was heaving and I was starting to regret my decision to do a cruise. It felt like everyone had boarded before us. The pizza place and café promenade were full, Windjammers was packed, with a line to wash your hands before entering and waiting for a table. I realized after that we should have gone up to Coastal Kitchen instead, so if you are traveling suite class, definitely do that.

After a quick lunch, we headed to our room which was accessible at 1. It was a little weird that your room key is just left at your suite and I was curious how many times people went to the wrong room, but it worked fine. One really nice perk with the suite class rooms is you each get a ‘wow’ band, which is akin to a Disney magic band. The band acts as a key card to your room and allows you to charge things to it, which means you don’t need to carry anything else around on the boat. You do still need to bring your sea pass for getting off and on the boat however.

The 2 bedroom Grand Suite

Wow, what can I say; what a suite! This was like a proper apartment; a very spacious living area with a sofa bed, expansive balcony with 2 full sun loungers, 2 chair loungers and dining table for 4, a master suite with an attached bathroom with full bath, a second bathroom with a shower accessed from the living area, and a second smaller bedroom that can sleep 4 (1 double bed and 2 pullman beds). There was so much storage that we could comfortably unpack and put the suitcases away in the closet in the living area and under the master bed. Our room attendant was super attentive, and adorned us with different towel animals each day which delighted the Laulings. The only negative was because the smaller bedroom wall was against the corridor, the Laulings sometimes had trouble sleeping with people talking or running down the hallway.

We explored the different levels of the boat and checked out the pool for half an hour before the mandatory safety drill and then washed up for dinner at the Hibachi, which I review in the other Caribbean cruise blog.

Day 2 At Sea

Day 2 consisted of swimming, mini-golfing, climbing, riding the carousel, gym session for mummy and daddy Lauling, and just enjoying relaxing on the balcony. My youngest Lauling and I saw a pair of dolphins from our balcony which was just gorgeous to see (wasn’t fast enough to get a picture sadly). We did breakfast at Coastal kitchen, lunch at Johnny Rockets and dinner at the main dining room. We rounded the day at the Fine Line Aquatheater show. You don’t need reservations when you travel suite class; we turned up about 20 minutes before show time and there were 2 rows reserved for suite class residents. We got a prime view right in the middle.

Lauling tip: Book for the aqua theater in advance if you are not going suite class, and get there at least 30 minutes before show time for a decent seat.

Day 3 Labadee

Labadee is Royal Carribean’s private island, which we’ve done before. We did breakfast at Windjammer, which was pretty busy, and then exited the boat around 8.45 (people started exiting at 8.30). We had a 10 am reservation for the aqua park, so had time for a pit stop at the splash area, which was pretty quiet at that time in the morning. We then walked down further to the aqua zone area. Sun loungers and shade were pretty plentiful at that time which was about 9.30, but that was not the case when we came off the aqua park at 11. We checked in to get wrist bands which was a fairly smooth process, although it was clear the staff didn’t understand me ! Here was the issue. The info about the aqua park says those under 48 inches can go on if they are supervised by an adult, but when you book it you have to verify that everyone is over 48 inches. My youngest Lauling is not, but I booked him a ticket anyway, and then checked with the suite lounge concierge whether he was OK to go on and they told me no, so I cancelled his and my ticket, but when I looked at the tickets it verified he could go on with an adult. So I asked to reinstate the booking when we checked in. I still had 4 tickets though, even though 2 had been cancelled, so they just gave me 4 bands anyway! I guess all’s well that ends well. When we got up to the park it actually says those under 48 inches are supposed to stay on the first set of inflatables, however no one stopped my little guy going on the bigger ones. He’s a huge dare devil and would have been very upset if he wasn’t allowed on them!

We had a great time on the aqua park, but my knees did get pretty scraped up and it’s not easy pulling yourself up on some of them- it was quite the work out! My eldest Lauling and I did a slide down the water slide after, but it was super slow so don’t waste your money on it.

There is a suites only area on Labadee where lunch is served, so after the aqua park we headed back there. It was very full and we had to pull some rather dirty and sad looking loungers, but there was still shady areas to put them. The line for lunch took a while, and there weren’t enough tables to sit at, although we were lucky enough to get one. I don’t know how it would compare to the other eating areas for non-suites guests as when we went a few years ago we did an excursion and got to lunch close to 2 pm (it was quiet at that time!).

We stayed building a sand tower (because we forgot our bucket and spades!) until about 4 pm before heading back to the boat to shower and have dinner at Coastal kitchen.

Day 4 Jamaica

The boat docked around 10 am in Jamaica, so we did breakfast at park café for a change and I had time to do a gym class before we exited the boat. We actually went to Jamaica for Spring break the year before we did this cruise trip, so we had already done Dunn’s falls and Mystic mountain previously. I also knew from that trip that multiple boats dock in Jamaica on Wednesdays so all the excursions get very full. So instead I decided to do a non-Royal Caribbean excursion and do a resort for the day at Jewel Runaway bay. In part it was because I had flip flopped between staying there and where we ended up, which was Hilton Rose Hall and wanted to see what it was like. The only tricky part was finding the mini-bus to take us, but the info desk was able to direct us to the parking lot where it was waiting. There was another family and a few couples also doing the trip. It was about a half hour ride to the resort. Check-in took a bit of time because only one front desk girl seemed to know what to do, and we ended up at the back of the line.

The resort was great though. It was MUCH quieter than Hilton Rose had been, which surprised me for Easter break. We had no problem getting sun loungers at the beach. At the Hilton we had been running down reserving them in the morning. The beach was small, and definitely no better than the one at the Hilton. We spent about an hour or so there before having lunch at the grill which is behind the beach. We could have gone back to the lobby area and eaten at the buffet or the pizzeria on our day pass. Alcoholic and non –alcoholic beverages were all included too. After lunch we headed over to the water park, which was a great set-up with slides, a splash area and a lazy river. There were an abundance of floats for the lazy river. We didn’t do the slides as the Laulings weren’t interested, but they were pretty quiet too.

The bus was coming back for us at 4.45, so we packed up but were sad to leave. I could definitely see ourselves staying there and would definitely recommend it as an alternative to the other shore trips.

Dinner that night was at Jamie’s Italian, reviewed in the other blog.

Day 5 At Sea

Day 5 consisted of Coastal kitchen breakfast, a pilates class for me, mini-golf, Boardwalk arcade, pool time, climbing area and carousel rides. I managed to get my oldest Lauling down the Abyss. The hardest thing is getting going in the slide, but once you’re on your way it’s fast and fun, with glowing lights and spooky sounds inside. We saw the skating show, which we all enjoyed before having dinner at the Mexican.

Day 6 Cozumel

Day 6 we did the Royal Carribean excursion to Tolum, one of the Mayan ruins. There is also a trip to Xichen, but everything I read said that’s really far and not to attempt it as a day trip. One excursion I read up about after the fact was Xcaret adventure park, and I’d definitely look at that too. For most of the excursions you have to take a ferry from the port to the Costa Maya Riviera (takes about 45 minutes) and then a bus from there, which took another half an hour or so. It was REALLY hot with no shade at Tolum. I enjoyed it, especially to learn a bit about the Mayans which I really knew nothing about. but it was a bit too much for the boys. They did enjoy spotting the iguanas and Coatis though. After about 2 hours at the ruins, we took a short trip to a beach area with a restaurant for lunch. The tacos and ceviche were fabulous and then we had about an hour and a half at the beach. There was a lot of seaweed which didn’t make swimming look very appealing, and it was all piled up on the beach, but the Laulings didn’t seem to care and enjoyed building more sandcastles. We didn’t get back to the boat until close to 6 and had a Coastal Kitchen reservation at 6, so for any all-day Cozumel excursion, don’t book dinner for earlier than 6.30. We got down to Coastal kitchen around 6.30 and they still kindly accommodated us. We checked out the mow town show that night, but my youngest Lauling was pooped, and slept all the way through it!

Day 7 at sea

We had a leisurely breakfast at Coastal kitchen again and our usual itinerary of mini-golf, pools, climbing area and carousel. I got daddy Lauling down the Abyss and we watched a dog’s journey at the aquatheater screen too as well as the day time aquatheater show (nowhere near as good as the one earlier in the week). The daily itinerary lists what movies playing- we caught a bit of Spiderman earlier in the week there too. We wrapped up the day with dinner in the main dining room and the sad part of the week; packing. Cases need to be outside the room before 10 pm.

Day 8 De-embarkation day

We did a last breakfast at Coastal Kitchen, a last game of mini-golf and then got ready to leave. When you are suite class, you can pick one of 3 leaving times, and head up to the concierge lounge to be escorted off the boat. It was still a bit of a process. We picked the 8.45 slot which was supposed to have us leaving the boat at 9, it was closer to 9.15 before they started the process. What was good was they can hold the elevators so they didn’t stop anywhere else, so we all got loaded in to elevators and sent to the exit deck. From there we were walked off the boat to collect our luggage and exit through customs. We were done before 10 am. Our Mears taxi was already there and it’s a short 10 minute drive to the airport. We had a 1.30 pm flight and definitely could have done an earlier one. It did give me time at the United lounge at the airport to start looking for our next cruise in 2021 however ;)!

I will also say that the weather was perfect every day; not super humid and up in the mid to high 80s. It was a perfect time of year to go, you could really enjoy the outside areas of the boat which we weren’t able to do out of Bayonne. I also saw a decent mix of families, couples and solo travelers. I would totally recommend this itinerary and boat for those looking for a mix of activity and down time.

Dani & The Laulings do London

Even though I’m from the UK, I’ve never lived in London but I love to visit. It has a much more relaxed vibe than many other cities and huge variations in neighborhoods from the tourist areas of Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace to relaxed, more suburban areas like Richmond and Eel Pie Island.

Many flights fly overnight from the US to London, but you can sometimes get a day flight, like the 8.30 am flight out of Newark to Heathrow. With little kids, flying overnight can sometimes be a god-send as they will typically sleep most of the time, but it can then be difficult to get them to adjust to UK time. A day flight if you can keep them amused gets you arriving in London at 8.30 pm local time, which is only 3.30 EST US time, allowing you to get to your accommodation, unpack, decompress and aim for a 1 am bedtime, getting up around 9 am the next morning. The latter was my tactic on this most recent trip and the first time we did a day flight, but made us far more productive for our first day.

Where to stay?

If you plan to hit major tourist attractions, stay somewhere on the central and district tube (underground/ subway) lines. This trip we stayed in Westminster in a gated apartment complex called Lux St James. These apartments only accommodate 4-6 people but are well-appointed and a less than 10 minute walk from the St James’ Park subway station, with plenty of restaurants and shops a short stroll away. This apartment building also has free parking in an underground garage, although be warned that the access ramp is very tight and difficult to navigate.

How long to stay for?

There is so much to see and do in London, but you could can get a good sense of the city in 3-4 days. If this will be your only trip to the UK, I highly advise going to see some other areas of the UK such as Stratford, the Cotswolds or head further North to York or Edinburgh. Below I outline our more recent 2 day trip to London, perfect for all ages:

Day 1; Natural History Museum and Buckingham Palace

I got everyone up around 9 am and had us heading out the door just after 10.15 am. We took the leisurely stroll to St James’ park subway station. Buy a return ticket to South Kensington or a one day travel pass if you intend to do more than a couple of subway rides that same day. Kids travel for free so no need to get a ticket for them. Just go through the disabled/ family gates that are at one end of the turnstiles as a group. Subway trains run every few minutes. Make sure you take the District/ Circle line in the correct direction. Once you get off at South Kensington, follow the signs to the museums which will take you down an underground tunnel and exit when you see the Natural History Museum exit. This museum, along with most others, is free, although they appreciate a donation. Grab a guide map and identify which areas are most appealing. The museum is very popular and gets very busy from lunchtime onwards. I therefore highly recommend getting there in the morning to avoid having to queue to get in. Head to the dinosaur exhibition first as that is highly popular. You can easily spend a few hours here; we arrived around 11 and left around 1. We headed back to Westminster and grabbed lunch at Pizza Express before going back to the apartment for a quick rest.

Outside the Natural History Museum

I had reservations for a state room tour at Buckingham Palace at 4.15 pm. The state rooms are only open to the general public in the summer when the Queen is not residing at the palace. If you wish to do the tour, book tickets in advance. You can however take a chance to see if there are any tickets available at the palace on the day. We walked to the Palace from the apartment, which took about 30 minutes. We arrived at about 3.45 and spent some leisurely time observing the Palace guards and the fountains and grounds at the front of the Palace before heading round the corner to the state rooms.

There is a security screen at the palace consisting of a bag check and body X-ray screen. Once through there, you are given a self-guiding audio tour. The family version is great and includes ‘find the object’ hunts for each of the rooms as well as a few engaging games such as how many buses can fit in the ballroom. My two kids were fully entertained by it, which was a pleasant surprise. It ends with a fun dress-up area. Allow about 1.5 hours for the Palace tour.

Dress up at the castle

After the Palace tour we walked to the Rainforest café for dinner. We had a 7 pm reservation and we arrived about 10 minutes early. We sat near the elephants and had a great time before taking an Uber back to our apartment.

Day 2; Tower of London, Tower Bridge, Shrek and the London Eye

The next morning we headed out slightly earlier, and walked to the St James’ Park tube station again, this time going in the opposite direction on the District and Central line to Tower Hill. From there it’s a short walk across the street to the Tower of London. You can book tickets to the Tower of London in advance, which saves a bit of money and time queuing. Like the Natural History museum, the Tower of London gets very busy, especially the line to view the crown jewels. We arrived at about 10.30 and went straight to the crown jewels exhibit. There was a short line to get in, but it continues for quite a way inside before you get to the jewels, By the time we were out, the queue had filled up the complete outside queuing area which would mean at least a 15 minute wait before you even get inside.

If you can get your party up and out early in the morning, you might want to consider the early access VIP experience.

You can spend a whole day at the Tower of London if you want to catch everything, but after the Crown Jewels, we focused on the White tower where all the armor is, the torture chamber, which is quick and small to do, and the tower where the prisoners were kept. We left the tower around 12.30 and took the short walk along the river to Tower Bridge. We also bought tickets in advance for the bridge, but it wasn’t very busy the day we arrived and so would not have been a long wait to get tickets. Allow about 45 minutes to an hour for the Bridge. You can take an elevator, but if you don’t mind climbing a few hundred steps, there are a few exhibits along the way. Once at the top, there are viewing platforms on each side of the bridge and glass floors that everyone wants a picture of themselves lying over the road and river below.

Lie on the glass floor if you dare!

Once out of the Tower, there is a nice selection of restaurants along the river for a late lunch.

After re-fueling, we took the Circle and District line back from Tower Hill to Embankment and then switched to the Northern line to go one more stop to Waterloo. From there, follow the signs to the London eye. All the riverbank attractions are in the same vicinity; Shrek, Madame Tussauds, The London Dungeon and London SeaLife center. You can buy tickets in advance that are packages of one or more of each of these attractions with or without the London eye. We had a 4.00 pm reservation for Shrek. We did queue for about 30 minutes to get to the start of the attraction, yet when we came out there was no line at all, so it may just have been bad timing. There are pictures with the characters multiple times which takes time to get everyone through and started to get highly irritating for me. Once inside the attraction, it starts with the magic bus ride, a 4-D bus ride experience that lasts about 10 minutes. From there you go through various ‘scenes’ with actors. Overall, the Laulings thought the experience was ‘OK’. But definitely not a ‘must do’.

From there we grabbed a slushie break before heading to our 5.45 London Eye reservation. In the past I have done the fast pass, but it didn’t take more than about 10 minutes with a regular ticket to ride, so I’m not sure it’s necessary any more, and we were there in August during school holidays. I don’t know if it’s still part of the fast pass ticket, but we did have a narrator with us for that trip, which was a great way to understand everything you can see from the eye. This time, we were on our own. It was a ‘thumbs’ up’ from the Laulings.

From there we reversed our tube ride from Waterloo, heading back to Embankment on the Northern line and then to St James’ Park on the District/Circle. There are plenty of nice restaurant opportunities along the river at South Bank, but we chose to head back to Westminster to go to the Ma La Sichuan Chinese. I love UK Chinese food, especially the crispy duck with pancakes. I haven’t been able to find anything that’s quite the same in the US so I highly recommend you try it!

While my husband warned me it was too packed an itinerary, the variety I think kept the boys entertained. They didn’t complain once, and seemed to have a really enjoyable day. I had everyone in bed before midnight (I don’t transition them fully to the UK timezone as it’s tough to get them back otherwise), with a plan to be on the road the next morning by 9 am to head to Legoland Windsor (reviewed in a separate blog).

Dani & The Laulings do LEGOLAND Windsor, UK

Legoland Windsor is close to Heathrow airport and only an hour or so’s drive from central London. The Laulings adore theme parks, so I thought this would be a nice addition between doing London and then the required family visits. Having been thoroughly spoiled by Disney World and Universal Studios, I wasn’t quite sure how LegoLand was going to go down, especially LegoLand in the UK versus LegoLand in the US. We went in August 2018 and were pleasantly surprised.

Where to stay?

LegoLand has two on-site hotels; the regular hotel and the Castle hotel. We opted for the Castle Hotel, thinking it would be quieter and slightly more ‘up-market’ than the regular one, and that was the case. When you drive in to the park, the parking for the hotels is immediately on the right. This confused many people thinking it was regular parking, or perhaps they thought they could sneak through the hotel, but that’s not possible without a key card for the lift/elevator. If you’re staying at the LegoLand hotel, I believe you have to leave your luggage in the car until check-in time, while if you’re staying at the Castle hotel, you can take your luggage to the luggage check-in at the front of the LegoLand hotel. You then check-in at the LegoLand hotel but can’t collect your room key until 3 pm. The luggage is then taken over to the Castle hotel and is waiting for you in your room. To get to the Castle hotel, you have to go out the back of the LegoLand hotel and down a wooden pathway to get there. It’s not impossible to take your own luggage, but just a bit of a pain.

We stayed in a Knight room, and it was wonderfully themed. There is a little treasure hunt (note: the clues are on the round table in the window) that leads to unlocking a bag of goodies in the room safe. The boys adored it. The kid’s area has 2 bunk beds, lego building station and a Playstation. Even though the Laulings have a playstation at home, there was something extra special about being able to play from a bed. They still don’t stop talking about wanting to go back, just to be able to play the Playstation from bed! There are a selection of demo versions of lego games to play. The rooms have air conditioning (a rare find in the UK) and have one bathroom. It was very nicely appointed with some amazing dragon lego builds.

Kids area
Adults area
amazing Lego builds
Bathroom

Park entry and fast-passes

We stayed for 2 nights with 2 park days. We got there around 10.30 the first day, so the park had been open for about half an hour, but was already very busy. I would not attempt this park without a Qbot during school holidays. The Qbot essentially holds your place in the queue and counts down the wait time until you can go to the ride. You can go anytime once the countdown is done (there’s no window) and you can’t book another ride until your Qbot has been scanned for that ride. You can do a regular Qbot which means you wait the time of the current queue or a faster Qbot that halves the time, or a super expensive ride immediately Qbot, that not even I was willing to splurge on. If you want to Qbot Ninjago or laser raiders, those are pay for add ons too! Qbots can be picked up from the gift store in the LegoLand hotel. I did mine on my phone rather than carrying the Qbot around, and the staff set you up. Be sure to have a portable phone charger to hand though.

We did the regular Qbot for day 1 and the express for day 2. The Dragon coaster, Ninjago and Laser raiders consistently had wait times of about 45-60 minutes, and the pirate shores a whopping 2 hours. I personally couldn’t imagine standing in-line with my kids for that amount of time at a park that’s open from 10-6. If you set aside an hour for lunch, that would mean you could only get through 5-6 rides by the time you’d walked from one to the other and actually completed the ride.

You need to book a time slot for the restaurants in the hotels for dinner and breakfast. There are instructions in your booking confirmation on how to do this and I’d advise doing it before your stay as they do book up. You can also book a swim time at the pool for an hour, instructions for that are also included in the booking pack.

Day 1

We headed to laser raiders first and waited about 40 minutes for that as I didn’t have a Qbot for that on day 1. There was a movie screening area in the middle of the queue that the kids could sit in and then meet their parents at the end, which was neat. The ride as it sounds is a laser shooting ride. While we were waiting for that I had the Qbot queuing for Ninjago and so we were able to go straight over to that next. The theming was wonderful but the ride is really tiring on your arms after a while, and the scenes just a bit too long versus the speed of toy story mania which is a similar concept at WDW.

We then headed for burgers near pirate falls and had the Qbot queue for the dragon while we ate. The burgers were freshly made and not bad. The line to order food was long, but moved fairly efficiently.

The Dragon coaster was by far the Lauling’s favorite ride. The combination of theming inside followed by a short but fun outside roller coaster was really different. Next up was Viking’s river splash. There was no way you were getting wet on this, and the boys found the fact that there are people driers everywhere and ponchos for sale hilarious. The sides of the round raft are just too high for water to ever get in. There are no seat belts though and it really jolts so make sure everyone holds on tight. The family we were in a raft with said that when they were on it earlier, a lady flew right across the raft. We did some of the smaller rides like the scarab bouncer and swings before another ride on the Dragon, and wrapping up our day at the submarine; really cool that there are real fish.

We booked a slot for the indoor pool at 5 pm. It’s very small, with only a small kid’s slide and splash area and a small regular pool. I wouldn’t recommend wasting valuable park time on it, but if you have kids that won’t be exhausted, perhaps do a 6.30 slot after park closing and then a later dinner at 8. You only get an hour in the pool.

We ended our day with dinner in the LegoLand hotel which was a buffet, but we were seated efficiently and everyone enjoyed their food. There was the usual kid favorites; chicken nuggets, mac n cheese, chips, but also curry, carvery meats, chicken and veggie dishes and an ice cream machine.

Day 2

The next morning, breakfast was included and served in the Castle’s restaurant. Our service was efficient, aside from them always running out of plates for the pastries. There were full English breakfast and pancake options that were served quickly and were not bad at all. The dragon sleeping on the fire place is a wonderful touch with a playground right outside allowing the kids to go and play while waiting for the food to come.

Those staying in the hotel could go in to the park at 9.30. The hotel spits you out right in to the park, where someone checks your tickets and you’re on your way. Only the rides in the Kingdom of the pharos are open first thing and the SQUID surfer. You can’t Qbot the squid surfer, so we headed to that first. There are 2 SQUID surfers and we got all the way to the front and then for some unknown reason they closed the ride. So we had to go and stand in the line for the other one and of course those that were at the back of our line were now at the front of the new line. That would never happen at Disney and this was one of many major differences in the customer service at LegoLand.

They were grossly understaffed overall. At many of the rides, such as the Vikings river splash and the Pirate falls the Qbot line joins the regular line close to the ride start point, but expect to wait at least 15 minutes once you’ve got to the join point. At both of those rides, the same person was often getting people off the ride and new people on the ride and just couldn’t keep up with the fact that the boats just keep moving. So several times, boats were let go with no one on them, or with just a couple of people. The other thing they did with the roller coaster was not have you queue all the way up to the ride, but hold you back until it was your time to go, but that meant you then had to be sorted in to where you were going to sit. As Disney, the cast members have you lined up in your ‘stall’ ready to jump on the ride the minute it gets in. So much more efficient. If they re-looked at how they got people on rides they could really change their throughput of guests. They even ran out of 3-D glasses at Ninjago!

After spending way too much time at the SQUID surfer, we headed over to Coastguard HQ. You can’t use the lower level QBOTs on that so we had to use the regular line. It was probably a 45 minute wait just after official park opening at 10 am. As we got to almost the front of the line, a lady in front of us fainted. My husband alerted one of the staff. About 10 minutes later a single female arrived with a wheelchair. The family clearly wanted to get on the ride and so the lady said she felt she was fine. The ‘medic’ didn’t check her pulse or her blood pressure, just said there was a first aid center she could come over to if she needed to lately. Personally, I didn’t feel very comforted by the way it was handled. The ride is basically an individual boat ride; different, but not super exciting.

We went to the pizza and pasta buffet for lunch. While getting seated took a while as you have to queue to pay up-front, the food was hot and constantly replenished and you could eat as much as you liked.

Having the half time QBOT for day 2 meant we could get through a reasonable number of rides. We did the 4D movie theater (surprisingly good fun and don’t worry about the water on the seats- you don’t get that wet), sky rider (nice view of the park from up there), fire academy (we were woeful at it, but good team building exercise), laser raiders, pirate falls (log flume which has a pretty impressive main big drop but was looking a bit sorry for itself on the back end due to canons that I’m assuming shot water at some point, but no longer do), Vikings river splash and submarine again, Dragon and Dragon’s apprentice junior coaster two times and spent some time in mini-land where models of buildings around the world are, and the castaway camp play area. The Dragon broke right at the end of the day just as were about to ride for a last time, which was a disappointing end to the day. They were giving a fast pass for another ride, but as it was almost 6 pm, it would have been a real hussle to get to anything else, so we just headed back to the hotel.

The Laulings weren’t interested in doing the driving school, but it looked like fun and is a popular inclusion for most kids.

We had dinner at the Castle hotel on our second night. We were seated efficiently, but ordering and getting the bill paid took a bit of time. Bizarrely the dragon is ‘turned off’ at 9 pm, even though there were still several people finishing their meals.

Check-out day

Breakfast on our day of leaving was not as positive an experience as day 1. We had to ask twice to give our order in (our server came over to give us menus and then I saw them leave the restaurant and they didn’t come back for ages, so we ended up ordering with someone else) and then we had to ask for our order to be checked on after people that ordered after us got their food first. There was also the same issue with no plates for the pastries as we had the previous day. That said, a character dragon came around to take pictures that morning with each table, which I didn’t know about, and made the kid’s day.

A surprise table visit by the resident Dragon

You were supposed to have been able to request for your luggage to be picked up in the morning to be taken over to the Legoland hotel, but despite filling in the request form, that never happened. It wasn’t a huge deal for us to take the bags over, but may have been a struggle for those dealing with strollers.

All in all, I was actually pleasantly surprised by Legoland. I didn’t have very high expectations, but many of the rides were well done, food options were better than other reviews led me to expect, and the hotel rooms were wonderful. My kids still ask when we’re going back to Legoland 6 months later. The biggest pro is it’s not cheap, especially with 4 QBOTs and the number of rides you could cover without it would be limited.

The ‘potty’ chair was a huge hit
Sword in the stone

Dani & The Laulings Guide to Walt Disney World

Planning

Firstly, do NOT attempt WDW without a plan, each Disney park is HUGE and you will have pretty cranky kids if you’re zig-zagging all over the place without fast passes (FP). Start by picking your dates. Both Kenny the Pirate and Touring Plans have crowd calendars which can help you plan which dates to go, or if you need to go on specific dates, will help you plan which park to do on which day.

I strongly suggest staying at an on-site WDW hotel. This gives you the ability to book dining for your whole trip 180 days in advance and FPs 60 days in advance. If you stay off-site, you have to book dining at 180 days in advance of each day of your trip and can only book FPs 30 days in advance, which obviously means you might miss out on some of the most popular ride FPs like 7 Dwarf Mine Train at Magic Kingdom. Travel agents (TAs) will book WDW trips for you for no additional charge, which is definitely worth doing, especially for the first trip. They will also book your advanced dining reservations (ADRs) and Fast Passes. The Facebook mom approved Disney Planning group has a list of approved TAs.

So now you have your dates booked, where to start? Create a profile at My Disney Experience (MDE) and link your reservation. If you have a TA, they will do this for you. Once you’ve done this, you can book your dining 180 days out from your trip and FPs 60 days out, and your plans will be displayed in the MDE webpage and associated cell phone app.

Once you have your FPs booked, plan out what other rides you want to try and hit and use Touring Plans to create a touring plan. It will give you a plan in terms of what rides to do in what order based on minimizing walking around the park and typical waiting times. WDW Prep and Kenny the Pirate also provide stock touring plans for kids of different ages that can be good to follow if you don’t need to create something more custom or you don’t have a clue what rides you want to ride.

Where to stay?

There are a range of hotels ranging from value to moderate to deluxe. In the value category, the little mermaid and cars suites at Art of Animation are a good pick as they give separate adult and kid sleeping areas, and the newly renovated POP rooms are popular. For moderate, those with girls will love the Royal Rooms at Port Orleans. In the Deluxe category, the monorail hotels are super convenient, especially with strollers as you don’t have to fold them. The Polynesian is my favorite of the Monorail hotels based on theming and the ability to walk to the monorail to Epcot. Beach and Yacht have the best pool and easy access to Hollywood Studios and Epcot and are a great pick for kids out of strollers. The Wilderness Lodge has boat access to Magic Kingdom and is often the cheapest of the Deluxe options. Animal lovers will be in awe with the savannah view rooms at Animal Kingdom Lodge, but the transportation to parks is all by bus and the furthest out from parks other than Animal Kingdom. Details on all of Disney’s hotels can be found on their website.

If you want a higher end hotel experience, consider going ‘club level.’ This is offered by all the Deluxe hotels with rooms on a separate floor with access to a ‘club’ that offers included breakfast, hors d’oeuvres, dessert and drinks (both non-alcoholic and alcoholic). Most Deluxe hotels also offer 1 and 2 bedroom suites with club level access. Don’t look at this as a way of saving money by eating there all the time but as a stress-free way to not have to battle with the crowds for a quick service (QS) breakfast at the hotel, a larger room, and to have access to snacks and drinks. My favorite club level experience to date was at the Wilderness lodge, in part because they offer juice boxes, chocolate milk bottles and soda cans which you can stock in your room fridge and take in to the parks with you. The other ‘perk’ of going club level is you can pay $50 per person per day to purchase 3 additional FPs. This is an absolute god-send for Christmas week. You have to do a minimum of 3 days but all 6 FPs can be booked at the 90 day before your trip mark, meaning you are guaranteed to get anything you want. On our trip in January we had FPs for all 3 top tier rides at Epcot and all 3 Toy story land rides at Hollywood Studios plus all the mountains and 7 Dwarf Mine Train at Magic Kingdom. You could also do both avatar rides at Animal Kingdom (AK).

The other option if you want to spread out more is to do a Disney vacation club rental. While you can book these direct with Disney, the cheapest way to do it is to buy points from vacation club owners through reputable sites like David’s DVC. This is a way to get larger accommodations at the Deluxe hotels, although keep in mind that a travel agent cannot book this for you, so you will be on your own for dining and FP bookings. Due to this, I would suggest only doing a DVC rental if this is your second or later trip to WDW.

Advanced Dining Reservations (ADRs)

The Laulings meet Cinderella at Cinderella’s Royal Table

Yes, it does seem ridiculous deciding where you want to eat 180 days out from a vacation, but some restaurants are that popular, that this is a necessary evil. Everyone will have a different opinion on where the best places to eat at Disney are based on their own personal experience and food tastes.

You don’t HAVE to pre-plan meals. The restaurants you book in advance are table service (TS) (i.e. you are waited on) but there are plenty of ‘order at the counter’ quick service (QS) options. I do not recommend doing more than one table service meal per day as they do take up time. Even with a reservation you will likely wait at least 10 minutes to be seated and should allow at least 1 hour for a non-character TS restaurant and 1.5 hours for a character restaurant to ensure the characters get to your table.

At least one character meal is a must-do. My favorite is Garden Grill at Epcot. It’s small enough that you often get to see the characters twice and they have a nice range with Chipmunks Chip and Dale and various Mickey and friends characters. It has the added novelty of revolving around the Living with the Land ride and food is served family style, so virtually no waiting which is a god-send with impatient children, plus the food was our favorite dinner meal. Do a pre-park breakfast reservation and you can be in-line for Soarin before the waiting crowds arrive. Other restaurants that offer opportunity for early ride access is Arkershus at Epcot for Frozen (restaurant also includes Princess meets), and Be Our Guest for 7 Dwarfs Mine Train at Magic Kingdom. If you’re arriving early enough the day before your first park day, Chef Mickeys at The Contemporary is a great first night option to set the excitement. Everyone needs to dine in Cinderella’s Castle (Cinderella’s Royal Table) at least once in their lives, well just because it’s a castle, and Be Our Guest is a great lunch option as while it’s quick service (QS) food is brought to your table (order online in advance and skip the counter order) and it’s Beast’s castle and beautifully themed inside.

Another dining recommendation is to do a Rivers of Light at Animal Kingdom dining package or a Fantasmic! at Hollywood Studios (HS) dining package. You can book breakfast, lunch or an early dinner at select restaurants and get priority viewing at the firework/ lightshow in the evening. This essentially gives you an extra ‘FP’ and doesn’t cost any more than the regular dining.

My next recommendation is a ‘splurge’ on an early morning magic (EMM) experience at Magic Kingdom or/and Hollywood studios. While officially a ‘dining’ booking, EMM at MK gives you access with a limited number of other people to various Fantasyland rides, including 7 Dwarfs Mine Train (7DMT), Peter Pan and Pooh from 7.45 until 9 am, followed by breakfast. When we did it we rode 7DMT seven times, Peter Pan and Pooh 3 times each, the Carousel once and then were one of the first to arrive at Thunder Mountain once the park officially opened. We were sitting down for breakfast at 9.20. The HS version gives early morning access to Toy Storyland, so I imagine you can ride Slinky dog upwards of 5 times if you wanted to.

Finally, a dessert party is another ‘splurge’ option for a great viewing spot for Happily Ever After fireworks or Illuminations at Epcot.

If you book ADRs yourself, start with the most difficult to get ones first not by ascending date. The trickiest are Cinderella’s Royal Table, Arkershus, Ohana, Le Celier, California Grill, Be Our Guest and Victoria and Albert.

Disney offers a dining plan which allows you to pay in-advance for food. The most popular option offers 1 TS, 1 QS and 2 snacks per day which many people like as they don’t have to budget for food when they arrive. There are various dining calculators to see if it’s worth doing, but outside of buffets and family style restaurants, you may get away with sharing dishes as portions are generally quite generous and it can work out cheaper to pay as you go.

In terms of what time to book ADRs for, I do not recommend booking them later than a pre-park opening for breakfast as the first two hours are the quietest time in terms of ride lines so don’t eat during that time. If you are open to a slightly later than normal lunch or a slightly earlier than 5.30 dinner, you will often experience restaurants at their quietest and be seated quickly.

Fast Passes

Each member of your party gets 3 FPs for each ticketed park day. Once you have used your 3 FPs can you book more, one at a time. For this reason, I always recommend booking your FPs whenever possible in the morning, although obviously if there isn’t availability in the morning for a ‘must do’ experience then you may need to be flexible. The ideal time for your first FP is around 9.30. Each FP has a one hour window to be used, so you can wait until 10.30 to use that one, and have another one booked for 10.30 and your 3rd one at 11.30. Then you can book another one for straight after lunch if you’re not taking a break. Once you’ve used your first one, you can actually move the next one up (if there’s availability) and then the same with the next one, so you can be ready for your 4th FP faster. As soon as you’ve checked onto the 3rd FP ride, open the MDE app to look for your next FP. As soon as you’ve used that one, you can book another one and so on. If you can’t find one for your whole party, split it up in to smaller groups. You can often snag one for 1 or 2 people in overlapping windows, and still all ride together.

Many rides have height restrictions, so be sure to check kiddos will make the height requirements. Disney is VERY strict on this. To help with this, make the most of rider swap. This allows you to book a FP for a taller child and one adult (and another FP for another adult and the shorter child could be booked for the same time). The whole party needs to check in at the FP desk and you ask for the rider swap. The cast member will ask which adult will ride the second time, and load a rider swap pass on to their magic band. You now must return within an hour (or the standby wait time) to use it (this is a recent change). That adult can bring up to 2 more people back on with them, allowing the older child to ride a second time.

So what should you FP? Assuming, you have kiddos that hit the height requirements, these are my recommendations. You should always tailor to your kid’s preferences and whether they want to meet characters or not. Personally, I prefer to use character meals to address character meets rather than a FP.

MK: 7 Dwarf Mine Train (38 inch height requirement), Thunder Mountain (40 inch requirement), Space Mountain (44 inch requirement) or Splash Mountain (40 inch requirement); or Peter Pan’s flight, Winnie the Pooh, Buzz Lightyear or Tales with Belle, all which have no height requirements.

Epcot: You can only FP one from Frozen, Soarin and Test Track. Both Soarin and Test Track are 40 inch height requirement, so with kids under that height your default is Frozen. My experience is lines are typically shorter for Soarin versus Test Track, so I recommend FP for Test Track and rope drop Soarin (I’ll explain what rope drop is below). I have even got Soarin as an additional FP on previous trips. For the additional FPs, do Mission Space (you can do either green (lower intensity and 40 inch height requirement) or orange (higher intensity and 44 inch requirement), Spaceship Earth and Nemo and Friends (the latter have no height requirement). There’s no need for a FP for turtle talk with crush in my experience.

HS: You can only FP one from Toy Story Mania, Slinky Dog Dash and Alien saucers and Slinky dog is the most popular so I suggest trying to get that. If you can’t get one, rope drop it and get whichever TS ride you can get. It is possible to get Toy Story Mania as an additional FP on a quiet crowd day. For the rest, Tower of Terror (40 inch), Rock N Roller coaster (48 inches and goes upside down) or Star Tours (40 inches). For littles, Beauty and the Beast show and Muppet 3D. There are lots of shows to choose from, but in general a FP is not really necessary.

Animal Kingdom (AK): You can only pick one FP from the two avatar rides. Do Flight of Passage if you can (44 inch requirement), otherwise choose Navii River. For the others, Kali river rapids (36 inch requirement), Expedition Everest (44 inch requirement) or Kilimanjaro safari (no height requirement) and/or the lion king show. Dinosaur can normally be snagged as a 4th FP (40 inch requirement).

Have questions or comments, I’d love to hear from you.

Dani & The Laulings do the WDW Marathon

When my husband Gavin said he was up for doing the Disney marathon, I was amazed and realized he had caught the Disney bug as much as me. So I set about planning our trip. Because the marathon is in January and WDW packages don’t get released until June of the year before for the next year, I took a chance to wait until they were released to book on the RunDisney site, and also to make sure Gavin got a marathon slot. Despite historically the marathon filling up pretty quickly, it did not end up selling out in 2019. I logged on the first day you could register and had to wait a while before the system would let me register and I wasn’t 100% sure it had gone through until the confirmation came through several hours later.

Where to stay?

I flip-flopped over where to stay between the Poly and Beach club. The Crescent lake area hotels (Boardwalk, Beach and Yacht and Swan and Dolphin) are in the Epcot area, and the race starts from Epcot, so it would seem to make sense to stay in that area. That said, you cannot walk through the park to get to the start line that early, and you can’t walk back unless you intend to use a park ticket that day, so you have to take a bus. The buses are re-routed due to road closures from the marathon, plus Epcot is a nightmare on marathon day as runners go right through it, so areas are roped off and you are only allowed to cross from one side of the path between Soarin and Test Track from time to time. The Poly has the advantage of being next to the TTC, allowing you to take the monorail to Epcot plus the race runs right past the TTC and Poly allowing you to literally roll out of bed to watch as a spectator without really leaving your resort area. If your runner is doing other races such as the 10K, the Crescent lake area definitely makes more sense as it runs right past that area. But just as I decided the Poly might be the way to go, I couldn’t get the one bedroom room that I felt would be best if my husband was getting up at 3 am in the morning the day of the marathon, so went with Beach instead.

View from room 4671 at Beach club (club level 1 bedroom)

WDW in January

After the New Year crowds leave, WDW is typically quiet, but do expect it to be significantly busier over marathon week (Thurs-Sun), and also be prepared to leave more time for bus transportation due to road closures, and for parks to be roped off in during the first few hours while runners are still running. The temperature can vary wildly in January; from 40s to 80s. The week we were there saw a significant warm up versus the week before; mid to high 70s during the day and mid 40s at night. It was dry and not at all humid, except of course the day of the marathon itself. It made touring the parks a much more pleasurable experience than in the heat of the summer of our previous trips, and still warm enough to make the most of the amazing pool at the Beach.

Arrival

Because it was a school week, we took a 6pm flight out of Newark, which was late and didn’t depart until closer to 7 pm. We did make some time up, but didn’t land until around 9.30. We made it to the Beach club in a pre-booked Mears taxi by about 10.20. If you arrive before 10 pm, you will be whisked up to the club level, but because we were later than that we just checked in at the regular desk, but there was only one person in-front of us, so we were done fairly quickly. We were in room 4671, which had the most amazing view over Crescent lake. It has a master bedroom with a King bed and a living area with a sofa bed. There is also a sofa bed in the master bedroom, meaning you could sleep 6 comfortably. The furnishings feel ‘high-end’ but not very Disney-themed, aside from a single picture of Mickey and Minnie.

Bedroom has second sofa bed
Only “Disney” theming
King bed in club level one bedroom
sofa bed in one bed club level room

Day 1 (Friday)

I awoke around 3.30 to voices and it took me a while to realize they were coming from the 10K that was running that day. As the race began at 5.30, around 6.30, there were also cow bells outside our window as the runners came past the back of the Beach. I would imagine you would be able to hear the noise from any room in the Beach as they all face out towards the back of the hotel. If this will bother you, I’d definitely suggest staying away from this area.

We fueled up at the club level breakfast which was a good spread of cereals, pastries, breads, boiled eggs and two hot dishes; oatmeal and either crepes, grits or quiche.

Breads and pastries
Eggs and hot options

I chose to make Hollywood Studios our first day based on Kenny the pirate crowd calendar and the fact that there were no extra magic hours, which often tend to make the park busier. Due to the bell service being confused over which name to look for on the stroller we rented from Kingdom strollers, it took longer than I had planned to get us on our way. We just missed a freedom boat leaving the lighthouse between Beach and Yacht, and in hindsight that should have been our trigger to walk, but as my 8 year old was not in a stroller for the first time, I didn’t want to push my luck with the amount of time I was asking him to walk. The boats come from Epcot to Boardwalk to Beach/Yacht and then on to Swan & Dolphin and then to HS and reverse. A boat arrived around 8.20 and had us at HS around 8.40. The HS crowd had already been let past the ‘rope’ once we got through security and check-in, so I knew we were too late to have a chance of a short wait for Slinky Dog. We had done the 3 extra club level fast passes, so we would get to ride it, but I had hoped for another opportunity. We headed straight to Toy Story Land anyway, with a vague hope that the park would be deserted and the Slinky Dog line sub 30 minutes, but it was posted at 80 minutes and the line was snaking almost to where the Buzz meet and greet is.

So we decided to go straight to Alien Swirling Saucers, which had virtually no wait. We just had to wait in the loading area for the next ride. It’s basically just a sophisticated fairground ride; essentially a scrambler that moves from left to right. It was fun though, and the disco music helped to create the atmosphere. After that, we moved to Toy Story Mania, which was posting a 10 minute wait, with the standby line only just past where it merges with fast pass. Our first FP was back in TS land at 9.45, and it was only 9.30 by the time we exited Toy Story Mania, so I opted for Star Tours as that was also only posting a 10 minute wait, which ended up being walk on. From there we headed back for our 3 club level FPs that allowed us to FP all 3 Toy Story rides. The only downside is you can’t modify them so we had to wait the full 1 hour window to ride. We ended our morning with our much anticipated Slinky Dog FP. It was definitely fun, with a drop that was bigger than Mine Train and a fun rolling meadows part towards the end, but it lacked the theming/ atmosphere of Mine Train in my opinion. My eldest Lauling loved it and was vying to go again, while my youngest was not a fan of the big drop.

Alien saucers was walk on
My little Lauling not a fan!
‘The big drop’

From there we headed to Hollywood and Brown Derby for lunch. The main driver was I didn’t want to spend time on a character meal during such a short trip, but wanted to get the tickets for Fantasmic. Hollywood and Brown, Hollywood Vine and Mama Melrose all provide the option for a Fantasmic dining package, where preferred seating for Fantasmic is included. Note: the latest time you can dine with this package is about 4.30 pm so lunch is your best bet if you don’t plan to eat at odd times. The food was really good and was a set meal that included dessert. We had a noon reservation, were seated almost immediately and were out by 1.15 (we could have been out faster but our next FP window wasn’t until 1.20). My eldest Lauling and daddy had a FP for Rock N Roller coaster while my youngest Lauling and I had one for the 2 pm Beauty and the Beast show. After our respective activities, we met up back at the hotel so my husband could go to the Expo to pick up his race bid. While he did that, the Laulings and I hit up the pool. The beach part of the pool was a huge hit, although it’s quite the walk to get to. There were plenty of buckets and shovels on the beach. I had been surprised that the club level at the Beach didn’t provide them as they do at the Poly, and splurged on buying one from the gift shop that I didn’t need to have done. We figured maybe the Yacht club level provided them (because they were the same green buckets and yellow shovels that we’d got from the Poly).

Day 2 (Saturday)

While I awoke to the sound of the half-marathon, today was not quite so bad because the half-marathon ran on the other side of the lake past Boardwalk, so we were at least spared from being able to hear cow bells. After breakfast, we enjoyed the leisurely 5 minute stroll to the world showcase entry to Epcot. There is no need to take a boat- the walk is really quick. We arrived at 8.35 but they weren’t letting you in unless you had a pre-park breakfast. After about 5 minutes, we were let in, and there were only a couple of families ahead of us. Although we had FPs for all 3 Tier 1 rides with the club level extras, I figured we could rope drop Frozen given it’s in the world showcase. The world showcase area was deserted and we were about 5th inline for Frozen; beating everyone coming from the main entrance and coming out of Arkenhus. At 8.55 we were let on to the ride. Don’t be those people who used their FP at 9 am- at least ride it once on standby and then go again on your FP.

A deserted “England”

From there we had planned to go and see Ralph and Penelope who were a new character great, but the half-marathon was still in full-swing and we just missed the walk-way being opened to let us go that way. So we headed to test Track and Mission Space, and walked straight on to Mission Space green. Our first FP was for Test Track at 9.30, so we were just about ready for that as we got off Mission Space, only to get to the car building room and then for the ride to go down. We were issued another FP good for the day on our magic bands and had a while before Mission Space as our next FP, so decided to head over to Spaceship Earth. The wait time was only 10 minutes standby, but that ride went down too- Epcot was clearly having a bad day! It did get back up and running after about 10 minutes, so we stuck it out. My eldest Lauling and daddy tried out Mission space orange for the first time (my youngest was too small so we stuck to green). After that Test Track was back up and running, so we got on that before doing our Spaceship Earth FP. We then headed to Sunshine Seasons for lunch which had a great variety of fresh options, and then FPing Soarin, my personal Epcot favorite.

The boys were then more interested in going back to the pool that doing anymore rides, so we all headed to the pool around 2.30-4 before going back to Epcot for dinner. We ate at La Hacienda de SanAngel and again were seated almost immediately at a great table overlooking the lake. I didn’t like the food quite as much as San Angel Inn, but still enjoyed the shrimp tacos I picked. Gavin wanted to get back to rest before the marathon, but the boys and I hopped on Nemo and then our Frozen FP before calling it a night.

Day 3 (Marathon Day)

Maybe because previous years had been much busier, all the marathon reviews suggested getting on the 3.30 bus at the latest if you were running, so Gavin dutifully complied. The Laulings and I took a bus at 4.30. It was half full, and included some people that were running. 10 minutes later we were at Epcot and I have no doubt the runners would have got to their corrals with time to spare as Gavin said he was waiting around for a long time for it to start.

The boys and I boarded the monorail at 4.50 (after security check and just missing a train). The coffee shop at the Monorail was open which made me very happy. We were at the TTC by 5.10. By my calculations of my husband’s 3 hours and 40 minute pace, he should have been running by the 4 mile mark around 6.10, so we had a whole hour to wait. The areas still inside the TTC got very packed early on. My guess is those folks planned to then try to hop on the Monorail to catch their runner again at MK, but I think you might be pushing it unless your runner is slow. My plan was to walk to the Poly as our next stop, which would be mile 8. So I was fine exiting the TTC and finding a spot by the barrier just as the runners come out of the tunnel. It was a great spot and Gavin and I had no problem seeing each other.

We then walked past the TTC and past the front of the Poly to the road that runs the other side of the hotel. This is where things went a bit south. When we first got there, only the early runners were running by, and the police were letting you cross over the road to the other side, which garnered a much better view of the runners because there was a median and cars were being allowed to go down the Poly side. It was pretty dark though, and Gavin was the one that saw me first rather than the other way round. It’s also pretty narrow at that point, so the runners were so bunched up that they weren’t letting spectators cross back over and directed us to walk down to the Grand Floridian crossing. That was a reasonable walk, pushing the stroller off-road down the grass verge. Here they directed the runners down each side of the road, allowing spectators to cross from time to time. Rather than walk back up the other side of the road to the Poly, I opted to jump on the Monorail at the Grand Floridian and take it back to the TTC and then change for Epcot. This ended up being a good plan, and we got to take a nosey at the Grand Floridian. It was about 7 am by this point. The Monorail was still quiet.

Back at Epcot, I asked for directions to the buses to take us back to the hotel so we could grab breakfast before catching Gavin again at the back of the Beach club. The security incorrectly told me they weren’t running yet and I would need to go back to the TTC to catch one. 1) There are no buses that I’m aware of that run from Epcot to Beach on a normal day, so I decided to ignore him and luckily I found the buses and they were running. The bus driver had no clue what he was doing though- he went all round the houses to get to the hotel and then said he had only been told to drop at the Boardwalk. I complained to the bus coordinator at the Boardwalk who thankfully told the driver he had to drop at all the Cresent lake hotels so he grudgingly took me to the Beach. We got back to the hotel around 8.15. The Laulings and I went straight up to the club level for breakfast, and then I realized that the marathon was running round the back of the Boardwalk and not Beach and that I was probably not going to be able to catch him at mile 22 and then get back to Epcot in time to meet him at the end, so I opted to get back on the bus and go back to Epcot. We were on a bus by 9 am and at the spectators waiting area at 9.20 (note there is a security check at the spectator waiting area). I got the alert that Gavin had finished in 3 hours and 49 minutes, which was about 9 minutes off his usual place, and at about 9.30, he arrived at the reunion area.

Gavin said that the atmosphere at the start had been good- there was a DJ and more porter potties than he had ever seen at any other marathon. He said bag check was efficient and it was very well organized overall. Characters were all over the course, especially around the ESPN area, and DJs were everywhere. He enjoyed it so much he announced he was up for the Dopey next time!!

We caught a bus back to the hotel and fortunately this driver knew what he was doing and dropped us off in a much more timely manner. We were back at the hotel around 10.30. Breakfast was still being served at club level so I was able to grab some stuff for Gavin, before he showered and we all took a nap. I got everyone up around noon and we got a 12.20 bus to Magic Kingdom. We were quickly into the park and ordered lunch at Columbia Harbor House on the bus. The lobster roll was awesome. Suitably fueled, we started our FPs in Tomorrowland with Space Mountain for me and the oldest Lauling and Buzz Lightyear for the youngest and daddy. We did a rider swap for Space Mountain so daddy and the oldest Lauling could go on too, while the youngest and I were lucky enough to get on Astro Orbiters without much of a line. In fact we were off before they were off Space Mountain!

From there we headed over to Fantasyland and had FPs for Winnie the Pooh followed by Mine Train. Mine Train was our last ‘regular’ FP and we entered in the 5 minute timeframe before the official FP time, and I was able to sneak in a Little Mermaid FP before our first club level FP window. After Little Mermaid we grabbed a snack before our Haunted Mansion FP and then rode Small World standby. We wrapped our FPs with Splash and Thunder Mountain (Tomorrowland speedway and Peter Pan were both down for refurbishment).

We had dinner reservations at 6.30 at Tony’s. It was packed and a lot of people were trying to get a walk up table and were being told they’d have to wait an hour (and some did!). I liked the food, but the service wasn’t the best. The kids meals were initially ‘forgotten’- Gavin and I got ours but the kids didn’t and it took a while to get the check. I had made a last FP for Buzz Lightyear, but we didn’t need one- it was walk on even with standby, as were most of the smaller rides at this point. At 8 pm, even Mine Train was only posting a 26 minute wait. We watched some of the fireworks, and even getting a viewing spot in the circle infront of the castle was not a problem, and then headed out to beat the crowds around 8.30. I should also note that the parks were still decorated for the holiday season, which was an added bonus.

We definitely made the most of our MK day for sure, and were sad to leave the next morning. 2 days later all the Disney run pictures had posted to my Memory Maker. Note, it took about 12 hours longer than the other pictures for the character meets to show up, so don’t despair if that happens to you.

Now we’re looking at Jan 2021 for the Dopey. Heck, maybe even I’ll run the 5K!