So after listening to our Bonvoyagee on the Dibbcast the night before (1st November episode), my excitement was at an all-time high as Paul and I carried out our last minute preparations.
I woke up at 6:30am and jumped out of bed like it was Christmas morning! After 15 months of planning, the day had finally arrived!
One more day to Disney!
We woke up the kids and got them fed and watered and ready for school just like any other day. Oliver left first. So I quickly took this photo of Amelia. She was so excited about going to school she didn't even ask why I was taking a photo of her holding a piece of paper or what it said!
The second Paul left to take her to school, I was in full stealth mode. I showered and got dressed in minutes, did my hair and make-up before packing it and my hair straighteners in the hand luggage ready for the following morning and packed a few last minute clothes, toiletries, and stuff for the journey that I had bought in Tesco the night before. Then I wrote out the card for their reveal and wrapped the Mickey Messenger plush in tissue paper and put it in a gift bag. Then I set up my camera in the living room on my tripod in front of the sofa where they would open it.
Paul cleaned the kitchen, emptied the bins and cleaned the fridge out ready for any burglars that might pay us a visit. Then "nipped out" to get our dollars but was gone for aaages. The first of many set backs today.
If you read my pre-trip report, you'll know I did a market night in my Etsy store on the Friday. I don't know if many of you are familiar with how Etsy works, but for sellers, when somebody buys something and pays using a credit card, the money goes into an Etsy account before being released into your bank account on the next working day.… my market night was on a Friday and by Monday afternoon the money was still not in my account which was to be part of our spending money. Great. My sheer dumb luck, on Monday night at 11pm I received an email to say the money was on its way, but it could take 3-5 working days to appear in my account. In the past it usually shows up at the same time as the email, but of course they must have known I was going on holiday and needed it and decided not to give it to me. So all day Monday I was refreshing my online banking app and again all morning on Tuesday. By 10:30am, we had to give up and just exchange the other half of the money we had saved. Paul went into town to do that while I stayed home and got the cases down the stairs (no mean feat when you're 5'1", suffer with a bad back and all on your own I can tell you!) and did online check in. Another set back…
Yes you guessed it, Virgin's website was down for maintenance so that would have to wait.
I continued cleaning for the burglars, made some rolls and put them in the fridge and set out some cat food for the neighbours (to feed our cats with, not to eat themselves
) and before long it was it was almost time to collect the kids from school. I was starting to panic as Paul was still not back from town. At 11:45am he called to say he was on his way to get Oliver which was actually perfect timing. I made sure everything was ready; luggage hidden in the kitchen…
and at 11:55am, left to collect Amelia from school which is just a 2 minute walk from our house.
I waited a little while for the receptionist to collect her for me. Apparently the teacher forgot she was leaving early and she found Amelia in the queue about to get her dinner!
With her little tiny innocent hand in mine, I had to fight the urge to skip out the school gates with her as we were only "going to the dentist".
Little did she know!Just as we rounded the corner, Paul and Oliver were driving down the road. We couldn't have timed it better if we tried! He swung in to pick us up, we hopped in the car and were soon on the driveway. I told the kids a parcel arrived for them but they had to take their shoes off before coming into the living room to open it. While they were doing that, I snuck in and set my camera to record.
Unfortunately somehow the video got deleted on my SD card. I am trying it recover it but not having much luck at the moment
I was in tears when I realised ;'(I was welling up as Oliver read out the card to Amelia. As soon as I find it, I will upload it here.
I put the reveal DVD in the blu ray player and they watched it while we had a quick lunch of ham rolls and crisps, chatting excitedly about our plans and how we'd been hiding it so long. Oliver said he had no clue at all but had said to Paul in the car as a joke that we weren't really going to the dentist, we were going to Florida really. He must be psychic like his mum
We could finally talk about it which felt great and wrong at the same time which was a weird feeling. I kept thinking of saying "Sssshhhhhh" every time the word Florida was spoken!Paul loaded the car up while the kids got changed and re-read their card once more. I gave Amelia half a Kwells Kids travel sickness tablet as she suffers in the car sometimes (especially on long journeys and after eating) and we were eventually on our way at 1:25pm.. Only 25 minutes behind schedule but Paul was getting tense. He HATES being late for anything. In his eyes, being on time is late. The way I see it… what's the rush? Twilight check in doesn't open for another 3 and a half hours.
We pulled over a few yards down the road after setting off because the Sat Nav wasn't working. While I tried to get directions on my phone a message came through from Sam to say they had just left too. We live a 30-40 minute drive away from them so they would probably arrive first.
The journey to Gatwick wasn't too eventful. DVD's were watched in the back, a bag of Starburst were eaten and up until the first service station stop for Amelia to have a wee, it was OK. Then the heavens opened and we could barely see the road markings, the rain storm was that bad. The following pic is rubbish, and the sky looks brown. I couldn't capture just how black it actually was. It was horrible.
Amelia slept most of the journey and woke up to say she needed a poo. Great. 6 miles away from the nearest service station. She wouldn't stop going on about it. She was "prairie dogging" and needed to go NOW!
While we drove to the service station, Paul and I were both indecisive about what to do next… should we
a) Go straight to Premier Inn at north terminal, drop our hand luggage off and then go and park the car, then take the shuttle to south terminal to do twilight check in
b) Go and park the car, go to premier Inn at north terminal, dump the hand luggage and then do twilight check in at south terminal
c) Park the car, go to south terminal, do twilight check in, meet daniel and sam and have dinner - but then we'd have our hand luggage with us….. You name it, every combination of things to do came up and we just couldn't decide what was best so in the end I made the decision. A bad one, but a decision all the same. We went with B.
We swung in to the service station when it eventually appeared through the rain, I took Amelia to "do her business" while Paul put the car park postcode into the Sat Nav, and off we set again.
Soon enough the rain stopped, but the sky was still black. We rocked up at Purple Parking at 4:30pm, pulled into lane 4, Paul went inside with the paperwork while I struggled to unload the luggage with little help from Oliver (did I mention he's a lazy teenager?). Paul came back with a ticket and left the keys in the ignition as instructed and then he moved all the cases over to the shuttle stop while I packed Amelia's car seat into a case I bought from Kiddicare for our last trip 2 years ago but never used! Thankfully the rain held off for us enough to do this! Amelia was sat in the back of the car watching planes take off and was desperate to get out.
We said goodbye to the car, and as luck would have it, a shuttle was ready and waiting. We loaded it up with our luggage and soon enough we arrived at North Terminal. I loaded it all back onto two trollies while Paul went off somewhere (I can't remember where) and we went about looking for Premier Inn.
I seem to remember taking a lift here and walking over to Premier Inn in the pouring rain. Paul waited outside with the two trollies while the kids and I searched for reception. We eventually found it, and we took the stairs as there was a queue for the lift. The reception area was buzzing with people - most of which worked there. Slightly over-staffed me thinks. We were pounced on by an evil lady intent on ruining my day. When I showed her my email confirmation my heart and everything within me sank as the following conversation ensued…
Evil lady: "Oh you're at the wrong hotel."
Me: "I'm sorry? This is Premier in at North Terminal. That's what it says on the email."
Evil lady: "I can tell from the email header that you have the wrong hotel as we don't use Booking.com"
Me: "So which hotel am I supposed to be at?"
Evil lady: "You want the other Premier Inn over the road. It's not far. A 5 minute walk, or you can take the G2 bus. Here I'll show you…"
She frog-marched me across the room and pulled the curtain back from a window to show me the very large and busy roundabout just about visible through the rain and Premier Inn lit up somewhere in the background. To be fair, it didn't look far. Just very awkward to get to.
I bid her farewell, took Amelia for yet another wee and traipsed back downstairs to Paul. He left us with the luggage and went back in only to be told exactly what I had just told him. I told you so sprang to mind. He decided we'd walk as we had no idea where to catch a G2 bus. Evil lady had failed to mention that bit.
I was SO fed up. It was dark, pouring down with rain, I was extremely tired and my back was killing me. As we walked to the corner of the building it became apparent that there was no walkway. At least not one we could see in the dark. So I followed Paul as he directed us back the way we came, across the road and around the building on the opposite side. We then had to cross a very busy road where we almost got run over as two lanes of traffic filtered through at quite a speed. When we managed to get across that one in one piece, there was another quieter road to cross. This is where I lost it a little bit. Paul took the lighter of the two trollies of luggage over the road with Amelia while Oliver and I tried to get across; me with a trolley of three heavy cases and hand luggage and Oliver just about coped with a backpack on his back and Amelia's trunki. My front wheel got stuck in a bush as I was about to get down the kerb and would not move no matter how hard I tried. Paul couldn't get back over to help me as he had Amelia and Oliver is about as much use as a chocolate teapot when it comes to moving luggage. I was trying to shout across the road to Paul to try to do something to help (i.e swap over with Oliver) through the rain and traffic noise but he just kept shouting back that he can't. More like won't. Oliver attempted to help and ended up pushing one of the cases off into the road. I am shamed to say I snapped. I told him to get out the way and just leave me to it. Honestly, I could have just sat down and cried my eyes out at that point. Oliver crossed the road just as three old people came up behind me and I had to pull myself together a bit. When I looked back, the rest of my so-called family had disappeared around the corner, leaving me to deal with it. These poor old people must have been in their 80's and managed to dislodge the bushes from the wheels and between the four of us we got down and back up the kerb with it.
I must have said thank you a million times and tried to catch up with the others who were waiting around the corner. Paul stood for a second and then suddenly said "Why are we taking all the luggage with us?". Call it insanity, or tiredness, but not one of us had thought about this. We didn't need the big cases, just the hand luggage to take to Premier Inn. I was at boiling point now. All that stress for nothing. He decided that he would stay with the luggage while the kids and I continued the journey in the dark with all the hand luggage. Such a gentleman. I've never been so relieved to find the hotel. We must have looked like drowned rats. There was a bit of a wait while one of the receptionists flirted with a customer while the other one checked someone else out. Then it was our turn. We checked in no problem, until she asked for a copy of my passport because I was paying in cash. The same passport that was in my bag on the trolley with Paul. Luckily she said it was fine, but said to make sure I bring it down when we come back to the hotel after dinner. Phew. Our room was in a very handy location, just to the left of the check in desk, down a short corridor on the ground floor. Room 8. Amelia had fun running down looking for the number 8, and as soon as I had put the luggage down I felt a rush of relief. The ordeal was finally over. The room looked nice and comfy and I could quite easily have fell into the bed and gone to sleep. But we still had lots to do.
Amelia and I waited for Oliver to put his shoes back on. For some reason he thought we were staying there? ! Does the boy not listen to anything?
Shoes on and camera in hand (I didn't want to risk leaving it in the room), we left the room and trudged through the rain once again, passing an abandoned trolley I suspected once belonged to us.
We found Paul back outside the first Premier inn with just the one trolley.
and continued over to get the shuttle to South terminal. While we were gone, Daniel had been past twice and spoken to Paul. They had already checked in to Premier Inn (the correct one!) and were waiting for us at South terminal for the second part of the kids surprise. They still had no idea that Daniel, Sam and Sarah were coming with us. They had left their passports in a bag in the room though, so Dan had ran back to get them, bumping into Paul on route.
We took the shuttle over and I saw Sam's bright suitcases poking out around the corner, then Daniel sitting down next to them. Unfortunately Sam was taking Sarah to the loo. The kids' faces were a picture. They were both speechless and Amelia couldn't stop grinning and cuddling him. She ran across the room when she saw Sarah and gave her a massive cuddle. They were dancing about, giggling excitedly.
We joined the queue for Twilight check in which wasn't as busy as I thought it would be. I was so thirsty and had to crack open the bag of jelly babies I had bought for the flight which I shared out to help pass the time. We only queued for about 20 minutes. We were next in line when suddenly Amelia announced to everyone that she needed another wee. She couldn't hold it, so we ran the short distance to the ladies, and as we got back, our family were just being called over. Excellent timing. The whole check in process was over quickly. Very smooth and stress free after the last experience we had of twilight check in. Our car seat and two pushchairs had to go over to oversized baggage, so we dropped them off, and finally we were free. We headed up the escalators to Giraffe at 5:45pm and got a table in the back corner of the restaurant. We ordered drinks. Amelia was in awe of hers when it arrived as it had a giraffe drinking out of her straw! She loved it.
We all ordered food..
Paul and I both had a Giraffe burger - £9.95 each
Oliver had the All-day breakfast - £10.25
and Amelia had the kids cheeseburger meal £4.35
The Giraffe burger
All Day Breakfast
I noticed on the menu that they aim to have your food on the table within 15 minutes of ordering, but if you're in a hurry, let them know and they'll see if they can cook it quicker! The service certainly didn't disappoint. The servers were very attentive and cracked jokes with us, and the food did indeed arrive within 15 minutes and was lovely, although the kids didn't make a dent in theirs. A pattern that would repeat throughout the holiday.
We all agreed that we felt better after eating. We skipped desserts as we were all comfortably stuffed after our mains and got the bill. Ours came to £41 with drinks.
We headed back to north terminal, said our goodbyes to Daniel and Sam and arranged to meet up with them at 8:30am the following morning, then took a walk back to our hotel across the roads again. A little less stressful that the last time!
I searched the hotel for some shampoo but couldn't find any bottles anywhere. Paul said he would see if the garage next door had any when he went to find a smoking area while I gave Amelia a quick bath. While she was in there I found it - It wasn't in bottles, but was in a dispenser on the wall. He had left his phone in the room on charge so I couldn't text him to tell him not to worry.
He came back a little while later stinking of cigarettes. I hate smoking, and in the 7 years I've known him, I've never seen him smoke. He only has one or two a day, but at home he usually has chewing gum and washes his hands straight away to mask the smell, but being in a tiny room I really noticed it. He told me he'd got me some shampoo- a tiny bottle of Head and shoulders which cost over £4! When I looked at it, it wasn't shampoo, it was conditioner. Not much use darling.
He said that while he was in the lobby, loads of people were coming in saying they had booked the other premier inn and not this one. I definitely feel it should be better advertised. We weren't the only disappointed families that night.
The kids got ready for bed and picked the bed they wanted to sleep in, and then ended up swapping. I gave Oliver the little folder I made him a few months back with all of our plans, ADR's and FP's in which he couldn't stop reading. They both had a quick look in their bags and Amelia put the Minnie doll I made her to bed. We all had tea and Mickey biscuits, I face timed my mum and dad. My mum had tears in her eyes and said she was going to miss us which nearly set me off. I really wished they were coming with us.
I went on facebook for a bit, charged up my phone and my Surface ready for the flight, and we went to sleep. Oliver was tossing and turning for ages saying he was too excited. I don't think any of us got much sleep to be honest.
Such a stressful and tiring day. I was glad to be in bed at last.
One more sleep!
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