Down Under Disneyana Australian Disney Forum

SOOOOOOOOOO JEALOUS!!!!!

Although I can say I've seen a Shuttle launch from WDW.


Greg

That sounds amazing!
Hope you both have a great trip. 

It's kinda snuck up on me too!  I've been busy doing Fish Extenders and the million other little things you have to organise when you're in charge of travel for five people for a month and all of a sudden - we're just over a week away!

When do you leave WDW Keith?  I think we might overlap at some stage.  I know Sandy is getting on the Fantasy the day we disembark too.  

Hi Mel - we arrive there late Saturday night (3 Sept) and then depart on Saturday 17 Sept.

We are almost all packed and I'm just counting down the remaining 50 minutes of work this afternoon

We'll try and post a daily journal here, so check back Sunday or Monday

I can't wait for next Thursday night - not only are we at the Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party, but NASA are also launching a major space mission that night, the Osiris-Rex mission to visit and return particles from an asteroid.  It is being launched from a Atlas-V rocket and will be visible from the MK.  Can't wait

Is SpaceX going to have an impact on that with what's just happened? 
Greg 

I'm not sure if it will or not.  That explosion was at a different pad, so I suspect it won't - but you never know...

When I first read about that, I thought it was going to be the one we were meant to see!

How many launches do they have there on average?

Greg

I'm not sure - they are not frequent and we've only seen one before in all the time we've gone there.

Only one more sleep for us - we're doing some final packing now before having a relaxing evening - tomorrow is the big day!

SSOOOOOOOOO JEALOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Have a great trip and keep us up to date so we can all live vicariously through you.


Greg

We are at the airport all checked in. Boarding in an hour. Will post again from the US!

Woohoo! 
Flying First Class or slumming it in Business?


Greg

Premium economy all the way...

Anyhow - we are here!

We checked into Art of Animation Resort after a long, long flight.  We've got our magic bands, dumped off our bags in our room and then did what all good Disney fans do - hit the store!

I'll write up our day tomorrow - it is currently 11:40pm on Saturday night so I'm going to bed!

Premium economy all the way...

Still good, it's a bugger being tall.

Ok, am I the only one who does really serious shopping right at the end, once I see how the budget is looking?

Greg

Glad you arrived safely. We thought about you last night, and needed you for trivia.
I always check out the shops first too, just to get an idea of what I need to buy, but I do most of my shopping at the end of the trip.

We always shop as we go because sometimes we just forget where things are or they've been sold out. We have a motto of "If you see it and you like it, then buy it" because we've been disappointed in the past at missing out.

Anyhow - here is the day one journal - nothing exciting, just our travel day.

Day One – 3 September 2016 - Travel to WDW
Finally it is Saturday morning and we are off to Walt Disney World. After getting up and talking to the neighbours, we put the final packing together and called a taxi for 9:30am.  He turned up right on time and we dragged our suitcases into the car and headed to the airport.
 
We quickly got through check-in and immigration and Della headed to the shops.  As per her tradition, she couldn’t get past the Swarovski store without buying something…
 
We sat in the Qantas Club for an hour eating lunch and getting a drink before heading to the gate. We got on board but as it was very windy in Sydney, our departure was delayed by about an hour due to congestion.  No worries though as we had plenty of connection time in Dallas.
 
The flight was long but smooth and uneventful. We landed in Dallas around 2:45pm and had two hours until our next flight.  It took us about an hour to get through US Customs, collect our bags, drop them off for the Orlando flight and then catch the train to our next terminal – so always leave yourself plenty of time.  Other people on our flight were not as fortunate and as it was a holiday weekend, flights were full.
 
Again our flight to Orlando was uneventful other than being bumped up to a exit-row, yay! After touching down, we got our bags and headed to the Mickey’s Magical Express counter – we were going to Disney World!  As always, the check in was flawless and we were soon sitting on the coach number 5 to The Art of Animation Resort!
 
We were the first drop off and it was great seeing the Welcome to Walt Disney World sign as we came close to the resort. We pulled into the drop-off zone and headed to the resort check-in. It was great to be back and everything seemed so familiar.  The guy at the check in said a lot of people had gone home when the hurricane came near on Friday, so it wasn’t too busy this week.  We noticed the other effect of the nearby hurricane – the humidity!  It was very sticky outside, even late at night. We picked up our Magic-Bands and headed up to our room 8611. We are in the Ariel Tower.
 
It was now close to 10:30pm and we were hungry, so we headed to the food court and bought a delicious Angus Bacon Cheeseburger.  It was fantastic and really hit the spot. We also bought our refillable mugs (for some reason, they don’t have handles anymore – I don’t understand that).  Of course, we wouldn’t be real Disney fans without heading to the store…but we were tired and didn’t buy anything.  We headed back to the room and crashed for the night.  Tomorrow, we are going to Disney Springs!