Hi Laura,
I've really enjoyed reading about your school Disneyland trip. We haven't been to DLP since 2001 so things are looking quite different to me.

So I'm a little late to the party but I've finally read your pre-trippy! Your plans sound amazing! What a fab way to celebrate your 30th birthdays! I so want to go on a Disney cruise but the timing just didn't work out this year!

Love your ADR choices, we have a few the same!

Eek you're brave going to DLP with that many teenage girls! Hehe sounds like you had a lovely time though! Nice little Disney fix mid countdown!

Looking forward to more updates!

Thanks, I hadn't been for about 5 years either so there were lots of changes for me too, especially over at the Studios. It is well worth the visit if you ever get the chance.

Laura Xx

The party isn't in full swing yet, so you're not late!

I'm trying to ignore the fact that I am leaving my twenties and cling on to my childish ways by going back to WDW, but I don't think that I'll ever be too old to visit really!

I'm so looking forward to the cruise, I'm sorry that you couldn't squeeze one into your plans, but it does give you and Lauren another reason to go back!

Brave?! You're the courageous one looking after the teeny ones, I couldn't cope! I wouldn't know what to do.

Thanks for reading and well done for getting through all of my waffle in one go

Laura Xx

Finally putting faces to names

Your plans are ace! I'd never fancied a cruise until I joined the dibb..maybe it's not the cruise bit though more the mickey at sea bit lol!

Will look forward to seeing updates soon

Thanks, I was the same about the idea of cruising, but surely a Mickey cruise will be different?

Laura Xx

DLP Mini Trip Report
Day 3 - Tuesday 17th February: Social Science Conferences & DLP

We had the first of our seminars this morning, so had to be down to breakfast and ready at 7:30. I had gone for a French themed outfit today.



There were the same goodies on offer for breakie today and we all filled up on carbs and Nutella before making the walk over to our 9:00am seminar.

The seminars are held at the cinema in the Disney Village and it is very plush in there, the seats were very comfortable and it was lovely and warm – making it very difficult not to drift off. The seminar is a mix of clips shown on the cinema screen and a lecture, the group were given work booklets before we left that they had to complete during this time to ensure that they were paying attention and not missing out on important information


Very snug!

The session lasted an hour and the girls were then free to hit the parks again until the workshop that started at 1:00pm. The teacher’s park of choice today was Disney Studios.




I wonder if the tower in WDW will become the park symbol again, now that the hat has gone?



As we had the seminar this morning, we were stuck in the park rush, so had to queue for around 10 minutes just to get in – this is far from my normal park commando style!

We had two things that we really wanted to do today, the new Ratatouille ride and Crush’s Coaster. The plan was to FP one and queue for the other, however, Crush doesn’t have a FP and the queue to get a FP for Ratatouille was at least 20 minutes?! We noticed that the single rider for Ratatouille was also only 20 minutes, so jumped into this instead.




The Ratatouille area is brilliant, all of the little hidden touches are fab, it was extremely busy down here though so I didn’t have much time to explore – I guess this is a good excuse to go back and take Nathan with me this time!

The ride is brilliant, I was trying to describe it to Nathan when I got back and it is quite difficult. *Spoiler Alert* skip to the next paragraph if you want to keep Ratatouille as a surprise. The concept is that you are shrunk down to the size of a mouse and are moving around Remy’s kitchen, but how they do this is sooo clever. The closest ride in my opinion would be something like Spiderman, as this also has the mix of 3D film and ride technology. The ride is trackless and I have no idea how the cars / mice know where to move next?! You move from room to room, some are huge IMAX type screens that totally submerge you in the film and effects, whereas others are full of huge props like fridges and food to make you feel the size of a mouse – these types of rooms also have a 4D element too. For example, next to the fridge you feel very cold and when near the crate of oranges you can smell the citrus scent. Even though we went on as single riders, we ended up sitting in pairs and some of the special effects made us jump, the popping champagne cork caught us all out! It really is an impressive ride and I would wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone!

Whilst waiting to visit Remy, we decided that we would wait to ride Crush in the afternoon, when hopefully some of the queues had died down as it was turning out to be a damp and dreary day. This meant our next stop was the Pixar area, as we all love the films and were excited to see what Disney had done here. RC Racer was down and the CMs weren’t sure when it would be back up again, so we went over to ride the Green Soldier’s Parachutes.







The entirety of wait for this is outside and it was freezing at this point, there were also a few seats not working, which added to the wait. I loved the ride though; you get the same belly turning feeling that you get on ToT, but not as severe. I think that as you are not enclosed in a lift, it actually makes it a little bit scarier when you are waiting at the top to drop!



It was then a mad rush to grab some lunch before our next workshop. We stopped off at one of the fast food places at the exit to the studios and grabbed a burger each, as well as some cute Mickey cakes. I had a chicken burger and this was really tasty, as well as the cakes.



The workshop was really interesting, as the students had to design a ride that could go somewhere in DLP that would be accessible to people with physical and/or leaning difficulties. The seminar this morning had already gone through a range of things that Disney do to make their parks and rides accessible to all people, so the students had a few ideas to get them started. The girls came up with some brilliant ideas, that not only catered for people with additional needs, but also sounded really fun to ride. The winning idea was based on Tangled (seeing as it deserves more than a toilet!) and was a helter-skelter based log flume. There were a variety of lights, sounds and smells that added to the brief and I would love to ride it if it were built!

We made our way back over to the Studios after the workshop and took a few photos whilst we waited for our FP for Tower of Terror to become available – I think that we picked this up before the workshop?!







ToT was as awesome as ever, it is still a ride that I get really nervous about as the drops really make my tummy turn! One of the CMs was very in character and was loitering behind corners to make people jump.

We decided to take a bit of a more relaxed pace this afternoon and get some shopping done – one of my favourite things to do, especially Disney shopping, so I was more than happy. We went over to the Village and went into all of the shops. I didn’t really buy much surprisingly; I got myself a pen and magnet, but managed to pick up two Vinylmations for Nathan (pics in Day 4 after he opened them up!). I think that I kept on talking myself out of purchases, as I knew that we had our big summer adventure in the summer and I would probably find lots over in WDW that I would prefer to spend my pennies on. I really wanted to get my mum and I a decoration for our Christmas trees, as this has become a bit of a tradition and both of us have Disney trees, however the selection was rubbish. There were no decorations in any of the Village shops and the only place I managed to find any was in the Christmas shop under the castle and they were all a bit too big or garish for my liking. This means that I will have to buy even more in Florida now!







The male member of staff was super excited to be visiting the Lego shop, so we spent quite a while looking at everything in here. Nathan is also a Lego fan, but I had already seen most of the stuff back in the UK so nothing really grabbed my attention.





All shopped out, we met up with the girls to see how their afternoon had been. Dinner tonight was left open for the students to decide in their friendship groups where they would like to go. The teachers had tried booking the Princess meal and Walt’s, but they were both shutting early for events, so we managed to get a walk-up at Rainforest Café. We must have managed to sneak in before the mad rush, as we were seated straightaway and didn’t have to wait long for our food. When we left the line was all of the way through the shop and out of the door!





I had a Sneaky Snake cocktail that was lovely and fruity and the rack of ribs, which was way too big of a portion – I even think that it was bigger than what Nathan ordered in the US?! I only managed to finish a third of what was served, but what I did eat was tasty. It was also nice to have a proper sit down after the past couple of hectic days.

It was back to the hotel afterwards for a final check in with the students before we marched them up to their rooms to pack, as we had another early seminar tomorrow and departure time home.

Sounds like a great day in drizzly grey Disneyland.

It certainly wasn't the hot summer Florida heat that I'm used to in Disney, but we did have a fab time!

How are all of your holiday plans coming along?

Thanks for reading,

Laura Xx

DLP Mini Trip Report
Day 4 – Wednesday 18th February: Final Conference, Then Hotel Cheyenne to School

Our last day! We didn’t really do that much today, except travel, so I’m afraid that it might not be the most interesting of reads – sorry! We did still have one last seminar to attend before our coach was due to collect us at 10:00am. The timings were pretty tight, if we were to leave on time to make our Euro Tunnel transfer.

Breakfast was at the usual time of 7:30am and as we had made sure last night that the girls had done most of their packing we didn’t have to get up any earlier (Whoop! ). We had a little bit of time after croissants to pack away any bits that we had needed to use that morning, as we would only have time to grab our cases from the room after the seminar before needing to board the coach.

I took a few minutes to take a couple of last pictures of our hotel block; we were in block 10 – Sundance.





The original plan was to grab Earl of Sandwiches for the coach and the members of staff were going to split up, with half going to the seminar with the students and the others going to collect the food. This plan was flummoxed though, when we saw that EoS doesn’t open until 10:00am and that was when we were due to leave! Poor planning on our parts, but we struggled to find the opening time anywhere as there were lots of different answers online – I should have come on here to ask! Plan B was to grab some sandwiches from a service station when we stopped, so this was now put into action and all members of staff managed to go along to see the last seminar.

It was a bit tense towards the end of the seminar, as the girls (and staff) knew that we would only have around 10 minutes to make a mad dash back to the hotel, grab our bags and get to the coach – we managed it though and left just after 10:00am!

The journey back was pretty uneventful, we had one stop in France, where we picked up some VERY tasty baguettes for everyone to munch. They were also absolutely huge!


The macaroon was also enormous! It was the width of a digestive biscuit, but also a few centimetres deep, not like the puny ones you get over here. I devoured it! ... It was delicious!

We made our transfer time and there were no delays at the crossing.



Another stop at the services when we were back ‘home’, where the students went to stock up on even more food, as apparently the massive baguette that they had consumed an hour ago was a distant memory! Back on the road though we had ran out of luck, as we then hit lots of this…



Apparently there was an accident on the M25 and then we hit rush hour traffic, so we ended up spending hours looking at this…


The journey back took ages – 12 hours! The AC on the coach also broke on the way back, so it was baking and very stuffy. The students were brilliant though, there was a little bit of moaning about the heat (but the teachers were too!), but apart from that they were extremely well behaved. We tried to fill the time up with some more Disney quizzes, which they all seemed to enjoy – I think that I have successfully managed to turn them into Disney geeks!



We arrived back at school at 9:00pm, we had been in contact with the parents throughout the journey, so most of them were ready and waiting to help us unload the coach. Nathan came to pick me up and grabbed me a McDonald’s on the way back, as I had missed dinner and was starving. As I munched through my food, I filled Nathan in on the rest of the trip and gave him his presents.


He loved them, especially the Buzz one in his pinny.

I ended up sleeping in until 9:00am the next day, which is very late for me, so I must have needed to catch-up on my sleep after our exhausting, but thoroughly enjoyable school trip. I would recommend it to any Dibb teachers out there!

So that’s it, I hope you enjoyed my mini-trip report. It has been quite difficult to write, as I am limited to what I can say and what pictures I can include, but at least it cut down on some of my babble! Normal schedules will now resume and I am hoping to update very soon with what WDW planning I have been up to.