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Old 8 Sep 13, 12:52 AM  
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Happyhaunt1000
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The Reluctantly Written Pre Trip Report

Dibbers…
Before I start with the bog standard introductions & pre-trip shenanigans, I just want to say that the only reason that I’m writing this report is because a fellow Dibber said it would be a brilliant trip to write about, as not only will it be lasting 26 days… but also because slap bang in the middle, me and my fiancée will be getting married in Walt Disney World!
So before I get going, I would like to dedicate this trip report to Wizzo (aka Paul).
After meeting Paul, his long suffering partner in crime Lynn, and their 2 adorable girls in London and spending a great day eating Five Guys burgers, drinking alcohol and chatting about all things Orlando, he convinced me to step up to the plate and take a swing a trip report writing.

So here goes…..

(Closes eyes, takes a deep breath…..)

Hello my fellow voyeurs,
It’s normally at this point that you’re introduced to the cast of people who’ll feature in the report.
For us… our cast will be growing from just the 2 of us to a whopping 37!
So for the sake of not overloading you too soon, let’s just keep the intros down to me and my partner and introduce you to new people as we go through the report.

So here’s the facts about me:
I’m 38
I’m a HR Manager
I love Florida!



This trip will be my 10th visit to Florida and without a doubt, it’s certainly going to be my most memorable.
I first went to Orlando in the late 90s, but for some reason I don’t remember much about the trip.
I did the parks, I hung out on I-Drive, but the only things that I remember clearly were eating at Race Rock and my first ride on Splash Mountain!

Even though it’s a faded memory for me now, that trip must’ve planted a seed, because I went back again in 2002 and 2004. A strange thing about the 2004 trip is that at the same time I was out in Florida (with my then girlfriend), my soon to be wife was also in Florida with her family!

It’s at this point in writing that I haven’t even mentioned my Fiancée’s name! (Love you Darling xxx)

2005 was when I met Jo.
The initial meeting will always remain fuzzy to her as she was… let’s say… ‘tipsy’ at the time.
We hit it off immediately and soon found out that we had a mutual love for all things Orlando.
We went there together the following year for a 3 week holiday and both realised it was going to become our second home.
Trips then followed in 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012 and just as recently as May this year when we headed over to meet with the Disney Wedding Planners (don’t worry, for all you Dibbers interested in Disney weddings, I’ll cover the wedding info later in the pre-trip).

So how about I introduce you to Jo… my better half:
She’s 29 and will be celebrating her 30th while we’re in Florida, not long after the wedding
She works for the NHS as a Senior Administrator
Without a doubt she’s definitely the brains of our relationship & her love of Florida (and especially Disney) knows no bounds.



This trip will be her 9th in total and unlike me, clocked up her tally by visiting Florida with her family once as a child, and then again when she was 20 (this was the 2004 trip when our paths almost crossed but didn’t quite!)

We both love the parks, the weather, the food, the shopping, the people… Hell… we love all the things you guys love. We can’t get enough of Florida and don’t ever see ourselves getting bored of the place.

I guess that’s the intros out the way… and I really should start getting down to brass tacks before you give up and go read a shorter report!

So… I guess I should do a quick rewind to explain how we got to where we are now. Long story short, on a 4 day trip to Disneyland Paris back in Feb 2011, I popped the question to Jo in front of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle.



Of all the places I could have got down on one knee, doing it in a Disney park (albeit a French one) seemed like that right place to do it. And when talk started of where we should get married, there really was only one answer…

And so the planning began (in earnest).

We knew immediately what we didn’t want, and for fear of offending any Disney Wedding Dibbers who are reading this, I won’t say what we thought was tacky, OTT and just plain hideous… instead I’ll simply say that we had in our heads a very clear idea of what we wanted.

*I feel I should point out that I’m not going to go into every single minute detail regarding the process of planning a Disney Wedding in this pre-trip. There are Dibbers who’ve written reports that can help those of you thinking about getting married on WDW property….but this probably won’t be one of those!
I’ll include a few details about our meeting with the lovely Disney Wedding Planners and other contributors to the wedding, but it won’t be a fact sheet on how to go about doing it yourself… sorry*

So with a WDW trip already booked for Dec 2011 we figured that would be an ideal opportunity to get some ideas of locations we could use for the ceremony and the reception. We’d decided we wanted a September wedding, but being more than 18months out all we could do was register our interest and just let the clock tick down until we could actually discuss things with someone from the Disney Fairytale Weddings team. They did send us a nice little brochure though!



So there we were, day 1 of our December 2011 holiday, on the resort monorail heading back to the TTC.
We were taking pictures of the Grand Floridian as we went by when suddenly we were faced with what appeared to be excavation work going on right next to the Wedding Pavilion!



After a quick bit of research later that night at the hotel, we discovered that what we had seen earlier that day was the beginning of work on a new DVC resort! The Wedding Pavilion had been the venue we’d discussed having the ceremony at, but with the work scheduled to carry on for the next couple of years we’d hit our first bump in the road. There was no way we wanted builders bums and cranes littering the background of our wedding photos… so scrapped that idea and went back to square one.

We didn't stay on square one very long, because by the end of the trip we were certain we found our ideal replacement. Ladies and gentlemen… say hello to Sea Breeze Point.



On the last day of our trip we were walking from Boardwalk to Epcot... both filled with the dread & sorrow that I have no doubt you all feel, because we knew that in 24hrs we’d be back in cold, grey miserable England… that’s when we reached SBP and stopped. We’d found our Wedding Pavilion replacement! And since then we’ve realised that SBP is actually much more ‘us’ anyway.

Christmas came and went, and before we knew it, March was upon us and we were 18months out from the date we wanted to have our wedding. We emailed Disney Fairytale Weddings (DFTW from this point on) and within a few days we’d been assigned our very own DFTW Consultant!

They sent us information packs, PDFs and other documents to print out and read. Sweet baby Fonzi these things are wordy! It’s like George RR Martin himself has written them (sorry… that’s a Game of Thrones reference. As you can tell, I'm a nerd on many subjects! ) So after putting out feelers with family and friends and getting a rough idea of numbers, we decided that the Wishes Wedding Collection would work best for us (try saying that fast five times in a row after one of those frozen margaritas from the Mexico Pavilion!)



We arranged to meet Pam, our DFTW Consultant, for a site visit on our next trip to Florida, which was September 2012. When we walked into Franck’s Bridal Studio for the meeting I thought Jo was going to hyperventilate (or worse). She’s not a girly girl, and I think all the pink, frills and diamantés were a bit much for her!



We told Pam that we’d like to have the ceremony at Sea Breeze Point, and an outdoor reception at the Isola in Italy Pavilion of World Showcase. Unfortunately, at that point we didn’t have the required headcount, so it was suggested that we use the Rue de Paris (or French Island Arm) at the France Pavilion. When we got home it was only a couple of weeks and she’d sent through our contract to sign (along with the dreaded deposit payment form) to make everything official. Once we’d signed and paid, another envelope arrived with our Annual Pass vouchers! For those of you who don’t know, if you book a Disney Wedding you get free Annual Passes, and the vouchers can be cashed in whenever you want.



I’ve just mentioned one reason why getting married at Disney is so great - free Annual Passes. Another exciting ‘freebie’ is taste testing your menu. This was one thing we really didn’t want to miss out on so we unfortunately HAD to book another trip for May. This was titled as a Business Trip as the main reasons were meeting with our wedding planner, and the Officiant who’ll be marrying us, and will be the only chance we’ll have to sit face-to-face with everyone to thrash out the details.

A few weeks after booking the May trip, we were living every Dibber’s dream by booking a second one for September, only this one will be our holiday, wedding and honeymoon combined! The original plan was to go for three weeks - arrive a week and a half before the wedding, and have a week and a half honeymoon after. Then we realised that the day after arriving home it would be Jo’s 30th birthday – Happy Birthday Jo, welcome back to rainy old London! We then thought we’d see if we could sweet talk, beg or bribe our bosses into letting us have an extra couple of days off work so we could fly home the day after her birthday. I personally thought I had more chance of Forbidden Journey being a walk on at 1pm on a Saturday afternoon in July than my boss letting me have 4 weeks off work… BUT, much to my surprise he was more than happy given the circumstances. It actually turned out that it was Jo who had to wait over a week or so for a decision, and I swear at one point I was thinking she’d be at home celebrating her birthday with the dog while I was face-timing her from the top of Splash Mountain.

After what felt like months of waiting, Jo finally got the thumbs up from work that she would be granted the time off. Shame really… I was looking forward to a week of using the single rider line! Oh well…

So it was official…..we were going to be in Orlando for 26days! (Even as I write this, I know there’s absolutely no way we’re going to want to come home after spending that long out there.)

Because of the new location for the ceremony we thought it’d be nice to treat ourselves and stay at the Boardwalk for a few days on either side of the wedding. We looked at so many different ways of booking the trip, but in the end it was best for us to book a Virgin Holidays package with Premium Economy flights from Gatwick and 26 nights at the Rosen Inn at Pointe Orlando (which came to just under £3500), and then just rent DVC points for the stay at Boardwalk (preferred studio villa for 3 nights was $630).

It was around the same time the lovely Amy was assigned to us as our Wedding Planner. She sent us a huge email with a ton of information including sample menus, details about photography packages, entertainment options – you name it, it was in this email! Being Disney, you know there wasn’t anything they hadn’t thought about, and to see it all at once was a bit overwhelming! If you want to do a conga line down the aisle with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, so long as you transfer enough into the Disney bank vault, I’m sure they’ll do it for you! I’ve lost track of the amount of nights we sat up till the early hours listening to the Innoventions area music whilst trying to narrow down the hundreds of food options available!

So the next thing on our list was to send out our Save the Dates. We thought we were being really clever using this design, but it was lost on 90% of those we sent it to. I have no doubt they’ll get the significance when they’ve got a real one in their hands and they’re skipping the 90minute line for Toy Story!



At this point the ball was well and truly rolling! Save the Dates were sent out mid-November and by Christmas we already had 10 guests who’d confirmed and booked their trips!

By the end of February we’d got our second batch of invitations back from the printers. Yes…. SECOND BATCH! This was because somehow, both of us had managed not to notice that the word ‘Boardwalk’ was misspelled on the first batch! Apparently ‘Boarkwalk’ was where we were getting married! To say Jo was mortified is an understatement… but after I calmed her down, we rectified the error and proof read the invite another 30-40 times before confirming the second order. Over 40 invites went out, and we’d asked for RSVPs by the end of April… so let’s see how many of those 70+ people who said they were definitely coming would actually bite the bullet and book!

Our May trip was fast approaching and it was now time to revisit the information packs we’d been sent by DFTW and narrow down what exactly it was we were going to taste test during our meeting with Amy and the Disney chefs. Imagine having all of Disney’s cuisine at your disposal… and then having to pick just 9 things to try! Oh the deliberation that went on… I think that was our longest session of discussion and went on till easily 3am. Our idea was to pick things that we thought people might not have eaten before and sounded delicious.

Eventually though we picked out 9 items to try. We’re keeping our menu a surprise to all our guests, so unfortunately we won’t be telling you what we picked here… but fear not… when it gets to the wedding day report… all will be revealed!

Next came choosing the flavours of cake and frosting/fillings to taste. We ended up picking 6 different flavours of sponge, and 10 frosting/filling flavours we wanted try! (My teeth hurt again just thinking about it!)

After that came giving them a rough idea about the flowers we wanted, and also telling them the colour scheme we wanted to use. Which was something else we struggled to nail down. That was until I was sat in the living room staring up at the Sunshine Tree Terrace canvas poster we’ve got on the wall (oh yes… that’s how nerdy we are) and I said to Jo how we should use the blue that’s in the poster as a reference… and it dawned on us both that we love all the colours in that poster and we should use that as our source of information. So that’s what we did… What better inspiration to give them than a poster of something that’s actually in WDW and is in their archive!

By now it was the end of April and as is the way in life, you send out an RSVP and give people a specific date to get back to you by… and still have to chase people 5 days after the time has expired! (Friends and family ‘eh!?) Anyway… we had a pretty solid guest count of 32 (with the possibility of another 10 guests who hadn’t given us a definite answer.)

Having 32 guests confirm they’d be there was more than we 'd actually expected, and it was so humbling to see so many of our family and friends (especially those with very young babies) wanting to make the journey so they could be with us. There were some notable absences from my side of the family, but it couldn’t be avoided so we had already come to terms with it long before they actually confirmed they wouldn’t be there. Since our initial headcount of 20 had swelled in size, we were moved again from Rue de Paris and we’re now holding our reception at Eau de France (French Island Lower), which we’re both thrilled about as it’s got an amazing view of Illuminations! We’re actually still going to be using the Rue anyway, but now it’ll be our kitchen!

MAY 11th 2013….
We’re off to WDW and this time we’re staying on property (a first for us)
This was our business trip. We had specific goals to achieve and so long as we got those done, the rest of the time could be spent having some fun (hell… we were in Disney World after all)

This pre-trippy is already massive, but I feel the need to include a mini May Trip Report:

We stayed at All Star Sports (the first time on property for us) and considering this is a value resort we were pleasantly surprised with the hotel and all its amenities.



The shuttles ran frequently, the area we stayed in was quiet and the lemon poppy seed muffins were to die for! (As were these mini carrot cakes mmmmmm!)



We dumped our bags in the hotel when we arrived, hopped on a shuttle and headed straight for the Magic Kingdom. We exchanged our vouchers for actual Annual Passes and the guy who was serving us started chatting to us and when we said we were there to meeting with Disney wedding planners he wrote us a little voucher the could be swapped for a couple of ice creams… his treat as congratulations for getting married.



A simple little gesture, but one that makes Disney they best in the business at keeping people coming back. (I’m not saying that one free ice cream can buy me off… but it’s a start!)

We got the new RFID passes and even though it’s just as simple as inserting your card into the turnstiles, it’s still amazing how many people struggle to remember to use the same finger they used to register the card. And there’s nothing worse than being stuck behind someone who is so stupid that they are trying to use their Dave & Buster’s game tokens card to enter the park! We spent a couple of days just bouncing round all 4 parks, coming and going as we pleased, moving to the next park when crowds got a little too much for us.

Monday was my birthday and we had a lovely late afternoon lunch at The Brown Derby. Great food, very calming atmosphere, maybe just a little pricey for lunch… but worth every penny.









It’s hard to remember what we did or where we went for the rest of the day, as the whole week is a bit of a blur. But I’m sure I had fun.

On the Tuesday morning Jo had the hair and make-up woman come to the hotel to paint her face and play with her hair! I sat by the pool on my own and sunbathed till noon.



When I got back to the room, she seemed quite happy… I say happy… she looked like one of those kids from the teen pageant competitions whose mum has pulled their hair back so tightly they look like Joan Rivers! (Only kidding babe…. Kisses xx)
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Old 8 Sep 13, 12:54 AM  
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Happyhaunt1000
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Continued...

Wednesday was the main event… meeting Amy and Rev Tim Herring!

It was Rev Tim first. We met him at Franck’s and sat there chatting for an hour or so. A lovely guy that asked us a few questions, told us a few stories and made us both feel so at ease we knew he was definitely the right man for the job.

Next up was Amy. We had a great conversation about the two of us, how we met, our dog, her dog, our hardcore nerdy love of the Disney parks and their history etc etc, then after half hour we decided we’d better get some wedding planning done! We basically ran through everything we’d put down in our planning kit, and went into a bit more detail about certain things, like timings etc. She then introduced us to Elizabeth, our Floral Consultant, to talk about, yep, you guessed it, the flowers! But not only flowers… ribbons, lights, chair covers, napkins, tablecloths, favours, cake knives… and the list goes on.

It was at this point that Amy said we weren’t the typical British couple that she normally gets to work with! We hesitated for a second and then she said it was a positive thing. She said that most people who come over to get married in WDW really do want the Disney Princess wedding, whereas we were going for something different. We wanted Disney to weave their magic, but we wanted it to be understated. We were going for simple, refined ideas but with a twist. The best things for us was from that point on, everything was a breeze. She totally got the vibe we were going for and it meant she could immediately dismiss a lot of ideas she’d normally have to run through with other couples.

When we got to choosing our cake, we knew we didn’t want the typical 2/3 tier white iced wedding cake. Jo had seen pictures online of (and fallen in love with) a style of cake called ’The Mad Hatter’, and the layers are, for want of a better description… wonky! We told Amy that this is what we’d like and she pulled up hundreds of designs of previous cakes they’d created, and we sat they goggle eyed for the best part of 15minutes… cake after cake after cake.

Although they all looked really nice, with some clever design ideas, we hadn’t yet seen anything to inspire us to make a decision on what ours would be like. As we were scrolling though endless wonky cakes… my stomach growling knowing that soon we’d be taste testing all the cake we wanted... Amy casually mentioned back to something we’d said to her earlier when discussing our love of the parks.

People… I’m sorry to keep doing this to you but I can’t tell you what it was we’d said earlier, and what it was she suggested as ‘design inspiration’… but needless to say me and Jo both had huge smiles on our faces and were both nodding and saying “yes… definitely.. oh my god... that’ll be so cool!”

So then Jo’s favourite part came next, the cake tasting! She played the ‘how many different combinations can I make with 6 sponge flavours and 10 fillings’ game. The answer is lots! (FYI a few of them really don’t work!)







After about 15mins of eating, we were both one mouthful away from slipping into sugar induced comas so figured we’d better make our decision on the flavours for our wedding cake. And the winners were… top layer – orange sponge with lemon mousse filling, bottom layer – red velvet sponge with cream cheese filling. Jo apparently ‘cannot bloody wait’ to eat this cake!

And so we’d decided on the flavours, the style and with Amy’s help, what the theme/design would be. Not long after this the first part of the meeting had drawn to a close.

We had an hour to kill, and were like a couple of hummingbirds, but had to try and calm down as Amy was going to be driving us backstage at Epcot to our menu tasting session soon.

After a quick circuit of MK (and I think we even managed to squeeze in a ride on the TTA) we were back outside the Wedding Pavilion and jumping in Amy’s car on our way to something we’d both been eagerly anticipating… the taste testing of our menu!

We drove into the employees only backlot area and were quickly ushered inside a non-descript building. We headed through a couple of doors, passing Disney employees who all smile, say hello and then jump out of our way like we’re famous films stars! Through another couple of double doors and BAM… we’re in the middle of a fully operational Disney kitchen. There were people everywhere, preparing dishes, moving things in and out of ovens, carrying stacked trays full of amazing smelling food… it kinda made me freeze for a second.

Look I know it was just a kitchen area… but it was a Disney kitchen area… muggles like you and me never get to see behind the curtain (unless you’re doing a taste testing… or you know someone who can pull strings for you!)

And there in front of us laid out on a shiny work surface was 3 place settings… and standing next to the settings were 2 chefs and a server! They all greeted us and the head Chef (a lovely woman named FIND HER BUSINESS CARD!) started speaking to us about the food we had picked. We did take pictures of the food but as I explained earlier, there are a few elements we really want to keep secret until the big day… so I’m really sorry, but I won’t be including them on here, or really talking about the food. I promise I will divulge all when I write the full trip report and get to the wedding day! (I’ll do a sort of Lost-esq type flashback and explain a few things I’m currently holding back.)

Needless to say we were totally blown away by each dish in not only is flavour, but also in its presentation. We discussed ways we’d like dishes changed as we tried them… and when I say changes, it wasn’t that there was anything wrong with any of the dishes (far from it) it was ways we could have it served on the day, slight variations/accompaniments etc that we agreed would enhance things.

It was all over too soon and as we left that gave us a little white chocolate Mickey and Minnie to take with us. It’s sat in our fridge, and I’ll be honest, I don’t ever think we’ll be able to bring ourselves to eat it.



The Disney wedding planning day was over… Amy drove us back to the hotel and we thanked her for a lovely day. She went to shake my hand and I said “sod that… get in here and give me a hug… “
I could see in her eyes she was excited at that prospect (well it was that or fear… but it was probably excitement!) I gave her a big cuddle and I think Jo followed suit and hugged her too. Now that I think of it… she really did get in her car and drive away pretty quickly… huh… guess she had to be somewhere else(!)

We still had a few days left before we had to go home and literally spent every moment in the parks. Well that isn’t entirely true... on Thursday we did feel like we needed to spend some time outside of the Disney bubble (it felt like we were in an episode of Under the Dome!) After spending the morning at a stupidly busy Blizzard Beach (where we bought Waterparks Annual Passes to go with our other ones) we headed to the Premium Outlet Mall for a few hours and took part in some retail therapy. Surprisingly for us, it was quite reserved… although we did end up with a couple of hundred dollars’ worth of clothes (each!)

Our last full day was Friday and that was also the day the Star Wars Weekends was starting. I grew up on SW (as did most guys my age) but the thought of hitting the park on opening day of SWW just filled me full of dread. I’d seen pictures online of previous years and the crowd levels alone scared the life out of me. But... at the last minute, I figured I’d probably never be here in Florida again at this time of the year, so missing it wasn’t an option… and boy am I glad I changed my mind.

DHS was nowhere near as busy as I’d anticipated it being… and we got to ride quite a few attractions (including Star Tours, which I just assumed would have crazy wait times.) The best part of the day was seeing guests dressed up as SW characters, ‘proper’ characters wandering around the park and randomly stopping for photos with people… and finally some of the crazy merchandise that was available.
















(fanboy moment... Jeremy Bulloch... The original BOBA FETT! )

I picked up the cool ceramic mug and hunted all over the park for this t-shirt. I’d seen it earlier on one of the specially set up Star Wars merchandise booths but figured I’d pick it up later. When we went back though they didn’t have it in my size! We did a complete lap of the park checking every single shop… but to no avail. Luckily, when we were at DTD later that evening (on a last minute rush to pick up an extra bag/case for the way home… we’d been on a ‘reserved’ shopping trip remember), I spotted the t-shirt in the far corner of the store… and as luck would have it, they had one left in my size!

It was a great trip (if not a little short). We achieved everything we’d hoped we would, and left feeling like we were in safe hands with Amy and her wedding planning team.

One of our favourite new games was giving each day a title, which linked to poses we’d have to pull while having our photos taken and also while on attractions. We had Salute Sunday, Moustache Monday and of course Fist Bump Friday!







We’ll be carrying on that ploy this holiday… in fact I think it’s now one of our new traditions which we’ll be carrying on each trip we take.

Back home… and we were in the process of getting loose ends tied up. Ya know… little things like me buying the groom & best man suits(!) and Jo going for her final fitting of the wedding dress.
I’m sorry ladies, you’ll notice that as a guy, I didn’t even mention anything about the wedding dress, or how that back in March, Jo went out with her bridesmaids and mum and found her dress in the second shop she visited, on the first day of looking! But as I’ve already mentioned on numerous occasions, Jo really isn’t a girly girl, so the day was a huge stress to her and one that she just wanted out the way! Some little girls dream of their wedding day and the dress they’ll wear… Jo tweeted on her way out that she’d rather be indoors eating pizza and playing Xbox with me! (Good girl!)

I actually found the suits for me and the best man in the first store we went in. We were trying them on in Reiss and it wasn’t till I was hanging up the trousers that I noticed the name of the suit was the HARDING (my surname!) I was already sold on the suits anyway… but that was definitely the thing that sealed the deal. It was kismet… It was the suit I was meant to wear! Yet again… sorry but no pics yet… but I will tell you it’s a 3 piece light grey suit that I’ll be wearing a sky blue shirt with (no tie… I want to keep that relaxed informal feeling going throughout the day).

A couple of weeks ago we paid Disney the final balance on the wedding (needless to say we went a bit over the minimum spend), and the last thing we had to decide on was our music for the harpist to play before, during and after the ceremony. (Yes… I did say harpist!)

I think this was literally the hardest thing about planning the whole bloody wedding! We’ve picked some key pieces we both love, which really aren’t your typical wedding music… but hopefully there won’t be much that’s typical about the whole day! On top of that Jo’s insisted she doesn’t want to walk down the aisle to the wedding march! That’s fine by me… if that’s something she doesn’t want and it makes her happy… then I’m happy.

Earlier on this week we finally got our hands on our wedding rings. A good friend of ours who is a jeweller made them specially… very plain and simple but exactly what we wanted!

We’ve decided to pick up the wedding licence when we get out to Orlando… we looked into getting it in advance by post, but it all seems like such a hassle, especially getting it signed by a Notary Public. We figured we’re out there for a week and a half before the wedding, so have plenty of time to go to the courthouse to get the licence in person.

The hen and stag nights have been and gone without anyone ending up either in hospital or another country, so that’s a bit of a result. Jo’s friends arranged a scavenger hunt during the day with little Disney touches the thrown in, followed by a night in an 80’s themed nightclub! All my friends did was try their hardest to kill with me alcohol… lads 'eh!

We’ve also been attempting to plan a party in November as a kind of wedding reception and 30th birthday party for Jo. I say attempting, because all we’ve actually done is book the venue and DJ, the rest will probably now have to wait until we get home! The invitations for that arrived this week so they’ll be sent out in the next few days.

Annual passes for the Universal parks and Sea World/Busch Gardens/Aquatica will be bought when we get out there as it’s cheaper than buying two 2-week passes, so along with our Disney ones we’re covered for the full 26 days and can do what we like when we like.

As we’re planning on going to Halloween Horror Nights at least 2 or 3 times, we’ve already bought the Rush of Fear passes online, which let us in every night for the first three weeks it’s on… which very conveniently is the last three weeks of our (nearly) four week holiday! Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party is also on the cards, but those tickets we’ll just buy when we get there.

Photopass+ has been pre-purchased, so expect to see plenty of Moustache Monday, Fistbump Friday and Sound-Asleep Saturday photos in the trip report when we come back, because if you didn’t already know, when you purchase the Photopass+ you can add on-ride pictures to your account. And you’d better believe we’ll be taking advantage of that BIG TIME!

A couple of other things we have planned are a girls night out (aka Jo’s Bachelorette), and a lads night out, once everyone’s arrived. We also thought we’d attempt the 4-Parks/1-Day challenge for a second time… first time was 11th September 2012, and it was far too easy. I say easy… it still took 7hrs of non-stop commando park-hopping for the two of us to finish it! So with about 8 of us attempting it this time round, time will be an even bigger factor in us completing it!

We’ve also said we are going to try and ride every attraction at the 4 WDW parks & the 2 Universal parks during the 26 days. I think it’s very do-able… and will of course mean sitting riding/seeing some absolute tosh! (Magic carpets of Aladdin, the Tomorrowland Speedway, Storm Force Accelatron, and ET to name but a few!) Still, I think it will be fun… so we’ll make sure at the end of each daily report, we include a checklist of the days completed attractions.

And how could I forget our little princess, Tarn.



She’ll be going to stay with my brother, his fiancée, 4 kids, dog, 2 cats, rabbit, frog, fish and whatever other pets they might acquire in the next two weeks!

So that’s pretty much it, stuff that could be sorted has been, and the stuff that can’t be done here will be done there.

I was trying to think of some witty way of closing of this pre-trip report… but figured I’d just finish by saying thank you to everyone who’s taken the time to read this monster. If you post any comments, I’ll do my best to reply before we go away.

I’m not going to pretend like I’ve written everything on here myself. Jo has been heavily involved in not only putting this together, but also taking over for me on writing duties when I was flagging.

I’ll try not to leave it too long after we return before I start posting up the daily reports… but I fear that coming back home after 26days in paradise is going to take me some time to re-adjust, let alone attack a 26days trip report!

One final thing… I’ll be posting on twitter and Instagram while I’m out there. So if you wish to follow me, my usernames are:
Twitter – milkyjoe75
Instagram – happyhaunt1000

If you’d like to follow Jo as well she’s:
Twitter – tarnabanana
Instagram – tarnabanana83

If you do start following us, say hello and mention you’re from the Dibb and we’ll follow back.
God… I sound like a desperate teenager trying to get more followers on my accounts!
P.S… I love One Direction!
P.P.S… only kidding… but thought my follower count would jump up by 50% by saying that

Please be advised... I can be sweary & moany at times. If you think you might be offended, probably best you don’t follow.

So long everybody… and remember…
“There’s a great big beautiful tomorrow, shining at the end of everyday… There’s a great big beautiful tomorrow, and tomorrow is just a dream away…”


Edited at 09:14 PM. Reason: .
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Old 8 Sep 13, 01:13 AM  
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Kellea
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:)

Fantastic ! Congratulations to you both. I hope you have a fabulous time xxx
I can't wait for more
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Old 8 Sep 13, 01:40 AM  
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arteta333
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Good stuff,I enjoyed reading it.
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Old 8 Sep 13, 07:38 AM  
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M.poppins
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It sounds like you had a blast.I can't wait to read more.
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Old 8 Sep 13, 08:09 AM  
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Taffy1959
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Congratulations it sounds like its going to be an amazing wedding,have a great time
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Old 8 Sep 13, 08:24 AM  
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BevS97
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Sounds like its going to be a lovely day, I'm looking forward to seeing a non-princessy wedding. I love the mad hatter cakes, so I bet that's great too!
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Old 8 Sep 13, 08:48 AM  
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Jedi Princess
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Congratulations to you both.
I really enjoyed your report. Looking forward to the updates.
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Old 8 Sep 13, 09:10 AM  
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What a great report, it sounds like you have an amazing day planned!

I am looking forward to reading all about it. I am also now following you both on twitter in the hope of some live updates!
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Edited at 09:18 AM.
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Old 8 Sep 13, 09:22 AM  
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wow, love everything! can't wait to read more xx
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These things are fun..and fun is good NYC/Orlando May/June 15 Pretrippy
Adults are only kids grown up pretrippy Oct/Nov 2013
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OCT/NOV 2013 - OLD KEY WEST Disney trip - DDP
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