5 Year Anniversary

Tomorrow (10/09/07) is M and I's 5 year anniversary!

I'll save the soppy stuff for him but just wanted to say that feel really lucky to have my lovely M and I hope I make him as happy as he makes me :o)

Pampered Me...

I'm so spoilt...

Yesterday I went over to the parents house and Mum and I went for a bit of R&R at her gym/Spa place. We had a splash about in the pool and sat in the sauna and spa pool for a while before making our way to the beauty area to have a full body massage!

It was of course lovely - thankyou mum for treating me yet again :o)

Mum had also got a picture of M and I from my birthday blown up and framed (it's the one of us together on the front of the boat that I posted in my last entry) and also gave us some $'s for our holiday... I'm going to do so much shopping it's not funny!!

Birthday Picnic

It was my birthday a couple of weeks ago and we went out for the day on my parents boat and stopped for a picnic in Henley. Attendees were myself and M, mum and dad, my brother and sister and their OH's, my nephew, and the two dogs. It was the first nice weather we have had for ages - M actually managed to get sunburn!

It was a well nice day - Mum had packed a lush picnic and my sister and nephew had made cake... YUM! I do have pics of everyone but have not asked if they mind them being posted on t'internet so I will just post a couple of M and I...

I got lots of lovely gifts - including a new posh MP3 player and camera, and lots of $'s for our holiday. Thanks everyone for my presents and for coming out for the day - hope you all had fun too :o)

Potter & Dinton Pastures

It came to me that I have never said anything about The Deathly Hallows... How I could be so remise I don't know, but suffice to say that when it comes to Snape I WAS RIGHT!!!

Shall say no more in case anyone hasn't read it yet. We were up at 7am and down to Asda to get a copy each. I finished mine in 1 1/2 days - closely beaten by the reading machine that is Jax but at least no one got the chance to spoil it for me :o)

Here I am, changed back into my PJ's and embarking on the reading marathon:

Also went to Dinton Pastures today (25/08/07) which was lovely as usual. Walked all around Black Swan Lake, Lavells Lake, Herons Water, and traipsed around in some kind of copse for a while. Took a few pics - did see bunnies and Herons but no pictures of them as again I had the never-ready camera with me!:

The oo-de-tinerary

SO, we spent a lot of time creating an itinerary to try to fit the "Must Do's" into without dying of exhaustion in the process.

When I say "We", I should probably say "M" as I am a teensy bit guilty of getting a bit sidetracked by 1. The Brits Guide to Orlando book, 2. The DIS message boards, 3. The planning DVD's, and 4. Singing the oo-de-lally song!

I think he did a great job on it though:

We start on Sunday 16/09/2007 - DAY ZERO

16/09: Train or (hopefully) lift to Gatwick, Twilight check in, Dinner, Overnight stay at the Gatwick Hilton.

WEEK 1:

17/09: "Leeeaaving, on a jet plane..." Take off 10.45am... Arrive, get through immigration (I'm scared!) and make our way to I-Drive and the SSC Hotel.
18/09: SeaWorld and Dolphin Nursery Tour. Lunch or Dinner at the Sharks Underwater Grill and possible afternoon visit to WNW.
19/09: Typhoon Lagoon - evening at Downtown Disney
20/09: Coach from SW to Busch Gardens in Tampa - evening on I-Drive after what I anticipate is going to be our most tiring day.
21/09: Universal Studios - Blue Man Show in the evening
22/09: Discovery Cove... swimming with a Dolphin... just another day really ;o) Dinner at Universal CityWalk

Jax and Toms Engagement Party - sadly we will be missing the party of the year as, while we are living it up with our new flippered friends, one of my oldest and best friends is celebrating her engagement. Jax - I'm sorry we can't come but you won't be able to keep us away from the wedding - we'll be there with bells on!! We hope you & Tom have a fantabulous night at your party and expect to see lots and lots of photos on our return :o)

23/09: Island of Adventure and/or Shopping, evening at CityWalk

WEEK 2:

24/09: Wet n Wild and SeaWorld,maybe a bit more shopping
25/09: Blizzard Beach, Downtown Disney in the evening
26/09: SeaWorld & Dine with Shamu
27/09: Animal Kingdom, Dinner at the Rainforest Cafe
28/09: Islands of Adventure, Universal CityWalk in the evening
29/09: MGM, Medieval Times Dinner Show in the evening
30/09: Last Day... BOOOOOOOOO. No plan as yet - re-do our favourite park or maybe head for Magic Kingdom or Epcot. We shall see. Some kind of sumptuous feast in the evening!
01/10: Flight Home... lets not think about this bit yet :o(

So there it is - our basic itinerary. Who knows if we will keep to it but at least we know that it is possible to fit everything in! The plan is to rise early and get to the parks for opening, and then have more relaxing afternoons. WNW is just over the road from our hotel so I'm hoping we can just dip in there as and when to chill, have some silly fun, and cool down!

OOOO-DE-LALLY for the OO-DE-TINERARY!!!

Timeline

Spend, Spend... no SAVE!!

With all the big decisions made and the itinerary decided on (coming up soon) we proceeded to book and purchase everything we could. M was furtively changing £'s into $'s and we were topping up our savings account whenever possible. In between the big decisions and purchases we also made good headway with all the "Little Things"...

We bought extra luggage to carry our holiday shopping home in, both got some Crocs, M got a new biometric passport, and I bought a cheap waterproof watch as am completely paranoid about missing our Dolphin Swim slot at DC!!

We bought some new summer kit, shades, and tiny toiletries. Ordered some bags from Captain Bags for carrying liquid on the plane (I'm going to want my deoderant!). The list goes on and on and we are not finished yet!

A lot of time and effort has gone into planning this trip and happily M keeps a journal so we do have a timeline of the main events:

Florida Planning Timeline

27/06/06 - Decided to go
17/07/06 - Began Research
01/01/07 - Booked Flights/Hotel/4 Park Flex Ticket online with Vigin
01/01/07 - Booked Discovery Cove (WOOOOHOOOO!!)
02/01/07 - Picked seats on plane
03/01/07 - Purchased Holiday Insurance
06/01/07 - Confirmation arrived from Virgin
09/01/07 - Confirmation Arrived from Discovery Cove
30/01/07 - Booked Dolphin Nursery Tour
08/02/07 - M new passport arrived
26/02/07 - Booked Dine with Shamu
27/02/07 - Purchased Disney Tickets
27/02/07 - Purchased Medieval Times Dinner Show Tickets
27/02/07 - M changed more $'s - hits his $1000 target
05/03/07 - SeaWorld made announcement re the new Aquatica WaterPark which cements our plans for a 2010 return trip!!
08/03/07 - Disney and Medieval Times Tickets arrive
17/04/07 - Booked Blue Man Group Tickets
06/07/07 - Transferred savings to pay holiday balance
06/07/07 - Ordered AMEX TC Card (that was a mistake - but at least we are travelling before they withdraw it!)
12/07/07 - Amex TC Card arrived
13/07/07 - Holiday Balance Paid!!
25/07/07 - Purchased funky Mickey trip report book and started writing
31/07/07 - Booked Gatwick Hilton for our pre-flight stay

It has not escaped my notice that we began our planning on 17/07/06, and finally paid the Holiday Balance 13/07/07 - almost a year to the day!

Up Next: The Itinerary

Attractions & Tickets

Another round of research ensued and we decided that the following attractions are essentials:

1. Discovery Cove (DC)
2. SeaWorld (SW)
3. Universal Studios (US)
4. Islands of Adventure (IOA)
5. Disneys MGM Studios (MGM)
6. Disneys Animal Kingdom (AK)
7. Busch Gardens (BG)
8. Blizzard Beach (BB)
9. Typhoon Lagoon (TL)
10. Wet n Wild (WNW)

Now thats a whole lotta fun!

Obviously we have not included the other two Disney parks, Magic Kingdom and Epcot, in this list. A lot of the Disney Addicts will think we are mad for choosing BG over Magic Kingdom, or that I am more excited about SW than any of the Disney Parks but hey, it's our holiday and we have planned it around the things that we think we will enjoy the most. If we have enough time/money we may still visit Magic Kingdom but its not going on the essentials list!

ANYWAY... looking at all the brochures and websites it became obvious that choosing the tickets was not going to be a simple task... there are 4 & 5 park flex tickets, 2 day passes with extra days free, different prices from different agents, the option to book through Virgin or the parks direct, and about 200 types (seriously - there actually ARE that many) of Disney tickets... our minds were well and truly boggled!

Not to be deterred we worked out that the following three tickets would cover everything on the essentials list:

1. 4 Park Flex Ticket (SW, US, IOD, WNW)
2. Discovery Cove with Dolphin Swim (WOOOOHOOOO!!) + 7 days entry to Busch Gardens
3. 2 + 3 Disney Tickets (2x main parks plus 3 visits to waterparks / fun)

We opted for booking the Flex Tickets through Virgin as the price seemed pretty standard across the board. Discovery Cove was booked direct, and the Disney Tickets were purchased online from Ticket Mania. Now that we knew which attractions we would definately be visiting we had the task of creating an itinerary to fit it all in. Our research had also revealed a number of little extra's that it seemed rude not to partake of...

Tours, Dinners, & Shows

It seemed a bit of a waste to go all the way to Florida and not treat ourselves to some of the extra FUN on offer so we also booked:

1. Dolphin Nursery Tour @ SW
2. Medieval Times Dinner Show
3. Dine With Shamu @ SW
4. Blue Man Group @ US

I love seeing the list of things we are going to do - it's VERY exciting!!! I literally CANNOT wait to get to Discovery Cove. Have a look at the reviews here for an idea of why I'm so looking forward to this day. M is a bit aprehensive about the dolphins not liking him (I know - he's silly!) but I'm thinking I will need to be restrained from throwing myself in fully clothed and will probably burst into tears (in a good way) on meeting my dolphin friend!

I do tend to get a bit obsessed about DC and SW, but then I remember about all the other cool places we are going and think my head may EXPLODE with excitment!! The anticipation for this holiday is HUGE and although I feel like we have been waiting to go forever, planning it has actually been really good fun as well :o)

UP Next: Timeline & Itinerary

ALL together now.... OO-DE-LALLY!!!

Oo-de-lally Tour 2007 - Pre-Trip Report

As it is now under a month (29 days to be exact!!) till our Florida Extravaganza I thought it was about time to write my Pre-Trip Report and share our year of planning the (hopefully) perfect holiday.

The trip will henceforth be known as the Oo-de-lally Tour 2007 - I will expect everyone to join me in periodic renditions of the "Oo-de-lally oo-de-lally Golly What a Day" song from Robin Hood, and you may of course shout "OO-DE-LALLY!!" whenever it seems appropriate ;o)

So, without further ado I present....

Oo-de-lally Tour 2007 - Pre-Trip Report

Decisions, Decisions!

So many things to decide on and so much choice to choose from! I honestly can't remember the first conversation we had about this trip - but I'm pretty certain it started with the words "I wonder how much it would cost..." and ended with the words "Who cares how much it costs!"

I do know that we started our research on 17/07/06 with the two biggies - When? & Where?

When? was suprisingly easy - we decided on 17/09/07 - 01/10/07. There are no UK school holidays and no American holidays between these dates, and all the guidebooks say it is one of the quietest times of year and that the weather is more bearable.

Where? posed more of a problem. It was obvious from the start that we were going to stay on International Drive but as for which hotel - what a minefield! Eventually after many hours of scouring the brochures and reading online reviews we finally agreed on the Sheraton Studio City. It seems to be in a good position on I-Drive (right opposite Wet n Wild) and has free shuttles to Universal Studios & Disney if we need them. M also has a bit of a movie obsession - once we had read about the Sheraton Studio City's 50's movie theming it seemed a given that we would stay here.

So with the two big decisions made and a general consensus that we would take the easy option and book a package deal through Virgin, we were left with planning the actual fun!!

OO-DE-LALLY Indeedy!!

Up Next: Attractions & Tickets.

Paintballing Pic...

Here is the pic of my workmates and I at the paintballing - you can barely see my face as I have my mask thing on my head :o/

Achy Me

Went paintballing yesterday - It was fun but I don't half hurt today!!

Went with workmates - after the first couple of games we really got into it and started doing quite well I thought. Only problem was that the other team were cheating like hell. This however did not go un-noticed by the marshalls and although they won more games than us they were docked so many points for cheating (not going out when shot / not using the submit rule / starting before the whistle went / still shooting after final whistle gone... etc etc) that we won the overall battle.

YAY!

Seriously though it was a bit embarrasing. They just see who has come on the day and split you into even teams. We had 11 people from work and 2 other randoms. The other team were made up of 3 different groups. I started out thinking it was the group of younger lads who were cheating but oh no - it was the big burly grown men! Sad but true.

I don't really see the point of playing if you are not going to do it properly. Hey ho - I thought the marshalls dealt with it quite well and I'd like to go back and have another go. I think it would be more fun if everyone was playing properly so hopefully next time we will have better opponants...

Will see if I can get hold of the photo that one of my workmates took and also upload the piccy of my worst bruise. It's quite impressive!

(Edit to add bruise pic... ouch!)

www.pointmydinner.blogspot.com

I have created a new blog to keep track of my Weightwatcher friendly recipes / dinners... feel free to have a look at:

www.pointmydinner.blogspot.com

Also if any of my fellow WW-going friends want to add any recipe ideas that would be great :o)

24/06/07 - London / National Gallery / National Portrait Gallery

Lets do something different I said - so we went to a couple of art galleries.

This was to be M's first visit to a gallery of any kind so I was a bit aprehensive as to whether he would like it or not - turns out he prefers the architecture of the buildings to the actual art but at least he was game! In fact the National and National Portrait Galleries are on his list of things he wants to do (a very long list it is too) along with sightseeing in London gernerally so he was actually pretty keen on the whole idea :o)

You're obviously not allowed to take photo's in the galleries but we also did a bit of tourist piccy taking outside - the weather was shit so none of them turned out great :o(

As per usual I am waiting for M to upload his pics -hoping that he will have some better ones!

After we had looked around the Galleries and I had established that I really don't like Van Gogh or Cezanne we were both hungry so headed for Leicester Square to get some lunch. We didn't know before hand but they had West End Live going on in Leicester Square this weekend - the first we knew about it was seeing a big fat stage in the square with Sue Pollard singing on it :o/

Confused? We were! Until that is a nice lady gave us a free programme which explained that West End Live is like a mini musical festival where there are performances from participating West End Shows. It is also sponsered by various organisations who had tents / little exhibition areas around the stage.

We met Shaun the Sheep, Paddington Bear, had our pictures taken with the stars of Ratatouille: Rat-a-too-ee and Doctor Who. We saw the Batmobile, the Pink Panther car, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, James Bond's car, and I stood inside a bubble! To top it all of they gave us each a plastic bag with a load of freebies in when we left. How jammy are we?!

Oh and if you are wondering - Sue Pollard is apparently in Menopause the Musical...

After all the excitment of West End Live we really were hungry so went to Garfunkels for lunch - M had a yummy looking club sandwich and I had the spiciest Penne Arrabiata in the world. Obviously ate far too much so tried to walk it off with more sightseeing...

Down the Mall to Buckingham Palace:

Through St James Park to the Horse Guards Parade Grounds:

Past Downing Street then over the bridge to the South Bank:

Calling it a day and jumping on the Tube back to Paddington for the train home.

More pics of Chessington...

I'm not scared of the ride... oh no - I'm scared of the crazy organ playing man in the queue line :o/

On-ride photo from the Runaway Mine Train - I'm loving every second obviously!

Rest and relaxation on the Safari Skytrain thingy

Question - How do you measure up to an Andean Condor?

Answer - Small.

22/06/07 - Chessington World of Adventures

The forecast was woefull but we took the chance and headed to Chessington World of Adventures on our day off yesterday - it was the right decision :o)

We had lots of fun and actually the weather was fine - a couple of short showers but not the torrential downpours and thunderstorms that had been forecast!

We started the day in Transylvania by riding the Vampire which was a bit of a blast from the past. It must be at least 10 years since I have been to Chessington and they have taken the floor out of this coaster since then. I wasn't expecting much from the Vampire as it is hardly hardcore but the lack of floor and the fact that the trees have grown so you are actually weaving through the treetops make for a pretty entertaining ride.

I should say now that M likes to take pictures at theme parks but he hasn't uploaded his yet so you will just have to be content with mine. Some of them are pictures of M taking pictures...

We then entered The Land of the Dragons riding Dragons Fury which is one of those spinny rollercoasters like Spinball Whizzer at Alton Towers. I don't know why but these things just make me laugh and laugh - they're just sooo silly! Fun though. We rode this a couple of times and the second time (later in the day) it was much faster and more spinny - I think coasters must warm up or something as they always seem to be better later in the day.

We almost went on Ramases Revenge after leaving the Land of the Dragons but they had the water going at full blast and we didn't really fancy getting THAT wet! Ramases Revenge still seems to draw the biggest crowd of spectators which just goes to show that the older rides can still compete with the new. Speaking of new rides it was at this point I think that M spotted our next coaster Rattlesnake - which is situated in "Mexicana" with the Runaway Train, which I found a bit odd. In fact I found the whole theming of Chessington to be a bit strange - they seem to have made new "Lands" everytime they put a new ride in. Consequently I never knew where I was and the older rides / areas don't really gel with the new. They now have TEN different areas which seems a bit excessive to me and all merge into each other anyway.

For instance Pirates Cove consists of the Swinging Ship (which should be outlawed anyway IMHO as they are EVIL) , a kiddies carousel thing and a chipshop. Pirates Cove is situated basically in Transylvania which consists of Vampire, the Bubbleworks and more refreshments / gift shops. Thats two areas for essentially four rides and can someone please explain to me what is Transylvanian about a Bubbleworks??? (no longer Proffessor Burp's I might add - it is now sponsered but Imperial Leather and based around rubber ducks)

It is the same lazy theming that they have in some areas of Alton Towers (did someone say Imperial Leather Log Flume??) Adding rubber ducks to a ride does not constitute re-theming in my book... and I play enough Roller Coaster Tycoon to know!! They really need to limit the number of areas and rethink the theming on some of the rides to get things into some kind of order.

Anyway - Rattlesnake is difficult to explain, you go round in individual cars holding 4 people and there are lots of tight turns and ups and downs. I really liked it as there were some good moments of airtime. M liked it too but found it a bit uncomfortable as he was crammed into the car and everytime we went round a corner he got a bit crushed :o/

We went for a bit of relaxation after Rattlesnake and had a ride on the Safari Skyway - this takes you over the Zoo area of the park and if you had a better camera than mine you could get some good pictures. Sadly my camera is too slow and also eats batteries like they are going out of fashion - I spend most of my time waiting for it to fire up and by that time we had gone past most of the interesting stuff. I should have just used my mobile phone camera as I always end up resorting to it anyway!

I do like the Zoo at Chessington - it's a shame it's not bigger though. The Sea Lions have a lovely area and we got a good look at it as next on the agenda was the Sea Lion Show festuring Boris (big male) Harley (one of Boris's sons) and Ocean (Boris's daughter, young and obviously being groomed for greatness!) . The show was very cool - Boris doesn't do much but Harley and Ocean were very clever and funny. My favourite part was where they demonstrated how a Seal moves compared to a Sea Lion.
We were sitting next the thickest woman in the world throughout the show who kept telling her children that only "The big one" was a sea lion... I'm not sure what she thought the others were!

Next to the sea lion area they have creepy crawly caves that house snakes, lizzards as well as the requisite creepy crawlies. Behind the sea lions they have The Trail of the Kings where you come face to face with Lions, Tigers, Leopards, and Gorillas. At the moment they have three tiger cubs, all female, which is great as they are part of the Sumatrun Tiger Endangered Species Breeding Programme (there are only 400 Sumatran Tigers left in the wild). The Gorilla family has three generations and is headed by Kumba who is 40 this year, the newest addition being Kumi who was born in 2004.

In another area of the park there is also a monkey and bird walkthrough area, some penguins, and a petting zoo. All the enclosures were clean and tidy, the animals seemed happy and they were obviously using positive reinforcement training on the sea lions (like clicker training but with whistles).

Having watched the sea lion show we thought it was about time for a few more rides and jumped onto the runaway train - no queues meant that we got to go round five times and the operator guy sped it up for the last two. Very tame but still fun :o) Mark took some pictures on this one - I'll have to post them later. Also managed to take a few pictures on the log flume (called Dragon Falls but not in The Land of the Dragons - oh no, Dragon Falls lives in Mystic East. Obviously)...

It started out nice a gentle... we were happy:

Then we realised we were at the top of a bloody great drop... we were a bit worried:

Turns out that going done the drop is fun... We're happy again!

We continued the soggy theme by heading into the Bubbleworks which is still good fun even if it is an exercise in advertising soap (Bring back Proffessor Burp!!). I am struggling to remember the order in which we went on rides now but I think it was Hocus Pocus Hall which was just weird. It's a walkthrough and you have to wear "Magic Glasses" as modelled by M in the picture on the right. There are some cool visual illusions and it ends with a maze of mirrors. Think horror film - girl lost in maze of mirrors, man with axe bursts through the mirror as she is looking at her self, man lops girls head off - thats the feeling it gave me, but then maybe I watch too many horror films...

We did visit Beanoland at some point in the afternoon but it doesn't really have anything of interest for the over-12's apart from one of those whirly rides with swings on big long chains. These things freak me out so Beanoland really does have nothing of interest for me - it is one of the better areas of theming though.

We also stopped for food in KFC - it was fine, like KFC everywhere else.

Tomblaster was next on the list - it's an indoor shooting ride. Tomblaster pissed me off a bit. We barely had any wait time on any of the other rides - definately no more than 10 minutes. On Tomblaster we had at least a 20min wait - mainly due to it being run by gormless park employees. This must be where they send the really cretinous people who can't be trusted with any of the more dangerous rides. We were also joined in the queue by a group of highly irritating teenagers - one of the girls was of the "if a boy tickles me I have to fall to the floor screaming in a very over the top loud screechy way" type. I hated girls like this when I was a teenager let alone now... so I killed them all.

It was also unecessarily hot in the queue for an indoor attraction (not going to be nice in the summer) and when we finally did get on the ride my bloody gun didn't work properly. Not impressed.

We needed some fun after Tomblaster so hopped back on Dragons Fury for our final ride of the day before having another quick mooch round the zoo and buying our fridge magnet and some sweets for the journey home. Dragons Fury was running faster this late in the day and it was definatley the antidote to Tomblaster! We remembered to pick up our ride photo from our first go on Dragons Fury and then it was back to the car for a very long and dull journey home. Took ages to get on and off the M25 as always but we finally got home at about 6.30pm .

Had a yummy dinner of spag bol and then watched a great film - Walk the Line. Joaquin Phoenix and Reece Witherspoon both put in brilliant performances - M and I both agree that they did a great job of interpreting the characters (Johnny Cash and June Carter) and delivering a performance rather than just trying to impersonate them which would be the easy thing to do.

Well worth watching if you havn't already!

Danebury and Cheyanne

Just a couple of old pictures from the Hawk Conservancy in Andover - here are Danebury and Cheyanne, American Bald Eagles... very cool!

Don't mess with geese...

Today the weather was lovely so we went to Dinton Pastures for a walk and feed the birds. Took some pictures...






We saw big swans and tiny swans...













and lots of baby geese...













Sooooo cute!! But don't mess with mummy goose :o/














....and beware the stampede of little ones!!






Awww FLUFFY :o)