Day Two - Magic Kingdom

Today we decided to go to Disney's Magic Kingdom.  I'd actually not put it on the list of things to do as we've been to Disneyland Paris three times, and it's pretty similar, but Dan wanted to go, so we thought we'd get it out of the way first.

I'm actually really glad we did go as it was a brilliant day.  It's sufficiently different to DLP to warrant a visit, and some of the rides are different as well.

Before I start though, I wanted to mention the new Disney app - My Disney Experience (I have a few friends going to Florida in the next year or so, so I'm hoping to pass on a few tips if I can).  It's brilliant!  It has good information about all the parks and the rides (we were able to get ride heights and what they would be like before we decided to go on them or not), but you can also book your Fastpass tickets on there, book restaurants etc.  It tracks your location round the park so if you need the loo in a hurry and can't see one, a quick look at the app will tell you where the nearest one is.  It also shows show times and character meet and greets too.  Oh, and possibly most importantly - ride wait times!

It was indispensable and made life in the Disney parks so much easier and enjoyable.  You obviously need WiFi but there is free WiFi in the all the Disney parks (and Broadwalk and Downtown Disney) and it was pretty extensive, I don't remember having any difficult accessing it.

To me this is a major step forward for the theme parks, hats off to Disney!  This, along with their new "paper-free" My Magic tickets (like a credit card that you just hold up to the entrance stalls and Fastpass machines) made so much difference.  We tended to decide where we were going the night before, and I would book our three Fastpass choices online (the My Disney Experience is accessible via pc and tablet as well as mobile), and then keep an eye on things via the mobile in the park (there are Fastpass booths in the park that you can use to book your Fastpasses still, but there tended to be a bit of a queue for a lot of them, so much easier to sort it out the night before).  We tended to try and book the busiest rides for the busiest times (eg big rides mid-afternoon), and then fit in other, less busy, rides around that.  It seemed to work well.  We aren't early risers so tended to get to the park late morning and stay til pretty much it closed (the hour before the park closes is especially great as lots of rides don't have any real wait times at all!).  But obviously this made for very late nights, which isn't everyone's cup of tea.

So, back to Magic Kingdom.  And now, of course, I am desperately wishing that I'd blogged every night because I can't remember half of it!  But hey ho (it's off to work we go ;)).  Magic Kingdom is a lot like DLP but seems bigger (I don't know if it is or not), and seems to have more rides?  The layout is pretty much the same though, with the usual Adventureland, Fantasyland, Main St., etc., and of course the princess castle in the middle.

Now, at this point I need to mention that none of us are particularly big Disney fans.  Dan and I are grumpy old cynics, and the boys, being boys, aren't particularly into it all either.  They used to like Toy Story and Cars, but have grown out of that.  But I do think the parks are what you make them.  We obviously ignored all the Princess stuff, didn't bother with the meet & greets, and didn't bother seeing the parades (rides are less busy when the parades are on!).  We concentrated on rides really, especially as the last time we'd been to DLP they'd both been a bit too small to go on a lot of it.

So at Magic Kingdom we started in Adventureland and Dan took the boys up the Swiss Family Robinson treehouse, which they enjoyed (not a ride, just a mock up I believe).  Then Dan, Ollie and I went on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.  We'd been on the DLP version and enjoyed it, so wanted to go back on it again.  However, the ride here is quite different from what we remember the DLP to be like, and we were quite disappointed.  The DLP one seemed to have a few more sudden drops (it's a water ride inside) and this one was pretty much just a leisurely trip round in the dark with a few pirate scenes to look at.

Toby sat out with Dad, Toby because he's scared of pretty much everything, and Dad because of his foot (although we did take Dad on it when we went back).  This became quite a theme of the holiday as Toby found more and more things he was scared of!

Disney have changed their policy regarding disabled people because they found that people were hiring (!) disabled people to go with them to the parks so they got to the front of the queues!  (Anyone who's pushed an adult around in a wheelchair for 10 hours might think twice about that!), but they do have a system on some of the rides that you can go to the entrance, ask for a "white card" and they will give you a time to come back that is the equivalent of the time you would have waited in the queue.  To be honest I felt a little bad about using this, as Dad could easily queue in his wheelchair (although on some rides the queue wasn't wheelchair accessible).  However, I hadn't realised how much hard work it was pushing the wheelchair!  A lot of the queues were on slopes too, which made it harder, so we needed the white card for me and Dan, rather than Dad! lol

We then moved round the park doing other rides, such as the Winnie The Pooh ride (oh they might be 9 and 10 year old boys, but they still had to do that ride lol!), The Barnstormer (kids rollercoaster - big wait for a very short ride!), and of course, "It's A Small World" - a ride that HAD to be concieved on drugs!  Dan and I have a theory that every now and then one of the boats that you go on is taken off to one side, and everyone in it is turned in to the singing dolls in the ride!

 

After a bit of cooling off at Casey Jnrs Splash Station (the boys had great fun pushing Dad through it in the wheelchair, supposedly dodging all the water!), we moved into Tomorrowland, and did some of the rides there (Buzz Lightyear - exactly the same as DLP, and the Speedway (very average road "race" on big Scaletrix cars).  We wanted to do Space Mountain but the queues were pretty bad.

We went back to Frontierland later and did Big Thunder Mountain (Toby decided he didn't like roller coasters after all!), and Splash Mountain, a decent log flume based on the story of Brer Rabbit.  Both boys loved it, and as it was quite late in the evening there wasn't much of a queue, so we went on it a couple of times (and got rather wet!).  The weather was brilliant, blue skies and about 26 degrees, but at 10pm it did get a little chilly when you're wet!

I can't remember for the life of me what and where we ate, but we did make the great discovery that Disney have now let Starbucks into the inner circle as it were, so I'm pretty sure there were coffees somewhere along the line!

I must say we really enjoyed our first day, much more than I thought we would considering we'd done DLP so many times before.  Some of the rides were a bit disappointing, but the overall feel of the place, the lengths Disney go to to make the whole thing more of an "experience" and the brilliant staff all helped to make up for it :)

Day One - Travelling

So, for someone who doesn't travel much, a trip to the airport and a plane ride is quite exciting to me, let alone the destination etc., when we get there!  Of course, I am something of a shopaholic too, so the lure of different (and possibly cheaper) shops at the airport means I am happy to travel.

Dan on the other hand just sees it as extremely boring, and obviously apart from the excitement of the plane taking off, the kids do too.  One of the great things about the modern age is not only the personal in flight entertainment, but the fact that you can look on the internet to see what options you have before you go.  So we'd looked up the films available and I was actually rather impressed.  Lots to choose from, and some really quite new (eg not long out of the cinema).  As I'm not much of a cinema goer, there was lots for me to choose from, and lots for the kids too.

Our flight was at 11.20am from Gatwick, so we left home at 6.30am (we planned to leave at 6.30am and actually did - anyone who knows us well will know that this is quite an achievement!!).  There was an uneventful journey to the airport, we dropped off the car, checked in (BA staff were very helpful with the wheelchair etc.,) and dropped off our bags.  I mention this because the discussion about how many suitcases to take had been debated more than any other aspect of this holiday.

I was on the side of "take as much as possible so we can buy as much as possible" school (not like me eh?), whilst Dan was on the side of a little more caution (and the one in charge of the bank balance!).  We needed new suitcases and a few weeks before had bought four.  Two big ones for us and two little ones for the boys.  Which I thought was fine.  However, with Dad now being in a wheelchair (and having his own suitcase), we had five people travelling but only three able to push suitcases (as one of us would be pushing Dad in the wheelchair).  Whilst I still thought we should try and take a suitcase each (we could take a trolley and you really aren't pushing them around for long), Dan, as the chief packer in the house, won the arguement, and we took two large suitcases and one small one (and Dad's one).  Dan pushed the two suitcases, I pushed Dad, and the boys took the small suitcase and Dad's one.

We breakfasted in Cafe Rouge and did a little shopping.  I get my shopping gene from my Dad, and possibly even more than me he can't resist any kind of "deal" or "bargain".  So it didn't take much persuading from the kids to enter the "Win a Luxury Car" thing that you find in these places.  You know the ones, £8 a ticket or something ridiculous, and obviously the more you buy the more you "save" ;)  That done, we went off to board our plane.

The journey was pretty uneventful for the most part.  There was a strange coincidence though in that on the way there a woman asked us if we were on the plane to Orlando, as that is where she was going, but she wasn't sure she was going the right way.  Turns out her seat was next to Ollie's on the plane!  She was a lovely American lady, happy to chat away to Ollie for as long as he wanted (and those that know Ollie know he likes to talk and isn't afraid of talking to strangers!).  She called him "my darling" and answered all his questions (she flew a lot).  She even helped me look after Ollie when he was a little sick at the end of the flight (I think he overheated).  She was my first experience of an American on the trip and a lovely one too :)

The boys amused themselves by watching movie after movie on the plane, at least three each.  When you add a bit of eating, going to the loo, and a little playing on the iPad, it's amazing how quickly nine hours goes - the boys getting bored and restless on the plane was one of my worries, and it was such a relief when they were fine!

It's a shame to note that airplane food hasn't come on much since I last had a meal on a plane!  I had sausages and mash and it was pretty rank tbh.  Having said that, pudding was a divine chocolate mousse from Lily O'Briens, which kinda made up for it!

I read a little, watched Despicable Me 2 (which the children had been telling me for ages was hilarious (I didn't like it as much as no.1 tbh), and did some colouring in (I'm such a child lol), so didn't get too bored either.

We arrived about 4.30pm local time and went through all the security checks etc..  Made a mental note to wear gloves if ever committing a crime in America as they now take your fingerprints and keep them forever!

We collected our rather large car (another heavily debated topic!), a Ford Expedition, and off we went.  Good old Sat Nav makes life so much easier, not only telling you where to go, but giving you a good idea/reminder about driving on the right etc., so that negotiating junctions etc. was without incident.

By the time we got to our villa it was getting dark, so here's a photo of it in the daytime:

It was really lovely.  To be honest, we'd paid more than we wanted to for a week, but because we were booking so late, there wasn't too much to chose from that had everything we wanted.  This house was huge!  It had five bedrooms (luckily one double downstairs for dad as upstairs would have been an issue with his foot!), and our bathroom was bigger than our master bedroom at home!  It also had the biggest dressing room I'd ever seen (you could have comfortably had it as another double bedroom!).  The boys were delighted to find an electric piano and a karaoke system in the lounge!

The biggest dressing room I've ever seen (leading to our bathroom)

Lounge through to kitchen

The pool (and Dad eating his breakfast lol)

(As an aside, I'd spent months looking at villas in Florida and wondering why on earth ALL of them had these stupid big "greenhouses" on the back, and thinking that surely with all that sun it would be like an oven in there??  Only to realise once we'd got there that it's not glass, it's just netting (D'oh!!), and extremely useful in keeping bugs and dust etc. out!)

Anyway, we raced to the supermarket, bought some bits for supper, then went to bed at what was about 2am England time!  And that's the end of day one!

The Fat Gymnast Goes On Holiday!

Ok, so I'm cheating a little here.  I can't be bothered to set up a new blog to detail my recent trip to Florida, so I'm hijacking this one.  To be honest there's very little to say on the gymnastics front at the moment, I haven't managed to get to the gym for about six weeks now, so no news on that front really.

So, let me tell you about my holiday, and why I'm blogging it.  About 18 months ago we started talking to my dad about what he might like to do for his 70th birthday (June this year).  My Mum had died of early-onset Alzheimers about 18 months before that, which obviously had been a terrible time for us all, but Dad obviously particularly.  I wanted give Dad the 70th birthday he deserved!  He'd spent so long looking after Mum's needs and not doing what he wanted to do, I wanted to make sure he got what he wanted to do for his special birthday.

Dad mentioned that one of the things on his "bucket list" was to go back to Florida, but this time to go to the Everglades, do an airboat tour and see the alligators.  (We'd been as a family in 1988 (a long time ago!) but we'd just done the Disney thing (Universal Studios wasn't even built then!).

It's not something he would want to do on his own, and my husband and I have two children of pretty much perfect Disney/Universal age (two boys, age 9 and 10), so we started to talk about a family holiday to Florida.

It's at this point that I need to tell you about my husband (I'm pretty sure he won't mind as he's very open about this).  In 2001 Dan had a nervous breakdown.  I don't think we'll ever really know what caused it, but the trigger was most definitely September 11th.  Obviously an awful day for many many people, and one with far more serious and sad consequences for many more people than us.  It's a day I'm sure none of us will forget, and my heart goes out to the people who died and their friends and families as much now as it did then.  But on a personal level, it was the start of a difficult time for Dan/us too.  There's no technical way I can think to describe it, but he basically heard the news and just flipped.  He'd always be a very nervous flyer, we'd flown to Singapore/The Maldives for our honeymoon in 1998 and he was very nervous then.  But in 2000 he was supposed to fly to Sydney for work, had a massive panic attack on the plane before it took off and in the end he got off before it flew.

So, of course, you can see how September 11th was a trigger.  I won't go into the details of the breakdown, I still find it a difficult time to really think about too much, but I need to mention it because it's important to know how far Dan has come in the last 10 years or so that the idea of going to Florida was even up for discussion.

Up until a few years ago it wouldn't have been.  Both because of the flying and because through the breakdown Dan had come to see America as the principal target for terrorism, and therefore an extremely dangerous place to visit.  However, through years of medication, counselling, CBT and sheer hard work and determination, I am the proudest wife in the world to be able to say he has come out of the other side :)  Of course, he still has his bad days, and it has all affected him, changed him as a person even, but now he is a million times better than he was!  And therefore, a family holiday to Florida was indeed a possibility!

So we talked and talked, discussed what each of us wanted, ummed and ahhed, and finally decided to go for it!  We decided on Easter this year due to school holiday and weather considerations mainly.  March 2013 came and I started to look at flights.  I was literally about to book them when Dad was diagnosed with bladder cancer.  Obviously thoughts of going on holiday went out of the window and we concentrated on getting Dad well.  Thoughts of Florida were in the background, I wanted to have something for Dad to look forward to and work towards, but obviously we couldn't book anything.

Dad had his chemo and in January was given the fab fab news that he was in remission!  After all the trauma he'd been through I was even more determined to give him a holiday to remember!  We booked flights, and after looking at pretty much every villa in Orlando still available, we booked that too.  We were going for nearly three weeks.  The first week in a villa in Orlando doing Disney parks, then a little road trip down to the Everglades to see the alligators, then back up to Orlando and a different villa for a week to do the Universal parks, Kennedy Space Center and Daytona Racetrack (Dad is a car enthusiast).

So, that is pretty much why I want to blog it all.  This was a BIG holiday for all of us.  It was way out of Dan and my comfort zone (up until last year a few days in Center Parcs and a week in Devon was all we were comfortable with lol).  It was obviously massively exciting for the kids, and hopefully a big celebration for Dad.

Of course, nothing ever goes properly to plan, and two weeks before we were due to leave, Dad broke his foot!  He phoned me from the hospital (where he'd driven himself!) to tell me, first of all joking that he'd been playing football with some old friends!  He sure knows how to test me!  Anyway, after a bit of ringing around etc., and checking details, we got sorted for this extra little issue!  Luckily Dad didn't need a plaster cast on his foot, so we could still go (if he did need one he wouldn't have been able to fly!), and we already had a wheelchair, so we were sorted!

Save our gym (class)!

Well, this is a Stop Press kind of post!  Steve tells me that the centre are thinking of stopping the adult gym class as there aren't enough people coming to warrant running it.  I will be devestated and The Fat Gymnast will have to go into retirement again, we can't have that now, can we? lol.  So I've just made up this flyer to give out to parents, what do you all think??

I do hope we get some more takers!  Any of my lovely friends fancy having a go??

She's back!!

So, after an extended holiday over the summer because of a hamstring injury, I'm finally back in the gym!  I'd been testing my hamstring out now and then when I've been coaching to see how it's going, and it finally feels better :)  Not 100% fixed, but getting there!  I can do a handstand without wincing now!

And to prove it, look what I can do again after months and months of not being able to....

Yippee!  (although critics will notice my back leg still isn't straight!)  I'm also managing to get much further down into a Japana (straddle sit leaning forwards) now too - not all the way but my face is about two inches off the floor!

The other big news (well, in my gymnastic life!) is that I can now do a forward roll properly (eg standing up at the end).  Not a big deal for most people, but I think mainly because of my size (and lack of stomach muscles!) I've not been able to stand up from the roll before now!  (Steve has taken a video of me that I may or may not put up at a later date!).

We think the reason I can do it now is that we've introduced a new warm-up in the gym (for the development and squad groups) and I've been trying to do it along with them sometimes!  It's specifically for stomach and core conditioning and it involves a lot of sit-ups and V-sits amongst other things!

So, I'm going to keep doing that (have downloaded the track so I can do it at home too!) and hope that it continues to make a difference to my gymnastics!

Week Seven

Well, another surprising week, in that for the first time I wasn't looking forward to my gym session.  I'd had some bad news that morning and I guess really wasn't in the mood.

But like with a lot of things, focusing on the gym allowed the other things to go to the back of my mind for a while, which was a bit of a relief.  For the gym itself, my handstands are getting better, feels like up upside down for ages now! lol.  I'm sure it's only a few seconds, but it feels like longer to me.

We did a lot of airtrack work and I worked on cartwheels - especially on my "bad" side (everyone has a good and a bad side!  The idea is that you practise the bad side more and both sides get better!).  Did quite well with them I think.

Towards the end we did some splits practise and I got right down!  Yay!  And managed to keep my hands in the air for a while too!  Here is a particularly horrible photo of that! lol

   

In all seriousness, it's good to see how much I've come on in a few short weeks.  If you look at my first splits attempt - I was leaning forward (not good), toes aren't pointed, head down, obviously a struggle.  This one is much better (despite the beetroot face and flabby tummy!).  Yay!

And finally, my gymnastic friends have professed a desire to appear on these pages, so here is a photo of them working hard!

Week Six

I do love the way things happen sometimes.  Things have been pretty quiet on the gym front as it's half term and normal classes aren't running.  I coached at the kid's gym camp day, and as expected, I couldn't last all day without having a jump on the trampoline and a few handstands on the airtrack!  But nothing particular to write home (or here) about.

That evening in the bath I picked up a book that my husband bought me for Christmas and I hadn't got around to reading.  "Is It Just Me?" by Miranda Hart.  I feel the need to inform you all that I had not even leafed through through this book before then at all.  As I was reading, I came across this:

"As a teenager, we suddenly had to get serious about hobbies (which, incidentally, doesn't include walking around shopping centres in feral packs, buying tops).  So, no more gymnastics unless your forward roll is good enough to represent the school at the county championships.

And, by the way, at what age does it suddenly become impossible and terrifying to attempt a forward roll?  I don't know about you, but I always used to be forward rolling.  If I wanted to jump on a friend's bed, I might casually forward roll my way on.  I was like a piece of teenage elastic, throwing myself everywhere.  We all were, weren't we?  Then, suddenly, in your later years, you might be faced with the prospect of doing a forward roll only to hear yourself saying: 'I can't do it.  Seriously, oh my goodness, it's really scary, I can't, I'll break my neck, won't I?'  Ditto handstands.  There was a stage in my life when i was never not doing a handstand of a summer month.  There I'd be, walking along; I'd see some open grass, up with a quick handstand, and keep walking.  No one would think it odd.  Now if I attempted a handstand, firstly everyone would assume I was deranged but secondly, I would assume my arms would break underneath me.  Also, it looks an awfully long way down, that grass.  What happens if I do a good one, a really marvellous perky handstand, but can't get down?  Or what if I lose control and flip over?  That would be truly terrifying."

Ha!  Love it.  My thoughts exactly.  My mum said I never walked into a room, I always cartwheeled, Arab sprung (?!) or walkovered my way in lol.  And exactly what I thought (and I think documented here) about handstands!  I'd love to invite Miranda to one of our gym classes lol, she comes from the area too, so could be quite feasible!  (Except I wouldn't have an idea of how to get in touch with her!  (Anyone want to flood twitter with my blog address?? ;) )).

Anyway, it makes me think again about how cool the human body is.  Like riding a bike or skipping I guess, even after years of not doing something (28 years of my not doing a handstand for example) the body remembers what to do!