Celebrations are about to start …..
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The morning of Tom’s birthday trip was about to dawn and we were up
bright and early at 4.30 to get ready to head out on our next
adventure. Everything had been prepared the day before, so we only
had to check if we had everything in our hand luggage and we were
ready to leave. All our stuff was loaded into my car and then at
shortly after 5am we left our house and headed for the gas station
as I had not filled up my car previously and we didn’t want to run
out of gas on the way to the airport. Since we had not had breakfast
we even picked up a sandwich for Tom and a chocolate croissant for
myself to eat at the airport. Since it was still so early we made
good progress and found ourselves at the airport just 25 minutes
later, stopping in the no parking zone, pulling out our suitcases
and heading inside to send them on their way. Having done online
check in we could use the business class check in to get our luggage
checked in and we were in and out of the airport in just a few
minutes. We drove the car to the long term carpark, found a space
close to the exit, grabbed our carry-ons and headed back to the
airport. |
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One last stop at the ATM and we were ready to join the line for the
security check. Once we had gone through, which didn’t take too long
we bought a bottle of Coke and sat down to finally have some
breakfast. Breakfast finished we strolled through the duty free shop
and made a final stop at the restroom. It was funny to see a bus
pull up when the plane was just 20 steps from the main building, but
it stood the wrong way around and they will not let you walk all
around, and maybe a bit underneath the aircraft. So once they
started “boarding” we headed outside and onto the bus which then
drove for about 20 seconds until we had reached the correct side of
the aircraft to board. |
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We quickly found our seats and stored our carry-ons, then settled in
and soon enough the doors were closed and we went on our way. And as
soon as the fasten seat belt signs were off the flight attendant
handed out Corny Milk
breakfast bars and started serving drinks. I think Tom had Diet
Coke and I had water, but neither of us tried the breakfast bar. |
The flight was smooth and nice and the most interesting part was
seeing a 747 flying very close to our small plane and then watching
it land at Frankfurt airport while we were on route to another
runway. And soon we had landed too and the plane was parked at an
outside position and we were on another bus which was going to take
us to the terminal. This time the bus ride took about 10 minutes and
once we were inside the terminal we checked if our gate had been
changed. Hm, well, we had a five and a half hour layover and our
flight was not even on the board yet. We strolled around a bit, then
made our way to the terminal where flights to the US depart from and
finally went in search of a restaurant. |
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We were happy to see that Hausmann’s was really close to our gate
and we headed over. There was a nice table for two and we were
quickly handed menus. It did not take long and our drinks arrived at
the table. I had ordered a large Diet Coke, while Tom had decided to
have a beer with his
breakfast sandwich. A few minutes later our food was served. Tom had
ordered the “Räucherlachsstulle”, smoked salmon, cream cheese, horse
radish, honey mustard sauce, pickled cucumbers and fennel on a slice
of freshly baked bread. It looked and tasted wonderful. I thought
I’d better start our vacation on a high and ordered the
Toast Eggs
Benedict Style, slow poached eggs with grilled green asparagus,
Hollandaise Sauce and crispy bacon. We sat for quite a while
enjoying our wonderful breakfast before we paid our bill and finally
left the restaurant. We did more wandering around and exploring the
shops and finally we decided to have a look at the Duty Free fare. |
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Tom actually found some spirits he wanted to try and we purchased
them, then finally went to our gate. We took out our laptops and
checked mail and caught up on news. And after some time we got
ourselves some coffee an tried our breakfast bars, but they tasted
pretty mediocre, so most of it ended in the trash. About an hour
before they were starting to board we heard some announcements that
they were looking for people to delay their flight as they were
hopelessly overbooked. We watched for a while and then struck up a
conversation with a lady who told us that she was on the way to
visit her daughter in Florida and she had not done online check in
and now was one of those on the waitlist. |
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We chatted for quite some time until it was our turn to get in line
for boarding. Didn’t take long until we were actually on the plane
and had found our seats. I had paid a little extra to have the seats
at the emergency exit, where you are able to stretch your legs. Tom
stowed all our carry ons and my handbag and we took our seats.
Sitting in these a bit exposed seats we got to witness a lot of
people not happy with their seating, especially families who had not
done online check in and now faced sitting apart from each other. It
was very interesting to see the purser reseating people and sorting
out problems. It all went pretty fast and soon we heard, “all doors
in flight” and our flight attendant came over, pulled the handle and
it would not get into place. She tried again and it still would not
fall into place. So she called and all the doors had to be put back
in park. We looked at each other and were not very happy to be next
to a faulty door. But they started to put the doors in park again
and our door …….. would not budge. |
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It was still stuck. Time was ticking and we would be loosing our
take-off window in Frankfurt, which would give us a delay, but there
was no way around it, they had to call for maintenance. It only took
about 10 minutes until two maintenance guys were arriving and tried
to open the door, but quickly found out that the emergency slide was
already activated and they could only open the door a few
centimetres. But it was enough for them to crawl underneath and fix
the problem. Yippie. With about half an hour’s delay the doors were
finally all in flight and we were rolling out of our space. Soon the
fasten seat belt signs were off and the flight attendants were off
to do their jobs. |
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So, a few minutes later we were all handed hot/cold towels to
freshen up a bit and the we were served drinks and snacks. I just
love those little airplane shaped crackers and cloud shaped
pretzels, which I washed down with some Diet Coke and Tom had opted
for some beer. About 20 minutes later we were served some lunch.
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We started off with a small salad, followed by
Orecchiette pasta with a
creamy pesto sauce and a julienne of vegetables. Tom had decided on
the other menu and was enjoying his
chicken in a paprika
sauce served with rice and a floret of broccoli. There was some nice
yoghurt cake for dessert
and a roll, butter and some
very young Camembert to close the meal. There were even some
Lufthansa Chocolate Coins.
Trays taken away we found out what movies were on demand and I ended
up watching “Up”, which I had never seen before. We even slept a bit
as it had already been a long day for us and we had an even longer
night ahead of us. About 3 hours before we were supposed to land at
MCO we were served some dinner. Again, it was Pasta. |
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This time it was spiral pasta
with some Arrabbiata sauce which was quite spicy, even with the
slightly overcooked pasta. For dessert there was some really good
and creamy chocolate pudding
with some vanilla sauce. Then it was time to fill out the customs
declaration before sitting through the rest of the flight. We had
left Frankfurt about 35 minutes late, but had only made up about 15
minutes of the time, so were coming in about 20 minutes late. |
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We were really worried as the last time we had arrived late there
were two other planes’ people in line for immigration and it took
over an hour to get to the front of the line. So when we had finally
arrived and were able to leave our seats and head for immigration we
were quite anxious to see how many people were already in line.
Turned out it was only our plane that had just arrived and we kind
of walked through the line, were then directed to one of the
machines to fill in our details and within minutes we were waiting
for an officer to finish immigration. It was only 7.45pm when we
walked up to pick up our luggage. One of our bags was already making
rounds but the other one we could not see. |
Took about 20 more minutes for the other bag to appear and we
finally made our way over to customs. There was quite the line by
now, but we finally made it through and were on our way to pick up
our rental car. We did not even stop for the Earport as we were on a
mission to make it to the hotel as soon as we could. We got down to
the rental car floor and knew that we were out of luck. There were
LONG lines for all the companies and we knew that Hertz always takes
quite some time to rent out its cars. And did I mention that the
line was long? We joined the line and it did not move for a long
time. |
There were three people at the counter and while two of the other
employees were able to serve several people those three were still
there when it finally, after 75 minutes was our turn to go to the
counter. About 15 minutes later we had a car
key in hand and were on our way out the door, where we were hit with
the heat and humidity that we were not used to. Once we had found
our car we stowed all our luggage and quickly fixed the GPS and were
on our way. But by now it was already close to 10pm and we had a
quick conversation and decided that it made no sense to head over to
the Magic Kingdom and waste a day’s ticket for just an hour or two.
So while on route to the Contemporary we made a d-tour and went to Krispy Kreme instead. When we arrived their Hot Now sign was on and
the CVS right opposite was still open, so we stopped there to see if
we would find some drinks to take on the cruise with us.
They did not have much of a variety, so we just stocked up on Diet
Coke, got some Tortilla Chips and Salsa which Tom loves and a six
pack of beer which we put into the trunk of the car before finally
heading into Krispy Kreme. |
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I was trying hard to find a point not to get too many doughnuts as I
had ordered a surprise for Tom at the hotel, but there was no way
around it, without spilling the beans, so we got a dozen
glazed doughnuts, a Diet Coke and a
Flavoured
Coffee.Tom grabbed some sugar for his coffee and some napkins and
we sat down at one of the small tables next to the conveyor belt and
took a first bite. Yes, that taste spells out vacation again and
again and we knew our vacation had started.
Tom tasted his coffee and pulled a face, as the coffee already
seemed to have had sugar in it and now it was sickeningly sweet.
We shared the Diet Coke and both had two doughnuts, which was okay
as it was already late and we had had our “dinner” at around 4.30pm. |
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Sweet tooth sufficiently filled we headed back to the car and
finally drove to our home for the night, Bay Lake Tower. When
we got close to the hotel we saw that they had signs out that said
that there was no parking for non hotel guests and we were sure we
would have a hard time finding a spot to park our car. |
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But the security guard quickly checked IDs and waved us in and we
found a spot close to the hotel in the second row down. Score! We
took our paperwork and headed for the front desk. Five to eleven,
which meant that we were now up for for more than 25 hours, we
checked in for our standard view studio, which had been the only
studio I had been able to secure. We chatted with the Cast Member
doing the check in as she was from Paris, France and she then
presented me with the bill which she wanted me to pay now. Um, I
actually am DVC and used my points. No, in her computer our
reservation showed as a cash one. Thank goodness I have a folder
with paperwork and I presented my reservation, including points
payment to her. |
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It did not match and she went to get a manager, who came out, looked
at the reservation, then with a huge smile said, that I had asked
for a higher floor and she did not have any higher floor standard
view studios, so she had upgraded us to a Lake View studio. We both
were standing there with open mouths, trying to wrap our tired
brains around what she had just said and then she pulled out a
birthday button and mentioned that there was something to celebrate
and she wanted to help us with it. We were stunned, thanked her a
thousand times as she overrode the cash payment with points, handed
us our magic bands and then they sent us on our way. Hadn’t we been
so tired we would have skipped all the way to the elevator. We went
up to our floor, then walked along the hallway, when Tom finally
said, “Isn’t that the wrong side for a lake view?” When we had
finally reached our room I let Tom open the door and my surprise was
right there on the table, a mini-cake for his 50th
birthday, but we needed to check the view and when we were out there
my heart skipped a beat, as the first thing we saw was Space
Mountain. |
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And if you leaned out just a little there was the castle as well.
Disney Magic at its best – we loved our room for the night. We had
to go back to the car to get the rest of our stuff and when we
returned to the front desk to thank the CMs again, we learned that
their shift had ended a minute after we had left the desk. Luggage
in the room and on a high we thought about heading over to MK for
EMHs, but knew that it did not make any sense to waste a ticket just
for an hour. But what about heading to the Top of the World for a
cocktail to toast Tom’s birthday? We asked the CM in the lobby if
that was still an option and she said that they would be open for
just a little longer and she was happy to send us up in the
elevator. |
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When we arrived at the lounge we saw that we would have been the
only guests and CMs were already cleaning up, so we decided again
the idea and went back down to our room.
We sat out on the balcony, enjoying the warm night air and a drink
and some nachos that we had bought just a little while earlier. It
was after midnight when we returned to the room and I was searching
for the candles for the birthday cake and we had a slice of it each
as a late night treat. It was already 1am when we finally went to
bed. Needless to say after the long day it did not take long for us
to fall asleep. |