Day 259 Thursday
Today we had to check out from our hotel at Disney and move to our next hotel on I-Drive - The Enclave - it was sad but there ya go.
Now I have stayed at the Enclave before and I know it's not the most modern place to stay - big back tvs anyone? but it was clean and in a good location so I thought it would be okay.
Our suite when we got it was pretty much the same as the one we stayed in 2 years ago literally no changes. It had a master room with a queen bed and ensuite shower and toilet, a twin room with single beds and ensuite with a bath shower and toilet, a open plan living room with kitchenette.
The furniture was old but useable, the room was clean and the ac worked provided you didnt want it lower than 70.
We stayed here for 7 days and it was horrible - the hideous surroundings would have been fine but they blasted tiki music every day from 830am right the way up to 10pm. I couldnt sleep - if your interested in seeing pics and reading my full blow by blow review about how truly awful this place was then it's up on tripadvisor and a linkie is on the side--->
Positive about this place though was the location and the fact I had my own room - YEESSSS - over 2 weeks of sharing a room with my mum and my niece was causing some serious stress so at least we all had our own space here.
Days 260 - 265 Friday - Wednesday
So I have to be honest I cant remember the exact order we did everything but here's the highlights of what we got up to:-
1. We hit the outlets at both ends of i-drive and shopped shopped shopped and shopped some more. We also hit the big Walmart near i-drive and again shopped til we dropped
2. I met up with a friend of mine who I know from when I worked at Disney - he used his cast member discount to get us Mickey's not so scary halloween party tickets and me him and another of his friends went to the party one night - my mum and niece didnt come - I offered but mum thought I deserved some time out with my friends.
3. My Disney friend who works in Guest Relations did me a HUGE favour and hooked me up with free FP+ to ANY attraction I wanted. Me and mum told my niece we were going to Magic Kingdom to get some photo's outside of Cinderellas castle and she was really excited - she got dressed up as Elsa and I had a tiara I bought her she wore. Anyways we got to MK and I was all grumpy and told her I had enough and wanted to sit down and dragged her into a building before she could see what it was...well we went in and she nearly cried as it was the meet and greet with Anna and Elsa themselves :) She really thought they were real - first and only time I have ever seen her speechless. It was actually Magical :)
After meeting Anna and Elsa I used another FP so we could ride Peter Pan - this isnt my fave ride but I knew my niece would love it. We used our final FP then to meet Tinkerbell
Magic Kingdom was completely packed out so we didn't do much else but we didnt need to my niece had the best day ever - we stopped and I took some photo's on the way out in front of the Castle - finally some true disney magic.
4. We went to the Pirates Dinner Show - we have done pretty much every dinner show in Orlando now but we hadn't done this one before - I have no idea why not! It was by far the best show I have seen in Orlando - the pre-show included an aperitif of chicken fried rice.
We also got to meet the different pirates and get the background on what the show was about - then it was into the show itself which featured a really cool set up of a pirate ship surrounded by water. We were sat in the second row so had really good seats and could see everything. The show itself was funny, lots of tricks and stunts, some good singing, some awful singing, gunfire and lots and lots of audience participation - literally every kid was chosen for some task including my niece who whilst not a little kid (at aged 24) still looks like one and with her learning difficulties and disabilities is quite low level. She took part and was the first in her team to get her flag raised too! The food and drink provided was good - jugs of coke / diet coke and starter for the meal was salad, followed by a choice of chicken or beef kabob (yes thats what they called it not a typing) which you chose when confirming your booking this had a side of bread, fried rice and veggies and dessert was a slab of chocolate brownie. After the show finished there was a disco and more stuff to do with the pirates but we left at the end to take a few pics outside on the mock pirate ship. We all really enjoyed it.
Now unfortunately on the Monday I didn't feel well - I had been bitten by a mozzie on my neck and being me my glands had swollen to golf ball proportions - that in itself wasnt a problem but it caused my already poor ears (and the tubes behind them) to get blocked. By Monday night I had a raging temp along with a banging headache and severe ear ache. I was literally crying in the night and tempted to do a van gogh and chop it off. In the early hours of Tuesday morning my ear drum burst bringing with it sweet sweet relief from the pain (as the infection was festering behind the ear drum) and the most disgusting smelling and looking pus and blood discharge ever - literally not to sound gross or anything but it was like a tap pouring out of my ear and all over the bedding. I have ongoing ear probs so I knew that 1. I needed antibiotics, 2. my ear drum was once again perforated and 3. sadly that meant no swimming or getting water in my ear.
I checked out walgreens website and found that the big walgreens on i-drive had an urgent care facility and drop-in centre. My lovely friends met me for lunch and seeing how unwell I was took me there and waited whilst I was seen by a nurse practitioner.
It was kind of funny because she was quite like really you have an infection your ear drum is burst how do you know then when I lay down for her to exam me and all the puss and blood started pouring out she was grossed out. Anyways it cost me $170 to get seen, get a prescription and get it filled for painkillers and strong antibiotics which was much cheaper than visiting an actual doctors clinic. I did have insurance but to be honest by time you take the excess off £100 it wasnt really worth claiming back especially as I am planning on going to the USA next year and dont want my insurance costs to go up - they are already hefty due to pre-existing conditions. 3 days after starting the meds my ear was feeling a lot better but I was still slightly deaf but I am used to that :)
I wanted to add photo's here but my card reader is playing up so I will hopefully add a bunch in the week :D
Day 266 - 269 Thursday - Sunday
So once again on Thursday we were moving hotels - I cant lie I was so excited to be getting out of the enclave and away from that crappy tiki music we were up showered, dressed packed and checked out by 1030am!
I had called the hotel we were changing to - the Econo Lodge (which was handily a 5 min walk away) and the earliest we could check in was 12 noon. We decided to just get the hell out of dodge and get over there anyways we had a fair amount of luggage and we knew we could just chill. We made it there and I asked if they minded us sitting in the lobby in the ac - it was HOT outside and they said just go ahead and check in so by 11.15am we were sat chilling in our new room - once again the 3 of us sharing but what a difference. The hotel was clean and modern and it had working wi-fi - SCORE.
Now whether it was in sympathy with me or due to the ac my mum started to feel rotten! She had a nasty head cold brewing oops. We were due on Friday to go to Busch Gardens but as she was feeling so rotten we cancelled it. Instead we went to the Florida Mall on the bus and did even more shopping - I mentioned we like to shop right? Anyways we spent about 3 hours in JC Pennies which had tonnes of stuff on sale yay and after a stupid amount of time in the mall itself headed back to the hotel.
Saturday was our last day :( I paid an extra $25 to the hotel so we could keep our room til 3pm which was perfect as it meant no rushing our dragging our cases and having to get them stored.
We got picked up at 3.15pm by our airport transport and were checked in at the airport ready for our flight by 5pm with the flight going at 7. We grabbed some food in the airport and caught out flight which was slightly late. We had a 1hr stop off in iceland which was interesting and arrived in uk around 12.20pm Sunday!
So we raced through the airport, through security - grabbed our bags and ran to the coach pick up point for our coach which we just about made and then finally got into Cardiff at 6pm and home by 6.30pm
So that was basically it - 3 and a half weeks spent in the canada and the usa and then back to reality with a bump - we had some ups and downs, some arguments, we didnt do everything we wanted but we had fun and enjoyed ourselves and thats the main thing :D
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