Our Walt Disney World traditions

There's still a little while to go until our holiday to Walt Disney World in September, and it's sadly been exactly a year since our 2018 trip.

I like to keep the magic alive between trips so I thought I'd blog about our Walt Disney World traditions. I tried to include lots of traditions that aren't centered around food to provide some variety, but it was obviously impossible to compile a whole list without some edible essentials sneaking in.



Staying in a Disney resort

We've been to Walt Disney World six times and we've always stayed in a Disney resort. So far I've stayed in Coronado Springs, Old Key West, Port Orleans French Quarter and Saratoga Springs (three times). I'm super excited that we're adding the Yacht Club Resort to this list in September!

Going to Disney Springs on our first evening

As soon as we've arrived at our resort and freshened up, we always head to Disney Springs for a wander around the shops, dinner at Earl of Sandwich and a cocktail at Dockside Margaritas. Park tickets are valid for 14 days from first use which means we need to choose whether we want to use them on our first evening or on our last morning before leaving for the airport. We prefer to use them on our last morning, so Disney Springs is the perfect relaxing alternative for our first evening.

Making use of our refillable mugs

We've had a free refillable mug on our last few trips to Walt Disney World as we've been on the Disney Dining Plan, but we still buy them when we're not on the plan. They're really good value for money as you can top them up with soft drinks or hot drinks at your resort as many times as you want. And, as an added bonus, they're beautifully designed like everything else in the Disney bubble.

Mickey waffles for my first (and last) breakfast

We always have a sit-down breakfast in the resort's food court on our first and last morning, and I absolutely have to order the Mickey waffles. Once I've got my three Mickey waffles in front of me, I feel as if my Disney holiday has truly begun!

Space Mountain is always our first ride of the holiday 

We always head to Magic Kingdom on our first day and, without fail, Space Mountain is the first ride we queue for. There are lots of rides I love at the Magic Kingdom, but Space Mountain is my absolute favourite because it's in the dark and IT'S SO MUCH FUN.

Lunch in the Magic Kingdom on our first day

We always book a table service lunch at the Magic Kingdom on our first full day, and we usually choose the Plaza. We did go to Tony's Town Square Restaurant instead a few years ago which was pretty good, but I think the Plaza will always be my favourite restaurant in the Magic Kingdom.

Ice cream at Beaches & Cream, Plaza Ice Cream Parlor and Ghirardelli 

You can buy ice cream in about a hundred different places in Walt Disney World. However, we always gravitate towards three places when we need an ice cream fix - Beaches & Cream at the Beach Club Resort, Plaza Ice Cream Parlor at the Magic Kingdom, and Ghirardelli in Disney Springs.

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Meeting Pluto

Character meets aren't a huge priority for me when we go to Walt Disney World, but I always make sure I meet Pluto. We usually meet him on our second full day when we're in Epcot, and I love seeing his happy little face.

Fitting in as many boat rides as we can 

We always make sure we have a few boat rides during our trip. We try to get the boat from the Magic Kingdom to the Grand Floridian a few times, and we also catch the Friendship boat to Hollywood Studios from Epcot (and/or the other way around). They help us to rest our feet, they provide nicer views than the buses, and they obviously get us to where we want to go.

Beauty and the Beast and Festival of the Lion King shows

As you'd imagine, there are lots of different shows to see when you go to Walt Disney World. We tend to alternate between most of them on our different trips, but I absolutely have to see the Beauty and the Beast show in Hollywood Studios and the Festival of the Lion King show in Animal Kingdom every time we go.

What are your Walt Disney World traditions?

Top 5 snacks and quick-service restaurants at Walt Disney World

I've been back from holiday for four weeks and I haven't blogged about the food yet. Can you believe it? I certainly can't, so I thought it was about time I rectified this situation.

I'm going to start by blogging about my top 5 snacks and quick-service restaurants on this trip, then I'll blog separately next week about our favourite table service restaurants.

We made good use of our Disney Dining Plan as always (read my quick summary of how it works here), although we did struggle to use all our snack credits this year. It turns out that a table service meal, quick-service meal and two snacks per day is sometimes too much food even for us. However, we spent our remaining snack credits on Ghirardelli chocolate so we felt quite smug about having so many left over.

Brace yourselves for photos of my top 5 snacks...

Mickey-shaped cinnamon bun at Animal Kingdom 

My all-time favourite Disney snack. Churro! 

Giant pink doughnut... I ate this at 9am. 

One of many trips to Beaches & Cream for our ice cream fix

Warm Wild Berry Buckle with pepper-berry gelato from Epcot's Flower and Garden Festival. One of the new things I was determined to try on this trip!  

After seeing the size of the snacks, I'm sure you can understand why we struggled to use up all our snack credits! 

We did well with our quick-service credits and managed to space them out evenly throughout our trip. Quick-service restaurants are ideal when you want a more casual meal which you can eat as quickly or as slowly as you want to, and there really is something to suit everyone. Don't be fooled into thinking you'll get a small portion though... see below! 

These were my five favourites this year: 

We tried Blaze Pizza in Disney Springs for the first time and it was goooood. 

Orange chicken at Lotus Blossom Cafe in Epcot's China pavilion.
I look forward to this every year! 

Another holiday staple for me - Mickey waffles for breakfast at The Artist's Palette 

One of many trips to D-Luxe Burger. BEST BURGERS EVER. 

Colossal breakfast at Be our Guest in the Magic Kingdom 

Are you really hungry now? I definitely am... no change there then. Keep a look out for more mouth-watering photos of food next week!  

My birthday celebrations

Another year, another birthday... I seriously can't believe it's June already. At the risk of sounding like a carbon copy of everyone else, where on earth has this year gone?

My birthday fell on a dreaded Monday this year so I decided to do most of my celebrating the weekend before. The week leading up to my birthday weekend was pretty dull weather-wise, but the sun came out just in time!

We took Jessie for a long walk on Saturday afternoon then went to Etc for an early dinner. Although I've only been to Etc a couple of times, it's quickly becoming one of my favourite restaurants for special occasions.

The sun was still blazing when I was getting ready so I decided to wear one of my brightest outfits to make the most of it.

When you take a look at what I ate and drank on Saturday evening, it's easy to see why Etc has become a firm favourite...

Lavender Fizz - a gin cocktail 

Sweet potato confit, crispy chorizo and sage 

Cauli-meflower (chargrilled cauliflower steak, spiced red lentil dhal, tempura purple sprouting broccoli, caramelised grapes and curry oil)

Etc Berry Mess 

Banana Daiquiri 

'That all looks amazing!' I hear you say (hopefully). And you'd be absolutely right. 

On the Sunday, we took Jessie for another long walk then drove to Joe's Ice Cream on Wellfield Road for the first time in years. I'd never dream of ordering a tub of plain vanilla anywhere else, but I can't resist Joe's vanilla ice cream. It tasted just as good as we remembered, if not better. 

As always, the weekend flew by and it was business as usual on Monday. I had 5 meetings so it was a long day in work, but I had lots of lovely birthday wishes and a couple of cards from my colleagues. I also brought doughnuts and cookies in to the office, and it would have been very rude of me not to sample a few for myself as the birthday girl.

I opened my presents from Neil (and Jessie!) when I got home from work, then we went to Romeo's by the Sea for a quiet meal. We were home by 8:30pm and finished off the evening by sitting down to watch an episode of Homeland, our new series of choice.

Thank you to everyone for your lovely gifts, cards and messages. I had lots of pink and Disney-themed presents and cards as always, and I'll continue to post lots of my gifts on Instagram over the next few weeks.

I'll leave you with one happy thought... 200 days to go until Christmas Day. You're welcome!

Snacking, Disney style!

It's been two weeks since we got back from Walt Disney World and I'm still suffering from an extreme case of holiday blues. For all the reasons I detailed in my last blog post, it's so difficult to leave such a spectacular place behind at the end of an amazing fortnight. It really does get a little bit harder to leaveevery time.

I thought blogging about our holiday might make me feel better and, after posting a quick poll on Twitter because people haven't had enough voting opportunities recently (!), I've decided to start with some blog posts on the food we ate at Walt Disney World.

The Disney Dining Plan was included with our booking which meant we had 14 table service credits each, 14 quick service credits each, and 28 snacks each. Today, I'm going to focus on the snacking element of the plan.

Snacks generally cost up to $6 and are widely available across all parks and resorts - just keep a look out for the purple Disney Dining Plan icon to find out what's eligible. We quickly realised that 2 snacks each per day is a huge amount of food on top of the other meal credits, so we used a few of our credits on bottled drinks in the parks rather than on food items or more fancy drinks. However, we still managed to fit in a substantial number of fun snacks as you'll see below, as well as some boring fruit snacks which I didn't photograph!

It's amazing to think that all the food and drink below was completely free and didn't chip away at our spending money. Although I don't think we'd ever pay outright for the Disney Dining Plan, it's a definite perk when it's tagged on to your booking.

Scroll down to find out what we decided to spend our snacking credits on this year...

A Disney snacking classic. Mickey pretzel!

One of my favourite snacks of the lot - churro!

Ice cream from the legendary Plaza Ice Cream Parlor at the Magic Kingdom. 

A giant cookie with little sugared Mickeys from our resort's selection of snacks.

Another Disney classic. Mickey ice cream lolly!

Dole Whip on our first morning.
This is like a meal in itself and requires both a spoon and a straw!

One of my favourite pastries - a hefty cinnamon roll from Epcot. 

A new snack choice for this holiday - giant pink doughnut!

Frozen strawberry lemonade on one of the hottest days of the holiday.

Definitely NOT the only apple danish pastry I ate over the two weeks. 

Giant Oreo chocolate cupcake from Candy Cauldron in Disney Springs.

Cookies 'n' cream and strawberry ice cream from Beaches & Cream at the Beach Club.

This frozen Violet Lemonade from Epcot's Flower and Garden Festival was

another first-time snack for this trip. 

LeFou's Brew from Gaston's Tavern - terrible photo but amazing concoction. 

Yes, it's just a diet Coke, but look at the label!

Unfortunately, I was too parched to walk to the castle for a more suitable backdrop. 

Are you hungry yet? Keep a look out for my next food-filled blog post! 

Tourists in London

Last weekend, we went on a coach trip to London to see The Lion King in the Lyceum Theatre. We booked the package through Ticketline UK and the trip included coach travel to and from London (as well as coach travel to our various destinations over the weekend), theatre tickets, and bed and breakfast at the Guoman Tower Hotel. If you want a stress-free weekend break where everything is taken care of for you, I'd highly recommend this option!

We left Cardiff at 8:45am on Saturday morning and stopped at Reading services on our way to London for an obligatory sandwich stop and toilet break. It took us a while to get through central London due to standard traffic jams and a few accidents, but we eventually arrived at our hotel at around 2pm. Tower Bridge was quite literally on our doorstep!

As our rooms weren't ready for us when we arrived, we went for a walk to explore our surroundings. In addition to Tower Bridge, the Tower of London (with the impressive Shard building in the background) was also within walking distance of our hotel. We called to Wagamama for a quick lunch then walked back to the hotel to get settled into our room before leaving for the theatre. 

When we got back to the hotel, we discovered that there'd been a mix-up with our room which meant we didn't actually have one assigned to us. However, we spoke to very apologetic manager who offered us a new room and upgraded us to an executive suite, so we couldn't complain too much. We had an hour to ourselves before getting back on the coach to get to the West End, and I mostly spent that hour admiring the view and the rainbow outside our window!

The coach driver picked us up outside the hotel at 5:30pm and took us to the West End where we were the first drop-off. The show didn't start for another hour and a half so we went for a walk to Covent Garden and happened to stumble into Venchi...

I went for a combination of salted toffee and white chocolate and it was SO GOOD. We wandered around a very busy Covent Garden, with our ice cream, sorrowfully noting that the Disney Store has disappeared from the main square, then headed back towards the theatre ready to take our seats.

The Lyceum Theatre is such an impressive building, both inside and out, and I was so excited about setting foot in there to see the acclaimed show I've wanted to see for years. We were seated in the Grand Circle which meant many many stairs up followed by many many stairs down to our seats in row C, but we were really pleased with the view we had of the stage (and the many flights of stairs were good for my Fitbit stats).

There just aren't enough superlatives in the world to describe how good the show itself was. I was completely blown away by the costumes, the set, the choreography and the general goosebump-inducing music the whole way through, and I'd see it again tomorrow if I could. I loved the show's take on Rafiki in particular, and Timon and Zazu were also firm favourites. The transition from young Simba to adult Simba was cleverly done, and the extra scenes added to the show which don't feature in the film didn't disrupt the flow at all. I loved every second of it!

Once I managed to tear myself away from the tempting merchandise stand, we walked back to our pick-up destination and the coach took us back to our hotel via a few other pick-ups s in various parts of the West End. After admiring the nighttime view from our room, we promptly fell asleep ready for a busy Sunday of sightseeing.

After a lovely breakfast at the hotel on Sunday morning, we were back on the coach by 10:30am ready to be dropped off at the Haymarket for a day of exploring, sightseeing and shopping. Although it was supposed to rain heavily all day, London obviously didn't receive the memo. We made the most of the sunshine and blitzed all the famous sights in the area, taking lots of photos while we were at it. We walked to Trafalgar Square then to Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament...I've visited this area with work recently but it's been years since I was an actual tourist in London!

After taking in all the sights, we walked back to Covent Garden and did some shopping. We did mostly browse rather than shop, but I can never resist purchasing something small in Ted Baker when I'm in the area. We also went into M&M's World in Leicester Square for the first time which was possibly even more impressive than its New York equivalent. On an unrelated note, I did feel as if I was playing Monopoly bingo when I looked at all the street/area signs around me!

All shopped and sightseeing-ed out, we sat down for an hour to have our lunch then made our way back to the pick-up point via a few more shops, including a quick stop at Ben's Cookies. We were completely exhausted by this point and I fell asleep on the coach almost immediately.

We arrived home at around 8:30pm on Sunday evening. It was a lovely full weekend and we managed to fit loads in alongside our main objective of seeing The Lion King. I definitely want to book another theatre trip soon as they're pretty addictive... I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we'll manage to get tickets for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child one day. 

Have you seen The Lion King in the theatre? What did you think?