Jon84's Photo TR May 2016

I'm not one for writing a diary, or about myself, so I think I'll let the photos do the talking, I'll update a Day of the trip each day

Our trip started on the 3rd May for 7 Nights at the Poly (or so I thought!!, more on that later!)

2nd May

But first we spent the night of the 2nd May at the Bloc Hotel in Gatwick, bagging a VIP room for an extra £35...

It' was a little grey outside, but the watching the planes come in was fun!





Even had Sky HD with the Disney Movie Channel in the room

We ate at Giraffe, and had a couple of cocktails to wash down a good burger before hitting they hay before our visit to the Virgin Clubhouse the next morning....

More to come tomorrow!!

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But we stayed in a double window room in the Bloc Hotel at Gatwick the night before our flight in 2014, and we really enjoyed the room (especially the bathroom) is compact but it was reasonable & enough for one night's sleep.

Tony Bush said:

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c3h3a3r said:

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LiquidSunshine said:

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Fixed now!

LiquidSunshine said:

But we stayed in a double window room in the Bloc Hotel at Gatwick the night before our flight in 2014, and we really enjoyed the room (especially the bathroom) is compact but it was reasonable & enough for one night's sleep.

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It is compact, but I don't think you need much else before flying

3rd May - Travel Day

We traveled on the VS26 from Gatwick and were lucky enough to be able to bag a cheap upgrade a few months prior to Upper Class for this leg.

The Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse was brilliant, staff were really attentive and between us a and a couple who we met we worked through the cocktail list pretty quickly! The Breakfast Martini was my favourite.

The flight was smooth save for some turbulence coming through the clouds into MCO. Upper wasn't what I expected, read about, or really what they sell it as.

• We didn't get a welcome from the FSM (Flight Service Manager) before takeoff,
• they ran out of food options too quickly,
• you couldn't sit at the bar because it was too full up of stuff,
• my seat motors packed up and the poor crew had to manually adjust my seat for me
• when the bed is flat is is very uncomfortable for a 6ft guy.

We had PE booked for the return so just took it as an experience.

I didn't take many photos of the Clubhouse or the plane so there is just a video of take off here (photobucket has killed the quality!)



We arrived at the Poly and got into our room (3rd Floor, Raratoga, with Balcony) overlooking the new quiet Oasis Pool area, which was really nice.

I thought I'd realllllly like the Poly, but well, it just didn't wow either me or my wife, but the rooms were big and the location to MK was worth while, so we stuck at it, for now....

First night we went into MK to catchup with some friends from Home who had traveled out before us. After a chat and a quick ride on POTC (no more ankle deep water, yayyy!) we went off for our evening ADR at Be Our Guest. By this time we were shattered, and just wanted food, so all photography went out of the window!!

View from the room...



The first monorail trip...


There seemed to be more ducks in WDW than usual!!

Enjoying your photo trippie, can't wait go find out where you ended up staying. I dream of going 1st class, sorry you were disappointed.

stephensmum said:

Enjoying your photo trippie, can't wait go find out where you ended up staying. I dream of going 1st class, sorry you were disappointed.

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It was an experience, but I'd never do it again. Kinda on the feeling that it's just a means of getting back to Orlando!

4th May - First Full Day!

Woke up early as we always seem to on the first day, still hanging onto UK time!

This morning it was absolutely tipping it down thundery showers were forecast all day. Not so many photos due to the rain!

We had an 8:05am Royal Table Reservations, and no ponchos. We managed to get the shop in the Poly to sell us a couple of Ponchos before opening which was a life saver! onto the Monorail to MK!

Walking into MK on a Pre Park Opening reservation is so surreal, the park is so quiet and I really love how it looks when it's wet too!



Really enjoyed Royal Table. It's really easy to pick out the people that are using a Touring Plan, they are out before half 8!

We strolled out and the rain had eased off, got to walk the new Standby queue for Peter Pan's Flight, which was cool, love that classic!

We also got on Haunted Mansion, Splash Mountain, and Big Thunder Mountain Rail Road, all with walk on wait times. The week after, the Touring Plans Wait times said that day had been much lower than predicted due to the rain!

It started getting blustery which is always a sign for more rain so we decided to go jump on the boat to the Grand Floridian and take a look around.





After having soaked up so atmosphere we really felt like we'd like to stay here sometime.....

We had an early reservation with some friends at Jiko so headed over there and had an explore. The food was OK, not amazing, next time we'll try Sana!