Before I begin talking about the main subject of this post proper, let me take you all back in time a bit.
I’m old enough to remember the first time DVDs were released
commercially. I remember going into our local Sainsbury’s branch with my mother
and seeing a whole stack of blue boxes, each containing a silver DVD player and
five accompanying DVDs. I can’t quite remember what all of them were, but I
know for sure that two of them were The Full Monty of all things and a
truly dire adaptation of James and the Giant Peach. Since when were
giant mechanical sharks and underwater undead pirates part of the story?
Since my family and I had quite a lot of VHS tapes, the
transition to DVDs was relatively slow at first, although the advantages were
immediately apparent. For one, no longer was there a need to rewind after
finishing watching a film. For another, DVD menus opened all sorts of benefits,
such as scene selection and bonus features. Finally, there was the increased
portability potential. Cars were being produced which had in-build DVD players
and screens on the backs of seats, providing passengers new entertainment
opportunities.
While my family never owned a car with an in-built player,
we did own a portable DVD player which we strapped to the back of the driver’s
seat for me to watch during long journeys on the way to various holiday
destinations. With the number of times my family goes on holiday, it saw a lot
of use prior to around 2014 or so when we stopped using it.
One of the films that we would take with us in the early
days was The Lion King, which to this day is still my favourite animated
film. I was the sort of person who liked plugging in not only the main disc but
the disc containing bonus features as well, and in this instance the bonus
features contained an entire section themed around the Animal Kingdom Park in
Walt Disney World.
Young me was transfixed. Firstly, this thing looked like an
entire country, not just one part of a theme park. Secondly, since the only
Disney park I knew about at the time was the one in Paris, this was also the
first time I realised that there were other Disney parks around the world.
Granted, this did seem confusing at first; after all, if Disney was French, as
I thought at the time, why would there be parks in America, let alone even
bigger ones?
Retrospectively, I do find it amusing that my young mind had
effectively normalised the concept of foreign language dubs for films due to
this misunderstanding of Walt Disney’s nationality.
If this section on the DVD was designed to advertise Animal
Kingdom Park, it did its job; the dream of visiting Walt Disney World had
firmly planted itself in my mind. The issue, of course, was that it was very
difficult to justify doing so for several years. Sure, there were things
we could have found to do, but it’s a lot of money to just gamble on
whether you can find things to do for a long enough time to make it worthwhile.
Things got kicked up a notch when it was announced that an
entire section devoted to Star Wars, known as Galaxy’s Edge, would be
opening within the Hollywood Studios Park. Suddenly, there wasn’t just Star
Tours, which we had done a few times in Paris, but an entire array of
specialist themed shops, eateries, experiences, and additional rides in the
offing.
Time continued to pass on by, and around 2019 the idea to
visit Orlando was floating around as a serious prospect. We even popped into a
Virgin Holidays branch to pick up a brochure. Nothing came of that, however,
and I’m very glad about that considering that the very next year the COVID-19
pandemic hit.
Again, we waited, this time to be sure that nothing would
emerge to interrupt potential plans again, and in late 2021 we begin
formulating plans for 2022 with the help of the ever-reliable Trailfinders.
Initially, we were looking at a December holiday due to the timings working out
best for us around then, but it soon became apparent that for a first-time trip
out there, December is one of the worst times to go. After some mulling
around moving it to February half-term 2023, one of us suggested looking at
October half-term 2022. We checked everything was a-okay with my parents’
workplaces, booked the hotel and one of two days out in wider Orlando, and we
were sorted!
To begin with.
See, there are multiple layers to organising a holiday in
Disney. You may be booked into a hotel, but that’s just step one. You
then need to look at the website or download the My Disney Experience
app, where you’ll have the options to reserve parks whenever you like (assuming
there’s availability), and 60 days before you go you can start booking
restaurants and certain special experiences. This is also where you can buy
Genie+, the revised Fast Pass system, with options to start booking rides
opening at 7:00am each day.
This is where things got a little bit confusing. My
family and I are not exactly what you would call technologically adept. As the
most adept member – and even then, that’s being generous – it was up to me to
try my best to co-ordinate and link my parents’ accounts to the app so that
we’d all see the same things, and that took a good amount of time due to quite
confusing layouts and all sorts of hoops the app has you go through. It was all
sorted in about thirty minutes, but it wasn’t a fun thirty minutes for any of
us.
Additionally, for some reason people within the UK cannot
use the app or the website to book experiences. I learnt from reading a forum
thread of people griping about this that one way around this was to use a VPN
to connect to somewhere in America, and that would allow you to book
without phoning in. I can confirm that this does work, but since I’m paranoid I
still ended up changing my Disney password upon doing this just in case
the VPN wasn’t as secure as it claimed to be.
We were done with everything we could have wanted to be done
with by the time September arrived. All we had to do was wait again until
Thursday the 20th of October.
