So with Europe out of the way, it’s time to go into a bit more detail about our Pre-Wedding-Moon: Mr Jaguar’s and my big trip away. It worked out to be a month total that we were on holidays, and it was fantastic to have that time to relax and enjoy each other’s company, especially since I have a super hard-working fiance who didn’t take a single sick day in the entire time we spent living abroad in London. He really deserved this trip!
I’m really excited about recapping our time away with you—maybe you’ll be able to pick up a few ideas about things to do and places to see along the way. Since we were travelling for four straight weeks, our trip and our hotels were by no means luxury ones, but they were comfortable, centrally located, they did the job. I hope you’ll enjoy them and find them useful, and if not, just enjoy some pretty pictures.
Our first stop: Orlando, Florida.
All personal photographs
I’ll be honest: the first week of our vacation was essentially a week-long Disney extravaganza. (Three guesses as to whose idea this was?)
I’ll just put this out there first: November is a beautiful, beautiful time to visit Florida. The weather was sunny, gorgeously mild and the parks weren’t very busy—they were also already decorated for Christmas, which was a real treat. I would advise going before the busy Thanksgiving season though, because flights get a little crazy in and out of Orlando at that time—we just missed it.
We stayed at Disney’s Pop Century Resort for our entire stay, which turned out to be great! I was worried because it was one of the more low-budget resorts, but to be perfectly honest, the majority of the Disney resorts are grossly overpriced—I have no idea how people with families manage to stay in them. Pop Century wasn’t fancy by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a big room, with two double beds (one which was completely taken over by our suitcases the entire week!) and with lots of facilities. It’s also HUGE. There are hundreds of rooms, three different pools, a huge food court and wow, lots of stuff to do. And where else would you find a GIANT foosball set AND get to stare at Mickey’s butt every time you climb up to your hotel room? 
The best part about staying at a Disney-run resort is that all your transportation is arranged for you. We booked our complimentary trip on the Magic Expression coach from the airport to the hotel, which was also arranged for us when we were ending our trip here too. And better yet, their park-to-park transportation system is pretty flawless. There were buses running constantly in the peak times of the day, and probably every 20-30 minutes in the slow times. That meant that you were never really queuing up for buses to parks—you hopped on and off with ease. A word of advice for either the newly engaged or full-time honeymooners: WEAR THE BADGES. People are so, so nice to you—we had so many people stop and congratulate us, even Mr. Jaguar (who’s a bit of a shy petal) was commenting on how friendly both the staff and fellow Disney lovers were.
Tips for the Disney resorts: Buy a re-usable travel cup. Mr. Jaguar and I were cheap and only bought one, but it means that you can fill it up with soda and lemonade (or tea, coffee or hot chocolate) for as long as you’re at the restaurant. If you’re happy to share, like we were, you EASILY make your money back on it. Also, if you’re slightly terrified of the amount of unhealthy sides that come with your meals, ask for them without it. You may get strange looks (”but it comes with fries, potatoes, sauce and bread!”) but it’ll save you some calories, if you’re so inclined. Disney food is relatively cheap, but can get old fast—and most aren’t the most, er, nutritionally brilliant options. If you look around the different restaurants or food courts, you’ll find what you need—just keep looking!
Our six full days went something like this:
Day 1: Arrival
We ate, played hotel Twister, passed out. (Really, we’re such party animals.)
Day 2: EPCOT.
A fun park, even though I was hoping there would be more thrill rides there. We goofed around on the hands-on kids stuff in the morning, when we really should’ve high-tailed it over to the bigger rides first—lesson learned.
Tips for the park: Get a fast pass for Soarin’. It’s a gorgeous “ride,” and because it’s pretty family friendly, it gets busy FAST. Also, Test Track is hilarious fun—we must’ve gone on that about three times, and I never tired of that final speed lap. Wheeeeee! Don’t eat a big lunch: because there are some yummy, amazing restaurants and stores to eat from. Also, if you are there between the right dates, you can hit up the Epcot International Food and Wine Festival, which was awesome. The stalls were always busy, the smells, omgosh, I’m still drooling months later. GO. DO IT NOW. (Dates this year: September 30-November 13.)
Day 3: Universal Studios.
We organised a shuttle and hoofed it out of the Disney complex for the day—because I was going to visit the Wizarding World of Harry Potter if it was the last thing I did. Poor Mr. Jaguar—having to put up with me that day was probably worse than a toddler high on churros and soft drink. You guys, I was PUMPED. I was the first one on the bus, first one off the bus, fastest power walker to get into the park…I just wanted to get there. (Obviously am a big Harry Potter nerd. You heard it here first.) Case in point: posing with my ticket. Yes, I’m a dork.
We booked the two-park ticket online so we didn’t have to queue up, but then I made a snap decision to upgrade our tickets that morning (no lines! quicker times! multiple rides! yeah!) and so we had to line up anyway. Boo! We eventually made it in the park, hoofed it around to the Harry Potter section and well, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.
But, of course, there’s more to Universal Studios than Harry Potter—they have some pretty amazing rides, too! Mr. Jaguar gave them a big thumbs up, so we both rounded off the day as happy campers.
Tips for the park: If you can afford it, upgrade to the Express Pass. Nearly all rides will let you use it for cutting the lines, with the exception of the Hogwarts Castle ride, and a few others in the original theme park. Still, we got our money’s worth by using it over and over on our favourite rides. Also, unless the lines are really short? Give the Hippogriff kiddy coaster a miss—it’s the shortest little ride ever, and it’s a bit of a waste. (Sorry, Buckbeak.) If you’re like me, head straight over to the back of the ‘Islands of Adventure’ park to get the Harry Potter stuff done nice and early. The queues of people trying to get inside the tiny Hogsmeade stores are ridiculously long—and if you want a Butterbeer but the stalls have big waiting lines, go inside the Hogs Head pub. We grabbed our drinks and had a nice chilled out beverage looking up at the castle. Pretty.
My BIGGEST tip, though? If the lines are crazy and you just want to get them over with, be prepared to split up—go as single riders. You’re usually only a few minutes apart from finishing the rides, and it means you can FLY through bigger queues. Do it, trust me. We did this so much, and got to squeeze in a lot more ride time because of it. Also, I had the most amazing chicken pot pie in a little Irish pub inside the original theme park—eat it. It’s good. Yum.
Day 4: Magic Kingdom
I’d been to this park before with a friend, but this was Mr. Jaguar’s first time—so we piled in to one of the Disney shuttles and headed to the happiest place on Earth. We stopped to ogle the Grand Floridian resort over the water for a while: a) to see how the more extravagant vacation-ers live, and b) because a friend of mine is getting married there this coming May, and I was super excited to point out the wedding gazebo!
I have a bit of a strategy whenever we visit the Magic Kingdom style park, as it’s set up very similar to the Disneyland Paris resort which I frequented way too many times once or twice during my time spent in London. But it doesn’t matter whether it’s your first time to Disney or your third, or fourth, or twentieth, walking down Main Street is just awesome. I love seeing the castle poking up on the horizon—le sigh.
We usually head straight to Tomorrowland, to get Space Mountain covered while the crowds are low. Although, in our case, the ride wasn’t opened yet due to some maintenance, so we had to reshuffle our plans and ended up just wandering around. I believe it was Mr. Jaguar’s bright idea to go on Splash Mountain at 10AM because ‘the wait time was only 5 minutes!’
And I believe this face sums up how happy I was to be completely saturated this early on in the day.
Hair wetness and slightly chafing wet denim skirt aside, the rest of the day was great fun—though I have to admit, we sped through it fairly quickly. Tips for the park: save Splash Mountain until you’re READY to get wet. Common sense, though apparently we missed the boat on that one. Also, the giant Mickey shaped soft pretzels are amazing. Really.
Maybe it’s because we’ve done so many of the attractions previously, but it wasn’t as fun or as unknown as some of the other Disney World parks—so we headed back to the Pop Century resort for a chilled out afternoon of laundry and relaxing by the pool. Have I mentioned how fabulous November weather in Florida is? Love!
Day 5: Hollywood Studios
Another new park—hooray! This was another one I was looking forward to, mostly because it holds two of my favourite rides (that are also at the EuroDisney complex): the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror and Aerosmith’s Rock n ‘Roller coaster. We had grand plans of getting up early to get to this park before the Saturday morning crowds, but ended up sleeping in and didn’t arrive until just after midday.
It was while we were walking down the street you see above, that we were approached by two girls. They saw our badges and congratulated us, and then asked if we’d been in the park long. After telling them no, they handed us a fast pass ticket to ‘Toy Story Mania’ and said they’d been waiting since 10AM and were heading home—did we want this? We were pretty happy to take it off them, and upon looking at the time on the card, realised that it wasn’t until 4PM. Wait, what? The girls would’ve had to wait the entire day to be able to use that card, wow. We did get there later that afternoon and geeked out on the ride, all thanks to that little gift.
We also discovered while tucking into a hot dog and fries for lunch, that there was a Christmas lights display held that evening, so we parked ourselves down on the sidewalk and took lots of pictures of the pretty, pretty sights.
Tips for the park? Definitely get a Fast Pass for Toy Story Mania. The line was consistently over 100 minutes in waiting time while we were there, and it only got longer as the day went on. Even with our gifted fast pass, we still queued for around 20 minutes—the kiddies and the parents LOVE this ride! Also, if you’re there over the Christmas period, stop by and watch the Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights and fake snow. It’s pretty magical.
Day 6: Disney’s Animal Kingdom
We saved the more chilled out park until the end, mainly because we knew that we’d need a day to relax a little on our last day at the theme parks.
We hit up the Kilimanjaro Safari first while the morning weather was still nice and cool—that was brilliant! I did keep an eye out for myself while I was there, but no luck: although I did spy a few of my fellow safari animal blogging bees during our trek through the wilderness.
The rest of the day was spent meandering around the park. We loved ‘Expedition Everest’ and thankfully the lines were pretty short that day, so went on several times—a backwards rollercoaster? Yes, please! ‘Primeval Whirl’ was a bit of fun, as was ‘Dinosaur’ but we had the most fun checking everything out on foot.
Tip of the day: Since there aren’t many rides here, use the Fastpass option. It can’t hurt, any queue skipping is good queue skipping if you ask me! Also, I highly recommend eating inside the restaurant at the Yak and Yeti restaurant inside the park. I will never eat a chicken lo mein stir fry that was as good as the one I ate there. I still drool about it a little.
And that was that, our time spent exploring the Disney theme parks. We slept in the next day before jumping back on the complimentary Magic Expression bus back to the Orlando airport where we were set to move on to our next destination… Las Vegas!
Have you got any hints and tips for honeymooning at the Disney World resort?
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