Moving to Paradise — A Quick Trip to the US of A
Two weeks ago we left our island bubble and ventured back into the big wide world, more specifically Walt Disney World!
Way back when I was a baby of 19, I worked at Walt Disney World in Florida. It was one of the best experiences of my life and I wanted to show Carl, at least once, where I had been so happy. Being in Barbados we were on the same time zone and it is only a 3 hour flight to Miami, plus we were actually allowed in, unlike if we were coming from the UK, so it seemed like a good time to go (cases were pretty low when we booked!).
Having not seen a single Disney film and hating rollercoasters, I think it is safe to say Carl was not overly looking forward to it, but I think I sold it with the promise of lots of food and beer — he had not had a draft Guinness in10 months after all. I also booked us tickets to Halloween Horror nights at Universal, something I had successfully avoided up until now (Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party is more my scene), I am a massive scaredy cat but Carl loves that kind of thing.
As the date got closer, the covid cases in Florida were rising at a frightening pace, 1 in 5 cases in America came from Florida, but we had non refundable flights so we were going. Due to covid there were some changes to the general planning of the trip, all parks required a reservation as well as a ticket so they can manage numbers, and so the spreadsheet was born. It certainly takes a lot of the spontaneity out of the trip but I do understand why they introduced it.
At the time of travel, entry to the US only required a rapid antigen test 72 hours prior to arrival so we took ourselves off to the Crane Resort on the East Coast as they have a private lab. We did a testing package with them that included the outbound test, fast track when we arrived back, and the PCR required for re-entry to Barbados ($USD 209). As we booked this privately (rather than the free test at the airport) the hope was that we would get our results back the same evening and be able to go straight home.
Negative test results in hand and uploaded to the VeriFly app we were all set to go. I was more than a little anxious about the trip, we feel very safe here and venturing back into a place where covid is rampant was quite scary. The whole travelling process was surprisingly smooth, the VeriFly app, which was recommended by American Airlines, was actually checked and did indeed make things quicker, at least on the American side of things. Federal law still requires masks so everyone wore them in the airport and on the planes so I started to feel more at ease. I had booked us a night at Miami airport as I did not trust the 2 hour connection time between flights, having waited several hours at Miami passport control in the past. Well I needn't have bothered, we were through in about 2 minutes flat, I have never seen it so empty. I am not sure if we were just lucky with the timings or there are a lot less flights at the moment, either way it was a great experience!
On to Orlando early next morning and we had arrived! I had not scheduled too much for our first couple of days, mainly because I did not want to be in the parks on a weekend where possible to avoid the crowds. We were staying near Disney Springs, the much expanded shopping and dining area, so headed there for lunch and Carl’s much anticipated first Guinness. Safe to say it disappeared very quickly as did the next few!
We had a nice first couple of days pottering around, doing some shopping and trying out new restaurants. I had booked Toledo (in Coronado Springs Hotel) based on a recommendation and I have to say it was probably my favourite meal of the trip. Disney restaurants can be very, um, chicken strips, burger and chipsy (catering to the masses rather than people who actually want a decent meal) but this was a lovely tapas restaurant with an amazing view over Epcot and Hollywood Studios. We had some lovely sharing plates, a charcuterie board and a massive steak, all things we cannot really get in Barbados (not done well anyway).
And so to a park! We started with Universal, cramming Islands of Adventure, Universal Studios and Halloween Horror nights into one day. I did a couple of coasters on my own, including the new Velocicoaster which was mind blowing. Having already seen the Harry Potter stuff at IoA I was keen to see all the new bits over in Universal so we took the Hogwarts Express that they now have connecting the two parks. Universal does not have a mask mandate like Disney, so of course barley anyone was wearing one. This was the most uncomfortable time for me, being stuck in a small train carriage with 6 other unmasked people, I was very glad to get off. Diagon Alley is very cool here, similar to what they have in the Studios in London but actually outside and with actual fire coming out the dragon!
We did a few more rides on the Universal side before it was time to go hang out and wait for HHN. If you are already in the park you can go into a holding area and be one of the first out, meaning you can get around several of the nearby haunted houses before everyone else gets in. I had done my research and picked the New York area so we could sit down in the AC and have some food in Finnegans. We were then able to do 4 houses in about 2 hours before the wait times became crazy. Poor Carl had nail marks in his arm for a while after from where I had been clutching him with my death grip. Safe to say I did not enjoy the haunted houses! We also went back to Diagon Alley and did the Escape from Gringotts ride as the wait was much less than during the day. By about 9pm we were shattered and called it a night. HHN goes till about 1am but there was no way we could cope with that having been in the park since 10am. I was very happy to get to bed!
Monday was Food & Wine festival at Epcot. This is my favourite park and where I worked so it was a great day. We worked our way around the countries eating and drinking lots. It is sad that the internationals who usually work in each pavilion are not there at the moment, hopefully the program will resume soon. I was also sad to see that half of the UK pavilion was closed. I am not really sure why, but it was not quite the homecoming that I had hoped for.
Tuesday was supposed to be Hollywood Studios but things had to be shuffled around when I did not get a boarding pass for Rise of the Resistance. What am I talking about you ask? Well Hollywood Studios’ newest ride in Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge is Rise of the Resistance. Opened in December of 2019 (but with all the closure time off), it is still in full hype mode. It is supposed to be epic and groundbreaking so of course I had to do it! At the time of travel you had to get into a virtual queue on the Disney App at 7am and you can only do this with a reservation for the park on the day. I set my alarm and counted down to 7am but still missed out as thousands of people are doing the same thing. Gutted, I changed our plans around and we went to Animal Kingdom instead and I changed Hollywood Studios to another day to give us another go.
I was really keen to see the Pandora area and it did not disappoint! The construction is amazing and it is a great addition the the park, which is quite small and manageable which is nice. We did Avatar: Flight of Passage which was incredible, a simulation of flying on the back of one of those dragon things around Pandora. I think it blew Carl’s mind a little, mine too! The food in this area was also great, it is always nice to see options that are not chicken and chips.
We headed over to Magic Kingdom in the afternoon, there was a distinct lack of beer available (only in a couple of sit down restaurants) and lots of small children so needless to say Carl was not impressed. We didn’t stay long!
To get back into Barbados you need a PCR test, it has to be a full nasopharyngeal one, done by a professional, which needs to be stated on the certificate so options can be quite tricky to find. I managed to find a company who had a location at one of the outlet malls so off we went on Wednesday. It was again all surprisingly easy, they promised results in an hour and that is what we got. Negative again, a big relief!
Our last day in the parks and one more chance to get onto Rise of the Resistance. I had read up and discovered you could do one of the steps before the 7am start time, so I did, and this time, success! You get assigned a ‘boarding group’ but you don’t really know what time it will be called, but ours was 86 so it was safe to assume it would be later in the afternoon. Hollywood Studios is another quite small park so we left a little later but still ended up loitering around a bit. Finally our group was called around 4pm and off we went. Once you are in there is still a queue, I would say about 20 mins, and then several clever ‘pre-show’ bits that break up the ride into several experiences. I don’t want to spoil it too much but it is indeed epic. You end up in a trackless car that zooms around a massive area, and does lots more too! They have since done away with the virtual queue and you are looking at wait times of up to 4 hours now — madness considering with the virtual line you can do the rest of the park while you are waiting.
By the time we got out the weather had really caved in, we were planing to go over to Epcot to do a bit more Food & Wine, but decided to just head to Chilli’s instead as it was inside and close to our hotel!
A super early start and we were off back to Barbados. Once again the VeriFly app was handy at the airport, although I knew that once we go back to Barbados no one would know what it was. Earlier in the week it had been announced that there was a stricter curfew in place, from 9pm to 5am so we were advised to book at night at the Crane as we may not get our results back in time (most people I had heard got them back between 8 and 9pm). I was reluctant as I just wanted to be back in my own bed, but we booked it as we did not want to be stuck without somewhere to stay if the results didn’t come back. The fast track service was wonderful, wizzed us through the airport and out in record time, I would 100% recommend this. Of course even though Barbados has developed the BIMsafe app that is supposed to speed things up, it is actually just for unvaccinated people, and most of what you fill out online still has to be done in paper form as well, they really love paperwork here, it is so frustrating.
But off to the Crane we went, got our test, went to the pool (the Crane along with a few properties allows vaccinated people waiting for results to use facilities but most don’t), had dinner and at 8.45pm our results came back negative — we would not have got home in time after all. A lovely morning spent by the pool and lunch with friends who came to pick us up made for the perfect end to the holiday.
Overall it was a hectic but great trip and Carl enjoyed it more than he thought he would! If you are not staying in a Disney property I can definitely recommend The Hyatt Lake Buena Vista, only a 40 min walk to Disney Springs (although we were the only people who ever walked it!). We decided not to get a car, although I have no problem driving over there, as we had been told that Ubers were super cheap and easy, and they certainly were. We never waited longer than 10mins and that was at closing time of a park, usually they were right there. When you factor in parking fees at parks it just made sense for us to stick to Uber. I picked September as traditionally crowds are lower and this was the case, although they had picked up slightly after Labour Day, the weather was hit and miss, it was hot (although we are used to that) and we got rain every day but usually it was a big shower and then cleared up after about 20 mins. The $3 ponchos I brought with me were used every day!
Disclaimer — these are all my own views and opinions and experiences, not those of Red Quokka, others may differ. If you like gratuitous pictures of beaches and sunsets follow me on Instagram Katie_in_Barbados
