It’s hard to summarise a trip to Disney World in a few paragraphs or even a few pages.  I won’t even try do a day by day precis as that would be impossible so I will simply focus on a few thoughts in a random fashion.

The Disney experience is a wonderful one to share with family, especially with kids that are old enough to understand the rides they do and also to enjoy doing rides that are adult-interesting as well.

I was surprised by a number of things.

I had never expected such big crowds.  We were there outside of US school holidays but there just seemed to be people everywhere.  The systems are flawless and everything moves with great efficiency, but it is impossible to escape the queues.  And there are queues for just about everything.  We were issued our Disney “magic bands” as we checked in at the hotel and it was the passport to everything we did.  It has information about what package you are on, which determines your access to different venues, the food and drinks you are entitled to and when you are within a fast pass timing zone.

The fast passes are the most valuable currency at Disney, as they allow you to skip all the lengthy queues for each of the rides.  There is a complicated algorithm that runs on Disney’s big mainframe that keeps record of each person’s fast pass usage allowing a total of three fast passes per day.  But, it is also important knowing that fast passes for some rides need to be booked 60 days in advance i.e. there is a queueing system even for the fast passes.  Rides like “Avatar – Flight of Passage”, “Soarin’ round the world”, “Space Mountain” and “Thunder Mountain Railroad” are sometimes very difficult to get fast passes for and you end up queuing anyway.  We had been late on the uptake due to our end of year stress back home and although Jeanie was more awake than most of us we didn’t get everything we wanted to so we would need to wing it a little.

I also made a decision early on that we would not be able to do everything as it is simply impossible.  With my lower tolerance for crowds and queues than most, I planned a few birding excursions at nearby locations which would allow me to maintain a degree of serenity amongst the chaos.  But, more about the birds a little later.

Another aspect of Disney that amazed me was the volume of food that we were presented with.  We had ensured we had inclusive packages that allowed us access to restaurants with a relatively high level of freedom, but that freedom just seemed excessive everywhere we ate.  The portions were enormous and calorie counts stratospheric.  We would eat breakfast, lunch and dinner and emerge from each meal swearing we would never eat again.  And then we would do it all over again at the next meal.  Jeanie and I were able to force ourselves out for the occasional run, but it was clear that most Americans don’t subscribe to the same philosophy.  There is certainly a culture of excess and it is exacerbated as it is catered for to an extreme at Disney.

There are scooters made available for disabled people, but it does not seem as being disabled is the minimum level for their use.  We saw hundreds of people, severely overweight, using these scooters to get from one place to another.  We spoke to a senior staff member at our hotel who told us that there is a “vanity” room at each of the theme parks that has simulated seats allowing for unconventionally-sized people to test whether they can fit into the actual seats for each ride that is available at the park.  This accommodating methodology for an excessive society just does not sit well with me but it is what makes Disney so successful.

So, what about the rides we did?

The kids tried to do as much as possible and I followed them onto most.  We completed the “trifecta” at the Magic Kingdom which included Space Mountain, Splash Mountain and Thunder Mountain Railroad.  These are the three adult rollercoasters and we had ticked them off within the space of an hour despite missing the key fast passes we thought we needed.  It was a quiet day at Magic Kingdom, being so unusually cold so we were able to whizz through each of the queues.  The best of the lot was Thunder Mountain Railroad and although Space Mountain is a bit of a thrill it is quite dated (I can remember it from when I was a 13 year old).  Splash Mountain is also a lot of fun but getting wet on such a cold day had limited appeal for an old guy like me.  The kids certainly weren’t too fussed.

Interestingly, the first roller coaster we did was called “Expedition Everest – Legend of the Forbidden Mountain”.  It was at Animal Kingdom on our very first day and we unwittingly walked into the queue with all the kids, including Emma and Chiara (both 7 years old).  They narrowly made the height requirement but we had no idea what we were in for.  Even Granny Pam and Grandpa Brian stepped up to the queue.  We had a fast pass for everyone and we were going to use it. While we stood in the queue the roller coaster thundered around us with screams emanating from passengers from all directions.  I started to think this may be a little more vigorous than I had expected.

We loaded into the car and I decided I should sit next to Emma for support, just in case.  The first phase whooshed around a few G-forcing corners and inclined to the top of the “mountain”.  Nothing too severe yet but I gave Emma’s little hand a reassuring squeeze just in case.

So far, so good.

A fake Lammergeier soared over our heads and we were pointing upwards at the very end of the line.  I couldn’t quite imagine what was coming next.  And then suddenly the cars started rolling backwards.  Not gently, but at a breakneck pace.  We went straight back down into a darkened tunnel at a crazy speed.  My stomach was left at the top of the apex and I think I uttered a tiny little squeal of alarm.  My hands tightened once again on Emma’s and now I was petrified as to what her reaction to this violent turn of events would be, but I could see nothing of her facial expressions as we were in the pitch black.  And then suddenly, and I mean suddenly, we jerked to a halt in the dark cave of the mountain.  A projected shadow of a yeti growled above us on the cave wall and amidst the harrowing noises I managed to ask Emma if she was okay.  I expected sobbing and whimpering and all she said was “that was awesome!!!”

Well, I now knew she was okay but that made it worse as I had been scared out of my wits.  What 45-year-old can admit to being freaked out more than his 7-year-old daughter?

The ride wasn’t even over.  We lurched forward out of the darkness of the cave and started an outrageous series of sharp bends, rapid descents and ascents.

Thankfully the ride soon came to an end and as we got out at the departure area, both Emma and Chiara begged to do it again.  So, it was back into the queue and off we went for another go.  I couldn’t admit that I was too scared to go again but I think the second time was even worse than the first.

Undoubtedly, though, there were two rides that were head and shoulders better than the rest.

The first was “Soarin’” at Epcot Centre, a simulated free flying travel through the clouds above iconic sites around the world (Matterhorn, Arctic circle, Great Wall of China, Taj Mahal etc).  The 4D experience includes fresh smells from around the world (incense over the Taj Mahal and the sweet smell of grass at Kilamanjaro).

And then the crème de la crème (with four-hour queues to support that assertion) was the Avatar Flight of Passage ride at Animal Kingdom.  It is also a simulated 4D experience, where you sit on the back of a banshee (a dragon-like creature from the planet of Pandora) and your flight of passage involves an airborne adventure over the landscapes of the fictitious planet (ocean, hanging mountains, forests and caves).  You can feel the heartbeat and breathing of the banshee between your legs as you spiral and whoosh over and under trees and contort through tiny gaps in the rocks.  It’s a bizarre sensation as it is a ride in which you don’t move a metre but you feel like you’ve travelled far faster than on any of the roller coasters.

We had a perfect Avatar experience with specially arranged fast passes from our hotel guest relations expert Lene and, even though I suggested creepily that I was so happy I could hug her, she didn’t seem to feel that creeped out and so accepted the hug without hesitation. I would have thought there was something special about me but Grandpa Brian was on hand and also received a hug from her. She became my favourite person of the trip in an instant. Did I mention she was Norwegian, blond and rather pleasing on the eye?

Another of our favourite experiences was walking around the lake at Epcot experiencing all the sites and sounds of the 11 different countries represented in the World Showcase (France, Japan, Italy, China, Morocco, Mexico, Norway, Great Britain, Canada, Germany and the United States).  They have an internship program at Disney where they accept exchange students from each of those countries to work in the restaurants and stores and so it is as authentic as it can get in a manufactured setting.  We had dinner in a very fancy French restaurant with a young French waiter, Cyril, who made us feel like we were sitting in a Parisian restaurant.  Jeanie thought he was quite dishy but I’m not sure she got a hug like I received from Lene…

Disney is as perfect a holiday experience as you can get as the staff and service levels are of an extremely high standard.  It is hard to find an unsmiling face amongst the 70,000 employees that seem to love serving the Disney Dream every day.  But, such an amazing holiday destination attracts the masses and it was the one thing that I just couldn’t get used to.  There were queues for everything and it makes spontaneous decision making very difficult.  A last-minute decision to see the fireworks at the Magic Kingdom involved a two-hour lead time to queue for a bus at the hotel, travel on the bus, with three or four other hotel stops (which sometimes take 10 minutes to load fat-people scooters), a traffic jam and then a queue into the Magic Kingdom.  We misjudged the experience spectacularly and ended up watching half the show from the bus while still two miles out of the parking lot and then the second half from the bus parking lot.  We then got back onto the bus and headed back to the hotel without setting foot in the Magic Kingdom.  Bizarrely, most of the family described the quirky, mistimed debacle as one of their highlights of the week at Disney.

Fortunately, Disney excels in putting on a fireworks display and we were able to witness one first hand at Epcot the one evening (all pics courtesy of Tommy Buckham).

Here are a few more happy snaps of the family having good fun at Disney:

At times I needed to get away from the crowds and I have an incredibly effective antidote for that – I go birding.

I am very fortunate to have a consistent companion for my birding jaunts as it gives me greater licence to escape.  Adam was at my side for every birding trip.  We were able to search a few natural areas on Google Maps and Uber directly there and wander around looking for new birds for our list.  We had some hits and, as one would always expect, we had a few misses too.

Our most notable miss was a small nature reserve called the Tibet-Butler Nature Preserve, which was a short $7 Uber drive from the hotel.  It was a suitably sized nature reserve on the shores of Tibet Lake and it looked perfect for our first foray at Floridian birds.  We’d ticked a few commoners around the hotel but this would be our chance for our lists to accelerate a little.

Oh, our lists.

I’m a big fan of pre-trip research.  Over the years, technology has improved to the extent that it is really easy to look up potential life birds in new locations.  I have my entire bird list loaded on ebird (www.ebird.org) which is a world listing app run by Cornell University.  I took the plunge before travelling to Panama two years ago and it has really paid off.  At the click of a few buttons I can search for target species in new countries and regions and it pulls them up in descending reporting rate order.  I then load that into an excel spreadsheet for different localities that we will be visiting and I can narrow down the time that I need to spend learning all these new species.  Instead of opening a North American field guide and paging through randomly, looking at birds occurring in Orlando I have it already narrowed down for me.  So, it was with that pre-trip research that I had a dynamic excel spreadsheet with about 75 target species for our entire trip.

Our visit to Tibet-Butler Nature Preserve would be a great place for us to start nailing those targets.  The habitat looked great and we would be able to walk freely through it.

Well, that was what we did.

And for an hour we saw nothing.  Literally nothing.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a quieter birding walk than we had that afternoon at Tibet-Butler.  I always say to Adam that no birding walk is ever wasted.  There is always something that you see that makes it worthwhile, I tell him.  In Tibet that afternoon I added a new bit to the line: “no birding walk is ever wasted.  There is always something to see.  But, if you don’t see anything, at least you get a bit of exercise.”

And that was pretty much how it was.  We didn’t see absolutely nothing as a few treetop birds appeared towards the end of the walk and we celebrated with a species count of seven bird species.  It was a good way to start, though.  It couldn’t get worse and it didn’t.  It only got better from there.

We had one more miss early one morning at a nature trail that was clearly marked on Google Maps.  We had Ubered across town, through rush hour traffic, to arrive at the nature trail.  This time the birds weren’t a problem.  There were plenty, but we had inadvertently started walking along a road construction site and were unceremoniously kicked off just as things started hotting up.  Another Uber driver dropped us off at a random tree nursery and we were finally birding.

We managed a few short excursions around Disney that gave us some decent birds, which included a nice Urban Park along a lake shore.  It gave a few more decent opportunities for some photos, including the US national bird.

But, we really needed something a little more substantial.

My research had indicated that the best birding site in Florida was the Merritt Island Nature Reserve, situated on the east coast, a nudge north of the Cape Canaveral launch site.  To get there we needed to rent a car as an Uber would have blown our birding budget.  We also needed a little freedom with our own wheels.   So, while standing in the queue for Soarin’ I clicked a few buttons and secured a Ford from Alamo car rental.  We woke up pre-dawn the one morning and headed east, negotiating some nervy traffic in the darkness before arriving at Titusville, the small coastal town leading to the bridge over the Indian River taking us to Merritt Island.  Merritt Island, not surprisingly, is an island that lies separated from the mainland by the Indian River to the west and the coastline on the Atlantic Ocean to the east.  The habitat is mostly estuarine, riverside and tidal mudflats with sedge and palm-type savannah and a bit of typical southern US forest.  With the diversity of habitat there was a diversity of birdlife that we had just not encountered in our few short stints from the hotel.  In those we eked out species, trying our best to get to 20, but the minute we pulled over at our first stop at Merritt there were birds all around us – waders, egrets, herons and ibises in the pools and kingfishers, warblers, grackles and blackbirds in the scrubby vegetation.  Within a few minutes our cameras were firing in all directions and our lists were climbing.  This was the kind of birding we were more familiar with and it wasn’t hard to notice Adam smiling from ear to ear.

I was the same – it was great to be away from the queues and crowds.  It was just the two of us in amongst the environment in which we both felt more comfortable.  It is unfair for me to speak on behalf of Adam, as he really is a people-pleaser and he would have been just as happy being with his mom, siblings and cousins at the Hollywood theme park (which was the excursion we had sacrificed for our birding) but I was delighted that he had agreed to come with me instead.  We spent the next four hours at Merritt, probably rushing through more than we would have liked to have, but we just didn’t have enough time to do it complete justice.  We both added plenty of lifers, which included Roseate Spoonbills, Least Sandpipers, Black Skimmers, Royal Tern, Common Yellowthroat, Swamp Sparrow and Grey Catbird.  There were plenty of other birds we saw that we had already seen before but we had time to enjoy them and take some pics.

After spending our time on the world-famous Black Point Circular drive which weaves its way around the wetland areas we stopped in at the Visitor Centre to enquire after the most important bird of the day.

Everyone who knows me as a birder knows that endemic birds are what gets me going, and it would be no different here at Merritt.  I was after a bird that is not only an endemic to the United States, but is an endemic to the state of Florida – Florida Scrub Jay.  I had done some reading and knew that it was a toughie, as it had very specific habitat requirements.  It loves a specific vegetation type on coastal soils in palm savannah.  The two ladies in the visitor centre were just the people to ask as they hauled out the park map, spread it on the table and started drawing lines in bright pink highlighter Koki pointing us to the exact spot where we would see the jays.  For a really tough bird it seemed a little optimistically “birding by numbers”, but they gave the impression that we really shouldn’t have any difficulties.

I am not a religious or spiritual person but I believe strongly in jinxing good birds.  Nothing messes up a good bird more than someone blurting “don’t worry, you can’t miss it” or “it was there five minutes ago so you will definitely see it”, so I was willing to dive across the counter and physically stop them saying something of that nature, but they seemed well versed in the world of superstitious birders and they stopped short of a guarantee, but they looked at each other knowingly, probably thinking to themselves that we looked way to nervy considering how easy this was going to be.

And so it was.

Before we even got to the end point on their convoluted pink lines on the park map, we saw a characteristic shape on the top branches of a dead tree.  We screeched the Ford to a sudden stop lest it take flight, never to be seen again, and there it was – a Florida Scrub Jay perched and scolding as jays are want to do. We bundled out of the car and started taking some pics, quickly realising that we were in an ambush situation.  An ambush of mosquitos.  The jays seem to like their specific areas because people probably don’t.  There were millions of mosquitos feasting on our bare ankles and lower legs.  The jay came at an itchy price but it was so worth it.

Once we’d secured the jay we took a gentle drive along the shoreline and ticked a few more good birds.

By lunch time we had done as much justice as we could’ve to Merritt Island.  We missed a few birds but we had seen way more than we had missed.  Our rental car was due back at 4pm and it was now only 12:30.  We had an hour’s drive back but we still hadn’t seen one animal that we really had hoped to see.  It wasn’t a bird.  It was a mammal.

Florida is the best place in the world to see the most remarkable mammal called a manatee.  It is more commonly known as a sea cow and is pretty similar in most respects to dugongs that are seen off the Mozambican coastline.

Manatees are huge aquatic mammals that live entirely in water.  They have flipper like “arms” but their hind legs are replaced by a very strange looking ventrally flattened paddle.  They are unable to traverse land and must be in the water at all times.  They spend the warmer seasons in the river network of Florida which is immense.  During those times they are extremely difficult to find and not worth even looking for.  In winter, however, especially when there is a cold snap, they undergo a local migration to the fresh water springs which maintain a constant temperature of 72 degrees (Fahrenheit).  We had coincided our trip with an extremely cold snap and it was the best time to see manatees.

The Floridians are very proud of their special animal and they dedicate a number of state parks to their protection.  Because they are so sensitive to disturbance and pollution, the reserves are highly protected but when the manatees are in, they’re in.

We checked our map, also kindly annotated by our two lady friends in the visitor centre, and we rerouted our way home via the Blue Spring State Reserve somewhere to the north of Orlando.  We picked up a drive-through Wendy’s and hit the road for Blue Springs.

It was a weird visit as most tough animals are…well…tough.  These ones were the un-toughest I had ever seen.  We asked the ranger at the entrance gate whether we had a good chance of seeing the manatees.  He paused for a second or two and then simply pointed at a chalk board that had a crudely scribbled number of “398” on it.  And then he said: “we counted 398 this morning so you should be good”.  I wanted to chastise him for jinxing our chances but chose politeness instead with a “thank you very much” and drove to the directed parking lot.

All we had to do was walk 30m from the car to a platform and boardwalk overlooking the clearest spring water and right there in front of us were manatees of every size right in front of us.  There must have been at least 25 in the pool right there.

As easy as that.

It sounds a bit canned and perhaps a little arbitrary to make a big deal about a lump of blubber simply chilling in a pool, but it was strangely amazing.  I don’t think I have ever come across an animal that exudes peace and solitude quite like those manatees did.  And despite the detour and the resulting traffic jam that we sat in to get back to Disney World we were both delighted that we had made the effort to see them.  We have good nature-loving friends back home who were green with jealousy when we sent pics back home.

With the birding excursion ticked off and my cup having been filled we returned to our Disney experience and spent the remaining two days picking and choosing the things we wanted to do before the experience was over.

We’d had an amazing time and there was something that satisfied everyone. We had chosen the perfect age for our kids to enjoy it to the max and our week ended way too quickly.

And so the next leg of our journey was upon us.  We were going to be boarding the Oasis of the Seas in Port Canaveral and spending a week aboard a cruise liner sailing to the eastern Caribbean.

See here for next blog.