Right on to the good stuff now and apologies for the length (I'm not that concise with my words sometimes!)
Day 1 - Travel Day
Alarm was set for 6:30am and I think we were both awake at about 5
Spent some time just watching random videos on Youtube before getting ready. We had booked a taxi from the hotel for 8am as there had been tales of veeerrrryyyy long queues at Heathrow for bag drop, security and just everything in general. As mentioned previously, I have FOMF (Fear of Missing Flight) so this does not sit well with me (I do actually have Generalised Anxiety Disorder too
) hence trying to be at the airport 4 hours before our flight to account for the waiting.
We left the room and heading to check out at 7:45 and our taxi was already waiting. The driver was taking advantage of the breakfast buffet as he's a regular at the hotel, so had been there a while
He didn't bat an eyelid at our piles of luggage and soon we were off and on our way. 10 minutes later we arrived (and about £40 poorer!) and started to head into the terminal along with the hundreds of other people. We quickly found the Virgin Atlantic desk and joined a relatively short queue and soon we were dropping off our bags, both under the weight limit but not by much! We quickly headed up to security and as I turned the corner I was preparing myself with some deep breaths for the inevitable queue...but there was no one there
We walked straight up to the security belt, put all our belongings on, went through the scanners and we in duty free in less than 5 minutes
I think it took longer to work our way through the snaking queue line with all the switchbacks than it did to actually get screened!
We walked through duty free in a bit of a daze at how quick everything had been, then headed to the lounge that we'd booked into. 45 minutes after leaving the hotel, I was sitting in a very comfortable chair with this in front of me:
(that's Mr Eskimo trying to get his wallet back in his pocket!) I'd expected Mr E to come back from the bar with some water or a diet coke, but no, he thought a bottle of champagne would be the perfect way to spend the 4 hour wait we now had ahead of us
Food in the lounge was ok...not as good as the old Virgin V-Room at Gatwick (RIP) but it did the job with a selection of hot and cold items so a lot of hash browns and croissants were consumed to try and counteract the effects of the alcohol (I'm a bit of a lightweight sometimes!)
We kept an eye on the boards for our gate and as soon as it appeared we were off on the long march through Terminal 3. Again we were expecting chaos as there are never enough seats at the gates and again there was no one there. Fair enough, the gate had only just been called, but imagine my continued surprise when the gate agent called us forward and said we could board
Mr E said that we were just lowly economy passengers and she said that they were just boarding people as they arrived because the flight wasn't even half full! At this point things were sounding too good to be true and going too smoothly (or I just thought they were because I'd had half a bottle of champagne!) But no, there was hardly anyone on the flight!
We'd booked exit row seats as Mr E is rather tall so had to go through additional safety briefings on how to open the emergency exit if needed. Once this was done we settled in ready for the flight. Again leaving the stand, taxiing and take off were all smooth and soon we were in the air and soaring over London. The flight itself was fairly uneventful, the drinks service came round quickly followed by lunch (pesto pasta for me, fajita chicken for Mr E, with the standard bread roll and a salted caramel chocolate pot). There was a slight problem here though as I also have a weird aversion / phobia to wooden cutlery, lolly / popsicle sticks, basically anything wood being near my mouth and Virgin have replaced all their cutlery in economy with wooden versions
I carry reusable cutlery around with me for this very reason, but mine was currently sitting in the hold and of no use to me here. Eventually I was allowed to have some of the "proper" cutlery from Premium, but not before explaining to pretty much every member of cabin crew what was going on; I'm not kidding, I literally had to explain to the cabin manager 3 times why I couldn't eat using their eco-cutlery and promised that I would return the "proper" stuff after I'd finished with it.
After lunch I settled down to get some sleep while Mr E enjoyed the turbulence (he's strange like that) and a few films. I woke up about 2 hours before we landed to an afternoon tea box, with a warm scone
and spent the rest of the flight alternating between trying to read my book (Pachinko by Min Jin Lee in case you're interested) and craning my neck round to look out the window for land.
Finally we were descending into Florida, and things got a little bumpy again. We actually arrived 30 minutes early and as the plane was taxiing in to the terminal, the heavens opened and we were in a massive rain storm (spoiler alert - not the first of the trip!). A lot of people on the plane were very thankful the rain started after we landed I think. Eventually we were allowed off the plane and began the long walk to immigration. I think we queued for about 45 minutes so not too bad. However after being awake for a lot of hours and with the time changes, I was not in the mood for an immigration official who wanted to joke around with me. There's something about arriving into the USA that scares me more than any other country I've ever been too so I'm always on edge, and when asked how long I was staying all I could think of was the 10 nights we'd booked for the hotel. I gave this answer and it was met with "Well what about the days?" I know it was met with jest but I think the look on my face may have said it all
Mr E had to do his fingerprints etc. as he was travelling on a new passport, but I was allowed to just walk through after the "joking". Luggage was waiting for us on the belt and we quickly collected and headed for our transfers.
After the sad demise of the Magical Express, we'd booked transfers directly with Virgin as we'd booked this trip before the replacements were announced. I'd spoken to people who had had Virgin transfers before and they said that it was just Mears, so I didn't have any worries about it. However what followed was 30 minutes of trying to find anyone from Virgin or Mears who knew what was going on. (I knew the day was going too smoothly on the London side, something had to go wrong now!) Apparently the rep who was supposed to be dealing with the Virgin transfers had taken a break literally as our flight arrived so there were a few of us waiting around for him. He was very apologetic, and quickly took us out to the Mears desk to await our transport.
And we waited.
And we waited.
And an hour later the rep decided we'd waited long enough and put us in a Mears taxi to the resort. And that was only after Mr E had asked him why we couldn't just go and get on the Mears bus next door that was going to the Beach Club; apparently it's a different contract so we couldn't do that and the problem was that we were the only Virgin customers waiting who were going to a Disney resort, all the others we'd been with were staying off property and had already gone on their way to their hotels on minibuses.
I kind of blocked out the taxi ride because I was so tired by this point so not a lot to report, but the taxi driver did welcome us to Disney when we drove under the new sign which was sweet of him. At this point I started to perk up as we saw signs for things the closer we got to the hotel. As we turned onto Epcot Resorts Boulevard, I almost started crying because I couldn't believe we were actually here and getting to stay in an amazing hotel. When the security guard at the gate welcomed us home, I did let a tear roll down my cheek, which made Mr E chuckle - he's used to me being emotional over silly things now
And finally, finally we were here, pulling into the Beach Club, seeing those blue buildings, being ushered into reception. We'd checked in online but still had to go to reception to collect our Magicband +'s (and ask how to get to our room!) After what felt like walking for miles and miles through the corridors, we rocked up to room 3698 and opened the door...
Now I was actually surprised by how big the room was. In all the pictures I'd seen, I just got the feeling the rooms were a bit small (compared to the Contemporary room we'd stayed in previously). But no, it was huge! And we had a towel Mickey on the bed (I've never had that in all the times we've stayed!) While we were oohhing and aaahhhring over the room, Mr E headed for the balcony and let out a bit of a loud expletive in exclamation. I thought that there was a massive problem, like we had a mini balcony when Mr E really wanted a large balcony, or that he'd stubbed a toe or something. But no. He was exclaiming over this:
WE HAD A FREAKING VIEW OF SPACESHIP EARTH!!!!!!!
We both love Spaceship Earth and this was the point where I really started crying because I couldn't believe we were here. You best believe there were lots of evenings spent on this balcony just staring at the lights and sighing.
After 15 minutes of admiring the view, we both decided we needed to get into Epcot (luckily I'd already made reservations just in case) so we had a whirlwind of half unpacking and half just getting into cooler clothes. After freshening up and throwing on some shorts, we headed out for our first taste of the parks and you couldn't keep the grins off of our faces
By this point we were both a little hungry again as that afternoon tea was a long ago memory (it was about 8pm by this time). I asked Mr E what he wanted to do, did he want to get something from a Food and Wine booth, did he want to split something at Regal Eagle (a place he put on the "must try" list), but he just grabbed my hand and started marching us towards a familiar place, and not too far away. Yes, reader we went to Les Halles
(Mr E couldn't wait for me to take a picture before diving into his Creme Brulee) A pain au chocolat was just what I needed and boy was it good. After devouring our deserts like mad people who couldn't stop grinning, we decided to go and hop on a ride before calling it quits for the evening:
The posted wait was 20 minutes but we ended up in the queue for about 50. I'm not kidding when I say that this may have been one of the most tired moments of my life. At one point, I started swaying, and felt so tired it was like I was drunk and had to sit on the floor because I thought I was going to fall over. I did take a selfie at this point but I won't share it with you because I look completely out of it. We've ridden Ratatouille before in DLP so knew it was a nice gentle ride to ease ourselves in with.
I don't remember getting off the ride and getting back to the hotel, but somehow we did (see I told you I was tired!) When we got back to the room I did take some time to just sort out our park bag for the next day and lay out my outfit so I could have a little extra sleep, but we still had to set the alarm for 5:30am because tomorrow would be Magic Kingdom
). However it did feel like I'd forgotten how to pack for a holiday 
So by Saturday night I was chomping at the bit to just be there!
