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A Merry Disney Christmas...mark 2, 6 years on!

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A nother magical Disney Christmas!  If you’ve been following us for a while, you may remember our first trip to Disneyland Paris as a family of 4, 6 years ago! If you haven’t or would like to take a look back at this, you can read all about it here . 6 years on, now with an 11 year old Master S and an 8 year old Miss S, who incidentally now has a significant fear of big characters (!) we set off again on the 20th December to truly be immersed in to Christmas once more, Disney style! Due to Miss S's fear of big characters, we couldn't plan a trip without discussing it with her first, so we certainly couldn't surprise the kids with it this time round! Miss S was very excited at the prospect of everything ELSE at Disney and with the agreement we would keep our distance from all the big characters around the park. The only exception to this was Rapunzel, she didn't mind meeting her, as she is her favourite Disney Princess!   Just like last time, we drove up to Folkestone th...

Sail away, sail away, sail away...accessibly!

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  On the 12th August we set sail on P&O’s Iona, cruising to the Norwegian Fjords. If you read our previous blog post, you may remember this was our long awaited first cruise experience. Having first booked it back in the autumn of 2019 and many changes later due to Covid, surgeries and lack of availability, we finally made it on board! So here we share our experience. Warning! it's a biggie... Embarkation… Onboard and eating lunch within 45 mins! We were dropped off at the cruise terminal and it was nice and easy dropping our bags to the designated area for deck 10, where our cabin was located. Instead of following the masses, we were swiftly diverted to an accessible entrance and whisked off up in a lift to a dedicated accessible check in. We must’ve timed it right as after a quick check of our passports, we were directed through to security and we were quickly ascending the gangway up up enter the ship at deck 6. After a safety brief on deck 8, we grabbed our first bite to ea...

Getting set to sail…

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In two weeks time we will be heading off on our long awaited cruise! We originally booked this cruise back in 2019, but due to major surgery for Miss S and Covid thrown in the mix, it’s needed to be moved from one year to the next! This will be our first cruise and although we are trying to stay grounded and not get our hopes TOO high, we are all hoping we will love our first cruise experience and it will be an easier way for us to travel a bit further afield. Having both come from a travel background, Mr S and I, are always itching to get out and explore and the kids love to also…hopefully cruising will help satisfy this desire!  We have spoken to P&O Customer Services a fair amount over the last few years, with varying success! This is our experience... The good bits… P&O have been great moving our booking and spent a lot of time trying to find us an accessible cabin on the various cruises we have looked at over the last few years (but more on accessible cabins below!)...

The Marvellous Mayflower

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Mr S and I have always enjoyed going to the theatre and had been keen to try it out as a family for a while.  Having tried a cinema trip for the first time as a family at the start of the summer holidays last year, we felt confident Miss S would manage and be happy during a theatre trip. Miss S has a startle reflex due to her Cerebral Palsy which means her body will jump at sudden or loud noises and this can be uncomfortable for her at times. Going to the cinema, we found that although Miss S does jump at times, she manages it well and always wants to go back. We have lost count of how many films we have now seen at the cinema! Our first planned trip to try out the theatre was to see a pantomime last Christmas at the Mayflower Theatre, Southampton.  With Covid restrictions still so changeable at the time, we were SO relieved and excited that the Cinderella pantomime could still go ahead as planned!  We loved the pantomime and everyone else we spoke to who had also been to...