At first,we wanted to start our family trip by Cuba before the island become capitalist and too much of a touristic destination. Not so long ago, Obama went to Cuba and opened up a bit the relationship with neighbour island. As a consequence, a few US airline companies started new flights to La Havana and other Cuban major cities. I found cheap flight (50$) from Miami and we decided that the latter would be the first destination for our around-the-world open flight tickets.
Later when it was time to book and pay online our low cost flight from Miami to La Havana, I discovered that this flight was still restricted to 12 categories of travellers and tourism is still not one of them.We could have, slightly, lied and pick the category for educational project or for helping Cuban family, at the end, our goal was to learn Spanish and live/stay with local family but it is better not to play with US administration…
Change of plan, we’ll flight from Miami to Managua in Nicaragua, also with a US low cost company.
However, when we landed in Florida, we were warmly welcome by Lili’s uncle and aunt.
We stayed in Palm Beach and during one week we lived the american dream (for almost half of the planet) in a big, beautiful house with swimming pool in a nice, cosy condominium with friendly neighbours (thanks J.&J. for the friendly dinner).
This was the opportunity for us to meet again Lily’s cousins after they left Belgium,with their parents, almost 20 years ago.K. is now the happy mother of a beautiful 2 months old princess and her charming big brother (4 years old).
We enjoyed live, relaxing around or in the pool (with or without beer), taking pleasure at the aunt’s cooking, not having to make plan or prepare anything : it was our holiday, before the travel .
We visited Singer Island, a bit of Miami downtown (we really liked Wynwood , the Art district, full of colors with paintings on most walls) and of course, Disney World.
It took a bit of time before we could enjoy the magic of Disney.
On Monday, we woke up very early, drove 2h45 to arrive at Magic Kingdom’s for the opening hour (9AM), waited for almost 1 hour to get the tickets we had bought online the day before and finally lined up until a few minutes before noon before we could enter at our first attraction, Pirates of the Caribean.
What a frustration all that waiting time, luckily we downloaded the Disney app and we could monitor in real time the waiting time (up to 3 hours for some…) and get some fast passes:this allowed us to make most important and some minor attractions but not more than 10 in total for about 12 hours stay…)
One thing is sure, the Magic of Disney is also to be a $ machine: the 1-day ticket (for 1 parc only) costs 124$, the parc is more than full, and there is as much people waiting for the attractions than people buying merchandising in the souvenir shops or eating/drinking in the restaurants …
I would advise, if possible, to avoid summertime to visit it: too hot and too much people !
However, despite the frustration, the magic of Disney happened and we are happy to have done it. Especially the grand finale, the closing ceremony (9PM) was fantastic and majestic :like for all Disney movies, there was an happy end !
Our flight for Managua is for the next day, at 11.40PM but it is delayed and we finally leave Fort Lauderdale on July 19th at 1.30 AM.