Rachel's Next Adventure

Much like SeaWorld in California this park has enough to keep you entertained for a full day. I'm not going to get into the arguments about the parks so i'm going to keep this post really short. The shows are essentially the same as California, but as this year was a special anniversary for the parks, they had staff members out surprising random guests with gifts. I really enjoyed this viewing area, which is something I didn't see in California. I'm going to keep this post short, its a park that will keep you relatively entertained while you're there because of the shows, but thinking back there isn't really anything that stands out. Follow this blog on BlogLovin'

Disney's All Star Sports Resort We decided to stay at the All Star Sports as we wanted to stay on site and this hotel had a running track which my fiancé wanted to use in the mornings. When we arrived to our room we found this on the bed, although sadly, despite tipping MouseKeeping daily this was the only Mickey head they made me, so I was devastated when my fiancé messed it up! The hotel also does pizza delivery, or you can pick it up, we got one one night from the restaurant, neither of us really liked it to be honest. One day we noticed that Mouse Keeping had put a towel bunny in our window, it was a cute surprise. But then the next time I went to my room I noticed all of my Duffy Vinylmation were missing. I ran out to the window and saw this display! The hotel has more than one pool, with games and movies being shown at the main pool, but it was always loud and busy, the pool near our room was mostly quiet and more relaxing, but it wasn'

My fiancé and I had both ordered in room surprises for each other for our first full day at Walt Disney World. When we arrived back at our room around lunch time the gift I got him was there. And when we went back at night, the one he got me had arrived too. The website is really easy to use and I personally recommend it if you feel like surprising someone you're travelling with, they have a lot of gifts from balloons and autograph books to sweets and towels. Theres something to put a smile on everyones face! These are the towels we got. Follow this blog on BlogLovin'

In September my fiancé and I travelled to Orlando, Florida and spent two weeks staying on-site at Walt Disney World. We didn't visit the parks on our first day, so the highlights of our first day are shown in the two photographs below. Magic Bands These are fairly new to Walt Disney World, and are for on-site guests and AP holders. They hold your ticket information, your hotel key, you can put your bank card on there too - and they only take the money after you spend a certain amount so you don't get charged international fees for every purchase! My wrist was too small for the adult size, but they have an adjustment to make them smaller so I ended up with my band not having the black outline. These bands also hold your FastPass+ reservations and your Memory Maker information. First visit badges! We got our first set of these at Disneyland California in August 2013. Frozen Lemonade For anyone who hasn't read my posts about Disneyland Resort,

I wanted a specific tin for saving up for Disney holidays but I couldn't find one to buy that was cheap enough / looked good or big enough so I decided to make my own. First you need an empty and clean soup/spaghetti/custard tin and a flexible tape measure to measure it with.  Once you know the size of your tin, open a new page to that size on PhotoShop, or whatever editing software you have. I then searched for some Mickey heads on Google and arranged them on the page. Once I was happy with that I went back to Google to find a free Disney style font to write "Disney Savings" across the tin. Then all you need to do is print and cut out your design before sticking it onto the tin! Its a nice quick craft you can do, and a good idea to help keep the little ones busy and interested in saving for their Disney trip!  If you want the design I used just comment below and i'll send it over to you. Follow this blog on BlogLov

Once again, we stayed at the Royal National Hotel. It is in a perfect location, and not too far from Kings Cross is the tube station happens to close (this happens quite often, and we have had to walk to Kings Cross to catch our train before, so please leave spare time if you need to catch a train - no matter where you're staying!). The breakfast here is absolutely amazing, although i'm pretty sure the bread buns come in frozen, a sausage sandwich for breakfast here beats one anywhere else. They offer a cooked breakfast and a continental breakfast, depending on your room type you might just get the continental breakfast included in the price, but you can pay for the cooked breakfast if you want to (I think its about £4.95 per day for the cooked breakfast). The rooms have a kettle and a hairdryer, but you might want to take your own hairdryer as the in room hairdryers aren't that powerful. They do leave some tea bags in the room, but not many so if you

In August I took another visit to London Zoo, this time with my Mam and my brother, neither of them have been to London Zoo before, and neither of them have been to a zoo for about two or three years. We had a nice day out together, although my brother was tired and grumpy, he took a little bit of a nap resting on a table while my Mam and I got a cookie. The cookies here are absolutely amazing! Nice and crunchy, none of that gooey in the centre mess. As I posted about the zoo not that long ago, i'm going to let the pictures speak for the zoo this time. Follow this blog on BlogLovin'

During this trip my family and I took our first visit to a Ripley's believe it or not museum/attraction. We had been given the entry tickets for free, as part of a booking deal with Superbreak, this offer is still going on for anyone looking at booking a trip to London soon. The attraction doesn't seem to be as popular anymore, there was no queue to get in and there was hardly anyone inside. The attraction is filled with interesting facts and videos, as well as a lot of photo opportunities, you can see a couple of those above. I would definitely recommend a trip here if you can get free or discounted tickets, I don't think it is worth the full price unless its something you are really interested in, although we did spend at least an hour and a half here. It is probably better for younger children, who would enjoy the animatronic dinosaurs a little more than teenagers and young adults. The graffiti wall was closed, and that was the main thing my

In August I travelled back to London, but this time with my Mam and little brother. Trafalgar Square It was the first time we'd gone to Trafalgar square, and i'm not even entirely sure it was in our plans when we ended up there. I got some nice photos there so i'm glad we ended up there either way. Piccadilly Circus We spend a lot of time in this area when we visit London, well Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square as a whole. We tend to eat in the area, and this trip we also had our first visit to Ripley's Believe It Or Not, as we got free tickets by booking through Superbreak. I'll write a separate blog post about that in a couple of days. Tower Of London Remembers We have never visited the Tower of London before either, but my Mam really wanted to make sure we got there this time to see the Tower Of London Remembers poppies and how far it had come along. Platform 9 3/4 I've planned on visiting Plat

In the summer, my fiancé and I visited Edinburgh Zoo, neither of us had been here before and set out to see the penguin parade. I'm not going to show a photo of that because it really wasn't worth seeing, they could only persuade three of the penguins to come out, and you could only really see one of them because the zoo attendants blocked the view of the others. Food The restaurant here was nice, but the kiosks and carts throughout the zoo were sold out of pretty much everything - no hot dogs, no cold drinks, no ice lollies! And as the restaurant closes early, that leaves you with very little option of something to eat and drink before you long bus journey home. Giant Pandas We didn't think we would actually get to see the giant pandas, as they had stopped taking viewing slots due to Tian Tian's pregnancy. But they did allow visits in to see Yang Guang, you had to queue up and they allowed a small amount of people in at a time, asking you to remain silent a

In the summer my fiancé and I visited South Lakes Safari Zoo, previously known as South Lakes Wild Animal Park, back then they would argue against being called a zoo, i'm not too sure why they've suddenly decided that they are a zoo rather than an animal park. It was a nice, hot day, and as usual in summer, the zoo was busy. If you have never been here before, I definitely recommend it, this is my third or fourth visit, I fell in love with the place after first visiting with my college. There is a lot to see and do here, but don't stand too close to the birds in the aviary, one bit my shoulder when I tried to take a photo with it! I didn't even think I was standing that close. There was a brief moment where I thought I was going to die of a heart attack when we were leaving as I noticed just before we left the gates that i'd left my camera bag in the restaurant! My fiancé ran back for me and thankfully the staff had noticed and put it out

Sunderland International Airshow Every year I try to get a day off work so my fiancé and I can go down to the airshow, I usually spend all my time takings photos and videos, but this year it was a bit more relaxed. I did take quite a few photos, but I didn't spend my entire day doing it, we left the barrier, and we hadn't waited over an hour at the barrier before the crowds picked up to make sure I had a good shooting space either! We got snowcones and visited the arcade and just had a good day together in general. I did take some videos too, but i've still not managed to get them uploaded to YouTube, a mixture of really bad internet and my brother being off school (making the internet so much worse) and my fiancé having taken half of the videos and i've still not managed to get his half yet. Follow this blog on BlogLovin'

This is the third Sunnycon I have attended and I already have the time booked off work for the 4th. Its a relatively small, local anime and Japanese culture convention, although they focus more on anime and cosplay now than Japanese Culture. This year the two voice actor guests were J Michael Tatum and Quinton Flynn. The first convention had Veronica Taylor, Ash Ketchum's voice actor, and Chris Sabat, the voice actor of Vegeta/Yamcha from Dragon Ball Z, many people feel that they have struggled to get guests who are as popular or well known. There was quite a few problems at the beginning of each day, with the convention opening later that it should have, so on the first day the opening ceremony either didn't happen or only those with early entry tickets were able to see it. The venue had only recently reopened, and was in no state to host the convention, leading to some of the events and locations that were announced for the convention being unavailable. There were

You enter from the one side of the building, place your order, and then wait outside of the other side of the building for your food. They give you a buzzer to let you know when your order is ready, so you can go find a table while you wait and return to pick up your food when your buzzer goes off. Personally, I didn't really rate the burgers that high, I don't know if the cold weather had anything to do with it though, as we were seated outside so the food did cool down quite quickly. The fries were what kept bringing me back to Shake Shack, they are quite possibly the best fries I have ever tasted in my life. If you're ever in the Covent Garden area and feeling a little hungry you should try these fries! The outdoor seating area itself was great, they had overhead heat lamps that would heat you up a bit. Shake Shack is an American company and the Covent Garden location is the only one in the UK, they sell tshirts and other merchandise if you want a souve

This was my 5th or 6th time staying at this hotel. It is in an ideal location, a few minutes walk away from Russell Square tube station, and right by a small shopping area with Boots, Waitrose, Nandos and other places. The rooms are fine, and the beds comfortable. There is an on site gift shop but I would recommend going to Cool Britannia or somewhere similar to buy your souvenirs and gifts as this is a small gift shop selling a range of teas, hoodies and little ornaments. The only downside to this hotel is that there is no free wifi in the rooms. They charge 50p per bag to store your luggage on check in if you arrive early, so if you're visiting, try to have some change with you. It is free to store your bags on check out. This is a popular hotel for tour groups and visiting schools and colleges, so if you visit at a peak time the corridors can get noisy. I don't have a photograph of the hotel room from this visit. Follo

In March we took our first visit to London Zoo. It was a sunny, warm day so the zoo was quite busy, especially with it being a Sunday. The zoo is quite big and we didn't get to see everything, but we did see most of the animals we wanted to see. We even got a good view of the lions, which is something that i've never had in other zoos as the big cats are usually always sleeping. The ants in one exhibit were very interesting as i've never seen an insect exhibit set up out of a tank before. [The ants run up and down ropes gathering food and then dropping it into their home before going back for more] [[Don't touch them or the rope, the ants do bite]] Here are a few of my favourite photos I took at the zoo. If you have a free day in London, you should definitely take a visit to London Zoo and Regents Park, the zoo has plenty to see and do to fill your day, and the park is huge, the perfect place to relax after a long day of walk