Adventures by Disney -Pre-Tour Day

​After over a year, the time had finally come for our Adventures by Disney trip.   Chris and I had done one adventure previously – the Southern California adventure a little over 10 years ago.   This would be the first ABD for both of my sisters.

Just like you should arrive a day ahead of your cruise, you should also arrive at least a day ahead of your Adventures by Disney tour. Flight issues happen and you can start to get adjusted to the time difference.  Two couples on our ABD tour missed the parts of the first day due to flight issues. 

We left NY at 6:30 pm and landed in London at 6:30 am.   We had scheduled activities starting at 1:30 pm.   The idea was to sleep on the plane, hit the ground running to stay awake until a “normal” bedtime.  Unfortunately, I didn’t sleep at all on the plane despite my best efforts.   So it was going to be a long day…

Because we booked our additional night through Adventures by Disney, transportation from the airport to the hotel was included.   After we had our bags and were exiting baggage claim, our greeter and driver were waiting for us.   The greeter was very nice and started giving us some basic information about our tour and London.   She said there would be 32 guests in our group – some had already arrived; most were arriving today and a few arriving tomorrow.    She and the driver walked us to the car, got us all set and we were on the way to the hotel.
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The hotel for the London portion of the trip was the Kimpton Fitzroy.  It was in a nice quiet area of London, near Russell Square.   The staff was very friendly and always available to assist.  We knew our rooms wouldn’t be ready yet, but we dropped our bags and completed the check in at the desk.

​Our next stop was Fortitude Bakery which is on the street directly behind the Kimpton.   I had looked at what was in the area and this bakery was very popular.  I had started following them on Instagram and they always have a huge line.   It was a little late in the morning by this time and the line was minimal.   We got coffee and a pastry and took it back to the lobby of the hotel.

​While we were relaxing in the lobby, we received a text from our Adventures guides.   They would be in the hotel the next morning to say hello and the official start of the of the adventure would be at 6:30 pm the next day for our Welcome dinner.   They also sent a link to a form to complete for meal choices throughout the trip.   We each had to use the link to make our choices, and this made each group meals so much easier throughout the trip.

The next activity for us was a private food tour of Borough Market.   Through research, we found that one only person has access to do food tours in the market itself.  My sister worked with her to schedule a two hour tour for the four of us.  It ended up that our guide would be an assistant because the original person was on vacation, but she was wonderful.   We took a cab to the meeting location to meet her.   She asked about food preferences / allergies and then we were off!   The tour included ALL the tastes.   She gave us a lot of info about the market itself and navigated us through it while stopping to enjoy a lot of food.   We did a lot of sharing and small bites.  We were glad that we had decided to make this our dinner.   

  This is all the things we got to try:  sugar cane juice, a few cheeses, dried meat, a few kinds of olives, sausage roll, oysters, cookies, truffles, donuts, humble crumble, hard cider, gnocchi, grilled chicken, an Iranian dumpling and goat milk ice cream.
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   Our guide even took our picture at a perfect photo op wall.

​Now very full, our rooms were ready, and we went back to the hotel to settle in.   The room was small but very nice.   There were popcorn, cookies and bottled water which was replenished daily.   The only negative was there no dresser, only a wardrobe, so storage was limited.   I do like to unpack which was a challenge.

​We still had one more activity for the evening.  We were off to the West End to see Hamilton.   Sue and I have seen it more than once on Broadway.  It was the first time for Chris and Carrie.   It was amazing as expected and fun to see little differences.  There were a few minor lyric changes, and it was funny that some lines that get a big reaction in NY got no reaction in London (like “Everything is legal in NJ”).     We had hired a driver to and from the show which made it very easy for transportation.  

​   We were definitely tired at the end of a very long day but we all made it!