And they took just enough time off the rides to update us on the thrilliest, spilliest place on Earth.
Stars in my eyes
Now in a Galaxy’s Edge far, far, away in Disney’s twin centre in Anaheim… well, two years ago I got a glimpse into the future in the first party to try out Star Wars world.
And the future is here now in the present and ready for y’all to see it both in California and here in Orlando.
Of course Mickey, Donald and their pals have been celebrating since last month their 50th birthday (well, not theirs, they’re much older but Disney World’s).
On a theme
Rat-a-tat-tat: Food for thought
And the four theme parks and beyond have been in fine song.
Among the most anticipated attractions, and the ones we’ve zeroed in on are:
Disney Enchantment, a new all-new nighttime extravaganza at Magic Kingdom Park, featuring captivating Disney music, enhanced lighting, stunning fireworks and immersive projection effects that extend from Cinderella Castle down Main Street, U.S.A.
And we’ve danced along to Mickey’s In Da House party on that very street and can advise that you lose all inhibitions (or was that just me, Mickey and Donald?)
Then there’s Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure at Epcot, where guests shrink to the size of Chef Remy and race through Gusteau’s restaurant on a wild adventure.
You like your French gastronomeee, oui?
Then La Crêperie de Paris is a new restaurant located in the France pavilion at Epcot which offers both table and quick-service options and features a menu from celebrity chef Jérôme Bocuse.
The Showbiz Lion and I
Scots wahey: With Bev in Orlando
Now as a veteran of the Orlando theme parks I know how nothing sits still (well, it wouldn’t with you twirled this way and that).
Personally, I prefer a wet one, as my old sparring partner, Lady Lyons, Bev, of Showbiz Lion fame, would say.
And so we both loved Aquatica Orlando. AO can now boast Florida’s first-ever duelling waterslide, Riptide Race, which opened in the spring.
You’ll start atop a 68-foot tower and race side-by-side at top speeds, navigating tight loops and accelerations through indoor and outdoor sections.
While Florida also loves its natural as well as animated animals. And it has those in abundance, particularly flamingos.
In the Pink
Pickin’ ma pocket: Flamingo time
The Flamingo Mingle at Discovery Cove is a new, exclusive animal experience where guests can feed and learn about our pink friends in an outdoor setting.
Another old pal I met back then in Anaheim is The Jurassic Park VelociCoaster which opened in June at Universal’s Islands of Adventure.
The ride sends you catapulting up to 70mph and over 150ft in the air with the swiftest of prehistoric predators.
If you like your fun irreverent and green and ogre-like then you’ll love Shrek (guilty).
Guests can interact, dance and be photographed with multiple beloved characters from DreamWorks Animation’s hit film franchises, including Trolls, Madagascar and Kung Fu Panda – all in one location.
And seeing it’s all about you in ’22 then here’s what’s still to come.
Wet, wet, wet
Twirl power: SeaWorld Orlando
Ice Breaker, SeaWorld Orlando’s first launch coaster, will open in February and riders will shiver through family-friendly adventures featuring four launches, both backwards and forwards.
It all culminates in a reverse launch with a 93ft tall spike with 100-degree angle, the steepest vertical drop in Florida.
Aquatica Orlando’s newest water slide, Reef Plunge, will launch in spring with guests sliding through translucent cutouts and rings.
You’ll get to twist and turn though 330ft of fiberglass; and zoom past a vibrant array of marine life.
Commerson’s dolphins, leopard sharks, sardines, and a variety of other cold-water fish will be part of the new dynamic habitat.
Julius Caesar (stay with me here) has been kicking his stubby feet in Co. Down, Northern Ireland, for the best part of a year and a half.
The loggerhead sea turtle washed ashore in 2019.
Hail Caesar
Crate expectations: JC gets the deluxe treatment
Julius Caesar, thus named by the Donegal family who found him because of his fighting spirit, has been recuperating in Down.
At the Exploris Aquarium in Portaferry where they have put the poor fella back together again.
JC was just three months old when he was swept along the current (and who hasn’t been there).
And he was carried along the Gulf Stream to Co. Donegal.
Donegal diver
Just the ticket: And it’s Turtle luxury on Aer Lingus
The poor wee thing was underweight, just under a few hundred grammes, and suffering from hypothermia.
So it was just as well that it was Donegal where he was found.
Because Ireland’s most northern county boasts the warmest people in the world.
OK I’m biased as my Dear Old Mum and her people are daughter and sons of the sod.
The Ulster folk are famous for their hospitality as anyone who has enjoyed their ‘wee’ Ulster Fry will testify.
Turtle’s Ulster Fry
Turtle loving care: And the crew is besotted
So it’s no surprise Donegal’s fellow Ulsterians filled JC up.
Those pounds piled up on a diet of fish mixture, squid and gel.
Just a thought here but I might just have been a turtle in a previous life.
As I’ve got on famously with them in Barbados and in the Maldives.
Well, after 20 months being pampered in Ireland the day finally came today for JC to head home to the Canaries.
And when you travel from Ireland you need to promote the national airline carrier.
And of course Aer Lingus was only too happy to fly JC on the EI 782 to veterinarian Pascual Calabuig at the Tarifa Wildlife Recovery Centre on Gran Canaria.
Turtle on board
It’ll take longer: The swim back to the Canaries
JC’s minder Portia Simpson is going along for the company.
Our turtle, now weighing 25kg, is protected in a specially designed waterproof crate.
I can only say the best things about Aer Lingus’s flight experience… and the same can be said for turtles.
Another rogue loggerhead turtle, Leona, was found in Co. Clare in 2013 and transported to Las Palmas, Gran Canaria by Aer Lingus in December 2014.
This is your pilot speaking
Next time I’m flying: And i’ll choose Aer Lingus
Pilot Captain Peter Lumsden introduced the VIP to the passengers.
‘It is our pleasure to welcome aboard a very special passenger today and to ensure the safe transportation of JC the Turtle to Gran Canaria.
‘Keeping the turtle’s temperature above 19 degrees is critical to his wellbeing and he requires regular monitoring and shell lubrication so placing him in the aircraft hold was not an option.
‘Like all of us on the flight today, I’m sure he is looking forward to the warmer climate upon landing.’
Turtle minder
And so say all of me. The Canaries are a pleasure any time of the year, but especially in the late summer after a year in cold storage.
So the next time Portia needs a hand, then I’d be happy to fly turtles to the Canaries.
Sorry to be such an old misery guts on your rest day but every day will now be a rest day for Stobart a favourite airline now gone.
Stobart Air has been the wings beneath my winding my way from Ireland back to Scotland.
On more occasions than I care to remember.
Liquidation looms
But alas the 50-year-old carrier has been forced into liquidation now.
By Covid and Irish Government inaction.
Up in the air: For passengers now
For every Irish adult Stobart Air will always be Aer Arann.
Aer Arann got off the ground in 1970 to serve Inishmore in the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland.
And Galway and the West, where I would spend my childhood summer holidays, is best.
Fly the flag: My friends at Aer Lingus
Aer Lingus, the national airline carrier, saw the possibilities and soon got on board, contracting Aer Arran to operate their short-haul commuter links.
Stobart story
Stobart Group jumped in during the choppy mid Twenty-Teens and rebranded as Stobart Air.
Which is when I started to lean on them as my taxi service back and forth to Scotland while living and working in Ireland.
That’ll be Edinburgh Airport obvs
And revisiting my old haunts such as my young party days in Aberdeen, my adopted home Edinburgh and my home city Glasgow.
There are other airlines and they will fill the gap left by Stobart Air mist critically now where flights have been lost.
But the collapse of any airline is to the detriment of passengers.
A sad day
The wider the range of airlines the greater choice on offer and the better value.
Purple reigned: FlyBe
This is all on the back of the collapse of FlyBe.
And they were a favourite too with their flights to cruise town Southampton, Stobart Air’s decline is a sad day for us all.
We’ll be told that it is Covid collateral damage but try telling that to those who have lost their jobs.
And passengers who have been left out of pocket.
And until governments change their attitude to Travel as vital and not trivial…
Then it might be Stobart a favourite airline now gone today but there will be countless others tomorrow.
I’d heralded in the last year with a party like it’s Two-Zero-One-Nine and a celebration of the Purple One’s state. 2021 will catch up so let’s sing for Minnesota and Prince and Dylan.
2019 was special not least because I clocked up more air miles than an astronaut.
But also because Aer Lingus launched its inaugural flight from Dublin to Minneapolis. Unhelpfully, though, that was when I was already on my travels so I’ve still got to check in.
This year will be even better in Prince’s backyard as Paisley Park reopens after Covid and the Mid-West state also celebrates folk poet Bob Dylan’s 80th birthday in his home town of Duluth.
The legends
The King and I: In Vegas
It always comes as a source of inspiration to me that our musical legends don’t generally hail from the glittering cities of the world but rather Mississippi/Memphis (Elvis), Liverpool/Hamburg (The Beatles), Gary, Indiana (Jacko) Barbados (Rihanna) and Minneapolis (Prince) and Duluth (Dylan).
For Prince fans, and the rest of us, the reopening of the sex thimble’s iconic recording studio and home at Paisley Park will have us letting out high-pitched screams.
So what can we expect? A lot of purple (obvs), his wardrobe and yes only a Rock God can pull some of those outfits off while it also helps to have a hairy chest.
You can wonder at his eclectic elecrtric guitars and pianos… and, er, his ping-pong table and pick up a paddle and play. The table tennis that is.
Three packages are advertised on their site: The Ultimate Experience ($160), The VIP Experience ($85) and The Paisley Experience ($45). And for the $160 I’d want to get behind a Little Red Corvette. Only saying!
Now while Prince was the idol of the Eighties, alongwith Michael Jackson (and let’s face it for all time) the Poet Laureate of the Sixties was another Minnesotan Bob Dylan.
Dylan was born Robert Zimmerman in Duluth which is 154 miles north of Minneapolis on Lake Superior.
Again an unlikely port of call for a Rock God.
The young Robert spent the first six years of his life in the port by the Greatest Lake of them all before his family relocated to Hibbing 75 miles north-west.
So each have a claim to the Great Man.
Man of Minnesota
Moothie man: Dylan
And how do they solve such things in Minnesota?
Well Minnesotans and sharing and caring and are celebrating their favourite son together.
Duluth Dylan Fest , the Hibbing Dylan Project, Visit Duluth, the Hibbing Area Chamber of Commerce, Iron Range Tourism and the Minnesota Discovery Center have all formed a band (Dylan reference there) under the title Year of Dylan.
The year will run between Dylan’s 80th and 81st birthdays which will be celebrated both in Duluth and Hibbing.
It will all get under way at the Dylan Monument at Hibbing High School on May 22, as well as music at Dylan’s boyhood home in Hibbing.
Who’s your favourite?
I’ll keep you updated as we go along but let’s just celebrate this Mid-West state and sing for Minnesota and Prince and Dylan.
It is a right royal bunfight between two English counties which the Queen has now ruled on. So sorry Cornwall, it’s heaven for Devon… ONE decrees it’s jam on cream.
It’s actually timely that the Queen’s pastry chefs have revealed that Her Maj is Devonian in her scone tastes.
All of which is bad news for neighbouring West Country county Cornwall where it’s cream on jam.
Knowing look: Mary Berry’s giving nothing away
And why is this centuries-old row brewing again? Well, because supermarket chain Sainsbury’s is in the eye of the storm for putting out an advert where a Cornwall scone has the cream on first.
Creme de la creme
What we do know from living down near those parts is that Devon is the cream (we actually like Cornwall too but for the purposes of this article…)
And Ireland’s national airline carrier knows it too, or is coming around to it now.
Aer Lingus has announced that it is launching a direct flight to historic Exeter from August 30.
With my old friends Aer Lingus
And helpfully flags up for those who don’t know the county the city’s Gothic cathedral and its quayside as well as its national parks Exmoor and Dartmoor.
And for paleontologists its Jurassic Coast in East Devon, with its 185 million years of history.
While we were taken too among the attractions by Beer. And there’s little surprise there.
Mind you, Beer is better known for its chalk cliffs and quarry caves.
I dare say there are lovely craft beers down here but real Cornwallians and Devonians drink cider.
East Devon and the Jurassic Coast
Now don’t get us started on which is the better. Although we do know a wee old woman in Buckingham Palace who swears by one of them!
With Aer Lingus fares starting at from just €36.99 and four weekly flights on offer you’d have to be a dinosaur not to explore this magical corner of England.
Our new television guilty pleasure comes to us from the ubiquitous man mountain Richard Osman, a parlour games show called House of Games.
In which he gets celebrities to change individual letters to form words (so for me it would be House of James) and smash names of images together to come up with a lame pun in Answer Smash.
I’ll give you an example… if you want to promote the new Ireland to Barbados route through Manchester you might want to go with RihAnnarndale Centre. Gerrit?
Yes, our friends at Aer Lingus are only making it even easier to get to gthe Land of Rum with a new route via Manchester.
Fares will start from €249 from Dublin or Cork.
And in keeping with the House of Games Answer Smash game and knowing that Robyn Rihanna Fenty is of Irish stock… I give you Irieland!
Let it rip
Slip slidin’ away
And memories of the dude who had a tattoo on his front saying ‘I am only afraid of God’ but got all edgy when we approached the plunge water slide at Aquatica.
Of course that feeling of fear always comes just before the adrenaline thrill.
Aquatica Orlando is introducing its All-New Riptide Race, the world’s tallest duelling racer on April 3.
You’ll start atop a 68-foot slide with low walls so you can keep an eye on your opponents. And race side by side on your raft run through high-speed tunnels, twists and turns.
And judging by what a mess England are making of their cricket Test series in India, maybe they’ll go back to baseball.
There are few things more American than baseball.
And that obviously means that it came from somewhere else.
And this somewhere else is England where it had been a folk game.
Lord’s, the home of cricket, gave itself over to baseball for the first time when it hosted the Boston Red Stockings and the Philadelphia Athletics in 1874.
And Slugger Jimmy in the USA
So for all the big Wembley and Tottenham Stadium American Football matches it’s not a new phenomenon.
To bring American sporting franchises over to the Old Country.
We do, of course, have splendid memories of Aer Lingus‘s biennial American Colllege matches at the Aviva. Happy days!
In truth Beantown and Philly are winners when it comes to sport and you can’t visit without being touched by their love of their athletes.
Paris, non
Bravo: On World Cup final day
And the hairy-arsed Scots who make a biennial pilgrimage to Paris to converge around the Arc de Triomphe.
And watch their Bravehearts lose to Les Bleus were unable to do so this year.
So too did the Scotland rugby team whose match against Les Bleus of France was called off when the home outfit was hit by Covid.
Paris hasn’t always been kind to this hairy-arsed Scot either.
I had my butt kicked when I kipped down for the night in Paris Saint-Lazare railway station in my summer holiday down on the French Riviera after schoool.
The butt-kickers en force were the Gendarme…
And it wouldn’t be my first brush with the French law who took offence to me stopping the traffic in Saint-Raphael.
Let’s be Frank about Bruno
This year? When I’ll be back in Vegas
For those of us whose golden years (so far) were the Eighties Frank Bruno was ubiquitious, know what ah mean, Harry.
And his story was inexorably tied up with that of Mike Tyson’s though he was merely a punchbag for the Baddest Man on the Planet.
Waving the flag for DC and Aer Lingus
Me and ‘Baby Doc’ Peter