Sweet Nothings

Any old mug can come to Orlando and do the theme parks. Staying in the Disney bubble for eight nights without setting foot in any of 'em? Now that's the hipster's choice.  For the first time, we tried  renting DVC points . DVC is Disney's fiendishly complicated timeshare scheme. Though keen not to refer to it as such, the small print will be like ' Fine, this is a timeshare scheme but keep it quiet, yeah? ' The idea is, DVC owners can rent out some or all of their annual points if they're not going to use them, giving buyers access to some deluxe resort rooms for reduced fees. (There are fewer refund protections, but let's not be Debbie Downers.) DVC rooms are billed as 'villas' - you can shell out for larger units with extra beds, but the cheap ones are just standard hotel rooms with a tiny kitchenette. Still, it gave us the chance to return to one of our favourite resorts -  Animal Kingdom Lodge . This time we were in the DVC-only Kidani Villa...

We considered other options for our combined 10th anniversary-slash-Becky's birthday trip, we really did. Cities we've loved like NYC or Vegas, or maybe someplace new and exciting! But we wanted, nay deserved, a proper large holiday, and would've felt guilty about abandoning our daughter for that long. Given those criteria, Disney was the only viable option. Almost certainly... All Star Movies We chose another cruise/parks combo like last August, this time starting on the boat. That meant a safety-first buffer day at this value resort, a new one for us. The three All Stars (there's also Music and Sport) are the cheapest Disney-owned hotels, with basically the same layout as our beloved Pop Century but minus the game-changing Skyliner.  The case for these value resorts is obvious. Yes, the facilities are cheap and basic, but the bold, sledgehammer theming is great for kids and leaves you in no doubt that you're in the Disney bubble. The comparative subtlety of modera...

Ay up, our kid... are we the baddies? "Industries like airlines and Uber do it already"  Yes, and it sucks when they do it. Plus, they don't advertise one price and then increase it during the queuing process. "It's not Ticketmaster who set the prices, it's the bands" You're telling me the bands would have had this idea themselves if those guys hadn't invented it? Or that, when presented with the option of making more money, you would find it easy to decline? "Noel and Liam have forgotten their working class roots" They've not been working class for a long time, guys. Trying to paint either Gallagher as a saint this late in the game seems rather silly. "It's just capitalism, stupid" I'm no expert, but I would suggest that for capitalism to function it can't just be about the pure, untrammelled pursuit of profit. It's mostly about that, sure. But the last financial crash wasn't an inevitable consequence ...

I was really snooty about Deadpool. The MCU superhero formula of just-snarky-enough humour was going great guns, so why should I worry about what lesser studios were doing? All that potty-mouthed fourth wall breaking seemed kinda adolescent and, well,  desperate. At some point this year, post Disney-Fox merger and with the MCU in crisis mode , I conceded that maybe I'd been a key driver in my daughter's obsession with poos and farts, and I should probably give Ryan a chance. I watched the first one: Reynolds and his collaborators do nothing by halves, positively wallowing in their ironic depravity. But it also had a proper story arc with surprisingly high emotional stakes. It is, shock horror, a very good film. Kevin Feige presumably intended  Deadpool and Wolverine  to be a disposable palate-cleanser, but with popular opinion turning against the MCU it's become more like a last-chance saloon for Kev, Disney and even superhero flicks in general. Can it stop the rot? ...

As the saying goes, when life gives you lemons, go on a Disney cruise. Never mind that we booked the trip long before the citrus items in question arrived (straight after we came back from our last one, why do you ask?) - what better way to combat the greyest, boringest time of the year in the UK (NFL playoffs excepted) than getting the hell out?  Some might frown upon pulling your kid out of school for a couple of days, but my mum and dad took me out of school for weeks at a time and it never did me any hurm. Pre-ship We decided to top and tail the boat-based fun with a brief stay in a couple of different WDW resorts. The consensus take from the blogs and guidebooks on Caribbean Beach (CBR to those in the know) is that it’s huge and confusing to navigate, something we’d suspected on our previous visits when we’d Skylinered over from our regular haunt of Pop Century. Turns out said prevailing view is bollocks – it’s a few minutes walk from any room to the reception area and there’...