I hadn’t done anything on my family tree for such a long time that I decided to do some last night. Filled in loads of gaps using information from other people on www.genesreunited.co.uk. If you are doing family history research, I recommend you sign up, it is only £9.95 a year and could save you a lot of time and money!
Well, I logged on the website at 8.45 and left it, checked back at 8.59, pressed refresh once and it was 9am and the link for tickets came up. Clicked on it, straight through to ticketmaster and 2 mins later I had an email confirming my 2 tickets. I ALWAYS get stressed about tickt buying but this was so easy! I was totally shocked :)
Well almost 10 years to the day that I met Roger at an SAS gig in Chiddingfold so there was no way I was going to miss this one!
Got a train direct from Bristol to Woking where Terry came to pick me up and drove us to the gig. Freezing as usual so didn’t queue for long but had a great spot on the right hand side a couple of rows back. Very tired from the holiday so it was nice to lean against the wall! Saw Sam, Shelia, Andy, Vern, Terry, another Andy, Jen, Frank, Sue, Dave and Alison - hi guys!
The show was a great one and the show featured:
KIKI DEE
TOYAH WILLCOX
MADELINE BELL – (Blue Mink)
CHRIS THOMPSON – (Manfred Mann’s Earth Band)
JEFF SCOTT SOTO – (Journey)
TONY VINCENT – (Lead of “We Will Rock You”)
ROCKIN’ BOBBY HALL – (Maida Vale’s Skiffle King!)
FELIX AND ARTY (ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh)
Loads of problems during Kiki Dee’s set and we were starting to wonder if they would have it sorted in time for Roger and Felix but luckily they did. First we had Felix (with Roger on guitar) singing ‘Woman you’re beautiful, followed by Roger doing Strange Frontier, Chris Thompson did You’re the Voice and the show ended with Roger taking lead on Merry Xmas (War is Over) and read the words from a piece of paper!
I drove Terry and I all the way back to Derbyshire after the gig and collapsed in bed at 3am, but it was SO worth it!!
Left on November 18, 8 nights on the ship. Arrived in America on 26 November. Flew back on 4 dec.
We sailed from Southampton on an extremely wet day after getting on the awful train from Bristol to Southampton which took over two hours.
The QE2 was very different to the QM2 - lots of wood everywhere which made funny noises in the middle of the night as the ship moved around! We were upgraded to the Princess grill and we had a nice table for 4 with another couple from the North West. You can actually see the table we had in the brochure!!
We were on the ship for eight days in total and mainly slept most of the day everyday and went out for the lovely dinner in the evening! About half way through I got the ship sickness thing and was confined to the room for 24 hours and had to have an injection in my bottom! It was not nice! I recovered from that and Terry felt a bit sick too but didn’t seem to come down with anything. The couple at the table next to us got it the night after I did so it must have been going round the ship!
We managed to make use of the breakfast in bed most days then just went back to sleep afterwards! The weather between the UK and the Azores was awful so we couldn’t go outside much and one night Terry said the weather was so bad that he was rocking back and forth in bed all night - I just slept through it all!
We stopped off in the Azores after 3 days at sea. We were there for the day and went on a coach trip into the island. We visited Ponta Delgada town centre and had a wander round. I had an ice cream, Terry had a beer and we saw cats and chickens! The bus then took us up this massive mountain and we got to see the Fire lake!
After visiting fire lake, we went to the Pineapple Plantation. We tried a pineapple liquor and bought a bottle to take back to the ship. We saw pineapples being grown in many greenhouses, and pineapples are one of the main exports of the azores. We left the azores that evening for five more nights at sea.
After the azores we headed West on a southerly route across the atlantic through the Bahamian islands and into Fort Lauderdale. We finally got a few days of sun on the ship so we could go outside and enjoy a beer!
We arrived into Fort Lauderdale, Florida very early on 26 November. Got through the passport control ok and got in a taxi to take us to the airport so we could pick up our hire car. His boot (trunk!) didn’t shut properly so every few minutes we had to keep stopping in the middle of the highway while he tried to close it again!!
Picked up the hire car which was in my name but Terry wouldn’t let me drive it! We then drove up to Orlando to check into our hotel in Disney World!! I had to nagivate and we only had a few arguments along the way! We stayed in the French Quarter of the Port Orleans resort!
We got the bus to downtown Disney and looked round the shops! I loved the Lego shop and got to make a lego man! This lego dragon was outside!
We went for some lunch at the house of blues in downtown disney and then headed to the Magic Kingdom where it was late opening for hotel residents.
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At Universal Studios we stayed at the Hard Rock Hotel which was very good. By staying in the hotel we had a pass that allowed us to go to the front of the queue on the rides in the two universal parks - but parks were so quiet there werent really any queues anyway!
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We went to the Dolly Partin thing which was funny
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We went to Seaworld - and watched the shamu show
We went to the clubs at the downtown disney - each one was very different - there was a very funny revview theatre , and a comedy show where they tried to get Terry to go on stage but he said no and then they kept picking on him!
I'm Sarah, I'm 28 and I'm from the West Country. I have liked Queen since 1991. I saw Roger 14 times on the Electric Fire tour and I went to 21 shows on the Queen & Paul Rodgers tour!
