The ABC trip to London... ABBA, Belfast and a cruise ship! COMPLETED 8/6 - Page 10 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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The ABC trip to London... ABBA, Belfast and a cruise ship! UPDATED 8/4
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Originally Posted by chezp
Have you seen Mamma Mia 2? If so, you'll know what I mean when I say you come out of them whistling that! [emoji3] If you haven't seen it and you like ABBA at all... you need to see it!
I haven’t seen it yet, but I hope to see it very soon!
Very amazing and cool with the Tower Bridge raising! Glad you got to experience it and you covered it so well.
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Not any of these that near me, but I have seen one at the very beginning of the Garden State Parkway in Cape May, New Jersey and quite the site. I can't believe some of those people remained on the bridge until the last minute!
I just do not know what they were thinking.
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The Abba tour doesn't seem to beginning well with the restroom situation and hope it gets better!
No, it didn't start out at all well. I must admit I was wondering what we'd let ourselves in for, but it all ended up fine.
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Oh no, hope the tour itself is better than the pre-tour experience!
How long do you think the bridge was off limits to traffic from start to finish? Seems like it was really fast!
Oh no, hope the tour itself is better than the pre-tour experience!
It was - thankfully!
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How long do you think the bridge was off limits to traffic from start to finish? Seems like it was really fast!
I was going to say not long very long, but thought I'd check on the time stamps on my photos. I have it starting to go up at 1:31pm and it was all back down by 1:36pm, so not long at all!
Saturday 23 June – part eleven: I’d better give someone else a chance…
It turned out that we were only going into the ABBA exhibition, Super Troupers, with one other group of four people – by the looks of it, a mum and dad and I think their daughter and her boyfriend, but I’m guessing here. We were told it was a maximum of 16 people, so I was really surprised that this wasn’t booked to full capacity on a Saturday, but apparently it’s happened a fair bit recently. They originally had this running until April and then it was only extended just as it was about to end and they couldn’t publicise the extension in opening times until it was confirmed. Just as well I spotted the details of this then.
In all honesty, doing this in a group of 16 people would have been like hell on earth. The rooms we went into just weren’t big enough to accommodate that many people. They accommodated us fine and I reckon you could’ve comfortably got by with maybe eight or ten people, but no more than that.
Anyway, after we received our warnings about no photographs (some of the items weren’t theirs, so there were copyright issues, which is fair enough), we set off… in through the record! However, I did manage to find some photos online, which I have included in here:
They do warn you that when you start out with your tour guide (he/she (she in our case) does some of the work and some of it is done by musician Jarvis Cocker, which has been pre-recorded) that you’ll go in and it will turn into complete darkness for 15-20 seconds. Thankfully, it wasn’t that long before the lights went back on and you were presented with a real Super Trouper.
Not sure what this is? It’s essentially a stage light. It’s massive when you’re close up to it as well. This one is actually still used in the Royal Festival Hall to this day, which isn’t bad when you realise it dates back to the 1980s. There aren’t many things that last that long.
We were then tested on our ABBA knowledge with a series of introductions to their famous songs. I guessed the first couple correctly, but then realised that perhaps I was a) looking like an anorak and b) needed to give someone else the chance. Good grief, the other family weren’t very good though.
Once you were done with naming that tune, you then head into the living room of a house from the 1970s in the UK. As our guide said, it wasn’t a great time, not with the three day working week (this was not a good thing, despite what you might think) and power cuts. You were Ok if you could get candles, but they had sold out, so if you had one, consider yourself lucky. So what prompted all of this? Strike action by the coal miners. Only essential services, such as hospitals, were exempt from these measures and even TV companies had to stop broadcasting at 10:30pm to preserve power. I knew things were bad, but my goodness, it was a bleak picture. Mark tells me he has memories of it, but I don’t, given I was only born in December 1972.
As far as politics went, there were elections all the time, as parties failed to form and keep government and then there was the small matter of a referendum on the European Union – this time entering it. It seems some things haven’t changed in all that time.
We headed next into something much more glamorous, a recreation of the Brighton hotel suite that the band were in after winning Eurovision in the city. It was filled with fascinating items, including replicas of the costumes the band wore, but amazingly they had the actual woollen hat Agnetha wore. I couldn’t believe it had survived! Bjorn’s guitar was in an illuminated case in the bed (I know, bizarre! ) and then there was a bottle of Cinzano, something I haven’t seen in many years. It was like a dry Martini and I used to drink it in the early 1990s. Talk about going back in time…
There was also a pull out from a newspaper from the day of the Eurovision Song Contest, detailing all the competitors, which a fan waited and got the band (and a few others) to sign. Now they caught a woman taking a photo of this a few weeks ago and told her she couldn’t. She turned around and said she couldn’t see the problem, given it was hers! How cool is that? They let her off by the way…
We then moved back to the beginning and entered a woodland scene, where we learnt about how each of the band members first got into music. It was very atmospheric in here and you could just imagine a folk festival taking place in front of you. There were some wonderful photos from the 1960s of each of the band members, including Agnetha in the musical Jesus Christ Superstar and also one of Benny looking very cute!
Next: from the infamous “open air” to toilets and a plane!
Sounds like you had the right group. Right number of people, and clearly you can win any pop up quiz.
Funny story about the woman taking that photo. Now that’s cool!!
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Sounds like you had the right group. Right number of people, and clearly you can win any pop up quiz.
Definitely the right number of people in our group.
I could obviously win ABBA quizzes... but other pop quizzes, not so much. There's a weekday phone competition on BBC Radio 2 called Pop Master. The top score you can get is 39 points. I play along at home and I've never got that. I think 33 is my best, but my average is between 15 - 24 points.
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Funny story about the woman taking that photo. Now that’s cool!!
This looks great so far! Thank you for finding some pictures online for us to see!
It's a pleasure. I figured it wouldn't work without them, as no matter what I tried, I couldn't describe it as well as a photo. Also, I wanted some for the photobook I'll do in time....
Nice start to your tour and lucked out with just six of you! This tour is different than I thought with the hotel rooms and so on. Will be interesting to see what else is included on the tour as will be quite unique! Cool story with the woman and the photo!
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October 6, 2017-Enjoying an amazing dinner at Victoria & Albert's with PP's Dot and Drew
My TR from my most recent trip is now underway. Includes: Universal Studios Florida, Disney World and Sea World Orlando Trifecta TR -Updated December 10th! TR is now COMPLETED!
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Glad you got to experience it and you covered it so well.
Crazy ordeal with locating a restroom. 
They accommodated us fine and I reckon you could’ve comfortably got by with maybe eight or ten people, but no more than that. 
However, I did manage to find some photos online, which I have included in here: 
) and then there was a bottle of Cinzano, something I haven’t seen in many years. It was like a dry Martini and I used to drink it in the early 1990s. Talk about going back in time… 
Also, I wanted some for the photobook I'll do in time....
Cool story with the woman and the photo!
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