Travellers:
me, Tina, 40 (Disneyland, Ca. 1980, WDW honeymoon 1992, Disneyland Paris (DLP) 2002)
hub, Lee, 41 (WDW honeymoon 1992, DLP 2002)
son, Sam, 16 (DLP 2002)
daughter, Katie, 12 (DLP 2002)
So, as you can see, our first trip to Florida as a family, and one I've been wanting to do for years!
Let's dive straight in....
The day we headed off on my dream holiday
August 11th 4.30am
Katie was first out of bed this morning at just beofre 4am, bouncing like a caffeinated Tigger. Glad to see excitement has finally kicked in, thus far no one has wanted to share my 10 month-long excitement! A quick cuppa, washed up, dressed (don't panic, we all showered last night!), checked passports were in my bag, locked up, checked passports were in my bag again, and off we went to Gatwick. The M25 was dominated by lorries, but pretty quiet compared to previous trips.
We navigated easily to the Summer Special long stay parking lot (sorry, I've bought an Americanisation home with me, I mean car park of course!) only to find that buses were only running to the North terminal so we'd have to catch the monorail thingy to the south terminal for our flight. Not a problem though, we'd done it before and it's no bother.
Finding the Thomas Cook check in was painless, as was the queue...there wasn't one, or at least not a winding snake one, just two families ahead of us. Excellent start!
Having handed over our 2 wheely bags we were directed upstairs for the security check. I'd read about this here on the Dibb but had forgotten its existence. Thanking the guy who directed us there we were through in minutes, again, no queue (don't worry, you'll hear much more about queues from Day 1 onwards) For a change it was Katie who was stopped for a 'frisk' (I wonder what the formal name for this procedure is called?) not me. I thought they were very good with her, she's only 12 and at that age as we all know rather sensitive! After a few questions, such as "who are you travelling with, where are you going, how old are you", followed a "well done" which I thought was a nice touch, we were all through and tackled the pile of belts and bags.
Upstairs we discovered Frankie and Benny's for breakfast. Our normal haunt is Garfunkels but we were more impressed with F&B's. I chose fruit salad (far to early, my stomach hadn't woken up and I couldn't face much other than a coffee), Katie had a New England with pancakes (she loved them - I can guess what she'll be choosing for breakfasts in the U.S.!) and my boys had traditional fry-ups.
Sorry, no photos of this dining event, I was so tired and preoccupied with travelling arrangements that I didn't think to get the camera out of my bag until we arrived at the villa some 12 hours later.
We had plenty of time to kill so we wandered around HMV (and for the first time ever left with nothing other than our kids!) and WHSMith for the compulsory water for the flight and reading material - newspaper and magazines. This year, in an effort to save extra pennies Katie and I (the avid readers of the family) had raided charity bookshops in advance for our holiday books and had some good bargains. On this particular trip I took as many books as I would for a beach-style holiday (i.e. one in my hand luggage and 3 in my hold luggage) but I totally underestimated how little time there would be for reading on a Disney holiday!! I read half of the thinnest book that I took :-) Any time I did have at the end of each park day was spent half asleep on the sofa uploading the day's photos to my EeePC before falling into bed within an hour of coming home from the park.
Then followed a sleepy hour's wait for our flight to move up the board and appear with a gate number. Apart from the flight home this was one of the worst parts of the travelling...I'm not good when I'm tired, I suffer with twitchy legs and feel nauseous, and usually have, ahem, a few nervous excitement trips to the loo! This time was worse than usual and I resorted to two Immodium Instants! Moving swiftly on.... ;-)
No delays on the board, hurrah! More or less on time popped up Gate 23, off we strolled, no hurry, I'd forked out for pre-booked seats. A far cry from our experiences with Easyjet where everyone is desperate to be near the front desk in the departure lounge regardless or not whether those in wheelchairs or with small children are called for first! I liken it to verging on a rugby scrum, except there are suitcases involved because no one particularly wants to fork out for hold luggage if they can get away with it.
We boarded about half an hour late. During this time I was glancing around trying to spot fellow Dibber Helen or any other Dibbers (the Dibb is a very useful and friendly forum for anyone wanting to find out about, or share information about Florida and all things Disney World). It turns out that during the whole 2 weeks I never spotted one Dibber car sticker, badge, cap or lanyard...but then, I didn't wear any Dibb merchandise either.
Premium rows were called first, rows 1 to 7 I think, "we'll be next" we thought, being in rows 11 and 12, but no, after premium travellers came those from the very back of the plane. We were actually the very last family to board, Lee having been subjected to a randomly selected frisk and final bag check in the departure lounge (something we've never encountered before).
10am All board! First impressions....legroom - plenty of it! We sat in twos, by the window, the kids in front of us. Their main concern was which stranger would be sitting in the aisle seat next to them, but as it turned out, there was no one...until the lady next to us had to move forward because her TV didn't work, but she was a nice lady with children of her own so Sam and Katie's fears were abated.
I passed the first two hours working out how to use the TV, napping uncomfortably (I envy those hardy travellers who can sleep upright!), starting this trip report and also caught half fo He's Just Not Into You (I didn't realise you couldn't choose when to start your film, and there was no indication from the crew as to when it started) which I really enjoyed despite heavy eyes.
Lunch arrived after the drink/snack trolley (which we didn't need, we had our own sweeties and water). It, the lunch, smelt delicious and wasn't at all bad - beef provencial I think they called it...stew with peas and potatoes to me! Also 2 crackers, a roll, some disgusting spread, marg, caesar pasta with some parmesan, and a treacle/syrup pudding. Between the 4 of us we did some swopping and all had enough of what we liked. Coffe, tea or squash followed. Thumbs up Thomas Cook Airlines, we were content.
I tried again to nap after testing the downstairs toilet (tip - busy after drinks trolley and meals!), interrupted by occasional questions from my nearest and dearest , a mini cornetto and the arrival of the green visa waiver forms. At this point Lee was fast asleep so I filled in all four (after messing up one!)
I asked for a pillow and blanket, having spotted that others had them, as window seats leave you with one cold arm and leg! By now we are half way across the ocean...only some four and a half hours to go!
.....6.20pm Uk time, 1 hour to go! Second meal arrived - pasta bows in tomato and herb sauce, a Time Out bar and a coffee. Poor Lee, pasta again, he hates the stuff, so I angelically swopped my Time Out (do you realise what a big deal this is...I haven't had chocolate for 9 weeks!) for his pasta.
Passed some time reading the newspaper and on my DS Lite while Katie also read, and Sam and Lee played chess and checkers on DS Download Play...both Lee and I gave up on our iPods (Lee had bought Top Gear from iTunes and I had a Jodi Picoult audiobook I had been looking forward to), we couldn't hear them very well.
Twiddling of the thumbs, flying at approx 11400 feet and minus 55 degrees outside. Reflection - cabin crew have been excellent, cheerful, helpful and patient when queues of toilet trippers continually surround their snack trolley!
7.10pm...we're off! Procedures at Sanford were simple and quick, as was getting the car from Alamo - no hard sell or pressure to upgrade. The kids waited outside the Alamo building but forgot to seek shade, boy did the heat hit us! So glad I decided on shorts on jeans for the journey, unlike Sam. We were directed to the midsize area of the parking lot (I can say that now, we're on US territory and choose what we wanted - a white car to reflect the heat of the sun...not many whites, we picked the first one we saw, a Pontiac G6.
Here follows our first stressful moment! The road plan was to join the I4 west from Lake Mary Blvd. but in following signs for the I4 I directed Lee to a right turn and we ended up joining the 417 toll road north (or is it east?!). Slight problem...no change - we hadn't spotted a drinks machine at Sanford where we could have obtained some change. Lee was, understandably, reluctant to drive on without paying (signs warned of a $100 fine) so began to reverse (not wanting to really do this either...this was a one way entrance to the toll road!) but with traffic coming up behind we were stuck and were wondering what on earth to do! Just as I was about to get out and flag down a car to plead for change of a dollar bill who should pull alongside in the other lane...the sheriff!!
Yikes! I smiled sweetly, opened my window and explained our predicament. Luckily he was a very sweet man and provided some loose change and didn't want my dollar (how silly I felt afterwards trying to insist he took it...it's worth peanuts! We rolled up to the booth, popped the change in....oh. Ten cents short!! The sheriff was still there, and swallowing any remaining pride I shuffled back to his car and with what were probably bright red cheeks asked for another ten cents! Oh my, how embarrassing!
Now all we had to do was figure out where the heck we were headed...we had no idea where we were as we hadn't expected to hit a toll road! Light bulb moment! Mapman's map was buried at the bottom of my handluggage! Thank heavens! Fortunately a little boxed map to one side of the main section of the map made it clear that if we carried on we could join the I4 a little further north (east!) than planned. Onward...deep breath!
Any fears of terrible traffic or roadworks on the I4 were unfounded and Lee wasn't worried about having drivers overtake on either side. It was a peaceful and easy (cue Eagles tune!) journey down to the 192.
We picked up the villa key on the 192 from a locked security box and we soon at Westridge on the Nevada Loop (darn, we didn't get the gated community!) All in all, I think the journey took just under an hour from Sanford.
The villa was bigger than we had expected... a 4 bed with jaccuzi as well as pool and two living rooms.
Towels and plastic flowers were arranged on the beds and in the 3 bathrooms, but we couldn't help but notice that this villa was in need of a good lick of paint, a damp cloth around the skirting boards, and some scrubbing of the walls around the beds and in the corridors, some broken tiles around the jaccuzi, and some very basic supplies that we'd come to expect on previous holidy rentals in Europe, like a dishcloth and teatowel! Still, we weren't planning on spending much time in the villa so moved onto a trip to Applebee's at Berry town centre (conveniently only minutes away on the US 27),then on to Walmart at Cagan's Crossin for supplies, water and snacks, and a dip in the pool.
After some unpacking and TV time (and I thought we had rubbish TV in the UK, the basic TV package in the US is even worse! The best we could find was the Cosby Show!) we hit the sack, ready for an early start at Epcot the next morning. Surprisingly, it was a rough night, I thought we would have been exhausted, but with a new bed softness to get used to and some excitement about what was in store on our holiday sleep didn't come easily.
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