Tracey's report - the travelling

[TraceyL]

The usual suspects
Me – Orlando addict, lives & plans from one trip to the next
DH (Steve) – Orlando addict – pays and goes !
DD1 (Rachelle) – 7th birthday trip – 3rd visit
DD2 (Annabelle) – almost 3 – 1st trip
…and 2 new recruits
My mam & dad- approaching retirement age, recently bitten by the travel bug, first proper visit to Florida

Sat 18th October ……
… started well with a visit to the hairdressers whilst Steve watched the England v SA rugby match then mam and the girls & I then drove to Heathrow via Swindon Designer Outlet for a little pre-trip retail therapy to get us in the mood. We checked into the Heathrow Thistle about 5pm – looked a bit shabby on the outside but the rooms were nice, bit dark but it only cost is £120 for 2 rooms (one family one double)and 2 car parking spaces for the trip. Steve and dad arrived about 30 mins later and we went to a local Toby Carvery for dinner.

Sun 19th…..
.. up at 5am and loaded onto a shuttle bus to the airport by 6:15am. The flight was at 9:40am and we wanted to check in early as we hadn’t been able to prebook seats together but we needn’t have worried

…now for those who haven’t been following my last 6 months of planning, we had a couple of lucky breaks. The first being Thomas Cook cancelling our original LHR-MIA-MCO flights as they hadn’t allowed enough time for us to connect in Miami. This meant we were able to book BA World Traveller Plus flights (on the same flight my parents were on) for the same price as the original economy flights……..

Waiting at the airport



We were allocated 20 FGH&J – my parents were in 19 H&J – perfect What can I say about WT+ except that I’m never flying economy again !! The girls were perfectly behaved all the way across, we had packed plenty of reading material, colouring & stickers galore and they both had a sleep. Food was typical airline fare, kids meals were good, served first and drinks were plentiful !

Landed on time, queues at immigration weren’t too bad and we were in the country around 2pm local time. Our luggage came off the carousel fairly early on but there was no sign of the pushchair which we’d checked in with the cases. Typically – the pushchairs were the last things offloaded so we wasted at least 30 mins waiting around Off to pick up our ‘in terminal’ Dollar car which turned out to be – fill in the paper work in terminal then get the shuttle bus out to the Dollar depot to get the car , it was around 4pm before we finally left in our Dodge Grand Caravan to head up the Florida Turnpike.


....next episode fun and games finding our Villa

Day 1 - the arrival

[KayleeUK]

You were spoiled on your flight then Tracey..great start

[Minniespal]

Great start ~ Can't wait for the rest.