The One With All The Birthdays - Travel Day

RobynPrincess

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Joined
Nov 14, 2010
Travel Day

I was up at 7am, couldn't sleep anymore. I had been tossing and turning for a few hours before but I refused to let myself get up before 7am ;) So as you can imagine, when 7 o'clock rolled round I was outta that bed, showered and dressed moments later. I had made myself some new palazzo trousers for the flight as I thought they would be comfy but smart still. Sy grabbed a quick picture before we left the room.



We had booked 2 taxis at the front desk last night so we had to be down at reception by 8:55am. So we were killing time for a while once we were ready. We decided to head down to reception a little early to wait but we all arrived there at about the same time, don't think any of us could sleep! The taxi's had room for us and all of our baggage and cost the same as the airport hoppa would have cost without having to stop at any other hotels first - that was worth knowing for future reference. The reason we had to book taxis was because when I contacted the hoppa they wouldn't give us an answer as to whether they would take both scooters on the bus, they said it would be up to the driver, helpful.

We were dropped off by 9:15am. We made our way straight inside to check in and get the scooters sorted, they take a little longer to get booked in as you have to go through all the weight, battery type etc. We were soon checked in and making our way over to security which had no wait whatsoever - a bit different than what we were expecting! The news had been reporting huge delays and they were even selling fast track security, so we were very surprised to get through so quickly.

Once through we did a bit of shopping, parents bought a bottle of gin each to last throughout the trip (and they did get through it all haha), I bought a meal deal from Boots in case I didn't like the food on board. We just had time to grab some breakfast in Pret and made our way to the gate... It was here that we had a problem. My scooter was starting to run out of charge! I couldn't believe I had forgotten to charge it the night before. We ended up heading to the gate with my mum half pulling me along while I held onto the arm of hers! We must have looked a sight. At the gate I managed to find somewhere to plug in for a few minutes before they took the scooter down to the aeroplane.

It was gonna be a busy flight...



We were among the first to board, we were in row 41. hmmm. We had requested the bulkhead seats via special assistance for my parents (not for us) as my dad has had 2 new knees and can't bend his knees very far, on check in they told us they had put us into extra legroom instead but that wasn't the case. We were 1 row behind the bulkhead seats which were taken up by a family of 5 who only needed 1 skycot. It would have been much better to have 2 of them behind and my mum and dad have 2 of the seats with us behind them, but then maybe they had someone with special needs too who needed the extra room - who knows. There were actual extra leg room seats beside us which they could have been nice and put my parents in, I know they weren't sold out as I heard them say to a couple who were sat in them that they had been upgraded to those seats for free as they were frequent flyer gold members. Just feel like Virgin dropped the ball a bit with my parents. My dad was really in a lot of pain by the time we arrived in Miami and he had spent a lot of the flight up and walking around. That was the only downside of the flight though, the food was okay - Sy and I both had the creamy mustard chicken, the other option was Chilli.





It was pretty smooth all the way there, the fasten seatbelt sign only came on once throughout the trip. I watched a few movies to pass the time, Tammy, The Amazing Spiderman 2 and Bad Neighbours. I also watched some Big Bang and Friday Night Dinner (a British comedy). I even managed to get a little bit of sleep which helped pass the time. Through the flight we were brought round a passion fruit mousse, a fab ice lolly and then afternoon tea which was cheese and sun-dried tomato sandwich (yuk) with millionaires shortbread and some 'plane' crisps.







We landed on time and waited on the plane till it was almost empty. Once we got off there were 2 special assistance people waiting for us. The walk to immigration was immense! It must have taken a good 15 minutes to get there. There was no queue but as expected Sy was carted off again as he has a visa and not an ESTA. This time though they sent me with him! I wasn't a happy camper but Sy told me to shut it cause we didn't want to make them cross or give them a reason to keep us there any longer. Once they were done with him they let us go and off we went to wait for the bags. We picked up both scooters first and then waited an age for the rest of the bags. Some came out but then we were left waiting for the last 1 for ages. What was most annoying was there was loads of bags that had already been taken off and I said to Sy that one of them looked like his parents case, but he said they had already checked those.... Well guess what? I was right. Anne came over and went straight to it and said 'this is our last bag'. Grrr.

The queue to LEAVE the baggage hall was like nothing you have ever seen before, it was queueing round the room, there were hundreds and hundreds of people in that queue. It took about 45 minutes just to get out. Mum and I waited to the side as the queue zig-zagged loads and we were worried we would get stuck in the scooters. We joined the queue when the rest got to the front and were promptly told we should have joined the handicapped queue... Of course we should! Maybe someone could have pointed that out before? We certainly couldn't see one and there was absolute chaos in the baggage hall so how were we to know? When we finally were called forward to have our passports checked (again?!) the guy was so rude, as he looked as my dad my dad had turned his face away so he tutted loudly and then when he looked at Sy's passport he just went 'Glasses.' as a request for him to take them off. I mean how rude is that?! Disney this aint!

Once through we had to get on a monorail to the car hire centre, mum was back to pulling me through again, the charge had gone again... least this time it was fairly empty around us so less people to giggle ;)

First ride of the trip...



At Alamo we used the self service kiosk and we soon walking out to the car garage. We were sent over to the 15 seater aisle however there were no cars there :-/ we called someone over and then radioed for them to bring one round for us. We waited for about 5 mins before one arrived.

And here is 'The Beast', note I couldn't fit it all in one picture so had to take 2!





It may be 15 seats but there was ZERO boot space, nothing at all. Not even an inch. And the seats didn't collapse or anything. So before we could even leave we had to take the seats out and pile them on top of each other near the back and then pack all of the cases and scooters inside.

The drive to the hotel took about an hour cause of rush hour traffic and roadworks (when I booked the hotel I checked and google had it as 30 mins drive). We took all of the bags into the hotel but left the scooters in the car. We were given 2 rooms opposite each other and 1 room on another floor miles away, weird! We were all under one booking. The hotel was lovely, there were cookies on the check in desk so everyone helped themselves before heading up to the rooms.

The rooms were really gorgeous. I did notice the weird quilts though, they were really lumpy. This is obviously a think down there as our hotel in Key West had the same, it was definitely strange though.











Once we had unpacked a few things we needed we set off to find some food. We had passed a few places on the way in but by now we were all soooooo tired! It was gone 9pm as it had taken almost 3 hours to get out of the airport. The original plan was to head to Longhorns but we were all too tired to sit in anywhere so we went off in search of some take out. We ended up at Sonic which I've never been to before, the food wasn't too bad actually. The dad's had gone off with the thought that we were gonna eat in the garden area but we were too knackered and told them to come back as we were getting take out back to the rooms. We brought the food back and ate in our retrospective rooms, when done with dinner we totally crashed. Sy had a shower and I went straight to bed - without a shower!! That's totally unheard of for me as I like to 'wash the plane off' but I was so tired I couldn't help it. I was asleep before Sy had even got in the shower. I slept right through till the next morning.
 


Miami is definitely one of the worst airports I've encountered, it took us forever to get out of there too
 

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