How We Became Volcano Refugees - Apr 2010

[Shamurocks]

Hello, and welcome to my first ever online trip report! I don’t know why I didn’t get into this sooner, and that’s why this reports a bit late but hopefully you’ll enjoy it.

Ok, so this trip was a fair while back to someone with a terrible memory, so I may be a bit patchy in places and no-where as detailed as other’s trip reports but I thought it needed reporting mainly because of how unusual it become (the title and my sig are a big hint!).

So to start off a bit of background information on those involved.
Me – a 17 year old 6th form (equivalent to senior in high school ) student from England. Loves Disney & SeaWorld and theme parks in general and also your official photographer for the trip (using a Nikon Coolpix S220. I’ve not been a member of this site long, and haven’t posted much apart from on the SeaWorld board, but that’s because I’m a huge SeaWorld fan and these board are so busy I sometimes struggle to keep up.

DSis – 15 year old Disney nut, we get on... mostly lol I finally got her to sign up to the boards, she’s “LittleGreenAlien” if you ever see here around. She loves Stitch and hidden Mickey searching.

DDad – 50 something who’s a bit of a big kid, but not so great on rides. Likes Disney but loves SeaWorld (like father, like daughter eh ).

(I won’t be posting many pictures of us, mostly because my Dad and Sister aren’t keen on their photos being online)


So this holiday was booked as our last proper family holiday before yours truly went off to university. ( I’ve decided to take a year out before university so it turned out we’ll be making 1 more trip) And the basic itinerary was:

5th April – Travel to Gatwick Airport, use the Twilight Check-in & stay over at the Hilton.
6th April – Fly to Orlando!
6th April  20th April – Stay 14 nights at the Lake Buena Vista Resort Village
20th April – Over- night flight back home.

I think that’s all you need to know for now, so here we go...

 

[Shamurocks]

Contents

Day 0 - Airport Stay

 

[Shamurocks]

Day 0 – Airport Stay

(Didn’t think to take any pictures of this day, so will have to be a wordy section)

So the day was finally here! I had been very excited for this trip and was looking forward to going back to my favourite place after an 18 month absence.

The pre-holiday airport stay has been part of our Orlando trips since 2001, for us it makes sense as Virgin Atlantic allow you to check in your luggage the night before (“Twilight Check-in”) and it avoids getting up at the crack of dawn for the flight the next day.

So about mid-afternoon my Uncle finally arrived to take us to the airport. Even though I knew we wouldn’t be flying to the next day, I could feel the holiday excitement building! We arrived, and checked in our luggage without a hitch (my suitcase was reasonably underweight for once – which would turn out to useful in a couple of weeks!) and headed to check into the Hilton.

The room was a bit unusual, it was a “triple” room, which I had never seen before, but suited the 3 of us perfectly. We had a reasonable view, and could see (but thankfully not really hear) the planes landing, which was nice.

After heading back to the terminal and having some dinner and doing a spot of shopping (can’t resist a look in Accessorize!) we set our alarms for the next morning and turned in, super excited for the next day.

 

[Shamurocks]

Day 1 – We're on Our Way!

Finally, the holiday properly started today, we were heading to sunny Florida! We got up, and checked out of the hotel and headed into the terminal. We walked straight past the check-in desks having waved goodbye to our luggage the night before, and made it through security and into departures.

After doing a spot of duty free shopping, to get myself a book for the flight, we headed to the V-Room. For those who don’t know, the V-Room is Virgin Atlantic’s lounge in the departure area at Gatwick, for a small fee you can get breakfast and drinks overlooking the runway. We had used the V-Room once before during our 2008 trip and loved it, so made sure we used it again.
We grabbed some breakfast and chairs near the windows and settled down to wait for our call to the gate.
A few shots of the view:

After what felt like an age, but was probably more like an hour or so, we were called to our gate, only to be met by another security search. Everyone was patted down and had their bags completely searched, which felt a little over the top but at least everyone was pleasant about it.

Our plane:

We took off, on time, at 11:15 and waved goodbye to England as we headed off towards the Atlantic ocean.

Since it was only a couple of months until my A-level exams, I had to revise on the plane , but here’s the proof I did :

But we were getting closer!

After a small bit of turbulence (resulting in some very messy revision notes) we finally landed at MCO. After doing the standard immigration and baggage collection (and the not so standard getting lost – you’d think after multiple trips we’d know where we’re going ) we picked up our transport to the hotel. No-one in our family drives so we got a limo from Virgin to take us to the hotel (it works out easier than a shuttle bus), and soon after pulled into Lake Buena Vista Resort Village and Spa.
We had stayed in this resort once before, and were very happy to be back. It suits our family very well as the rooms are more like mini apartments and they provide complimentary transport to all the theme parks. We would totally recommend it!

http://www.lbvorlandoresort.com/

We checked in, and headed to our room, in a different area of the hotel to where we had stayed before and were pleasantly surprised, we was very high up the building and had a huge balcony with some amazing views of the area:

We unpacked and headed over the road to WalMart to get some basic food (and doughnuts, I can’t get enough of American doughnuts) then went to the hotel’s Irish pub for dinner, which was simply amazing!
By this point after the long flight and everything else we was too tired to think about doing anything else and turned in for the night.