Day -1 21st August (Wednesday) The day in which we fly.
Apologies for minimal pictures but airports and planes are fundamentally boring. And there was lots of aeroplanes and airports.
It was an early start, about 5am. 2 of us went through the shower. I'm pretty sure I forced zach to have a bath the night before. We left at 6 for a 10 min drive to Heathrow Terminal 2. Luckily we had a bit of time in hand as I might have missed a turn to the terminal and had to go round a little bit more but it was only an extra couple of mins.
We dropped the car on level 4 of the short stay car park. And a nice man took my keys and gave me the details on how to reclaim the car at the end of the holiday. It is so easy with no waiting around and minimal lugging of luggage. And it was in a deal with the hotel stay so only £10 more than a long stay carpark. Really worth it.
We were flying using united, with a plane change in Houston. We checked in using the machines at the airport, I had tried to use the app but it was a faff to get our passports scanned and I gave up. I was expecting to be near the back of the plane, as when I had gone in to the system to request seats that was all that was on offer. However we were nicely surprised to find we had been bumped up to economy plus for the first leg of the journey. Serious result.
We gave away our two bags of hold luggage and went to security which was a doddle, no taking off shoes in the uk. As soon as we were through we filled up our water bottles from the slowest machine ever.
Then it was breakfast time. Might have been getting a bit hangry So we found a restaurant and ate a passable full english (amelia and me) and zach had pancakes. I might have had copious amounts of coffee too.
Then we found some sandwiches and cakes for the plane for when zach won't eat the plane food and/or we get hungry.
Headed over towards the gate which is a long walk down under some tarmac and back up. We were very early but happy to sit and play on phones with free wifi.
Then we get on a plane. We take off on time at 9.30. A nine hour flight. Very boring but due to the upgrade there is some legroom. We were fed a meal quite quickly. We watched movies. It was definitely chilly. I wrote down I was cold.
We landed at Houston at 13.45. Our next plane took off at 16.30 so just under 3 hours.
And I've never got into the states so easily. This is the week after they had problems with immigration and it had taken 4 hours to get through so in the plane we had filled out 2 paper forms (as zach has a different surname) but we didn't need the.
Being further up the plane helped. We walked off and made it to the immigration hall before most of the plane. Got straight to a machine and scanned our passports and answered the questions. Then walked over to a person, I had my fingerprints done handed in the paper from the machine and got our passports stamped. It took all of 10 mins!!!!!!! Then we had to pick up our luggage which was already on the carousel and walk about 20 meters to drop it off again. This was all going swimmingly.
We got on their sky train (read fakeorail) and went from terminal e to terminal c. We had to go through security again zach didn't have to take off his shoes as he was under 12. I downed a bottle of water. And we were through.
Then we found a wendy's and ate burgers and fries. Sometimes fried food and lots of calories are required. We were all getting tired now but we had what felt like a long wait for the next leg. Couldn't find anywhere to fill up water bottles so had to buy a couple.
Our last flight was another couple of hours. We were near the back and there was no leg room. We survived.
Orlando was easy as we were now internal so a quick fake o rail ride were my fingernails were admired..
amelia did them I'm pretty sure this is her hand but mine looked very similar. I've never been through the local side before. It looked slightly tattier that the international side. Picked up our luggage and headed for the ME.
Still had all our hand luggage at this point.
Bus was fine. Unfortunately zach left his bag on the bus. With his phone, one book and some colouring stuff in. We were dropped off at all star sports. We realised this once I had picked up our magic bands from reception. So the bus had long gone. So we headed to our room. I phoned to report it lost, got a case number but it was never found.
We went to bed and were asleep by 9... it was a long day travelling.
Next up: the one were we revisit old haunts.
