to the kind people on this discussion board! We have been back 48 hours now and just starting to come to so thought I would enlighten you a little about how things went on our holiday.
We flew from Glasgow to Sanford on 13/8 which firstly involved travel from north London, the previous day. We drove along the motorways and with 3 stops we were there in about 8 hours. Stayed at the Holiday Inn express at the airport which was fine, excellently positioned just a short walk from the terminal by covered walkway. We left the car keys with them and they parked our car (at the airport long stay!) and had it ready for us on our return. They didn't book us in until the next morning so my 15 days parking was adequate with no additional to pay! Not bad at all for £75 (Holiday extras).
We took a walk over to the airport that evening and bought snacks and got an early night in order to be up at 5.30am the next morning. Was surprised that we were able to do this with the increased security and there were armed police around the airport - very scary. Next day check in was really well organised on our Flygobespan flight which was all on time. The lack of hand luggage was actually quite nice and we settled into our perfectly adequate no frills seats to watch a variety of programmes and a couple of films which helped to pass the time. Had snacks on board which were not too expensive but did mount up over the 8 hours. Luggage retrieval in Sanford was a breeze and security was ok too. Headed for the Hertz car hire desk where we were upgraded 2 classes to full size, which was very nice and I got to drive for free because we have number 1 club membership, which costs nothing! Everything went so well I couldn't have wished for better.
Our first weeks accomodation was at the Hilton Grand Vacations resort at Seaworld, which I arranged as an exchange for our Tenerife timeshare. We had a 5th floor room in Sandys House (car park view though!) which was lovely, a real home from home. Beautifully decorated, and well kept. We spent a very happy week there. The second week we transferred to Vistana Villages, another exchange and that was lovely too. We had a gound floor unit in building 14 at the Keys. Initally I preferred being higher up but by the end of the holiday the ease of access was appreciated. We also had a pool view which was nice.
Whilst in Florida we visited Seaworld (Mondays 14/8 & 21/8), Busch Gardens (Tuesday 15/8), Universal Studios (Thursday 17/8), Islands of Adventure (Friday 18/8) Discovery Cove (Saturday 19/8) Animal Kingdom & EPCOT (Wednesday 23/8), MGM & Magic Kingdom (Friday 25/8). Having been a couple of times before we managed to have 4/5 lazy days around the pool this time which was a nice rest in between the parks. We managed to fit in all the new rides at the disney parks over 2 days, Expedition Everest, Primeval Whirl, Dinosaur, Soarin, Mission SPACE, Mickey's philharmagic, Pirates of the Carribean and loads more. The parks were quite manageable beacause I had planned to do them mostly on the recommended less busy days, but even when we did have to adapt the plan we found the queues to be no more than 30 minutes by doing the main attractions early in the day. Mind you later in the day was another story, EE ran out of fastpasses by 12o/c!
As a real sun worshipper I was worried about the weather at this time of year and we did have rain at times but it really was a welcome respite from the heat and humidity which I believe was not as bad as in recent years.
Anyway I will be keeping an eye on the borads to see if there are any questions I can answer, and might even get round to doing a full trip report at some stage this time. Hope this is ok to post on the baord, not too long, I just want to give as much info as possible.
Thanks again to all who helped me to have a wonderful holiday.
Debbie
We flew from Glasgow to Sanford on 13/8 which firstly involved travel from north London, the previous day. We drove along the motorways and with 3 stops we were there in about 8 hours. Stayed at the Holiday Inn express at the airport which was fine, excellently positioned just a short walk from the terminal by covered walkway. We left the car keys with them and they parked our car (at the airport long stay!) and had it ready for us on our return. They didn't book us in until the next morning so my 15 days parking was adequate with no additional to pay! Not bad at all for £75 (Holiday extras).
We took a walk over to the airport that evening and bought snacks and got an early night in order to be up at 5.30am the next morning. Was surprised that we were able to do this with the increased security and there were armed police around the airport - very scary. Next day check in was really well organised on our Flygobespan flight which was all on time. The lack of hand luggage was actually quite nice and we settled into our perfectly adequate no frills seats to watch a variety of programmes and a couple of films which helped to pass the time. Had snacks on board which were not too expensive but did mount up over the 8 hours. Luggage retrieval in Sanford was a breeze and security was ok too. Headed for the Hertz car hire desk where we were upgraded 2 classes to full size, which was very nice and I got to drive for free because we have number 1 club membership, which costs nothing! Everything went so well I couldn't have wished for better.
Our first weeks accomodation was at the Hilton Grand Vacations resort at Seaworld, which I arranged as an exchange for our Tenerife timeshare. We had a 5th floor room in Sandys House (car park view though!) which was lovely, a real home from home. Beautifully decorated, and well kept. We spent a very happy week there. The second week we transferred to Vistana Villages, another exchange and that was lovely too. We had a gound floor unit in building 14 at the Keys. Initally I preferred being higher up but by the end of the holiday the ease of access was appreciated. We also had a pool view which was nice.
Whilst in Florida we visited Seaworld (Mondays 14/8 & 21/8), Busch Gardens (Tuesday 15/8), Universal Studios (Thursday 17/8), Islands of Adventure (Friday 18/8) Discovery Cove (Saturday 19/8) Animal Kingdom & EPCOT (Wednesday 23/8), MGM & Magic Kingdom (Friday 25/8). Having been a couple of times before we managed to have 4/5 lazy days around the pool this time which was a nice rest in between the parks. We managed to fit in all the new rides at the disney parks over 2 days, Expedition Everest, Primeval Whirl, Dinosaur, Soarin, Mission SPACE, Mickey's philharmagic, Pirates of the Carribean and loads more. The parks were quite manageable beacause I had planned to do them mostly on the recommended less busy days, but even when we did have to adapt the plan we found the queues to be no more than 30 minutes by doing the main attractions early in the day. Mind you later in the day was another story, EE ran out of fastpasses by 12o/c!
As a real sun worshipper I was worried about the weather at this time of year and we did have rain at times but it really was a welcome respite from the heat and humidity which I believe was not as bad as in recent years.
Anyway I will be keeping an eye on the borads to see if there are any questions I can answer, and might even get round to doing a full trip report at some stage this time. Hope this is ok to post on the baord, not too long, I just want to give as much info as possible.
Thanks again to all who helped me to have a wonderful holiday.
Debbie
We land on monday 16th October (my birthday - not sure how awake i'll be to enjoy it....), and none of us are back to work until thursday 19th..... plenty of time to sleep, sleep, sleep and transfer piccies / movies around!
