Short Trip Report Pt.1 - 1st Week

Well, here we go .........................

Miriam, Jeff, Jared & Charlottes trip to Florida April 10th - 24th

After the usual pre-departure last minute triple checking etc. our lift to the airport arrived and we were off

Arrived at Newcastle airport in plenty of time for the 11:55am flight to find it was delayed, an announcement was due at 12:30 so we weren't expecting to be airborne until after 1pm MyTravel had indeed got my medical request and we were allocated seats 15e,f,g,h these were 2 in the centre section and 2 window/aisle with a bulkhead in front of them.

At 12:15 we got a boarding call and hurried off to the gate, sat in the departure lounge for 15mins then everyone was told to get out as they hadn't done a second security check!, we now had about 200 people stuffed into the corridor leading to the lounge and we gradually filtered back through and sat down again, about 1pm we were on the plane and almost ready to go, the seats were very narrow with fixed arm rests and seat pitch was only about 29'!. I managed to squeeze my bum in and realised I really mustn't fly charter again if I can't get premier seating!. After 3 head counts we were told we were a passenger missing and were delayed a further 30mins until he turned up.

After a fairly uneventful flight and an edible chicken meal we were landing at sunny Sanford Airport No problems with immigration though they did ask why I was visiting again after I was there in Nov/Dec last year!. Picked the minivan up from Dollar who tried to sell me an upgrade to an SUV as a 7 seater minivan may be too small for 2 adults and 2 kids!. MyTravel gave me the hotel details and decent directions, The Orlando International Resort at 7400 I-Drive, I'd never heard of it but it was about 150yds up I-Drive after Sand Lake Road, just past the Quality Inn and before Pizza Hut. Turns out (after a quick net search) it used to be called The Ramada Inn Resort Orlando.

Room was the usual 2 bed room but with only a mini fridge, not much use with 2 kids who go through juice & soda like water!, also no microwave and reception didn't have a larger fridge or a microwave we could hire so I went to Walmart on Sand Lake Rd and bought one for £18, had to take it back as it had a huge dent in it!. I wouldn't recommend the hotel, we were in the rear block and noise from the I-4 was quite loud, also the large swimming pool had a concrete roof over it so the noise echoed around making it worse. We had a bad night the following Saturday as there was a double wedding reception with disco until about 1am, then guests going home, shouting goodnight, knocking on the wrong room doors etc.

We went to the MyTravel meeting the next morning and sat through about 40mins of soft sell for overpriced tickets & trips etc. and then drove off to Seaworld for the rest of the day, the parks were quite busy both weeks with lines over an hour for the more popular rides. Seaworld was busy but still enjoyable, the kids wanted to see the shows and about 7pm we headed back to the hotel.

The rest of the 1st week we just couldn't get into the time zone and were over sleeping most days, in the end we decided to oversleep and do 1/2 days at the parks, this was more relaxing and we did a couple of non-park days and an evening visit to SeaWorld to see Shamu Rocks America and the fireworks which were quite poor really

Universal & IOA were busy, we did 2 trips the 1st week and apart from the smaller rides with 20min wait times we left the rest until our 2nd week.

On Thursday we drove to Tampa, we had planned to do Busch Gardens on Thursday, meet up with our friend Katie on Friday morning and do it again together, then drive up to Spring Hill and stay there Friday night so Miriam & Katie could spend Saturday together doing horsie things while I took the sprogs to Weeki Wachee Springs Park ..................... of course this all went horribly wrong (as usual)

We found out on Wednesday night that Katie had been told she now couldn't have the Friday & Saturday off work she normal