Trip Report - 28th April to 7th May 2004
Well it actually started out on the 27th, a drive down from Nottingham to stay in the Slough/Windsor Marriott for the night. Why more people don’t do it I’ll never know – I’d hate to have to try and negotiate the M25 in order to catch a flight – especially when it only costs £10-£15 more than 10 days parking would be (and that’s included in the hotel price).
Up bright and early – caught the Hoppa bus to the airport, through check-in and off through security and onto the plane with no fuss at all. We were flying Virgin and were lucky enough to end up on one of their 747-400 Jumbos with the new V-Port system. Excellent – over 500 hours of video as well as games – you’ll never get bored. A slight detour for weather meant a flight time of 8 hours instead of the scheduled 9.5!
We landed in Miami and guess what – it was pouring with rain! Although the temperature was still in the 80s.
Immigration was a pain – we queued for about 1.5 hours and everyone in front of us in the queue seemed to take forever – we only seemed to be at the desk for about 2 minutes! The immigration officer did seem to be taken with my girlfriend’s surname ‘Fox’ so maybe that helped!!!
We picked up the hire car from Hertz (I get a too good to miss deal through work) and it was off to find our hotel for 2 nights – the Winterhaven right on Ocean Drive. I could easily get used to waking up to this view every morning…
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A very relaxing day was spent wandering around the Art-Deco district before off we were on the drive up to Orlando. We took the A1A up the coast until we got fed up and then cut across to the I95 before finishing our journey on the US192.
We decided that this time we would just do Disney and leave Universal/Seaworld etc for next time.
The first full day in Orlando was spent at MGM studios – May 1st was MGM’s 15the Anniversary and apparently they were giving out commemorative coins but we never saw any. We went straight for the Tower of Terror – good news – they’ve made it worse! Is the current slogan – random ride sequences mean that the number of drops and how far you drop is different every time. We only queued for about 10 minutes.
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Then it was onto the Rockin’ Rollercoaster and the longest queue of the holiday (60 minutes) and it definitely rocks!
We then progressively worked our way around everything and I mean EVERYTHING!! In four visits I still haven’t seen Indiana Jones all the way through – technical difficulties meant the show was abandoned again!
Day 2 (Sunday) was spent at Epcot – we arrived right on 9am and headed straight for Mission Space – on the way we picked up a fastpass ticket for Test Drive and joined the 5 minute (yes 5 minute) queue and pretty much walked straight into our briefing.
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I was really surprised with how empty Epcot was and once again we did everything we possibly could and by the time we made for home our legs were feeling very heavy!
Day 3 would’ve been a washout has we not been eagerly watching the weather forecast – thunderstorms pretty much all day would have marred a day at the parks but we did the obligatory shopping at Beltz and the Florida Mall
Day 4 was the Animal Kingdom – all the advertising is saying that it’s Nah-Ta-Zu (not-a-zoo) even though it is really – a very good one, but still a zoo!
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We got there early and had breakfast at the Rainforest Café before heading for Africa and the safari. Saw more animals than I ever have there before…
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Then it was off to Asia and the river rapids as well as to see the tigers…
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The day was finished off with a trip to Downtown Disney and some more shopping.
Day 5 was the Magic Kingdom and although there is still the buzz when you g
