Arriving, The Villa & Sarah
The captain announced our decent into Sanford after about 8 hours. I must admit that I don’t like landing at all, it scares me silly!! So with sweaty palms I reached out for Steve’s hand. The landing wasn’t too bad but Steve was grimacing because I had squeezed his hand into submission!
Upgraded passengers were first off the plane (another plus!) and then into immigration. It was empty! Our forms were checked by one of the ladies before telling us which desk to queue for. We can’t have been stood there more than 2 minutes when we were called forward. A very nice man checked all our passports, did the finger check thing and then the photo/eye thing (I think?), there was a small panic as Daron’s seemed to take an age and he had to re-do everything. But all was well, we were stamped where necessary and sent on our merry way. Last time we were in Sanford it took us over an hour to get through immigration, so we were pretty pleased. Next onto get the suitcases.
Well, we must have been one of the first few families through to luggage collection so we positioned ourselves round the conveyor belt (like you do) and waited. The conveyor belt starts off and a barrage of suitcases come flying out. Big ones, small ones, bright ones, but not ours! It seemed that everyone else’s on the plane came off before ours and they never come off at the same time do they? I think all in all we were about an hour waiting.
Next we were onto the dollar car hire desk. Again, we were sent in the right direction and told that only the drivers were allowed to go towards the desk and all other members of the party must wait outside in the car lot. We had 2 cars between the families but we had decided that we would each go on the others insurance in case we wanted to swap and change about etc.
The queues seem to move fairly quickly then it was our turn – we had to go to separate desks but explained that we wanted to be on each car. Richard’s seemed to move pretty quick and he was soon over to our lady to get our details. Ours seemed to be taking an age so I asked what the problem was. Turns out they were waiting for the 7 seaters to come back in. After about 15 minutes, kids were getting fed up of waiting so we asked what could be done. The lady went to her supervisor and came back and they only thing they could do was offer an upgrade to one with a sat nav for $70 so we took it because we really couldn’t be bothered waiting anymore.
We piled all the suitcases in the back and I got in (I was driver for all the holiday) and started trying to fathom out how to drive the thing! Richard pulled up in his Lincoln and explained the controls to me and slowly we set off out of the airport and headed for the 417. I soon got used to the driving but the only problem was I couldn’t fathom out how to move the seat forward so I spent the entire journey from Sanford to Kissimmee with my foot only just reaching the pedal!!
We hadn’t bothered with the Sat Nav because we had directions to the villa so we assumed we would be fine, but on the way Steve tried to figure out how to use it. As we came off the 417 we made a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in Celebration, don’t ask me how but I soon realised the mistake and headed back to the 192. It brought back memories of 2003 driving by Old town. The kids were getting excited in the back. By now it must have been about 10.30pm and I was starting to get tired, we knew the signs to look out for but somehow must have missed them and before I knew it we were on the US27 which I know was wrong. We pulled into the first petrol station and asked for directions – they both looked at me blank but said you need to be back on the 192!
So back on the 192, Steve frantically trying to figure out how the Sat nav worked. I was getting crotchety and short-tempered (oops!) so again we pulled in to ask for directions, this time stopping at the Best Western. I went in the reception and there was another lady asking for directions to Liki Tiki village (ha – not just us methinks!!). The girl on rece
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