PART 2: AND THEY’RE OFF!
It was one of those very rare mornings where we didn’t have to tell the kids twice to get out of bed. They got up, got dressed and looked like they were packing more energy than the Duracell bunny.
We arrived at Newcastle airport around 7am, got checked in straight away and headed up to the Departure Lounge with me getting stopped and searched going through security (just like I always do).
We decided to kick off the holiday in style with a cooked breakfast whilst we waited. Three hours passed reasonably quickly and it was time to board the plane.
We took off exactly on time and settled down for the 9 hour flight and I had already warned the kids that I didn’t want to hear the phrase “Are we there yet?!” until at least 8 hours into the journey.
There was a decent selection of in flight movies on the plane so settled down to watch Slumdog Millionaire. I gave up after about half an hour as when I had the sound turned up it tended to distort and when I had the sound turned down I couldn’t hear due to the noise of the plane. Besides, those free ‘in-ear’ headphones were so uncomfortable and hurting my ears.
Time seemed to drag on the plane, I could see the kids becoming restless and then we felt a bump...
As we approached the east coast of the States we ran into some pretty rough turbulence. It normally doesn’t bother me but I do admit to feeling slightly concerned at the seatbelt light being illuminated for the last 3 hours of the journey. The cabin crew didn’t even serve tea or coffee as they buckled up themselves for the last hour or so.
My missus is a terrible flyer and her face seemed to change colour from white to bright red and back again multiple times during our descent. The colour drained from Ben’s face as he felt sick.
They put on the ‘Welcome to Florida’ video as we juddered our way down toward Sanford airport.
I then remembered I still had a 45 minute drive, in a strange car, on the wrong side of the road, without my brother to navigate for me. I started feeling nervous too...
Anyways, we landed safely around 3pm local time – the pilot got a round of applause – which is something I’ve not heard in a plane for a long time. We stood in the immigration line and my wife heard the pilot talking to the cabin crew as they went passed “I don’t know how I landed that as I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face on the way in!” he said. That obviously did wonders for my wife’s fear of flying...
We got our luggage pretty quick and exited the airport after minimal fuss and the heat hit us. Wow! It was HOT!!!
We headed for the Tour Operator desk as we had been told and I was greeted by a really friendly guy who sounded exactly like Tom Hanks. He took my paperwork and then said “You do know about the issues with your villa don’t you?”
ERR....WHAT?!
“No” I replied.
“Oh, I thought they would have told you. “ he said. “There have been maintenance problems with the property over in Hampton Lakes so we have upgraded you to a better property in Legacy Park”. He also told me I had to drive to Seaworld for 8am the next morning to meet the reps and fill in the villa registration form.
After a long and pretty rough flight I think the only words I could muster up was “OK...” as I took the documentation pack from him and headed over to the Alamo Office to pick up our car.
The guy at the Alamo desk was also very friendly. He even managed to work a Jedi mind trick on me and get me to upgrade from a Compact to an SUV.
We were introduced to our vehicle. Two words – MONSTER TRUCK!
It was actually quite a standard size SUV (Chevrolet Tahoe) but when you’re used to driving a 1.5 Renault Megane it was a monster truck to me. The guy said – “you’ll be ok with this won’t you?” and headed back to the office. I just smiled, gave him a tip and said “Oh yes!” ( a bit like the Churchill dog does).
Had he just done another Jedi min
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