Week One
Hi All,
Our vacation got off to a good start by driving to Gatwick area on the Friday evening and staying at the Ifield Court Hotel overnight. Nice comfortable old style hotel offering us bed and breakfast and car parking for the whole four weeks of our vacation for 85 pounds. We had an early start on Saturday, 6.30 am check-in, so got a continental breakfast of toast, jam or marmalade, fruit juice and tea or coffee delivered to our door at 5.45 am. The hotels shuttle bus only took a few minutes to get us to the airport for check-in. Nice to not have that normal early morning dash to the airport worrying about being held up and late.
We were flying with Delta for the first time and although all the other desks were open and busy, Delta’s was shut. We had to wait for them to open but at least we were at the head of the queue. The check-in girl noticed I was walking with a limp and using a cane so immediately offered assistance in getting to the gate and assistance through-out the trip. The flight left reasonably on time and we had bulkhead seats, so quite good space in front of us. The seats were rather narrow and being quite a hefty 6 footer I was not very comfortable in the seat. Dallas being smaller was quite happy with her seat.
We were traveling via Atlanta which is an absolutely huge airport. So I was very grateful for the wheelchair assistance when we found our connecting flight was the other end of the airport. We had a 2 hour break between flights and we needed most of that time to get through the various formalities for entering the US and to get to the gate. The flight to Tampa was very short and it seemed as if we were descending to land almost as soon as we had settled ourselves.
We had pre-booked our hire car through Orlando Villas with Dollar, including full insurance. The clerk at Dollar still tried to persuade us to take additional insurance cover which we refused. He also tried to persuade us to up grade the vehicle and was quite put out when we insisted that the intermediate car was quite enough for the two of us. His comments almost bordered on rudeness.
The journey out of Tampa airport was very straight forward and we were soon on the I4 heading to our villa. The journey took 1h 15m and once out of the Tampa metro area very easy driving to Crescent Lakes.
The first week has been taken up with “Retail Therapy” for Dallas and Xmas light putting up for me. We can’t compete with the displays of some of the other villas but we wanted to join in as much as we could. We took a drive around Celebration and the light displays around there are wonderful. Something I had not seen before were large blow up figures with lights inside. The figures range from Snowmen, Santas and Disney characters. One street was covered with SNOW and looked beautiful.
On the 19th we had tickets for Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party and very much wanted to wear our OV tee-shirts being supplied by Ruth another OV owner. Despite having flown into Florida on the 18th she very kindly allowed us to collect our tee-shirt that night. (Thanks again Ruth). Unfortunately the 19th proved to be a very unseasonably cold day (36 degrees) and thick jackets were the order of the day rather than tee-shirts. We failed to spot any of the many OV members who were there.
The special shows put on for the party and the special Christmas parade were really worth seeing and we had a great time. The free hot chocolate and cookies were especially enjoyed in the cold weather. The fireworks can only be described as SPECTACULAR. We were able to sit drinking our hot chocolate and watch the show as it raged over the castle. The park was beautifully decorated and although busy did not seem too crowded. The longest wait we had for a ride was only twenty minutes.
We also saw for the first time the new “Philharmagic” show. This was a 3D movie featuring all the main Disney characters and was so fantastic we were all disappointed when it finished. Disney plan to issue 3D films on general release in the next few years and I recommend going to see th
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