Toarin' - August 2015. Day 1 - Travel day

[Scruffette]

Day 1 - Travel Day

US Airways/ AA Indirect Flights MCR-PHL-MCO. Check-in at Rosen Plaza. Dinner at Olive Garden.


I woke up figuring it must be almost time for my alarm to go off. It was actually 4.20am. I could hear a few families heading off. We were the room closest to the lifts which wasn’t ideal. I’m pretty good at sleeping through things, so don’t think it was this that woke me up.

I was probably awake for around 30 minutes and then fell asleep until my alarm went off at 6.30am. It was so nice not to have a 3am alarm like last time we went to Florida. I’d put a bunch of Disney songs on my phone, so this morning we woke up to the sound of ‘When will my life begin?’ from Tangled.

We used the wifi at the Premier Inn, but it was very slow. They do try and sell you and upgraded internet package. Over night we tried to download the Great British Bake Off to watch on our second flight. (we’d forgotten it was the first episode that night and only remembered as everyone was talking about it on facebook!). The download wasn’t possible over the wifi.

We were ready to leave the room at 7.20 am. We got down to reception where we were told that we hadn’t actually been booked on the shuttle! They ordered us a taxi instead, which turned out to be the same price. It was £3 each.

The journey to Terminal 3 took about 10 minutes. When we got to the US airways check in desk one of the boards listed a delay, and I worried about our connection, until I realised it wasn’t our flight. The American Airlines queue next to us was really long (for a New York flight) but ours was very short.

We checked in on the automatic machines, which all went through fine even with the issues I had with online check-in yesterday. We were each given two boarding passes, one for each flight. We proceeded to bag drop where the lady confirmed that we needed to pick up our luggage in Philadelphia. She also gave us our customs card.

Our cases weighed in at 15.5 and 15.3kg, with a weight limit of 23kg. My case also had a cabin case inside it. This meant lots of room for purchases!

We went through security. I fly from Terminal 3 at Manchester a lot domestically and they are always super organised. The queues were long, but moved quickly. Ollie’s tray got pulled aside for further inspection, as did my second tray which only had my ipad in.

Even with the extra search, we were through in 15 minutes.
The original plan for breakfast was something light, but as soon as we could smell fry ups we knew we had to change the plan!

There are two places to get this from at Terminal 3 – Trattoria Milano or Lion and Antelope. They were priced almost identically with the same elements. We went for the Lion and Antelope purely because they serve the beans in a separate pot. This was a winner for me as I don’t like my beans mixing with other foods! We both swapped out the black pudding for an extra hash brown.





The breakfast was exactly what we needed. It filled us up, which was the aim as we weren’t sure at this point what the plane food would be like.

With breakfast Ollie had a pint of Somersby and I had a pint of…. Water. Adventurous.



Alcohol early in the morning doesn’t do much for me, and I can’t mix alcohol with my travel sickness tablets anyway.

They didn’t serve hot chocolates (I don’t drink tea or coffee) so Ollie went to get me a takeaway one from nearby. Ollie seems to be a master of flirting with people to get free extras with hot chocolates. He managed to score free cream this time. The person working there didn’t seem to know where the cream came from, and Ollie had to put it on himself! This was exactly what I wanted with my cooked breakfast.



We used our table as a base, and it had a plug socket so we made sure the iPad was charged, as I hadn’t plugged it in properly last night. I went off to get some water from boots (as boots always seems to be cheaper than WH Smith). The hour of free wifi at the aiport was very good, and we managed to download Bake Off!

I think we had a good amount of time at the airport. I didn’t feel rushed and we could have a nice leisurely breakfast. There’s not masses to look round at terminal 3, but this didn’t bother us.
We were called for boarding at 10.05 and our section as being boarded at 10.15 am.

I got stopped for an extra security check before boarding the plane. Standard. The guy searching my bag made a joke about confiscating the pastries I had in my bag (which we were planning on eating on the plane) and I wasn’t sure if he was joking. Turns out he wasn’t as they were still in my bag when I checked as we sat down.

The lady who was searching me asked me to take off my sandals. The lining was coming out of them and it looked like I was trying to hide something in them…

Anyway, they deemed me safe to fly and we found our seat. The configuration was 2-4-2 and we had a pair of seats in the middle of the first section. I tried to book as far forward as possible, in case we were tight for time on the layover.

Although it was a US airways flight, we were on an American Airlines plane and the staff were all AA. I know the two companies have merged, but they still seem to be quite separate in lots of ways. I was worried when I saw the plane as I didn’t know if the AA planes had IFE, but they did.

We took off perfectly on time and the captain said the flight would be 7 hours 10 mins. The time really flew by and it was one of the best transatlantic flights I’ve been on.

They came round with drinks 4 times during the flight. The drinks were full sized cans and had a full selection (even coke zero and diet dr pepper). The wines were being poured from full bottles and were very generous in size.

The choice for lunch was meatballs or pesto pasta. I have the meatballs with herby mash. It looks a bit sad, but was actually ok. We had a pretzel bread roll which I enjoyed, even if it wasn’t quite like Le Cellier. There was also soft cheese and crackers and a Cherry crumble cake, which Ollie loved.







Small tubs of vanilla ice cream were bought out a couple of hours later.



A ‘snack’ was later offered which was a folded pizza and warm lemon sponge. Again, we both enjoyed these.

[Scruffette]

The inflight entertainment had a selection of new films and a large collection of less recent and classic films. There was plenty to choose from. The only downside was the touch screens. They weren’t very sensitive and it was difficult to scroll through the films. I was very conscious that I was annoying the lady in front of me, but I think everyone had the same problem. I watched the first half of the Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel as I wanted something light that I hadn’t seen before. I spent a lot of the flight sleeping , as I always do on flights. I did wake up for each of the food offerings though and Ollie got extra drinks for me when I was asleep. Ollie watched Chappie and then caught up on some humans on the iPad.

We landed ahead of schedule and did the ‘power walk’ to immigration where there was absolutely NO queue at all. There were actually immigration officers waiting. This was a massive novelty. We had a small wait for luggage as we made it through so fast. We were at the luggage carousel by the time we should have landed.

We picked up our cases, went through customs and dropped our cases, which was easily signposted. We had to go through security again which was very efficient.

We were all through by 2.05pm, so had loads of time. We had a nosey around Philadelphia airport and eyed up some food options for our layover on the way home.

I bought some water (at rip off ariport prices) and we found our gate. They announced it was a full flight, and people in certain sections with cabin cases would have to check the for free. However, they decided that the people who could keep their cabin cases with them were the ones all in the same sections, which wasn’t great planning.
Ollie went to get a tag for his bag, but when boarding came no one told him where to leave it. He ended up taking it on with him and there was loads of space for it. We noticed the baggage handlers were not being careful at all with the cases and were being thrown on and off the ramps.

This was our second plane:



We boarded around 3.30pm. The plane had to wait on the tarmac for 20minutes, but we still managed to land on time. I had a snooze on the flight and Ollie watched some more humans.

It was fab being able to walk straight off the plane and not clear immigration. I would definitely fly indirect again. It really broke up the travel day and didn’t feel any longer that a direct flight. The price saving was also significant.

We had a long wait for cases at the carousel. It was almost an hour from getting off the plane to getting luggage.

My case came off damaged. The wire was bent and sticking out of the case. There was no-one at the airport who could help us, so we emailed US Airways with photos. More on this later (much later…).

We went to the Mears shuttle desk for our transfers, which I had pre-boked for $18 each. We checked in at 7.35pm and were given a buzzer and were told it could be up to a 30 minute wait. The buzzer went off at 7.55pm and we were driving off by 8pm. There were a few other parties on our minibus but we were the first stop. We pulled up to the Rosen plaza and were checked in by 8.30pm.





While in the lobby we bought our Idrive passes – 3 days for $7 each.

Our room was on the top floor with an Idrive view. I emailed the hotel a few days before and we got exactly what we requested. The room was what we expected and good value at £40 ish per night (booked via travel republic).

A couple of room snaps:







The beds seemed to be quite narrow and were definitely smaller than the others we had this trip. The plug sockets were in the base of the lamp.

Something which confused us were the lights. We both spent some time searching for light switched. Turns out there weren’t any overhead lights, just the lamps throughout the room.

It was late and we were tired, but we weren’t deviating from the plan as we wanted to go to Olive Garden! It was a short walk from our hotel.

We checked in at 9pm and had a 15 minute wait. We ordered some soft drinks from the bar.

I signed up to their email club, so had a voucher for a free appetiser.

I had the salad and Ollie opted for the soup. The garlic breadsticks were amazing. Ollie was expecting more traditional breadsticks, but these were more like garlic bread.





As our free appetizer we had the lasagne fritta, which was deep fried lasagne slices covered in marinara sauce. There was so much cheese in this and was one of my favourite appetisers all trip.



For mains we both had the Create your Own ‘Tour of Italy’, which I think is no longer available. We both had chicken Parmigana, Zitti with five cheese marinara and Raviolli di Portebello.



The chicken was the star of the show, as you can’t really go wrong with deep frying chicken! The ziti was like a penne pasta bake and I liked the mushroom ravioli. However, we both did a poor effort and had left overs (although we both finished the chicken). We got asked if we wanted to take it to go, but declined as I didn’t think the past would keep very well.

In future I think I would order the traditional tour of Italy. However, I still enjoyed this meal. It’s not the best Italian food ever, but it was scrummy and filling.

One thing I did notice on the bill, is they had calculated the tip on the total including tax. I noticed this on a few places on I drive. I recalculated the tip on the total excluding tax and left this. We’d finished our meal by 10.20pm.



We stopped at Walgreens on the way home to pick up a case of water – 24 bottles for $2.99. This was a good deal, but heavy to carry back to the hotel. We were also after some breakfast items, but was a bit disappointed with the range. We picked up a muffin and a yogurt and fruit parfait. I had read Walgreens sold wine, but we couldn’t find any.

We got back to the room and fell into bed. A long day!

Day 2 - Seaworld

[tnkrbell]

Great travel day. Can't wait to visit Olive Garden on our trip. Those breadsticks are delish!

[Scruffette]

Originally Posted by tnkrbell

Great travel day. Can't wait to visit Olive Garden on our trip. Those breadsticks are delish!

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I could eat about 10 of them right now! Thanks for reading

[Milner]

Good travel day.

[joanna23]

Really looking forward to reading about your adventures. It sounds like a fab itinerary. Thanks for taking the time to share your fun!

[Scruffette]

Originally Posted by Milner

Good travel day.

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Thanks for reading

Originally Posted by joanna23

Really looking forward to reading about your adventures. It sounds like a fab itinerary. Thanks for taking the time to share your fun!

See more...

Thank you - I will try to get the next days up as soon as possible! The itinerary was great for has and had a little bit of everything

[collybird]

Your dinner sounds absolutely amazing, I'd have ordered exactly the same. Although I'm desperate to try the extra sauces you can buy for the breadsticks.

[Scruffette]

I didn't realise you could get different sauces for the bread sticks. A reason to go back! Thanks for reading

[Guest]

Great travel day! We stayed at the Rosen Plaza and Saratoga so I'm looking forward to reading the rest!