View Single Post
Old 8 Sep 12, 11:35 AM  
Link to this Post
#3
mkingdon
Thread Starter
Imagineer
 
Join Date: Oct 03

mkingdon's Reviews
Restaurant Reviews: 2
DIBB Villa Reviews: 1

theDIBB Guidebook
Guidebook Photos: 8









We finally landed at around 2.10pm, local time, in Atlanta. The efficiency of Atlanta airport is very impressive. Within forty minutes we had cleared immigration, including the most miserable git of an officer, claimed and redropped baggage and done security ready for the second leg. We caught the monorail to the F gates, and again headed for food. This was mainly for Emily, as she still refuses to eat on a plane. She had some fries and onion rings, the diet of champions, and we all helped out a little of course. They were lovely and $14.

We then wandered to the gate, and I reacquainted myself with US plumbing and those enormous gaps under the cubicles. I’d still give it five minutes if I were you.

Delta were again begging for volunteers to not fly on this leg, but for a measly $200 each. No chance of us not going on this one having given up a king’s ransom to fly this far today. This begging delayed boarding but somehow we still managed to push back on time. We sat with the females in a three together with me across the aisle which meant that I was a little oblivious to the abject terror at the quite bumpy turbulence we had pretty much all the way to Orlando. We did land on time, much to Louise’s eventual relief, and then proceeded to taxi for roughly the same time we’d been in the air.

This may all be in the mind as we are at this point so close to getting the car and gaining freedom, but the baggage claim also seemed to take an age. With cases secured, I parked Louise and the girls on some seats and set off in search of the Dollar desk, fearing that they would merely slow me down. I could now man walk.

Dollar was pretty much the furthest desk away from where I had left everyone. The queue was also long, and very, very slow moving. Some folks were there for literally twenty minutes. Seriously folks, what are you doing for all that time? You hand over your voucher, they tap at some keys pretending to do stuff, you refuse to buy whatever it is they insist you need, somehow you still have to hand over a credit card and be charged something, and then you head for the garage.

When I get my turn, I’m done in a matter of minutes, which is a common affliction for men of my age, and I am trekking all the way back to the women folk and the cases, only to then drag them all the way back up to the Dollar desk so we can get the car.

We are told we can select any car we like from the minivan section. I would normally revel in such a thing, but remember Louise is on the wrong end of a terrifying flight, no sleep, strong pills and a few red wines? Therefore, we just “pick any ******* car” quickly, and drive off. It wasn’t until the next day that I understood we had a Dodge Caravan. It was lovely.

I broke out the sat nav at this point, but being in the underground garage it kept throwing up messages that I couldn’t quite see whilst trying to navigate the Dodge behemoth thought the tight turns, and present the right paperwork to be let out of the garage so I just “OKd” them all. It turned out that I had basically disabled the GPS, which is pretty critical for successful navigation.

I quickly realised the sat nav had no clue what where we were, so this meant I had to use the force and somehow found signs for Disney, and then managed to correct the lack of GPS about three quarters of the way to our villa, which was handy to guide us into the final tricky stages. Oh yes, as soon as we emerged from the car rental garage it started to rain…immediately, and a lot. It continued to do this on and off for the whole journey to the extent that it was at times very hard to see where we were going. How we all laughed at this hilarious turn of events.

We encountered several tolls on the way. Luckily I had an attractive fanny pack full of last year’s US coin shrapnel. It was at this point that I congratulated myself for bringing that change and really gave myself a pat on the back for putting said fanny right at the bottom of Ryan the rucksack, as I now had to navigate the unfamiliar huge car into the right toll booth lane, whilst reaching behind me to open Ryan, reach the fanny pack, open it and liberate the right coinage all without looking. Are we having fun yet?

Somehow, I scrape together the required metal to get through the tolls and get to the villa with only minor unnecessary detours and fallings out.

The villa was a delight, but any major exploration of it could wait until tomorrow.






I dumped the females and luggage and immediately turned around bound for Wal-Mart. I had essentials to buy and some tea to locate. I returned shortly with both, but Rebecca had been defeated and had already gone to bed, so the remaining three ate the pizza, watched the Appliance Direct channel (yes, he has an entire channel these days), after spending a joyous ten minutes figuring out how the TV and cable worked, and then fell into bed at 10.30pm local time, or 3.30am UK time, whichever makes you feel most tired.
__________________
mkingdon is offline Boy Mouse Click to view Members Trip Plans Add Member to Ignore List