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As expected i was awake for most of the night, I passed the time by dibbing and watching Tim Tracker on Youtube I must say the beds at the premier Inn are really comfy and we never have a bad night here. My alarm went off at 5:30am and i was the first one in the shower. Quick freshen up and i am ready to go, Andy went in next, however, the boys seem to be suffering from sticky mattress syndrome this morning! Err, hello...were going to Florida today! It took a lot of coaxing to get them out of bed and in the shower. Luckily, the shower had the desired effect and they were soon back in the land of the living, fully dressed and ready to go. I donned my Mickey ears and we left the room.

Lift Selfie :-)

After exiting the Premier Inn, we literally crossed the road and made our way up the escalator in to the North Terminal.

So Close

On approaching the TUI Check In desks, there was a little queue for Premium, which seemed to take forever. They had 2 counters open but one couple were at the desk ages, i think there was a problem with their hand luggage, i’m guessing it was too heavy and they didn't look very happy. Read the paperwork people!

Check In

We eventually checked in and waved goodbye to our suitcases, offering up a small prayer we would be reunited with them when we landed. We then headed for security, from memory it wasn't too long a wait but i was that person who had Calpole in my bag (yes, I'm one of those mums who take it whenever we travel) and i’d forgotten to put it in a clear bag So my bag was sent for a second screening, which took absolutely ages. No moaning as completely my fault. Once reunited with all our possessions we headed in to departures and oh my goodness was it busy! I’ve never seen the North Terminal so busy, it was rammed! Every seat and square inch of floor space was taken up by people sitting or standing. In then occurred to me this is the first time we had flown out of the North terminal since Virgin moved from the South to the North terminal and i wondered if that had made an impact? But, thinking about it they just swapped with BA, so it shouldn't really of make an impact. It's probably just the airport cramming as many flights as possible in to the busy holiday season. Even the restaurants and cafes had long lines, so I was very grateful at this point that we had booked a lounge. The lounges are located at the far end of the terminal by the departure gates. So we bypassed the busy shops and dodged our way through the crowds to reach the Club Aspire Lounge. We always book the Aspire lounge as we find it one of the quietest lounges with a good selection of food. There was plenty of seating available so we set up camp for a couple of hours. We plugged all our devices into the usb ports around us and helped ourselves to some brekkie. Offerings were bacon rolls, sausages, beans, eggs, a selection of pastries, cereals, fruit, yoghurts, fresh juice and hot drinks. There is also a bar serving alcoholic drinks, wine, beer and spirits are free but you have to pay for sparkling wine and champagne.

After breakfast i took a deep breath and ventured back out in to the departure terminal as i wanted to buy a bottle of Southern Comfort to take to the villa. Southern Comfort located, I didn't bother looking round at anything else and made my way back to the Aspire lounge.

We sat excitedly waiting for our gate to appear on the departure board. At 9:00am our gate appeared and we made our way to the plane. Take off was meant to be 9:40am, however, our plane was late arriving at Gatwick, so boarding didn't start until 9:40am. They made an announcement for everyone to board the plane and take their seats as quickly as possible so that we could push back. As we were travelling in Premium Club we were called for boarding first, our seats were Row 1 & Row 2. We were served an on board drink of sparkling wine or orange juice. Whilst having our drinks the rest of plane was boarded and we started pushing back.

Excited!

Amazingly, we were in the air by 10:05am! The captain made an announcement and apologised for the short delay and said our flight time should just be short of 9 hours I have to say at this point that TUI is undoubtedly our favourite airline to fly long haul. The aircraft itself is a new 787 Dreamliner, the quieter engines, improved cabin pressure and increased oxygen levels definitely help with air sickness and jet lag. Row 1 is also our preferred row for extra space. I know there have been discussions on here before about having people stand next to your seat waiting for the toilet etc, but this never happened once on our flight. There are 2 toilets in the Premium cabin, so there was never really a queue for the toilet, plus i think people are just considerate of over crowding you. I also like having first dibs on the food and drink trolley when it comes round

Today for some reason i fancied Bailey’s, and i had quite a few

First few bottles

So much space

Our Inflight entertainment was very good, I watched The Greatest Showman, twice! And Peter Rabbit, love this film Andy watched The Last Jedi and Blockers in-between napping The boys watched a combination of The Greatest Showman, Peter Rabbit and Ferdinand.

More Bailey's

Food was soon brought round, I am one of them weird people who like plane food

The ham & melon was lovely and the bread roll was warm Total trip report fail here as i forgot to photo the hot food I think i may have had some sort of curry and Andy had a beef dish? I definitely enjoyed mine


Now remember from my pre-travel day the boys will not consider eating plane food So they happily munched on the rest of their Domino’s pizza and some other snacks we had brought from home. More drinks were brought round and more Bailey’s was consumed. I think i may have had a little doze at some point, must of been the Bailey’s A bit later some mini cornetto's were brought round.

So Tiny

Enjoying the flight

And then afternoon tea was served. The rolls were tasty, especially the cheese & pickle one, and the Victoria cake was absolutely delicious! It was very sweet, i loved it. The scone was cold, so could not eat it

Yummy!

Almost there!

The flight was fabulous, no turbulence, good service from the crew and we were soon touching down in Sanford. The second we landed the seatbelt's started clicking! Calm down people, we are going to be let off the flight first anyway. Another perk of flying Premium is that you disembark first before economy. Sanford is a small airport so as you are the only international flight arriving, you are literally straight through immigration. We were through within 5 minutes of getting off the flight. After collecting our cases we headed to the Avis desk to collect the car. Unlike Orlando International airport you don't bypass the desk and go straight to the garage, as it’s a small airport the Avis desk is located where the cars are anyway. I had booked a Mid-Size SUV, Ford Edge or similar. Annoying what seems to be a trend with Avis is that the Ford Edge was unavailable and we were offered a Jeep Patriot. After going outside to view the car we soon marched straight back in to change it.

There was no way Andy would be driving this for 3 weeks

After having a moan we were offered an upgrade to a full size SUV Ford Explorer for a discounted £200 for the 3 weeks. Out of desperation, because there was literally nothing else we accepted the offer. We had to sign paperwork acknowledging existing scuffs and scratches on the car and told to check it when we went out to the parking lot. On first inspection of the car, I wasn't overly impressed, it wasn't cleaned inside or out very well, which is evidence of a very quick turn around. We loaded the car up anyway and set off, however, our saga with the car wasn't over yet as you will see later in the trip.

A picture of the car from later in the trip

From memory the drive was straight forward with little traffic. Due to landing about 2pm, rush hour had not yet started.

Unfortunately, this is were my trip report notes fail me. This is my first year doing a trip report and I do have some patches during the holiday where i forgot to make notes or was simply to shattered. The boys seem to think we stopped at Subway on the way to villa, which seems to be a tradition of ours as it’s a quick, lighter bite, rather then going to a restaurant or getting a take away. We then stopped at a petrol station to pick up some supplies to get us through the first night like milk, water, diet coke (to go with my Southern Comfort ;-)) and beer. I had packed teabags and biscuits so we could have a cuppa when we got to the villa and in the morning.

Finally, we arrived at our second home. As i mentioned in my pre-trippie this is the 6th consecutive year we have stayed at this villa. We have built up a very trusting relationship with the villa owners and we love the location, so we would never stay anywhere else. The villa is located in Clear Creek on Highway 27, half a mile away from the 192, where all the restaurants are located on the way to Disney World.

Here are some pictures of the villa from the website as our ones look a bit too lived in

The evening was spent in the pool and lounging round the pool enjoying some drinks.

Cheers

We are here! Let the magic commence