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Old 26 Jul 12, 01:20 AM  
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[Travel Day] No Kids, July 2012

My Pre-Trip report has got a lot of background about our trip, how we booked/planned it and what we hope to achieve with this trip report. You can find the Pre-Trip report in our Index.

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Tuesday 10th July 2012

I had a pretty poor nights sleep, maybe nerves, maybe excitement - but I'm pretty sure it was just the noise coming from a live music bar just down the road. The Altrincham Travelodge had been brilliant for everything except for this, but I can't really blame the hotel I guess!

We had planned for Frankie and Bennies for breakfast, variety being the spice of life n' all that - but our free parking in the Hotel carpark expired at 0800. We left at 0755'ish and drove round to the underground carpark behind Frankie and Bennies. I paid for a couple of hours (as we had time to kill anyway) and we walked round to see F&B didn't open for another hour

It was raining too, but being the cheapskate that I am, we were not going to waste that parking money so we legged it over to Sainsbury's and their integrated Starbucks for breakfast.

All of a sudden I was feeling ill, and not very hungry. I sent Jen to queue up and get us both a Coffee and some food for her whilst I hunted for a toilet. After a frantic few minutes I finally asked somebody and waddled into the (well hidden) Sainsbury's customer toilet. My worst fears were confirmed on that toilet... I had the squirts, I appreciate that's probably too much information but that is NOT the kind of administrative overhead I want on an 8 hour flight so I felt it was an important thing to note down.

I felt a little better after my toilet break, so wandered over to have my Coffee and watch Jen eat her pancakes.

The rain was proper heaving it down now, so we headed for the magazine section so Jen could pick out some gossip mags and I grabbed an Anglers Mail.

It was time to brave the rain and get back in the car, so we legged it across the road and into the cover of the carpark.

The drive to Terminal 2 was uneventful, we entered the well signposted Valet Carpark and I took a quick snap of my mileage and reset the trip counter.

Jen waited in the car (it was still raining) and I ran into the little office to hand over my documents which I had all nicely prepared in my plastic wallet. The guy wasn't interested in my documents, just asked for my surname and confirmed the car registration matched - handed him the keys, job done!

I went back to the car, got the bags (and Jen) out of the car and we walked the ~30meters into the terminal.

Once inside, we got a little bit lost but eventually found our way to the Virgin Atlantic desks. I'd been told on the Dibb that we couldn't check-in until the morning flight checkin closed (probably about 1030). All the TV screens said that the check-in was open for the morning flight but I approached the Virgin desk to be told we could check-in now no problem.

There were no queues, so we walked straight upto the scales/conveyor belt. We had weighed our bags a thousand times at home with my fishing scales, but Jen was still a bit nervous despite her case only weighing about 15kg of the 23kg limit. Her nerves flatlined when the Virgin guy leant on her bag to cause the digital display to go to 25kg

After a good laugh, we were on our way to our gate.

I'm a bit of a geek, I'd been studying the names and histories of the Virgin 747 fleet for months before our flight so I was excited to see who we'd be flying on. I was confident it wouldn't be the refurbished Barberella due to her "regular" schedule and the fact our seating plan suggested a pre-refurb configuration.

We found our gate and I excitedly skipped to the window (kicking a few small children out of my way) to see English Rose sat in the rain waiting for us. She looked glorious, such an awesome aircraft and I was so relieved to see a 747 sat at OUR gate waiting for OUR flight.



My very first post on the Dibb was a question almost a year ago as to what airline/schedule would give us the best chance of flying on a 747. Jen has never flown on one before and she really wanted to, so it was good to see it had finally worked out - I'm well aware we could have had an A330 both ways which would have been fantastic for the IFE... but not so much for Jen's Jumbo Jet dreams!

We had lots of time to kill now, it was probably about 1000 at this time and our flight was at 1405...

We headed for the Observation Lounge (or whatever it's called) Bar and I had a pint and Jen had a lemonade. My stomach had settled down a bit now, maybe beer would help it even more.



After a few more photo's and a few games of Angry Birds we wandered off to look for the morning VA Orlando flight to see the A330 finish off boarding.

After that it was time for a proper breakfast... or lunch, or brunch, or whatever you want to call it - we had time to kill so food is always a good option.

You'll be surprised to read we went to Frankie and Benny's, I had a BLT sandwich and neither of us can remember what Jen had... but I'm sure it was lovely.

Boarding time was sneaking up on us now, so after a quick trip to WHSmiths for some water and some sweets - we went to go sit by the gate.

We met The Mul and family at the gate, they had been living it large in one of the lounges till this point but after a good chat with two very excited children it was time for us to seperate as they got called for boarding.

Using my awesome timing and coordination skills I got us queued up just in time for our row to be called in, meaning we got on pretty quickly and got sat in our exit row seats right by the door



The inside of the 747 was tatty to say the least, this fleet has long since been due a refurb and I really look forward to the day I can fly on a refurbed VA 747 but for now we had to make do.

Everybody got on board, and just when the doors were about to be closed disaster struck! A little boy a few rows behind was having difficulty breathing, I think asthma related and a paramedic had been called to come onboard to clear him for flight.

The Paramedic showed up after about 20mins and unfortunately gave the thumbs down on the little lad flying. If I saw it right, he got off with one of his parents whilst the rest of his family flew to Orlando with us, I felt really sorry for them - not a great start to their holiday... and for the record I was NOT one of the people chuntering about their flight being delayed, I thought that was rather insensitive considering!

The total delay was about 40mins, but we were soon on our way and lunch was brought out. Jen had the pasta and I had sausage and mash, pretty nice to be honest and then settled into the Wanderlust film on the crusty old IFE system. Film was funny enough and passed the time, I'd spotted 21 Jump Street which I wanted to watch next but needed to kill about an hour for the loop to come back round again!

21 Jump Street was a good laugh, and that took us to about half way through the flight. I can't really remember what else I did... listened to music for a bit and just stared at the skymap for hours



One thing I did notice being sat so close to the galley was that the air hosts/hostesses NEVER stop! Also some of the kids on that flight were either stockpiling on cans of coke in their handluggage or were drinking FAR too much fizzy pop. One little lad came into the galley asking for coke at least a dozen times, and I saw him wander in and help himself a few times too! If drunk all that, his parents would be spending the first three days of holiday peeling him off the ceiling.

Land finally appeared on the horizon and we got to see the best thing ever, the Kennedy Space Centre from the air!

I was honking like a proper nerd and I think the guy sat next to us was getting a little bit concerned about my welfare when I started frothing at the mouth a little bit! He let me lean over and take a photo though, so it's all gravy



The landing was smooth and without incident, we pulled up to the gate and we got all our stuff together... needed to be ready as we'd be first off the plane and first into immigration if we got our powerwalk on!

Unfortunately we hit another hiccup... the door opened and the Florida side Virgin staff informed us that immigration was overloaded with other flights and we needed to remain on the plane until the load filtered through. Doh!

We were kept on the plane for about 20mins, then finally let off. Jen and I did a runner and got to immigration first out of everyone on our plane... but we had a Brazillian airline filtering through in front of us (luckily families, not tour groups!). I think there was a French airline involved in there somewhere too.

We were queued in immigration for about 45mins, Jen was a little nervous about the immigration officers but that was mainly my fault telling her about all the horror stories. We got through fine, and we navigated the rest of Orlando International without a problem.



We got a bit confused with level 1 being ground level, and level 2 being level 1, etc etc but eventually we found the Jetsave rep who had our themepark tickets. She had been waiting around for just us two so she was as relieved to see us as we were to see her. We exchanged documents and then headed for the Hertz desk for my independantly booked Mustang.

The Hertz guys didn't really try the hard sell at all, offered me the premium insurance package but I just said "Basic will be fine", and that was that. Gave him my credit card details for the deposit and then got given our parking bay number across the road.

Unfortunately due to our wee delays, the sun was just going down so we didn't get to experience the first day heatwave when leaving the airport... it was still warm as hell though

The car looked awesome when we found it, we got a silver one which I was secretely hoping for.

We didn't actually take any photographs of it on travel day, so I'll steal one from later in the report:



We could only get one case in the boot, so the other one got dragged up onto the rear seat. You'd never get a family of four (and luggage) in one of these.

I spent about 15mins trying to adjust my seat, Jen assisting with the instruction manual and then eventually we were on our way.

We've got automatics at work, so I was pretty familiar with how to drive one - but still sitting on the left was weird, as was driving on the right!

I gingerly navigated us out of the airport and then we followed our ipad instructions towards International Drive.

I found lane changes to be very scary, this car seemed to have HUGE blindspots with the stupid magnifying wing mirrors but this improved over the holiday as I altered my driving position and mirror angles. I was also drifting over to the right all the time, Jen kept shouting at me to keep me in a straight line so it didn't cause much in the way of drama.

We got through the tollbooths without an issue, I think it cost about $4 in total to get to I-Drive (sorry, didnt note the exact amount down) but all were manned booths so no issue with change.

We got onto International Drive and it was just how I remembered it! Except now I was driving and I needed to concentrate instead of pointing out all the golf courses and upside down buildings. Jen had temporarily forgotten her navigation duties whilst she sat in awe of the sights but we found our road easily, Carrier Drive.

The Enclave Suites hotel was on the left once onto Carrier Drive and we got pulled in without incident. We wandered into the Lobby and got checked in easily, once again our documents weren't needed just a surname. We got given directions to our building, the WiFi keycode and we refused the offer of a safe key.

I drove the car round to our building, from the outside it looks pretty grand to be fair - for the price anyway. We hauled the bags inside and up to the first floor (or second floor), the corridors were a bit on the scabby side; I think they had run out of paint halfway down and couldn't buy the same colour again so it had a bit of a twotone finish to it.

Our room was about 75% down the hallway on our left, number 2209. I entered the room with one eye closed and squinted with the other... quite worried about what we were going to be stuck in for two weeks.

The first thing that hit me was an odd smell. It wasn't a bad smell like rubbish or toilet smell, but like a really strong and weird fragrance. Jen said it smelt nice, I wasn't so sure!

The room was decent enough though, fully kitted out kitchen, everything in the bathroom worked, no cockroaches, winner! Again, no photos on the day so here are some from later in the trip after we messed it up nicely:









It was probably about 2030-2100 by now, but I had a busy day planned for tomorrow so we needed to get some urgent walmart supplies. We dumped the bags and hit the road; Walmart was 5mins away with no traffic... 20mins away if at a peak time.

In Walmart we bought some bottled water, some Capri Sun thingies, A cooler box/bag, spray on no-brand suncream, some crisps and some chocolate for $45, but most of that was the cooler which we intended to bring home with us.

We got back to the room and I went downstairs for the Pizza Hut express which the Hotel had inside the lobby. Got us a Peperonni Pizza and 12 buffalo wings for $15.

We stuffed the food, then hit the sack. Soooo tired!

Unfortunately I got up in the middle of the night because the AC (or so I thought) was REALLY loud and it was keeping me up. I was getting a bit stressed out now because I was very tired and ratty. I poked around the kitchen for a bit fiddling with different knobs and switches on the thermostat but the noise just kept going.

After standing and scratching my head for a few minutes I realised the noise may actually be coming from the fridge! I looked inside and the freezer unit at the top was set to the maximum power. I cranked the knob down a bit and the noise immediately dropped to an acceptable level.

Phew, now time for bed properly.

Edited at 01:41 AM.
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Old 26 Jul 12, 07:37 AM  
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Great start for you both ..nice car
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Old 26 Jul 12, 07:54 AM  
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Aw what a shame for that poor boy on your flight! Good travel day, not too many delays! Cool car
Looking forward to reading more
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Old 26 Jul 12, 08:02 AM  
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Great travel day

Love the car
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Old 26 Jul 12, 10:17 AM  
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What a good travel day. That must have been terrible seeing the little boy being told he could not fly.
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Old 26 Jul 12, 10:17 AM  
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Such a detailed report! Sounds like a good travel day, and your seats on the plane looked fantastic! Looking forward to more
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Old 26 Jul 12, 11:19 AM  
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Old 26 Jul 12, 11:54 AM  
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What a shame about the young boy on your flight, hope he managed to fly out later. Sounds like a good start to the holiday, looking forward to reading more.
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Old 26 Jul 12, 12:55 PM  
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Brilliant travel day Love the car! Enclave Suites don't look half as bad as trip advisor makes it out to be lol! Looking forward to the rest!
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Old 26 Jul 12, 03:38 PM  
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Gotta feeling this is gonna be a good one. Subscribed...NEXT!

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