The “could have been worse” trip

[Rachy]

Firstly I want to say please read this post light hearted. I didn’t want to do a typical high and lows. For many reasons it’s been a completely different trip to what I’m used to.
I’ve been going to Florida most years for the past 12 years and honestly never had a trip like this one. It’s been full of doubts, and uncertainties from the moment we booked. But I will say we’ve all had such a good time.

On this trip was myself and my 6 year old Molly. She has been to Florida 6 times before, and I couldn’t wait to take her back now she’s that bit older.
Also on the trip was my partner Carl and his son Kieran who is 19. They’ve been to Florida before but not park nuts like us.
It’s the first time we have all gone away together so we knew it would be very different to what everyone is used to.

We booked this trip last year. Flights with Norwegian airline. Very cheap flights especially in school holidays and we grabbed them at the £350 bargain price. We then booked a 5 night stay in a beautiful villa, 4 nights on a Royal Caribbean cruise to Mexico with an overnight stay in Havana (which we were keeping a surprise from Molly and Kieran) and then back to the villa for 3 nights.
Parks wise we were going to do Mk, AK, BB, HS, Epcot. And both Universal parks. Great what could possibly go wrong 🤷

First thing... Norwegian changed our flight times twice in the period from booking. Then changed the aircraft. No big deal. But this was only the start.
In June Royal Caribbean emailed to say cruise ships would no longer be allowed into Cuba. This was a massive blow for us, especially as the new itinerary was just 2 ports both in Mexico. We were offered the chance to cancel and get a full refund.
Because our villa had been booked and flights we didn’t have much flexibility so decided to stay with the original plan.

Soooooo we set off to our Gatwick bed and breakfast. I’d stayed at the hotel before, so knew it was decent. We were picking Carl’s son up enroute. But due to it been so late when we arrived, Carl dropped me and Molly off at the B and B and went to the train station to pick up his son.
Then I realised there was 2 Gatwick houses with the same name and I had booked the different one 🙈 oooops. Anyway all checked in. Room was ok. Carl then calls to say he would take a bit longer as he had gone to the different hotel same name. (“Sorry about that”)

Next morning all up nice and early to get to the airport 2.5 hours before the flight. Plenty of time... so she thinks.
Queued up to check in. The lady says “Rachel have you got an esta” obviously I said “yes of course I have” why would I not?
“Nothing is coming up on the system” 🤔
I was thinking this is very strange.
What happened then I can only describe as probably one of the biggest stresses I have ever faced in an airport. I’m not going to go into too much detail about this as there’s probably the most longest post I’ve ever had on here already. And everyone is sick of reading about it. But my esta which I thought was valid, well it wasn’t 🤦🏼 I proceeded to do a new esta which I thought would be approved within a couple of hours before check in closed but it wasn’t. We missed our flight. It’s definitely a first for me and one I would never want to repeat. I kept expecting cameras to appear asking us to be on a tv show. Mind you wouldn’t have been a bad thing to supplement the £1300 on flights we had to pay to fly the following day. 🤷
Tried to book them on Carl’s credit card which the card company then kindly put a block on at that point. Thank god for back up cards hey?

Carl had already checked his suitcase in so I had to go through the staffs side of security to recruit the suitcase otherwise it would have had a very lonely trip to Orlando.

So we then booked a very cheap hotel for the night. Couldn’t find it and probably walked about 5 miles around the airport to find the buses which we just missed one. What are the chances of that 😂 carl insisted we get the bus to save money besides we couldn’t find the taxi rank. A taxi would have cost £5. Got on the bus and they charged £9 for us all. Hmmmm?

Made it to the hotel in one piece. Tried to change the car hire so we would collect tomorrow and we were told they were going to charge us more even though we were having it for less time. Dear oh dear, I think at this point we started contemplating going back up north and having a holiday in Blackpool for 2 weeks.

We actually all had a great nights sleep and proceeded back to the airport the next day. Queued up at tui. The nice lady says “have you done your estas?” By this point after the ordeal yesterday I didn’t want to hear the word esta again. Then I started thinking “god what if it hasn’t been approved” luckily it had and we actually made it through security this time. Yay! Doing well!

The flight was fine. Got to Orlando airport. The queue was actually quite speedy to get through immigration. Still I’m thinking “omg what if they question my esta” I think I was making every scenario up in my head at this point. And forgetting actually what you need to do in an airport such as collect luggage. Carl pulled the 2 suitcases off baggage reclaim and we proceeded to the escalator for the monorail. All happy and grateful to be there when Molly says “mummy where’s your suitcase” I looked at our cases and hand luggage and said “it’s here” pointing to them all thinking poor kid has lost the plot. “No mummy your big pink suitcase” oh god it’s me whose lost the plot, we’ve left it at bloody baggage reclaim. Carl attempts to go back. But you can’t actually go back in baggage reclaim once you’re out so he needs to wait for security to take him back through. So that’s twice in 2 days we’ve both been escorted back to the baggage reclaim by the security. Do you get prizes for stuff like this? Thank god for my 6 year old. She has way more sense than us lot.

The journey was absolutely fine. Villa beautiful. Although couldn’t get in it. (Who needs to go in anyway? When the weather is so beautiful)
A phone call to management sorted this out, and she gave us a different code which luckily worked.

First day was going to be Magic Kingdom. Finally in our happy place. Decided to take the monorail. It’s quicker right? Wrong! Breaks down with us on for half an hour. 🙈
When we did get in Molly runs in he park and falls grazing all her knee. Oh my days what else is in store for us!

Fast forward and we had a great first day. Our Disney tickets were 5 days consecutive use which meant we had missed our first day at Ak. So we made a trip to guest services asking if we could tag an extra day on after our cruise and the lovely lady enabled our tickets to do this. Love Disney! Their customer service is amazing.

Decided the next day to have a nice chilled out day at BB.
Had a lie in and packed our stuff ready for some fun at the water park.
Scanned our tickets. Declined all of them! 🙈 I thought maybe the ticket readers were broken. “Don’t be silly Rachel” your tickets don’t actually include water parks. Ooooopsie! We could have gone in at the day price admission but decided against it and had a nice chilled out day in the villa instead.

Epcot the following day was quite uneventful apart from the first ride TestTrack breaking down after queuing for nearly an hour and having to go back later. We were given fast passes though so could have been worse.
So proud though as Molly did the orange spinning version of Mission Space and actually loved it.
I was the only one who had been on before and I think I made it sound a lot worse than it was to everyone. I think everyone thought they would be needing hospital treatment after for the horrendous sickness they would endure for the following week.
Luckily all ok and we did a repeat.

That night Carl said he wasn’t feeling well. Man flu. So he took some American lemsip and went to bed.
I woke up at about 2am and he wasn’t there.
He is terrible for falling asleep In front of the tv so I figured he must be downstairs. I crept down and nope nobody there. Thought that was a bit strange. Went back upstairs looked in all the bedrooms (there were 6) and still no Carl.
Back downstairs starting to panic slightly now. The scenarios are coming back in my head “maybe the lemsip has made him sleepwalk, maybe he’s walked outside” I went outside the car is still there (he isn’t in it) I proceeded round the back of the house and nope not out there, not in the pool having a midnight dip 🤷
Obviously by now I’m really starting to worry. I heard the tv in Kieron’s room. Maybe he’s in there? No. Kieron was fast asleep so couldn’t ask him.
Decided I’ll just have one more look upstairs then I’ll have to wake Kieran up to break the news that his dad has disappeared. How on earth do you break news like that? And there I see him in one of the other bedrooms, sound asleep. (He was sweating so much in our bed so he moved rooms and left me asleep.) I must have not looked in that bedroom properly. It was a Batman room so maybe with it being a black room it’s hard to see people in there? Turns out he wasn’t kidnapped by aliens after all. That’s where my little scenario was at that point. 🙈 by this point of the holiday I reckon I’ve aged 10 years.

HS next day. Pretty much plain sailing apart from the way home and driving half hour in wrong direction. Who knew the villas road was so popular that it shared its name with another road half hour away both in Kissimmee.
I blamed it on my phones Sat nav, Carl blamed it on me! 🤷
Booked onto couples counselling...

The cruise was the following day. We asked the villa owner if we could leave some things in the garage as we would be back there after the cruise and we didn’t need everything. They very kindly obliged. We left plenty of time for the 3.5 hour drive to Fort Lauderdale. We wanted to get there nice and early for check in.
The thing is it turns out everyone wanted to go to Fort Lauderdale that day too and the I95 was at standstill.
Our nice early check in we envisaged ended up been a “are we going to miss the cruise” we were taking photos of the signs on the motorway showing all lanes were blocked just in case we needed to claim back on the insurance.
We ended up getting there with an hour to spare. Phew!
At this point Carl is going through his ageing process also.

The first day at sea was lovely, with the day after into Costa Maya. Not much going on here but we had a nice time.
Then comes the news about hurricane Dorian. And it’s projected path. The next few days we became meteorologists. Tracking its path. I think we became quite good at it. New career maybe?
Our next day was at Cozumel and we were informed our cruise would be extended by 2 days. We were going to have a day at sea and then go to Nassau.
Unfortunately due to the massive impact of what the hurricane did to the Bahamas we didn’t go there. Horrendous watching the complete devastation those people had to go through.
5 minutes before we were due to leave Cozumel the captain informed us we would be staying there overnight and leaving the following day to have 2 days at sea. Then back to Fort Lauderdale.
I have to say Royal Caribbean were incredible. They kept us updated the whole time. The service did not decline in the 2 days extension and we had a wonderful time.
When we booked the cruise we decided with it being such a short cruise we would all share one cabin. There were no balcony’s on this ship and the room was tiny. There’s no way you could swing a cat in there. A double bed and bunk beds directly above. Thats pretty much it.
I honestly didn’t think we would manage in such a small space especially when the cruise was extended but honestly it was fine. We all got along great and we had lots of laughs.

Must admit I was apprehensive driving back to Orlando. We were still hearing about the possible hurricane and I didn’t fancy us been in the eye of the storm.
Luckily it was lovely and calm driving back and we checked back into the villa and went to Ak for the afternoon and evening. The park was so quiet. Practically everything was a walk on. FOP was only 45 minute queue which we went on twice.
Carl got to become a warthog in the Lion King show which I’m sure he loved 😂

We didn’t know if our flight would be leaving the next day due to the cancellations because of MCO closing and we decided we would go to the airport but if Norwegian offered us an incentive to stay and bump us we would take the offer, this way we could make use of our universal tickets and add on the couple of days which we lost at the beginning. The airport was chaotic. Norwegian had cancelled 3 flights and everyone wanted to get home. Great that means we might get bumped off the flight. Free flights to anywhere, accommodation. I’m already planning on what rides we would do at Universal. Checking the app. The queue times are so low.
Turns out Norwegian did want people to forfeit seats but they wouldn’t give anything for this.
So here we are now sitting on the flight back. Wondering if anything else can possibly go against us. We still have to pick up the car, drive back to Yorkshire from Gatwick yet but hoping we’ve had enough adventure to last a lifetime.
Don’t get me wrong we’ve had an amazing holiday. We are still talking to each other at this point too 😂
Just wanted to add this as the flight is 5 minutes before landing. This is actually the strangest flight I’ve ever been on. No magazines in the front pockets. No duty free mag or anything which says you can buy snacks or drinks.
Cabin crew came round twice serving complimentary drinks. Zero alcohol even to purchase. Then near landing they came round with a Sandwich but literally sped past us. Never even said what they were. Carl stopped them and asked what they were and they gave us one. No duty free to sell. In flight entertainment was ok.
But towards the end of the flight (half hour before we landed) the crew were told to take safety positions and told us where our life jackets were and to check the safety cards. I was thinking they knew something which we didn’t. Never known anything like it. Because we missed the Norwegian flight coming out we didn’t know if this was the norm? I know the flights were cheap but no opportunity to buy anything? Strange?

3 more things I want to mention to help others.
Chillys bottles. Amazing. They saved us an absolute fortune in bottles of water. Can’t believe how cold they keep your drinks.
Mozzie brackets. I always get bitten to pieces on holiday. The only day I took mine off was on a cruise when Carl tells me you can’t get bit on a cruise ship. And what happens? 3 lovely new itchy bites. So they must work surely.
Buggy for 6 year olds. Funny how you change. I used to be one of those people (prior to molly) that couldn’t understand people who allowed their 6 plus year olds in a buggy. Well guess what I became one of them! Bought one off eBay before we went. £10 and it was the best £10 I’ve ever spent. Saved us so much moaning. So I highly recommend a buggy for any age child! Save yourself the aggro.

If you’re still reading thank you. And thanks to the dibbers who helped me with the esta fiasco. I haven’t been on here for a long time and it reminded me of what a lovely supportive forum this is.

Happy holidays! And remember “it could always be worse!” X

[TheHughesCrew]

What a fabulous read! So many ups and downs, but glad you still managed to make the best if it. It will be a talking point for years to come!

[Rac20]

So glad you got to enjoy your holiday at last. I read your ESTA saga as it happened and kept everything crossed that you would make your flight. I’m glad you got there eventually and wasn’t affected too much by the hurricane.

[Smilesonfaces]

I too remember reading your esta saga. Glad you got there and still had a great holiday despite the dramas.
Best trip report I have read in ages !

[ClaireNJ]

WOW what a trip, with all the ups & downs, don’t think you’ll have to go through that again, glad you made it over there in the end, I read your “ Esta” saga as it happened, felt sick for you
Glad you made it back ok too

[taylaboo]

Great read. I was reading your esta posts and had my heart in my mouth. So glad you made it and had a great time even with a changed cruise itinerary and the hurricane worry. Think of the stories you can tell!

[Ellelledee]

😂😂😂 this is so funny to read. I’m sure parts were not funny but it’s those tales you tell later where you absolutely roar laughing for years to come.
Thankyou for the report 😂😂

[stecee]

Wow, what an event filled holiday you had.
Great read

[Floridatilly]

Wow what an adventure!
What mozzie bracelets did you use? No matter what I do I get bitten alive

[Loopylooloo]

Goodness me what a ride! am mostly impressed that you all got on so well through all this! We dibbers tend to be zealous planners but this goes to show that even with great planning stuff still goes wrong sometimes you sound like you still had an amazing time (maybe a spa day is needed for you when you get home?)