AMI after a 15 night layover. Aug/Sept/Oct-2021 Pre-Trip Report

Mqt · 5 Sep 21, 10:14 PM

So, I’ve never written a trip report before, despite visiting Florida many, many times since the mid-eighties. If it wasn’t for Covid, I doubt I’d have ever written one but I’ve loved reading so many over the years and as they are so few and far between at the moment I decided to try to ‘pay back’.

I’ll warn you now, it might be rubbish! It might be boring, as there are no theme parks involved. There will probably be some ‘housey’ stuff and mentions of what we get up to around AMI and I may well run out of steam before I’ve hardly begun! I know a lot of Dibbers like AMI so hopefully this trip report might give some ideas of what to do off the beaten track.

Well, here we go!

Preamble

Who are we?

A pair of fifty-somethings. Married for more years than we care to remember. 3 grown up children and 5 (soon to be 6) grandchildren.

Background to the trip

We have a house in Anna Maria so are (normally!) very regular visitors to Florida. In the year before the pandemic, I clocked up nearly 5 months in the sunshine state, with Mr Mqt doing slightly less.

We last visited AMI in Jan/Feb 2020. We were due to fly back out around the 20th March……well that didn’t happen did it?

We shuffled our remaining flights around for the rest of the year, rebooking our March 2020 flight for mid-April…..Oh the naivety! We carried on with this process on a loop until…..until around now really!

In between our ‘couple’ trips, August 2020 was supposed to be a big family trip to Disney, followed by a family week on AMI, with the two of us then retreating to our (peaceful!) house for a month or so.

We then rescheduled this to August 2021, but as time went on and we had the awful realisation that the borders weren’t opening, we decided that the two of us would do a workaround via Barbados, where we would spend 15 nights, and then fly on to AMI. Sadly, the rest of the family couldn’t do this and so by mid July, they were busy trying to make their own arrangements to go to Europe for a couple of weeks.

We’d toyed with the idea of possibly going to Croatia with them and flying to the USA from there, so we could at least spend 2 weeks of quality time together, but there wasn’t a great deal of choice coming up for our dates and so we booked Barbados and left them to it.

By the end of July, our ‘children’ were still searching for something which they liked the look of and we felt bad that we were going to be away for over 6 weeks (we spend a lot of time together as a family in between our trips). We therefore came up with the idea of all of us going to an all-inclusive to Jamaica. I did have some trepidation as cases were rising there when we were looking, but I closed my eyes, stuck my fingers in my ears, la-la’ing, cancelled our couple trip to Barbados and booked Jamaica for 10 people from the 18th August for 2 weeks. Sadly our son and grandson couldn’t join us, but they are on board for August 2022 at Disney!

We decided not to tell the grandchildren for two reasons. Firstly, in case Jamaica went red prior to travel and secondly, as travel day was in just a couple of weeks, we thought it would be fun to keep it a surprise.

So, at the risk of glossing over 2 fabulous weeks in Jamaica, it went very well. Surprising the children at the airport was just lovely. We flew UC with Virgin, which again was great, but the food service was much reduced compared to normal, with none of the usual afternoon snacks available, such as the mini burgers or chicken satay which we usually enjoy! Afternoon tea was served but again, a reduced service. Also, the main meal choices were lacking compared to normal, but we were just grateful to be up in the air!

The Heathrow Clubhouse

The hotel in Jamaica was lovely, the food was good and we had a blast.

A Few Jamaica Photos

Coming soon….USA Pre-Travel Day

vegboatride · 5 Sep 21, 10:42 PM

Your trip looks lovely so far, it’s so nice to see families spending time together abroad.
I’ll look forward to reading about your time in AMI it’s my dream to winter in Florida when we retire.

5 Sep 21, 10:14 PM	#1
	5 Sep 21, 10:14 PM Mqt Apprentice Imagineer
Mqt Apprentice Imagineer Join Date: Jan 15	AMI after a 15 night layover. Aug/Sept/Oct-2021 Pre-Trip Report So, I’ve never written a trip report before, despite visiting Florida many, many times since the mid-eighties. If it wasn’t for Covid, I doubt I’d have ever written one but I’ve loved reading so many over the years and as they are so few and far between at the moment I decided to try to ‘pay back’. I’ll warn you now, it might be rubbish! It might be boring, as there are no theme parks involved. There will probably be some ‘housey’ stuff and mentions of what we get up to around AMI and I may well run out of steam before I’ve hardly begun! I know a lot of Dibbers like AMI so hopefully this trip report might give some ideas of what to do off the beaten track. Well, here we go! Preamble Who are we? A pair of fifty-somethings. Married for more years than we care to remember. 3 grown up children and 5 (soon to be 6) grandchildren. Background to the trip We have a house in Anna Maria so are (normally!) very regular visitors to Florida. In the year before the pandemic, I clocked up nearly 5 months in the sunshine state, with Mr Mqt doing slightly less. We last visited AMI in Jan/Feb 2020. We were due to fly back out around the 20th March……well that didn’t happen did it? We shuffled our remaining flights around for the rest of the year, rebooking our March 2020 flight for mid-April…..Oh the naivety! We carried on with this process on a loop until…..until around now really! In between our ‘couple’ trips, August 2020 was supposed to be a big family trip to Disney, followed by a family week on AMI, with the two of us then retreating to our (peaceful!) house for a month or so. We then rescheduled this to August 2021, but as time went on and we had the awful realisation that the borders weren’t opening, we decided that the two of us would do a workaround via Barbados, where we would spend 15 nights, and then fly on to AMI. Sadly, the rest of the family couldn’t do this and so by mid July, they were busy trying to make their own arrangements to go to Europe for a couple of weeks. We’d toyed with the idea of possibly going to Croatia with them and flying to the USA from there, so we could at least spend 2 weeks of quality time together, but there wasn’t a great deal of choice coming up for our dates and so we booked Barbados and left them to it. By the end of July, our ‘children’ were still searching for something which they liked the look of and we felt bad that we were going to be away for over 6 weeks (we spend a lot of time together as a family in between our trips). We therefore came up with the idea of all of us going to an all-inclusive to Jamaica. I did have some trepidation as cases were rising there when we were looking, but I closed my eyes, stuck my fingers in my ears, la-la’ing, cancelled our couple trip to Barbados and booked Jamaica for 10 people from the 18th August for 2 weeks. Sadly our son and grandson couldn’t join us, but they are on board for August 2022 at Disney! We decided not to tell the grandchildren for two reasons. Firstly, in case Jamaica went red prior to travel and secondly, as travel day was in just a couple of weeks, we thought it would be fun to keep it a surprise. So, at the risk of glossing over 2 fabulous weeks in Jamaica, it went very well. Surprising the children at the airport was just lovely. We flew UC with Virgin, which again was great, but the food service was much reduced compared to normal, with none of the usual afternoon snacks available, such as the mini burgers or chicken satay which we usually enjoy! Afternoon tea was served but again, a reduced service. Also, the main meal choices were lacking compared to normal, but we were just grateful to be up in the air! The Heathrow Clubhouse The hotel in Jamaica was lovely, the food was good and we had a blast. A Few Jamaica Photos Coming soon….USA Pre-Travel Day Edited at 10:17 PM.

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