The Energy Adventure: Helen & Andy - May 2016... Day 0 ("Computer says no")

[HelenJNT]

Index is here

Day 0 – Travel Day – “Computer Says No”

So, here we go with the trip report. It’s my first one, so be gentle!
A quick recap can be found in the pre-trip report…

I didn’t bother writing up a pre-travel day as we were both working all day so only had time to lob stuff in suitcases (thankfully we’d laid it all out in the spare room over the previous weeks) and make sure our cat sitters were briefed. Online check in was fine, we had pre-bought our seats, and that was about it! So not very interesting reading.

Managed to get a good sleep the night before we flew, and we were up at 05:00. Quick shower and final check of the travel documents.

We were meant to leave at 06:00 but like all best laid plans, we didn’t end up leaving until 06:30. No problems though as we’d left a huge window for getting to Gatwick. One of the cats shoots out of the house as we are taking our cases (a very respectable 16kg each) and I then panic that he’s got into the car whilst we were loading it and not looking. Can’t hear any miaowing though.

Friends are coming in to feed them whilst we are away. All three are rescue cats and we don’t like putting them in the cattery so we are very lucky to have good friends who live locally and can pop in once a day and set the food timers.

Unexpectedly, the car is iced over. Can't wait for that sunshine!

We arrive at Gatwick at 08:10, with only one minor hitch – being too excited and too busy chatting to come off at the right junction for the M25. Most unlike us to do something like that, especially as Andy has to go to this area for work quite a lot and so knows the area quite well. Luckily the roads are clear so we manage to hoof it up to the next junction and double back on ourselves.

We park in B5 in the long stay car park, right next to the bus stop which is great as we have three cases, two large ones and a cabin bag. It’s always a hassle hauling them on and off the bus and once again we wish we’d valet parked, but can’t really justify the expense. Final check to make sure there isn’t a cat in the car, and we are off on the bus! Manage to have everything with us which makes a change from the time we went to New York, and Andy realised once we were on the bus that he had left his phone in the sat nav docking station and had to run back….

We arrive at the terminal ten minutes later, feeling fairly pleased with ourselves, only to walk smack bang into the crowd from hell, like Primark on a cut-price day. The queue for the Virgin check-in/bag drop snakes all around the terminal. Obviously we decide to ignore this and walk towards a staff member at the front to find out what is going on. Turns out the entire airport’s IT system has failed and isn’t up and running yet.

We join the back of the queue. Staff are having to manually check people in, issuing hand-written boarding passes and load luggage onto trolleys to be wheeled to the planes. It is taking forever. Staff are coming down the queue calling out people for the flights that are due to leave… Las Vegas, Antigua, not Orlando though. I have a look on Twitter and it seems a lot of people have been there for hours and planes are sitting on the tarmac unable to take off. Marvellous. I have a bit of a panic at this point, wondering if it is the work of terrorists, who have knackered the IT in order to cause a large mass of people in departures. It isn’t a nice feeling at all.

By this time, my bladder is also nervous so I take a long walk round to the loos in Departures. They’re very posh now and there is a bit of a queue. By the time I get back, I can’t see Andy at all. Turns out in the time I was gone, the IT systems were up and running again and he is near the check-in desk. Phew! Problems over… or so I thought! We wave goodbye to our cases, cross our fingers, and go through security with no problems.


It’s 10am by the time we reach the duty free area and I am hangry. We stop off at one of the tech shops as Andy decides to buy a FitBit. He’d had some health issues in the month before we went, ending up in A&E with an erratic heartbeat that needed sorting, so whilst he was fine, and was certified as fit to fly once we’d got the relevant insurance in place, he wanted to keep an eye on his heart rate whilst we were away. He also loves a good stat, and was keen to monitor how far we would be walking each day. He purchases a FitBit Blaze, and we head on over to Pret to get some breakfast. Luckily they still have a few breakfast items left – he has a pastry of some kind and I have an egg and sundried tomato baguette. We also nip into WH Smiths to buy water and snacks for the flight – some sort of Bombay Mix, I think.

Our gate is announced straight away so we lumber on down. It’s always the furthest one, isn’t it? The gate is already busy, with people putting on their flight socks (Andy included), and kids doing Lewis Hamilton style laps of the area on their Trunki suitcases. Parents already look frazzled and I think they are trying to tire the kids out before the flight. Nice try…

We’re on the plane, Virgin Atlantic’s Jersey Girl, by 11am, in row 27 downstairs. They’re great seats for a number of reasons:
1) Turns out the air con has broken and the plane is roasting. We’re only two or three rows away from the main door, which is open, so we have a lovely breeze.
2) We are right next to the galley area so whilst it’s a bit hectic with flight staff prepping for the flight, it feels more open and spacious.
3) There isn’t anyone in the window seat so we have three seats to ourselves which means we can set up a nice camp for our snacks.

Not very good photo of galley area:

Maintenance people are on and off the plane trying to fix the air con and it’s taking a while. They then shut the doors to test it and suddenly it’s boiling hot on the plane as our air supply is cut off. I can only imagine how hot it would have been for the people on the other side of the plane, or in the bubble. Yuck! Luckily the pilot is keeping us all informed, and again, being by the door is great as we get to hear what’s going on as the maintenance workers chat to the cabin crew.

After an hour, the pilot declares the plane as ready to go. Hurrah! We’re off.

No, we aren’t. After all the hassle with the IT, it turns out there is a bag on the plane that shouldn’t be there. Panic sets in again. I don’t know how they do it but the staff get this sorted pretty quickly, it was a problem with the guy in the row behind us. I do feel a little uneasy but the staff seem happy enough.

Finally, two hours after our departure time, we are queuing for a position to take off. It takes a while as so many planes were grounded earlier in the day but we are finally up in the air at 13:00. Once airborne, the pilot says he is going to have a walk round the plane to apologise to us in person and answer any questions we had about the delay. Assuming the 2nd pilot was in charge of the plane during this time, I thought that was a really nice touch.

The flight itself is fairly uneventful. No photos as I couldn’t really be bothered. Rubbish! I will get better, I promise. I usually have a Bloody Mary on a flight but decided to stay dry this time. We eat the food, some kind of chicken and mash, watch some movies (Andy: Creed, Sisters, Straight Outta Compton; me: The Good Dinosaur <which has to be the saddest film ever>, The Intern, and Joy... I swear Jennifer Lawrence deserved an Oscar just for the number of times she had to utter the words "self-wringing mop"). I also decide to give my phone a bit of a boost with my Anker power pack and happily pull out my new cable to plug it in. Only to find that there must have been a mix-up as the one in the box is a Blackberry style charger, not an iphone one….oh no! Thankfully I have a spare iphone cable, as I always take two in case one stops working (flaming Apple and their temperamental chargers) but it’s buried at the bottom of the hand luggage so I give it up as a bad job.

The crew have missed us when handing out the landing cards so I ask someone for one…and wait and wait. No-one comes back and we’re getting close to landing so I wander into the galley and see a pile of them, and take a couple. We fill them in, luckily having remembered to write down our passport numbers and hotel address somewhere to avoid the inevitable scramble of searching for them.
The final couple of hours are fairly torturous. Some parents have let their kids loose to play “it” around the plane so I’m trying to have a nap and failing as they keep thundering around the aisles and galley areas, running up and down the stairs. Noise cancelling headphones in, scowl on.

As we land, one of the flight attendants makes an announcement that as we are landing late, we are arriving at the same time as three other flights. She advises us to “leg it” (actually what she says!) to security to as to avoid being caught in all the other flights. I’m so glad we have the seats we do, as we are first off after Upper, PE and the Bubble. We do as advised, and leg it. Luckily we went to New York in December so were able to use the machines to get through the first part and there isn’t much of a wait. Those photos though…. I look like I should be behind bars, hence why I haven't included it here!

They seem very concerned about the import of food items and so on. I think longingly about the snacks we didn’t eat and had to leave on the plane. Still, we didn’t much fancy making a Johnny Depp style video to apologise for importing anything illicit and we’re through and waiting for the bags. Orlando staff are great and hauling the cases off the conveyors and into neat piles on the floor. I spot Andy’s case straight away but no sign of mine. Ahhhhh, the agony. We always take a cabin case with enough clothes for a couple of days, but we never actually want to use them! Finally mine makes it out. It’s a soft case so I think has to go in a different area of the hold.

By 18:00 we are finally engulfed in the maze of MCO airport. We follow the signs to the Disney Magical Express, and walk, and walk, and walk, and walk. It feels miles away, like a little oasis on the horizon that gets further away the more you walk. In reality, it’s probably about 100 metres.

The guy checking people in is a little unusual and definitely hasn’t passed Computing 101. We are blatantly in the wrong queue as he is taking forever and we have a bit of a wait there. Finally get through and we are the last ones on our bus. Phew. That first wave of Florida heat has been had, and we flop into the last remaining seats. I’m feeling a bit tired and grumpy by this point which is just ridiculous as we know the hassle is behind us and we are on the final leg.
We watch the videos on the bus, and talk about how much we’d like to retire here one day. The bus ride goes really fast, dropping off at Saratoga Springs and then us, the Caribbean Beach. Yay! Check-in is absolutely seamless. Our dining plan upgrade is confirmed, we are given our bands, set our pins, and are given a map of where to go, Martinique, block 25.

We have a short wait for the internal bus, as we really don’t know where we are going and don’t feel up for a hike with the bags. Martinique is actually the first stop so off we get, finding ourselves in a car park. We head towards the blue and orange buildings and walk past the village pool. After a few twists and turns, we find our room, 2511, on the ground floor, touch the Mickey to the Mickey (fnar) for the first time, and we are in.

The room is lovely, and they have honoured the request we made 30 days previously. The air con smells a little musty but either we get used to it during the trip, or it sorts itself out as we don’t notice it again during the trip. Either way, it’s not bad at all and nothing to complain about. Everything is spotless, and in our excitement, we don’t manage to get any photos. And I was too ashamed of the mess we made in the rest of the trip to take any…Ooops. Anyway, there are two double beds, a pull down bed, a TV on the wall, separate vanity area and a little bathroom. It’s fine for the two of us, but I don’t think a family of five would cope all that well.

We slap on our bands, figure out the safe, and head over to the food court. It’s dark by now, about 20:00. We are a very short walk to the food court, so have a little look around and decide what to eat. We each get the crispy chicken burger and fries, and a Mickey krispie treat. It takes a while for our mugs to be activated as the sensor thing on the till we are at isn’t working but we have a nice chat to the Cast Member while she sorts it. She tells me she likes my necklaces, I don’t think I do much other than gurn in return as we are so hungry and tired.

Andy goes off to the restroom and I realise the burgers have bacon on them. He doesn’t eat bacon so I speedily transfer his bacon to mine – result! We look for some outdoor seats but the big screen is showing Frozen, so the courtyard is rammed. Seriously, hasn’t everyone seen that film enough times? I don’t grumble though, we are here at last and it really doesn’t matter. The fries are really crispy and tasty and the burger is excellent too, it has some kind of pineapple coleslaw on it which is delicious.

Food done, we manage to find our way back to the room (“turn right at the end of the beach”) and fall into bed. So comfortable! Alarm set for 06:00, not that I think we’ll need it, and the lights go out.

So there’s the travel day. Sorry about the lack of photos, I really do step up my game from here-on in. Thanks for reading and well done if you got this far!

Day One is here

[jacqui]

Great start, look forward to more.🙂

[NewtoOrlando]

Fab report! We're staying at CBR in August so excited to hear your thoughts on it!

[abiknox]

Great start to the trippy, not so great start to the holiday! Nightmare delays 😖

Love your Jonny Depp and Self Wringing Mop comments

Burgers look good, looking forward to more!

[Guest]

Great start, looking forward to following along.

[Archie14]

Great report, looking forward to more. We can't wait to go back to CBR next year.

[Redrach1903]

Great start except for the delay! What a pain in the bum!

Thanks for sharing! X

[SEAWORLD FAN]

Great 1st day. CBR is on my shortlist so looking forward to seeing how you get on thoughout your stay.

[Rockycat]

Great start...look forward to reading more.

[Happyhaunt1000]

Christ you had a cack journey! Seemed like if something could go wrong it did.

What the hell was up with those parents letting their kids play 'IT' on the plane?
I won't go off on a massive rant, but I will say that thinking about it again now is making me angry!

Nothing worse than arriving at your destination and being too exhausted to appreciate that you're finally there.

Looking forward to reading the next installment where you hit the parks and the adventure can really begin.

Keep up the good work.
TFS