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Old 27 May 20, 10:26 PM  
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spencem
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Silver Anniversary Trip, Day 21

Saturday, February 1st, A load of rubbish

You know how yesterday’s report had loads and loads of pictures? Well today’s report is the exact opposite with hardly any. The lack of pictures is down to the weather we got today, which was cold rain like an autumn day at home.

Sandra and I went to collect her hire car from the Dolphin hotel first thing. With the mess up of my hire car way back at the start of the holiday we didn’t have enough room to get all 4 of us and our luggage back to the airport later. Sandra looked at all the options and at £27 a single day’s car rental worked out the cheapest and offered us the most flexibility.

There was a lot of building work going on around the hotel, with a new tower block style hotel going up opposite. I believe it is the new The Cove that is due to open late this year. Since I was driving I didn’t get any pictures, but it was just an elevator core and a lot of Meccano at the start of February.

On the way back we drove along the newly opened Western Way. When we last stayed at Orange Lakes in 2018 Western Way only went as far as Flamingo Crossing, just past the 429 toll road. Now it has opened all the way over to Avalon Road. It wasn’t very exciting, but there was a lot of land clearing are grading going on both sides of the road, so there are clearly plans to build right along there now.

We got back to Orange Lakes and finished off the last of the packing before simply sitting around waiting for the rain to ease up, as it was forecast to do. As we got closer to our 10am departure time we packed the last bits up and loaded the cars. Having not spent anything at all at the resort there was no need to go to reception to check out and we simply dropped our key cards in the box on our way out of the gate for the last time at just after 10am.

We had really enjoyed our second stay at Orange Lakes and I can see us returning there again one day, if I continue to rack up Holiday Inn points enough to pay for it. One day we might even do more than sleep at the resort, there is apparently loads to do there. It is in a great location, just off the I4 / 192 junction with a couple of back road options for getting into Disney. The apartments are large with everything you could need and well maintained.

We were heading for our first ever trip to Gator Land before our early evening flight home. We were out of other options with our SeaWorld and Disney tickets having expired and Julia’s Universal pass not being valid for special events she couldn’t have used it to get into Universal Studios as it was Mardi Gras today. We could have gotten into IoA, but nearly everything is outdoors there and so we’d have still suffered in the rain.

We called into the Starbucks on the 192 by the Nike shop and were able to pick up the mug Julia’s friend had paid her for. In fact they had both the Orlando and Florida ones and so we picked both up, as well as a couple of drinks before carrying on to Gator Land via the 192 and a whole host of back streets, as directed by Google. For some reason it didn’t like either the 417, nor the Osceola Parkway, preferring the 192 and then a selection of residential streets between the John Young Parkway and the 441.

Sandra and Brian were already in the deserted parking lot when we arrived, having not stopped at Starbucks and so we pulled up next to them and had a conversation between the cars. Julia and I have never been, but Sandra has and she confirmed that the attractions are all outside, which none of us fancied in the pouring rain, especially with the prospect of sitting in damp clothes all night on the flight home. We reluctantly decided that we’d have to visit Gator Land on a future holiday.

We had some cash left over, yes we are those strange people who take our spending money as cash. I know it is not insured, but it works for us. Julia’s business is quite variable in terms of income and so whenever she had excess money she would convert it into Dollars, building our spending money up over months at all sorts of exchange rates. We would have simply put the money back in a drawer at home for ‘next time’ but with nothing else to do today we headed up the 441 in the direction of the Florida Mall or more specifically the Best Buy there.

I had been thinking about getting an Apple TV 4K for a while and since we had now got spare cash decided to pick one up finally. They were £179 here and $179 in the US, so I saved the exchange rate, even if I did have to pay sales tax on top of that. We picked up a couple of cheap 4K discs, including IT chapter 2 for Edward since at Best Buy it was cheaper than Amazon. I also got an Apple gift card to load up my new US based account with Dollars. Apple don’t care where you are in the world and make it very simple to swap between US, UK, Canadian, Australian etc accounts to buy content from them at the best price, you just need a payment method for each county. The easiest way of doing that is to buy gift cards for the appropriate country, which Amazon.com/au/ca etc. will let you do with a UK credit card.

Once I’d sorted my new toy out and Julia had had her fill of fantasising about American washing machines and fridges we went to confuse the checkout kid with strange bits of paper showing pictures of dead presidents, rather than the credit cards he was used to. Sandra and Brian picked some stuff up as well, the highlight being a phone holder that slots into the car CD player to hold it steady on the dashboard.

Once we were shopped out thoughts turned to lunch, especially as there was a Miller’s Ale House on the opposite side of the road. We drove across with minimum fuss and soon settled in for a long, relaxed lunch, having nowhere else to go.


I got the ribs I’d fancied last night.


Julia had the kid’s Quesadillas with a bowl of veggies.


Dessert was a shared Ghirardelli® Chocolate Brownie Sundae.

As I say we took our time over our early lunch, ordering coffee after we’d eaten, but eventually we moved on and took the drive over to the airport. Just because we could, being so early, we once again avoided the toll roads and took the back streets from the mall to airport. Even so we were back there by about 2:30.

Checking the car in was no problem, getting the all-important zero balance receipt from the guy inspecting the car. I got us another rip off $5 baggage trolly and we made our way back across the street to the terminal, dropping off out toll tag on the way in the very clearly marked box.

The tag worked out really well for us, once it got over whatever the problem was on our initial drive out of the airport that first night. Those transactions never did show up on the tag statement, but I did get them charged by Avis on my March credit card statement. It was only a few pounds and with everything else that was going on in the world by then I couldn’t be bothered to try and reclaim that from the tag people. Other than that it saved us a fortune on the very few trips we had used it for and it was much easier than worrying about having change in the car and then stopping to throw that in a bucket every few miles.

When we got to the BA check-in area it was absolutely mobbed as they were not yet fully open. We stopped short and sorted our bags out, getting the stuff we’d kept out for our cancelled park visit into our checked luggage and checking the weight on those handy scales the airport has dotted around. We then went and found a bench to relax on for a while. We left it about half an hour before returning to the now very quiet check-in desks. The check-in agent seemed a bit confused by the ECV and asked all the questions about the battery before suggesting that we leave that in the US and buy a new one in the UK. I assured her I wouldn’t be doing that as BA had been quite happy to transport it to America as it was well below the maximum power limit IATA have for such things.

We went and found some seats by the food court before taking it in turns to wander the shops for a while, Julia returning with the most expensive tee shirt of the trip from the Universal shop. Eventually we decided to brave the security lines and went off for a thoroughly rubbish experience.

First Julia and I were directed to the wrong line with the ECV, something we didn’t discover until getting to the scanning machine. Once we were in the right queue things moved slowly until I got told off for not having taken my shoes off and having not taken every last bit of technology out of our bags, despite there being no signage suggesting you needed to do either. Yes I’d looked for signs and at what others were doing. It seemed random as to what was needed which I kind of understand, but they could be polite about it.

Once through we went on our last monorail ride to settle at the unstaffed gate before back tracking to get some drinks from the coffee shop in the centre of the satellite hub. We had just placed our order when the announcement went out asking us personally to go to the gate. I suspected this was for them to take the ECV, rather than a surprise upgrade and so didn’t rush off without our drinks.

Once back at the gate they did indeed want to take the ECV off of us and were not at all worried by its battery. With a bit of cable stretching I was able to get the battery out but keep it connected so I could fold the machine up for them. I then very stupidly managed to wriggle the battery compartment cover back into place in the centre of the now folded machine. It was only as it clicked into place that I wondered how on earth I would ever get it back off to put the battery back in there again.


Our chariot awaits.

We sat back down and drank our drinks and it wasn’t much later just after 6pm that we were awarded the dubious honour of being called to board the aircraft first. This we did without our passports getting scanned at those facial recognition booths they now have at the gates in MCO, so we’re probably on ICE’s most wanted list by now. BA did scan our boarding passes and look at our passports, so hopefully that also updates the immigration system.

We only got as far as the bend in the jetway before being asked to wait by a group of cleaners stood by the door to the apron steps. They then called through to the aircraft that the passengers were on their way, which resulted in an argument between the cleaners and the aircraft crew. The crew wanted to know why on earth the passengers had been sent down already, to which the cleaners reasonable point of view was that they just cleaned the planes and had no idea why BA’s gate team might have sent BA’s passengers onto BA’s plane before BA’s crew was ready and that shouting at the cleaners wouldn’t resolve the issue.

It was fairly amusing to witness the angry person who had been shouting rudely at the cleaning team right in front of me a few minutes ago paste her best friendly customer service smile on her face to welcome me aboard a very short time later as if the argument had never happened a couple of feet in front of me.

It took about 40 minutes for everyone else to load and so we pushed back about twenty minutes late at 6:45 PM. It then took us another 20 minutes to taxi up to Sanford airport to actually take off at 7:05.

I must have watched something on the entertainment system and we were probably served a drink before dinner, but the details have been wiped from my mind by the sleep deprivation that followed.


Dinner of Teriyaki Chicken was good, but not as good as the outbound flight.

Why the sleep deprivation I hear you ask, surely with your Premium Economy seats you enjoyed a lovely night’s sleep all the way home? No, no we didn’t for a couple of reasons. The first reason was that when I went to recline my seat sometime after the dinner things had been taken away, having finished watching whatever it was I was watching the guy in the seat behind went mad. He not only had a go at me but also called the crew over, who explained to him that this being a night flight he should expect people to recline, indeed by this point the cabin was in darkness and the vast majority of people around us were as flat as the PE seats go. No, this guy claimed to suffer from severe claustrophobia and said that he would suffer a psychological episode if Julia or I relined into ‘his space’. The stewardess did say that if he also reclined that he’d still have the same space, but apparently he couldn’t possibly do that to the poor person behind him, despite their seat also being down by now. It was also pointed out that if he indeed suffers that badly he should call BA’s disability support group before his next flight to get the bulkhead row on medical grounds. None of this helped and so to prevent the guy blowing a fuse and causing the flight to be diverted I agreed not take advantage of the seat I’d paid such a premium for.

The whole argument was rendered irrelevant a couple of moments later when the rather large man in the seat behind my claustrophobic friend started a chainsaw of incredible volume somewhere in this nasal cavity. This man enjoyed a lovely night’s sleep, no one else in the PE cabin did, nor in fact anyone in the front half of the economy cabin. I had both noise cancelling headphones and industrial ear plugs in and he was still loud enough to keep me awake. I went for a walk in the night and he was still audible, with my ear plugs still in, halfway to the rear toilets.

I ended up reading or watching films the whole way home, not the night’s rest I’d hoped for when spending my wife’s inheritance on our upgrade. The only sleep I got was a brief nap between breakfast and landing.


Breakfast was ok, a rather nice hot bacon, tomato and cheese panini and a cereal bar.

We landed back at Gatwick almost on time just after 7:30 in the morning. Sadly, there was an aircraft stuck on our stand waiting to have the police remove an unruly passenger apparently and so we had to wait a while for another to open up for us. From the looks he was getting from other passengers I did think the man with the snoring problem might need a police escort to get off the plane safely. We eventually were able to get off just after 8am.

We were asked to wait by the aircraft door for the ECV, which took an age to come up to us, long after everyone else had gone, including the crew. When we did get it back I couldn’t open the battery compartment and so after a struggle and with security keen to lock the area up I ended up pushing it right through the airport.

Obviously, the E-gates at passport control didn’t work for me, as they never have done in this county. Elsewhere in the world I’ve never had a problem, but they don’t work for me coming back to the UK at any airport or indeed on Eurostar. When I mentioned this to the Boarder Farce officer I was directed to he said it’s probably because I share a name with someone they like to keep an eye on.

Sandra had very kindly retrieved our bags for us when we got to baggage claim and then while she took a quick restroom break I had another fiddle with the ECV and maybe because something had shifted on the walk I was able to get the battery compartment open and get the thing unfolded so Julia could ride back to the car.

We had called the parking company as soon as we had our bags and so by the time we had walked back to the car park, via one of my sister’s world famous ‘short cuts’ and navigated a scrum around the lifts our cars were waiting for us.

The motorways were in cooperative moods and with a brief stop for drinks at the M25 services we were home a couple of hours later where somehow we stayed largely awake until a reasonable time to go to bed that night ahead of work the next morning.

Conclusion

Well there it was, another Florida holiday over and done with.

It has felt very odd writing this report in the weeks and months following with all that has happened in the world since we got home. It feels strange to have moaned about crowds when everywhere is so empty now. To have talked about how things worked, such as boarding groups and FastPasses when the park experiences are likely to be hugely different for the foreseeable future. We were so lucky to have gotten our holiday in before the world changed, many people have lost their holidays, or will have very different experiences to those they had planned. I know so many of us would do anything for a crowded day in Disney now, or to have the money to even think about going. Indeed, having lost friends to the virus and having had close family extremely ill with it talking about holidays at all has sometimes felt completely wrong altogether.

That said we did have a fantastic holiday and I think it is important to hold onto the memories of that in these times, the alternative would be just to stare into the hole in our bank account and beat ourselves up about what we could have done with that money instead if we had known what was coming. With that in mind I’ll leave out the usual lows for the list of ‘highs and lows’, there was only one major low, Julia being so ill at the beginning. With everything going on the continuing investigation of her issue has stopped, but she’s had no other chest pains since then anyway.

Writing this at the end of May we’ve still not heard from our insurance company about Julia’s hospital stay. I suspect that’s mainly because of all the cancellation claims they have had to deal with since and I’m more than happy for them to sort those poor people out ahead of us. I’ve no doubt that we’ve not been forgotten and as things return to normal we’ll get a letter out of the blue denying our claim on some technicality and passing on a few hundred thousand pounds worth of hospital bill for us to settle. I’d not realised until today that we have a ‘Hospital Benefit’ section on the policy that if I’m reading it right means they actually owe us money, but I’m sure their interpretation will be that we pay them that amount instead.

Highlights

Spending so much time with my wife, until furlough I’d not had her to myself for anything like this amount of time since the few months after our wedding. Yes, we missed our son, but it was nice to be a couple again for the first time in 25 years. Even in furlough we have a three story house and have kept largely to a floor each, my office on the ground floor, Julia in the living room in the middle and Edward in his office on the top floor.

Another holiday with my sister and brother-in-law, with their recent health issues it was lovely to witness them fully relax and get away from the worry of hospital appointments for a couple of weeks. Having separate accommodation at Disney and separate cars afterwards meant that on the whole we didn’t get on top of each other too much, we were never afraid to go our separate ways when any of us needed a bit of space.

Some of the food highlights were the unexpected ones away from the Signature restaurants, the quality of counter service food is so good now I doubt we’ll ever go back to the dinning plan again. Of our table service meals the stand out highlights were Yachtsman and our unplanned visit to Skipper Canteen. Over at Universal I can see us eating at Mythos and Big Fire again.

Snacking around Epcot, this has finally led us to appreciate the park. I could happily spend an afternoon and evening wandering World Showcase now, especially if there is one of the excellent concerts on offer.

The location of all of our accommodation was fantastic. Being able to walk into the Universal parks from Royal Pacific is great and it’s only a short drive from Dr Phillips hospital. The Staybridge at SeaWorld is almost as close to that park and would work equally well for Universal and Disney, I can see us back there. Port Orleans is great for its boat service to Disney Springs, that opened up many of those food highlights. It is also very close to Epcot and Magic Kingdom. Orange Lakes is so close to WDW that it shares a fence with Animal Kingdom and is also past the worst of the I4 traffic when heading south to Busch.

On the attraction front Hagrid’s Motorbike Adventure is outstanding but Rise of the Resistance really does change the nature of what a theme park attraction is. With many rides there is an obvious queue followed by a pre-show that is really just an extension of that queue, with this attraction you are experiencing the whole thing from the moment you get into the first briefing room, there really isn’t a pre-show as such, it is one long attraction with multiple elements.

To wrap up even with all of the crowd and planning issues at Walt Disney World I can see us returning to Florida in a few years’ time. First we really do want to return to Southern California and of course before that can happen the world needs to return to something like we used to call normal.

I’ll leave you with my thanks for reading and for those who did, taking the time to comment. It really does help to know at least some people are reading along.


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Old 28 May 20, 10:04 AM  
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Thank you for taking the time to do your trippie I really enjoyed reading along :spin even though Julia spent time in Hospital seems like you had a good time and got lots and lots done

Thanks again and when you go back again I will be reading along

Joan
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Old 28 May 20, 10:22 AM  
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Really enjoyed reading your trip report. It is our 25th wedding anniversary this November and we had talked about a wee holiday to Florida, but looks like we'll have to make do with a weekend somewhere in the UK instead!
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Old 28 May 20, 10:39 AM  
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Originally Posted by mick View Post
Thank you for taking the time to do your trippie I really enjoyed reading along :spin even though Julia spent time in Hospital seems like you had a good time and got lots and lots done

Thanks again and when you go back again I will be reading along

Joan
Thanks for reading along and all the comments. You're right, other than those 3 days in the hospital we had a fantastic time.

Who knows when next time will be, but whenever it is there will be a report, as much for my own memory as anything else.

Originally Posted by JudeB View Post
Really enjoyed reading your trip report. It is our 25th wedding anniversary this November and we had talked about a wee holiday to Florida, but looks like we'll have to make do with a weekend somewhere in the UK instead!
Sorry to hear you've lost your trip, I hope you enjoy your anniversary no matter where you end up celebrating.
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Old 29 May 20, 09:23 PM  
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Thank you so much for taking the time to post another report. I do love reading about your holidays, although I fail miserably at commenting on each day (sorry).
I do hope that your insurance claim is sorted and they get to the bottom of Julia's trip to the hospital.
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Old 29 May 20, 11:19 PM  
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Originally Posted by DizzyDisneyMum View Post
Thank you so much for taking the time to post another report. I do love reading about your holidays, although I fail miserably at commenting on each day (sorry).
I do hope that your insurance claim is sorted and they get to the bottom of Julia's trip to the hospital.
Thanks for reading along and your kind comments. We're in no rush to hear from the insurance. So long as the hospital have been paid we're happy and they emailed Julia a survey a while back so we know they have her details. I'm sure they'd have shouted by now if they'd not been paid.
Julia's had no repeat of the issue, so it'll just get added to the list of stuff her GP keeps an eye on.
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Old 31 May 20, 11:03 AM  
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Thanks for sharing another fabulous trip report!

Sorry to hear that Julia was ill at the beginning of the trip, pleased to hear there have been no other episodes.

Congratulations on your special wedding anniversary!
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Old 31 May 20, 01:49 PM  
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Originally Posted by xuntitledx View Post
Thanks for sharing another fabulous trip report!

Sorry to hear that Julia was ill at the beginning of the trip, pleased to hear there have been no other episodes.

Congratulations on your special wedding anniversary!
Thanks for your kind words. Sorry to see your Paris trip has been cancelled, I hope you can rebook soon.
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Old 21 Jun 20, 08:32 PM  
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Really enjoyed binge reading your report. Congratulations on your wedding anniversary. You looked like you had a fantastic time. I hope Julia continues to remain well? Thanks for sharing.

M x
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Old 21 Jun 20, 09:04 PM  
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Originally Posted by Pumba75 View Post
Really enjoyed binge reading your report. Congratulations on your wedding anniversary. You looked like you had a fantastic time. I hope Julia continues to remain well? Thanks for sharing.

M x
Thanks for reading along. We did indeed have a fantastic time, we're so lucky to have had our holiday so early in the year.

Yes Julia's fine thanks, no reoccurrence at all.
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