Last Trip before Lockdown.Mar 2020 The Preamble Ramble aka Our Trip & New Florida House Plans

[WileyCoyote]

The Pre amble Ramble Or otherwise known as The Trip Bit and the House Bit

As I didn't write a pre trip at the time - this is sort of it - the details of the trip plan and the whole run up to the housey bit. I have put it into Two posts o if you are not bothered by all the house stuff you can skip post #2

The Trip Bit

Going Out Tues March 3rd, VS27 10.10 LGW-MCO
Coming Home Mon March 9th VS28 19.05 MCO-LGW

The Trip starts with an Overnight stay at the Sandman Signature

A king room booked direct on their website

Package booked is for Park, stay, meet and greet - this included a complimentary taxi to the airport in the morning and 8 days parking. Really reasonable at £107.

Flights with VA - amazingly managed to nab Bubble seats there and back - had no idea it would be our last trip up there.

Cost was £868 - this included £59 per leg for Andy’s seat on Dibbers Row (75H) and £59 for my upgrade to the window seat of the same row (75K) plus £35 to have the seat behind Andy on the way out. £424 each which we thought was fine.

Accommodation choices in Palm Coast for this week were really limited - we didn’t know until we got there that we had managed (again) to pick the week of another Biker meet up in Daytona - which explained why everything was booked up

There were some Airbnb choices but still feeling burned after our Bradenton experience, I couldn’t bring myself to commit - there were quite a few places in the European Village - they look nice but all overlook the square with the balconies

and we wondered how noisy they might be - as it turns out, on Biker week, that Village Square wasn’t always quiet

So that left us with a local hotel or the timeshare style Legacy Vacation Resort - with the Legacy winning out as it gave us the option to self-cater. The reviews indicated it was a bit dated but given this wasn’t a normal holiday and we didn't expect to be in the place much, we weren’t bothered - plus it was walking distance to the Village which was perfect.

Cost for 5 nights was £638 but we had some Expedia rewards to cash in which took £51 off the total - ending up at £586 - plus a nightly resort fee payable on checking out that totalled $40 for our stay.

We also planned to stay in Orlando the night before coming home to see friends - we picked the Sheraton on S Apopka Vineland so we could walk over to the Millers Ale House. One night was £68 plus $21 parking and $24 resort fee paid on check out.

In total c £1900
£868 for flights
£732 for US Accommodation
£107 for Stay, Park, Meet and Greet at Gatwick
Car Hire - with Dollar - can’t remember cost but was just a basic economy

The trip was only booked a couple of weeks before departure so we were totally lucky on those seats !