The Haunting Sequel - Pre Travel and Travel Day

[Safyre]

Putting the Pre Travel day and Travel Day together!

Day -1 Pre Travel Day

Woke up excited today, well, I did. Dave was at work for the last shift before the holiday. I had finished yesterday, which I’m sure my colleagues were pleased about as I had been updating them on my countdown every day since about 100 days.

I checked my phone and had a message from the beautician I go to cancelling my appointment, oh no! That’ll teach me to leave it to the last possible day. I had a mad rush to find someone else, which is always a bit risky so I only had the bare minimum done.

I was up at 7.30, but had to wait till 9.30 to phone for an appointment, and online check in was also 9.30. Sat and had some coffee waiting impatiently.

I was pretty tired after a really busy weekend at work, so tried to chill out, but I was in holiday mode and so excited I was bouncing a bit.
I packed my carry on and pulled all the paperwork together in a folder. I had packed the week before although I had to open the cases again to add some last minute bits I forgot, like red nail polish I needed for my Halloween costume.

My beautician appointment was fine, very quick, would probably go back to her again, then I went to Asda. I needed another memory card and sweets for the plane, Haribo are a tradition now, and something to suck incase my ears hurt. (I had ear surgery earlier in the year)

Once I was organised, Dave got home from work (woo) and his dad arrived to dog sit for 3 weeks.

We managed not to have the usual preholiday row, had some dinner (pasta in cheese sauce) and completely forgot to eat the cheesecake I bought. Oh well, Dave’s dad got it later.

The plan had been bed at 9….but that became 11 as we blethered. Typical us.


Day 0 – Travel Day (Wednesday)

The alarm went off so loudly at 4am, not good. We did manage to get up about 4.15, which was impressive for us! And without the usual begging and pleading.

Before long, my dad the taxi had arrived (about 5am) and was loading the car while I was trying to put some makeup on so I didn’t look like the living dead.

The drive to Glasgow airport was actually not too painful as the roads were still quiet, and we were soon dropped off.
We went to the BA desk with our 3 cases. One had a smaller case inside like Russian dolls.

I explained that I hadn’t been able to print our boarding passes for the Gatwick to Orlando leg as it had said ‘collect at airport’. She printed them and I noticed mine had SSSS on it….Eeep.
When we got up to security, the Glasgow boarding passes I had printed wouldn’t scan, so we were sent back to the desk. They printed us new ones as the ones I had printed only had half the barcode on it.
Went through security, no issues this time, and no pat down which is a rarity for us.

We had booked the airport lounge here, but couldn’t find it. We found a customer service phone so used it to call for directions to the lounge. It was next to the Wetherspoons and upstairs.

The lounge itself,we had bacon rolls, coffee, danishes, there was also toast and cereal, juice and a cash bar. It was pretty quiet, had wood panelling and lots of tartan, and that made it feel quite old fashioned, and I felt a little bit out of place. The atmosphere was a bit like a library, everyone seemed to whisper.

We got value for money but maybe we should have stuck to Frankie and Bennys!

We headed round to gate 21 for our first flight. Didn’t get a row to ourselves, boo. I noticed after a few minutes my seat was reclined, but I hadn’t done it. The tiredness had kicked in here I think.

The flight was pretty quick, we got to Gatwick about 20 minutes early. This was a relief. I was sitting in the middle and the woman next to me was very huffy and grumpy, she kept tutting and sighing at me. It made me feel like she didn’t like sitting next to me, and was upsetting me a bit. I was self conscious incase I was spilling over onto her seat at all so held myself at a funny angle so I didn’t get near her.

At Gatwick, we went into boots to get some water, then wandered through duty free, before heading to our gate, again it was 21. This is where I got my extra security check. I was taken to one side at the gate area and they ran something like a dry cloth on a stick over my carry on bags, my waistband, outside my clothes and my hands. Took 30 seconds and was no issue. Finally we got on the plane to Orlando!
The plane was pretty empty, behind us, quite a few people had a whole row to themselves, and Club World was empty. I wondered if there was any benefit to asking for a cheeky upgrade on the way back and decided to try it anyway.

We were in PE and it was probably the busiest section of the lane. The food was good, we both had steak as the alternative was a curry and spice is a no no for us. It was nice enough, and came with a salad, a roll, a wee pudding and cheese & crackers. We also both had some wine when we boarded, and then more with dinner. It’s very unlike us, but holiday mode! I may have spilled some. Maybe.

The guy in front of Dave (my notes use other words for him, I wont repeat) reclined his seat immediately after takeoff, and stayed that way until landing. Even during meals. We pointed it out to the cabin crew but they didn’t do anything. The amount of leg room it left him with, we would probably have been just as well in economy.

I watched Deadpool, very funny, and Unsane, which was kinda weird and I didn’t really like it, but stuck it out. Game Night was fun too. Dave and I kept recommending films to each other.

The music selection was dire, so I watched some old episodes of Modern Family, as I had watched all the films I fancied. We got some mini magnums, and a few juices. They obviously ran out of coke etc and gave us fruit juice then just water. The flight felt really long, we counted down every single hour. I wished I had put some films on my tablet but I honestly thought it would have been better than it was.
The snack came out, a chicken Caesar sandwich and a fruity flapjack with some coffee.

After we landed, we were taxiing for a while, finally getting off the plan at 6.44 pm. This was when the fun really started. Or not. We had landed late, I think we were late leaving Gatwick, so we had to taxi for a while, and when we got through to arrivals, there was at least 3 flights in front of us. The computers had gone we used last time, and passport control took two hours. They only had about 6 or 8 desks working.

We could have wept by this time. It was brutal. We could see our cases going round on the carousel for at least an hour too, so at least we knew they were there.

Once we got our cases, we walked to the monorail, bits of the airport were being worked on. Between the monorail and the car hire queue, we were probably another hour to get out the airport. We were getting really tired now.

In the garage, we found our car, and it was a white Toyota Prius. We were pleasantly surprised. I really want a Prius so it was nice to try one out. We loaded the car and set up our sat nav from home. We had been told to flick the switch on the sunpass if we wanted to use it, so we did. It was a group effort concentrating on the road and sat nav to get to our hotel.

We parked the Prius at the back and checked in at the Clarion Inn Lake Buena Vista. The check in was quick and friendly, she offered us a king room, but said that the only one left was ground floor facing the highway and would be noisy. We went for a room with 2 doubles instead, 3rd floor facing the car park.

The room was fine, if a little dated. Two beds, a coffee maker, microwave, fridge, so all we needed for 2 nights. The hotel also had a laundry room and a pool.


We were tired, but also a bit hungry so we went for some food at the hotel bar. It was $25 for 2 Philly Cheese Steak subs and some bright orange Fantas.

We picked up some bottles of water at the hotel shop and headed up to our room. We had a bed each, they were pretty small, and fell asleep almost straight away. That was now a full 24 hours we had been on the go.


We are also vlogging our trip, and the travel day video is here:

[Kat11]

Fab start. Looking forward to following along.

Kat

[Palm trees]

That's a l9ng wait at customs! Looking forwards to reading more of your report

[Safyre]

We really were about to tear our hair out!