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Old 18 Feb 20, 03:56 PM  
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floridasarah
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Hot Dogs and Hiccups take 2 – Introductions

Hot Dogs and Hiccups take 2 – 2/4/20 – 16/4/20

Introduction

Hi if this is our first report you have read, I am Sarah aged 53, DH Adrian 49 DS Tom 17. We have been to Florida a few times. I have liked doing a trip report as it is lovely to look back on. I love reading other trip reports and my favourite Youtube vlogs are travel days.

I work part time for the NHS as an administrator for Community Paediatrics Audiology. DH, on writing this, works for the NHS as an IT engineer. Tom is at Cambridge Regional College doing a BTech in Games Development.





It has been 3 long years since our last trip to Florida.

I have currently named this trip report Hot Dogs and Hiccups take 2 as we are staying at the same hotel near Heathrow and flying from the same terminal at the same time (due to a flight change explained below)and parking in the same car park. I have asked Tom and Adrian to set alarms when we are at the hotel so we don’t get the same hiccup on our flight day. If you have read Hot Dogs and Hiccups you will know what I mean.

This trip started when I was looking at flights (which I do quite often). I had found out what Toms college Easter holiday dates were and as he only attends Mon Wed and Fri, and Fri before Easter hols was a training day, I was looking for flights around 2nd April.

In June I found some indirect flights costing us about £1800 for the 3 of us which I thought was not too bad for Easter school holidays. I went upstairs to ask Adrian what he thought and he was as usual non committal. When I got back downstairs and searched again I found return indirect flights with luggage for the 3 of us for £1,250! This was with Lastminute.com via Skyscanner. When he came downstairs I asked again and he said we should go for it even though we had no savings, so it went on the credit card OOOPS.

Our Original flight details were –

United Airlines
07.30 Heathrow to Washington 10.55
1hr 51mins transfer time (this changes)
12.46 Washington to Orlando 15.05

Return
14.13 Orlando to Washington 16.25
2hr transfer time
18.25 Washington to Heathrow 06.45

I then started to research a villa, I had a few on a short list but went for one near Champions gate that looked nice, £1,500. I paid this off in instalments.



I had been looking at car hire but nothing (we like an SUV)was coming in under £600 which was far too much. On a party night round some friends, who are also going at the same time again, we got talking about cars and we searched and found a truck! for £450 on usrentalcars.com. so booked it there and then.


A few days later after deliberating on the fuel economy and also if I would be comfortable driving something so big I found an SUV on the same site for £418. so I cancelled the monster truck and rebooked. Payment for this is to be taken at the end of March just before our trip.

Disney tickets put on credit card, £429 was the best I found at the time with a $20 gift card each. After Christmas, Disney and some other sites started selling them for £399. Oh well these things happen.
We (I) had decided that to keep the price down we would only be doing Disney this year, there was so much new stuff since we last went in 2017 that I thought we might need at least 2 days in each park and we like a few lazy days too.

I liked the hotel we stayed in near Heathrow so used Tesco rewards and booked it through Hotels.com.

Heathrow parking I booked on their website as it was the cheapest I could find at £86 for the 15 days. Long stay parking where we keep our keys.

So all that expense, the car park and hotel fees were paid out of the bank at the time, But the flights and Disney tickets were put on a 0% credit card.

We would all need new passports and a new ESTA too.

So December soon comes around and I receive an email from Lastminute.com to say there has been a change to our scheduled outbound flight times.

07.45am Heathrow to Washington 11.20
1hr 10mins transfer time
12.30 Washington to Orlando 14.47

Now it would be nice to have an extra 15mins in the morning and arrive 15mins earlier in Orlando but cutting down our transfer time by 40 minutes was a bit of a concern.

So I messaged United on FB but got a reply to say I needed to contact lasminute.com as that is where I booked through. They were most unhelpful saying the type of ticket I bought meant no changes allowed. He also said if we missed the flight we would be stuck! Numpty.

Fast forward to Feb and the Heathrow flight still left at 7.30. I kept getting ads on FB from United so thought I would ask when the flight would change they said March 28th. I then asked what is the minimum time for transferring at Dulles and was told 90mins.When I told them ours had been reduced to 80 mins they asked me to private message them with my details. I did this not expecting much, but they came back extremely quickly with 2 options. Change to the later Washington to Orlando flight about 5pm meaning a 4 ½ hour layover and getting in to Orlando at about 8pm or fly from Heathrow at 9am to Newark with a 2 hr 10 min transfer time and arriving in Orlando at around 5pm. We chose the 2nd option, as this meant a slightly better morning flight and getting to Orlando earlier than the other option. They even selected seats for us. I received a confirmation email within seconds. The only slight downside is we have 3 bulkhead seats in the centre, not window seats. It would have been nice to see the New York skyline as we come into land. I logged on to United to see if I could change the seats but they look fully booked. I’m amazed we got 3 seats together

January came and I had to send off for our new passports. The most difficult bit was trying to get decent acceptable photos against a white wall. They came back very quickly and as soon as we received them we applied for our ESTA’s, these were approved within an hour.

We also decided to get Kennedy tickets as there was an offer on Attraction tickets for adult tickets at kids prices. We had said every time shall we go but never got round to it.



I had also wanted to go to a rodeo for a while and when Archibald, from the Easter 2020 group, mentioned the Silver Spurs rodeo on our first weekend there, I asked for a link to the website and got 3 row B tickets for our first Friday night. Friday 3rd April.



The boys also have a 7.00pm reservation in Galaxy’s Edge to build a droid on Saturday the 4th April.

I have made a plan using the Dibb planner and am now waiting for our 30 day window to arrive.

https://www.thedibb.co.uk/forums/pla...a=view&p=62484

Edited at 11:01 AM.
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Old 18 Feb 20, 08:44 PM  
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beth21
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Not long now I’ll be following x
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Old 19 Feb 20, 10:17 AM  
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mick
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Sounds like a good plan have a great trip

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Old 19 Feb 20, 10:30 AM  
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Palm trees
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You've got lots to look forwards to there, and sounds like a great result on the flights.
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Old 19 Feb 20, 11:32 AM  
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Hollyhobbit
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Looking forward to reading along. Have a great time.
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Old 19 Feb 20, 12:25 PM  
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Rabel
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looks brilliant! Enjoy the slightly more relaxed flight.
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Old 19 Feb 20, 12:34 PM  
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Looks good, will be following along 😊
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Old 20 Feb 20, 11:36 PM  
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Great start, I look forward to reading along!
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Old 21 Feb 20, 05:07 PM  
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How hard is it to book build a droid please? I know ors $199 but might be an option if we cant get on the ride itself... will it be as busy next may do you think?
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Old 26 Feb 20, 12:15 PM  
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Thanks for the heads up about the rodeo - will look into getting tickets ourselves for 3rd April.

Have a great time!
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