Winging it - a no plans trip to Orlando - May 2022

[Fuellady]

Winging it – a “no plans” trip report to Orlando

Pre-Trip Report

With less than a week to go, I thought I should get started on our Pre-Trip Report! Even now as I type this, there is uncertainty hanging over this trip and no guarantee that we will embark on our adventure as planned. We both woke up yesterday morning with cold-like symptoms and are currently testing negative for Covid but there is always the chance that will change over the next few days.

Anyway, enough of the negativity – let's proceed with confidence and high hopes for a successful trip!

Who are we? Some of you will know us from previous reports, but for those of you who don’t, we are Neil and Lynda. Empty nesters from the North East of Scotland who love holidaying anywhere really, but our favourite is Orlando. Here we are on our last trip, way back in November 2019.

Quite a lot has changed for us since our last trip. Mainly in terms of my employment. Bit of a long story, but the bones of it is that I had worked for the same company in an office job for over 31 years, things had changed there and I wasn’t happy anymore. This had been going on for a while and in November 2020, I took some leave and did a Nail Technician course. I started my tiny part time nail business alongside my full-time job in April 2021, then finally packed in my full-time office job in December 2021. I now have a part time reception job in a GP surgery for 3 days and do nails 2 full days and a couple of evenings a week. It’s a great balance for me and I’m loving life but obviously this change has impacted our income so who knows how that will affect future holidays. Time will tell. Neil is still in his job of 26 years, and still loves football and Formula One!

When and How? All being well, we fly on Friday 13th May, leaving Inverness Airport at 7am. Landing at Heathrow about an hour and a half later, we have to get from Terminal 5 to Terminal 3 for our 2nd flight, from Heathrow at 1.30pm straight to Orlando.

We are flying Business Class with British Airways all the way, thanks to a Companion Voucher earned by spending lots on our BA AmEx card! All for £1014 in taxes and 120,000 Avios points. This is our first time flying Business and we are so excited for the spacious seats and real cutlery. We do like an airport lounge as well, and flying Business gets us access to the BA lounges. Hopefully we’ll have time to take advantage of this, but we need to get sorted with changing terminals first, I think.

We are staying for 13 nights, leaving Orlando at 7.55pm on Thursday 26th May, arriving back in Inverness at 2.50pm the following day, connecting through Heathrow again. I really hope we won’t be as jet lagged as normal with having the flat bed seat to rest in on the overnight flight.

Where are we staying? We have 3 different accommodations booked for this trip.

The first is the Clubhouse Hotel in Nairn. We live just over an hour from Inverness Airport, so decided that we should get a little closer the night before so we don’t have to get up quite so early the next morning. The hotels in Inverness were really expensive, and Nairn is a little town that we have to drive through anyway, about 10 minutes from the airport so it seemed like a good shout. We found this on Hotels.com for £48. Since we had a £30 Hotels.com voucher from Christmas we only paid £18. It looks really nice for the money. Bargain!

Our 2nd hotel is the Hyatt Regency Orlando International Airport. In order to take full advantage of our Business Class flights we didn’t want to be picking up the car as soon as we arrived. By changing Tesco Clubcard points into Hotels.com vouchers, we paid £58 for this night including breakfast in the morning. Another bargain! We’ve stayed here once before, and it’s really lovely so we’re looking forward to staying here again.

The next morning (Saturday 14th May) we pick up our car and head to our home for the next 12 nights, a 4-bedroom villa at Watersong. We normally rent on the US27 and this is down by Champions Gate so a slightly different area for us. We left it quite late booking the villa, as we couldn’t quite believe that the trip would go ahead so we didn’t start looking until January. I did put a shout out on The Dibb but didn’t get any replies until one came in 2 weeks later. We had booked from another site by then! Despite leaving it quite late, we still had some beautiful villas to choose from and went with this one as the owners were so helpful with the booking and it looked great too. We noticed that the prices of villa rentals have gone up quite a lot too, but we were happy with the price of this one at £1368 for the 12 nights including pool and spa heat.

We had a bit of a scare when the villa owner we had booked with sent an email saying they had sold the villa . However, within a couple of hours we had an email from the new owners, telling us a bit about themselves and explaining that our deposit had been transferred to them and nothing would change with our rental. We were so relieved, and the new owners have been fabulous at communicating with us and seem really lovely. We’ve received all of the welcome information including how to enter the villa so we’re not anticipating any problems. It looks such a lovely villa, overlooking a conservation area.

Getting around? We’ve gone with an Intermediate SUV from Budget with the Gold Package, booked through Andy at Discount Florida Car Hire. I’m hoping the desk won’t be busy as we’ll be picking the car up at 10am in the morning, but we won’t be taking any nonsense from the desk clerk despite not being in a hurry! We downloaded the app for the Visitor Toll Pass today, so we're all set with that too .

Plans? What plans? The only plan is for this to be a chilled, relaxing holiday with lots of pool time, some nice strolls, great food and a bit of shopping. We can’t get into the villa until 4pm on our first day, so we’re heading to the Premium Outlets for some retail therapy straight from the airport. After that, we’ll be “winging it” every day, hence the report title! We’ll probably get out of the villa for a while every day, but we’ll just see what we fancy doing at the time. Likely suspects will be a wander round Celebration, a couple of visits to Disney Springs and maybe a trip to Clearwater Beach.

There will be a couple of days when sport will take over and Neil will spend the day in front of the TV and I’ll be chilling by the pool. On Wednesday 18th, Rangers play Frankfurt in Seville in the Europa League Final. This is such a big deal for Neil as a lifelong Rangers fan that he has to see this game, and that’s fine with me too. Three days later on Saturday 21st, Rangers are in action again, this time against Hearts in the Scottish Cup Final, another must watch.

Where will we eat? Being seasoned Florida visitors, we have our favourites that we will definitely be visiting. I can guarantee that Longhorns, Olive Garden, Denny’s, Bob Evans, and Perkins will make the cut. We were delighted to discover that Longhorn’s and Olive Garden have new branches very close to our villa. We also plan to have breakfast at Keke’s in Dr. Phillips as we had a fabulous meal there last time we visited.

There are a couple of new places we’d like to try, namely Ford’s Garage and Rock & Brews. Bahama Breeze is a place we’ve never frequented, but so many people have personally recommended it to me that we’re seriously considering it. I wouldn’t mind a repeat visit to Cheesecake Factory, having not eaten there for a number of years but Neil isn’t so keen. If there’s anywhere you think we NEED to try, let me know!

We all love a food pic, so here are a few from previous trips...

Bits & Bobs? A few wee bits that don’t need a section of their own...

Airport Parking – There is literally no choice at Inverness Airport – you have to book parking with the airport itself or not at all! It’s so expensive but they have a complete monopoly on it so we had no choice but to pay the £118 they were asking for 14 nights parking.

Covid Testing – We've ordered home testing kits from MedicSpot for a total of £38.00 using the discount code on the BA website. We left this a bit late as we were holding off hoping for an announcement that pre-flight testing would be scrapped, but no such luck. These should arrive on Wednesday ahead of our supervised tests on Thursday at 12.30pm.

Currency – The rate is so poor just now that we’ve decided to only take a small amount of dollars. We’ll use our Halifax Clarity Card for all of our purchases.

Packing – We made a start on this today, with most of it done. We’re not taking many clothes, we have laundry facilities in the villa and of course, we’ll be shopping out there. Plenty of room left in the cases with only shoes and toiletries to go in. I decided to use my packing cubes, as I bought them over 2 years ago and haven’t had a chance to use them yet! Neil thought it was a waste of time and has just folded his clothes straight into the case as usual.

I’ve decided to do a separate food report, then one post for the whole trip (this is what I did last time) as there will be some days when we don’t do much at all. I can guarantee we'll be eating out a lot though so there will be plenty of food to report on!

I think that’s all for now – I'll pop back on and update if I think of anything else...

Thank you for reading - it's so nice to finally have (hopefully) a trip to look forward to, and new reports to read .

[Col&Ali]

Hello lovely Lynda! Sounds like you have made some very brave decisions in your work life - good for you!

I am in envy over your relaxed trip plan! The villa looks lovely 🥰

I remember you staying in that airport hotel before - what a great idea! Obviously that’s what the packing cubes are for 😉 Come on Neil!

Did you get the car at a good price? Car hire prices seem to be extortionate at the moment!

With regards to restaurant recommendations - I can’t believe you’ve never done Bahama Breeze! It’s our absolute favourite 🤤. I would also suggest Cheesecake Factory too but for the savoury options - such good portions!

Looking forward to your reviews of Ford Garage and Rock & Brews! I had forgotten about that one! Let us know what the Margaritaville Resort is like please!

Hope you can shake off the cold you have got and everything goes smoothly 🤞

I’ll be reading along as usual 😀

Ali
x

[margyloveswdw]

Sounds like a fabulous trip you have planned! I’d recommend Cheddar Scratch Kitchen for a new place to try. Went to the one on the 192 back in Jan 2020 and January this year a different one (think it was on IDrive south) and hand the best steak of the trip! Definitely on our must do list for future holidays.

[Libby B]

Following along! Just the two of us for our next trip too!

When I see some trip reports I think I would never be able to keep up so I looking forward to the chilled relaxed report!

Hope the trip goes well and look forward to the updates

[Fuellady]

Originally Posted by Col&Ali

Hello lovely Lynda! Sounds like you have made some very brave decisions in your work life - good for you!

I am in envy over your relaxed trip plan! The villa looks lovely 🥰

I remember you staying in that airport hotel before - what a great idea! Obviously that’s what the packing cubes are for 😉 Come on Neil!

Did you get the car at a good price? Car hire prices seem to be extortionate at the moment!

With regards to restaurant recommendations - I can’t believe you’ve never done Bahama Breeze! It’s our absolute favourite 🤤. I would also suggest Cheesecake Factory too but for the savoury options - such good portions!

Looking forward to your reviews of Ford Garage and Rock & Brews! I had forgotten about that one! Let us know what the Margaritaville Resort is like please!

Hope you can shake off the cold you have got and everything goes smoothly 🤞

I’ll be reading along as usual 😀

Ali
x

See more...

Ali - how lovely to "see" you . Thank you - it has been tough making those big life decisions, but I'm so glad I did.

I think our car hire was £742, so over double what we normally pay. When we started pricing it up it was coming in about £1200 so it was a relief to get it under 1k to be honest.

I need to insist on giving Bahama Breeze a try - I believe they have lovely cocktails! I'll definitely report back on all of our food and drink choices.

Originally Posted by margyloveswdw

Sounds like a fabulous trip you have planned! I’d recommend Cheddar Scratch Kitchen for a new place to try. Went to the one on the 192 back in Jan 2020 and January this year a different one (think it was on IDrive south) and hand the best steak of the trip! Definitely on our must do list for future holidays.

See more...

Thank you - we did try Cheddar's on our last trip. I really enjoyed it but Neil didn't as much. By his own admission he probably chose badly. Maybe worth another try.

Originally Posted by Libby B

Following along! Just the two of us for our next trip too!

When I see some trip reports I think I would never be able to keep up so I looking forward to the chilled relaxed report!

Hope the trip goes well and look forward to the updates

See more...

Thank you - chilled is definitely the way to go for us now! I think it's more relaxing as a couple anyway - less people to consider! I'm sure you'll love being away, just the 2 of you

[WIGGYSMUM]

Hi Lynda
I’m so excited for this trip for you both , it’s been a long time coming!
I bet you can’t wait to experience business class
Your plans sound lovely and relaxing 😎 with lots of great food choices, if Neil doesn’t fancy Cheesecake Factory why don’t you order it in if there’s an evening you don’t fancy going out
I hope you are going to have some lovely holiday nails too, no excuse with all those amazing colours you post 🤗
Emma xx

[Florida1972]

This all sounds and looks like a great trip. I look forward to reading more 🇺🇸😊

[bigsis3]

Wow... we have so much in common ! ! . We are from central Scotland, currently staying in the premier inn and flying out from Manchester tomorrow morning to Orlando and returning 20th May.
Collecting a full size SUV From Orlando booked with Andy at DFCH. Staying first night in Orlando at Embassy Suites LBV and second night at Hampton Inn Ellenton to do premium outlets there. We have a villa from Friday in Cape Coral, just the two of us, and will spend our time shopping and sunbathing. Will take a day off on Weds 18th to watch Rangers in Europa Final as my other half is a lifelong Gers fan too and we wouldn’t miss such a big occasion . Hoping to tie in with the Naples Rangers supporters club for the game but if all else fails we will drive to Orlando and stay overnight. Here’s hoping all your tests go well and you are able to make the trip . Fingers crossed for you ! .

[Goldia]

I'm really hoping the covid tests went well and that you had a fabulous time on the flights, really making the most of the business experience. I can't wait to read all about your laid back no plans trip.

I hope you have a fun holiday lovely lady

[Fuellady]

Originally Posted by WIGGYSMUM

Hi Lynda
I’m so excited for this trip for you both , it’s been a long time coming!
I bet you can’t wait to experience business class
Your plans sound lovely and relaxing 😎 with lots of great food choices, if Neil doesn’t fancy Cheesecake Factory why don’t you order it in if there’s an evening you don’t fancy going out
I hope you are going to have some lovely holiday nails too, no excuse with all those amazing colours you post 🤗
Emma xx

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Hey Emma, how are you? Aw, thank you - it's certainly been a while!

That's a great idea about ordering in, I'll keep it in mind .

I'm so annoyed about my nails as I'm not happy with them at all . We had such a stressful pre-travel day where nothing went to plan so they were a real rush job

Thanks for reading

Originally Posted by Florida1972

This all sounds and looks like a great trip. I look forward to reading more 🇺🇸😊

See more...

Thank you

Originally Posted by bigsis3

Wow... we have so much in common ! ! . We are from central Scotland, currently staying in the premier inn and flying out from Manchester tomorrow morning to Orlando and returning 20th May.
Collecting a full size SUV From Orlando booked with Andy at DFCH. Staying first night in Orlando at Embassy Suites LBV and second night at Hampton Inn Ellenton to do premium outlets there. We have a villa from Friday in Cape Coral, just the two of us, and will spend our time shopping and sunbathing. Will take a day off on Weds 18th to watch Rangers in Europa Final as my other half is a lifelong Gers fan too and we wouldn’t miss such a big occasion . Hoping to tie in with the Naples Rangers supporters club for the game but if all else fails we will drive to Orlando and stay overnight. Here’s hoping all your tests go well and you are able to make the trip . Fingers crossed for you ! .

See more...

Hi! I hope you're having a wonderful trip It sounds like you have a lovely relaxing trip planned too with lots of shopping. I hope you manage to tie your plans in with the big match - fingers crossed for a great result

Originally Posted by Goldia

I'm really hoping the covid tests went well and that you had a fabulous time on the flights, really making the most of the business experience. I can't wait to read all about your laid back no plans trip.

I hope you have a fun holiday lovely lady

See more...

Hello Abby Well, I wouldn't say the covid tests went well - it was a bit of a nightmare actually. But, we are here!

Business class was fab - definitely the way to travel Thank you, we're having a lovely time