"Do you serve root beer here?" Day 2 (More travelling)- Feb 2014

[Guest]

Day 1!

Okay so day two let’s go! I had set my alarm for 7:30 I think, as we had planned to leave the hotel at around 8. We knew we had already checked in but you know better safe than sorry and we thought sitting in the airport would be better than sitting in the room just waiting to get off.

When I woke up James was practically ready to go, he had showered and was dressed with all his hand luggage ready. I opted to just wash my hair so we could get out of the room super-fast and according to his instagram he watched Will and Grace while waiting for me.

Now this morning I was nervous and I was anxious, I remember being a little nervous for flights but I hadn't been on one for a few years thus my brain had romanticised them and this morning I kinda had a “oh yeah airports are really stressful and planes are practically a can flying through the sky and now I’m the one who has done all the planning I hope nothing goes wrong” thought which just made my stomach feel like some sort of butterfly farm.

I dried my hair and we tidied up the hotel room a bit, I did do the genius thing of using left over sandwich bags to shove handfuls of left over crisps in so we would have something to munch on the plane if we didn’t like the food. Always thinking.

We checked out of the Premier Inn and set off on our adventure! The walk though only 5 minutes felt like forever! But we did have fun singing the Jurassic Park theme tune down the secluded walkway.



Getting to the check in area and seeing the queue we were super glad we checked in the night before. We walked up to the security and he was just putting a rope across to stop people entering (I don’t know why) but signalled for us to hurry up and let us slink through, the gods are on our side this morning. It took around 10 minutes to get through security (I was the only one who had to take my boots off and they had American stars and stripes on them…conspiracy? Probably not) then we were at the departure area…thingy! We strolled around for a bit and to be honest I felt really guilty, I was incredibly excited but my nerves made me pretty untalkative and I wasn’t showing my excitement to James. He was so sweet just talking to me and holding my hand but I think he deserves a pat on the back because I’m sure I was a little short and snappy with him, sorry James!

James was pretty hungry so we went to Boots and got him a meal deal and some pringles to take onto the plane. After a few gruelling hours of sitting around the airport we were positioned under the screens at 10:30 staring intently as this was the time we were meant to get our gate……nothing. We stared harder….nothing. James wasn't too anxious about this as he managed to get a picture of the massive Tomblerone he was in awe of:



But yay! Around 10 minutes late they let us know our gate and we ran down to it. I now did the annoying womanly thing (or maybe just a me thing I don’t want to group y’all in with my annoying habits) of going to the ladies room at the most inconvenient time. After I got out there was a TINY queue which James obviously thought was massive and I got our passports and boarding cards out.
“I Really like your nails! What brand is that polish?”
“Barry M! and thank you!” (I promise this trip report isn’t sponsored by Barry M)
The lady who checked our boarding cards was super chatty and nice telling us about her upcoming wedding and how she needed a shade exactly like mine for her big day. At the end of the girly nail polish talk she casually added on to the conversation “oh and we’ve got an upgrade for you”
“an upgrade?”
“yep”
She crossed our seat numbers off (that we paid for, don’t get me started BA) and wrote our new World Traveller plus seat numbers! I was still in my nervous mood so didn’t really make a massive deal out of it the at the time but James was going out of his mind, Facebook knew, Instagram knew, I think even the Queen knew and he kept grabbing my knee and shaking it once we were sat down to try and get the excitement out. I sent a text to my Dad to tell him and to tell him we would be boarding soon and bye! Then we got called to board…not last! But with the fancy classy people!

Our seats were amazing; I have never been in that luxury! I could stretch out my legs in front of me and not touch the divider thing!




James also had ANOTHER batch of excitement when two footballers got on our flight; Gianfranco Zolav and Roberto Dimateo (apparently, I have no idea). He was bouncing in his seat and taking dare I say too many sneaky photos. Here is one of the guy actually noticing James is crazy:



It was really funny seeing all the men going “oh my god” and their wives replying “who is he?” but after everyone was seated James settled down a bit. (He did go for a wee in the flight just to sneakily look at the other player who was in a lower down class than us…fancy fancy us).We set off on time and it only seemed like two minutes till we were in the air, James held my hand and was lovely while the plane set off and almost like a switch as soon as those seatbelt lights went off and we were at altitude my nerves disappeared and I turned to him and said “Oh my god we got upgraded! ”

The rest of the flight was pretty uneventful other than the fact we got STEAK as our meal which blew my mind and they had Great British Bake-off on the system which made me punch the air in happiness. We played Who Wants to be a Millionare? We watched tv, we made fun of each other and we did the “we’re going to America!” “In 6 hours we’ll be in America” “In 5 hours we’ll be in America”



Oh and apparently James has his own Bay



The landing was fun mainly because seeing James look out of the window in awe of the fact he was in America, it made me go all fuzzy inside and excited to see him actual be in the car driving to the hotel. We did the usual stand up immediately and stare at the plane door till it opened then whoosh we were one of the first people off and suddenly I became Jessica Ennis in my speed to immigration. We got to immigration and boom a Virgin flight had just landed and we were at the back of them all…fun…there were two lines, one for the express route and one for normal, I enquired about the express but the nice lady said it was for people who had been to the US in the past 2 years and had used their estas before. Booo. So we joined the slow line, that was really slow, I mean think of a really slow thing…that’s how slow this queue went. We were cranky, impatient and super tired but after about an hour and a half we were through immigration! Plus as it had taken so long our bags were already on the carousel. James now has his fingerprints and photo on the American system and we could go find the Quicksilver man!

I’m used to Sandford so the monorail and many levels was a new thing to me but we easily managed to find him. He was lovely! He carried my bags for me, took an interest into where we were from and our plans and even put on a lovely CD of Bruce Springsteen for us when we got in the car (Me and James were laughing about his choice of Born in the USA ) James spent the entire car ride staring out of the window saying things like “this is so crazy”. It only took around 20 minutes for us to be on International Drive. It was so amazing to be back into the Orlando I remember! I just wanted to get to the hotel!



James was getting good at this taking photos of people for my report without them knowing.

We pulled in and paid our driver in full for the return trip, he made sure I knew where to meet him and that his times were right which helped to put my mind at rest and after pulling our suitcases inside we checked in. I had sent the hotel a message on Facebook a few weeks before requesting for a high room in F block (we like being far away from the main hub…not sure why but we do) and she gave us what we asked and even referenced the Facebook message which was pretty nice
We got to the room and instantly checked for bed bugs under my mothers orders, of course there was nothing and I quickly changed out of my leggings into something much cooler as it was BOILING!
Our view was pretty nice but it was incredibly foggy not making for the best photos.



In skype conversations months before our trip we always said Hooters was going to be our first meal, the plan was to walk to Walgreens for necessities such as shampoo then walk to Hooters, order takeout then veg on the bed and an early night. First port of call was easy, we didn’t have the normal hour in Walgreens staring at all the different stuff (like do it yourself dentist kits) it was more of ‘grab any shampoo that looks good, grab some water and let’s get food so we can sleep’
I think we spent around $30 on stuff then rushed to Pointe Orlando…but…Hooters isn’t there anymore ha planning is going well already! So I threw Johnny Rockets into the pot as I knew they did takeout and after walking down loads of stairs we placed our order. James had the BBQ Chicken Melt and I had Chilli Cheese Fries. Oh my god was it good.




We got to 8pm and we were struggling to stay awake, I can’t remember what we were watching that night and I haven’t made a note but it managed to keep us up for around half an hour then nope we tapped out and fell asleep.
Jeez for a travel day this was super long! Tomorrow we head to Universal Studios!

Index

[Guest]

The first visit is super exciting! Lucky you getting upgraded too.

[pmac]

Fab upgrade!

Cant wait to read more.

[Pussycat Doll]

Excellent day, always great to nab an upgrade! Pussycat

[scottfeltham]

A great days travelling
Scott

[MissFortune]

Wow that must have been a nice colour Nail polish to score an upgrade

Really cool that you saw some famous footballers, I wouldn't have any idea who they were either but sure my OH would have been excited.

I had no idea that Hooters had closed, not sad though TBH as I didn't enjoy it.

[Guest]

Wow Zola ! Legend , but gotta admit...he looks mighty annoyed ! , loving it

[Guest]

Great read, I can feel your excitement! How cool on the upgrade too!

[lovedisney89]

Great travel day! Yay for the upgrade

[Milner]

Good travel day.