Five Fords Fifth Family Floriday-August 18-Travel Days

[juliab]

Monday 6th August

I got up at my usual time of 6am. Thanks to a very productive day previously I had just a little bit of packing left to do. I then managed to get a couple of loads of washing done – I hate coming home to loads of washing! And thanks to the wonderful weather everything was soon dried and ironed.

Scott went into work earlier this morning and was working straight through to get a full day’s work in.

Kids got up around 8am, had their breakfast then help out with a bit of tidying and hovering round the house. Excitement levels were up so it was a good way to use up some of that excited energy!

Before we knew it Scott came home – work finished for 4 weeks yay! Got on with the last few chores, cases put into the back of the car and we were ready for off. Everything seemed to be running smoothly and as we set off I didn’t have that feeling of leaving anything behind! I suppose only time would tell.

Seemed a little strange going to Manchester for our summer holiday as the past few times we’d flown from a London airport. Thankfully the traffic was good to us no issues anywhere and before we knew it we were spotting planes up in the skyline.

We were booked into the Travelodge at Altrincham which was just a few miles away. The 2 rooms were a really good price and both of them had lots of space as they were both family rooms. Not the fanciest of places but it provided everything we needed for the night. Overnight parking was £5 which we paid for when we checked in.

By the time we’d brought the cases up it was well after 5 pm – teatime. Had a short walk along the high street where we came across a Wetherspoon’s pub called the Unicorn. It was fairly quiet inside with lots of tables available so we settled on eating in here.

The meals were reasonably priced and with drinks cost £30.

For some reason the dessert’s didn’t appeal to us so after we’d finished we popped into Sainsbury’s , which was literally next door, and the kids picked some donuts. I also bought some pre packed muffins as I thought these would be ok to eat as a snack or for breakfast in the morning. Whilst we were at it Scott picked up a couple of cans of beer for himself and a small bottle of wine for me, we had these in the room when we got back.

Showered and changed we settled down and watched a bit of tv as well as some plane spotting from the window.

Couldn’t believe how chilled we all felt and that the day had gone really well. I normally feel quite frantic! Scott laid all the clothes out ready for the morning whilst I did my nails and caught up with my journal. Then it was lights out at 9pm as we had an early start in the morning.


Tuesday 7th August

The alarm did its job of waking us up at 3.45am. I had woken earlier but didn’t want to check the time as it was so dark, didn’t want to disturb anyone either. Anyway I had managed a few hours the room was really quiet and we made sure we stayed quiet too as we got ready to go out.

We didn’t see anyone on reception as we left and it was the same as we drove over to the Airport we didn’t see a car for a while – not that we had far to go.

The other thing that felt strange was the heat, it felt so warm to say it was 4.15am in the morning.

We were at the airport in no time and soon leaving our car at Manchester T3 meet and greet. Dropped the keys off at the office and we were all set.

Next we needed to drop our bags off. I’d checked us in already but hadn’t printed any boarding cards off. It was very busy inside with massive queues everywhere. Turned out that the big lines were all for Ryanair flights and as we made our way over to BA we were very happy to see that nobody was waiting there.

The lady handed us all our boarding cards, took our cases from us and we were done here, ready for security next. Going through security was painless too which I was very thankful for. None of us got stopped for extra screening and all our hand luggage came through with no further checks either.

Before we knew it we were sat in Costa’s having a coffee and plane spotting. I was a little cheeky and gave the kids one of those chocolate muffins we’d bought from Sainsburys. It was still way too early for Scott and I to have something eat, but we enjoyed our coffees.

Scott checking the board and soon our gate number came up. We made our way over to the gate and we spoke to a lovely young lady who was going to London on a business trip. She told us she didn’t like going on this flight as most of the people flying are going on their holidays unlike herself.

We settled ourselves into our seats and soon we were taking off, right on time at 7am.

Seemed like we were only in the air for a few moments, the flight didn’t take an hour anyway. Before we knew it we were looking down onto the London landmarks through the airplane window. Just love these short flights!


It all looked fairly straight forward as we got off the plane and we followed the purple route to Terminal 3. We were asked various question’s by the AA staff before we went through the line to catch the bus over to the other Terminal.

It was all good though and we arrived with plenty of time to go through security, which was really quiet.

Unfortunately we had no time for breakfast, we didn’t even have time to buy a meal deal from Boots which Poppy was so looking forward too! Scott quickly purchased a couple of bottles of water and some juice and then we waited for our group to be called onto our next flight.

As we were near to the back of the plane we were the last group to be called. I sat with the kids in the middle row of 4 whilst Scott sat in the aisle seat in the same row. A mum and toddler sat with Scott.

We all soon found the entertainment and made use of it throughout the flight. Poppy kept flitting from film to film and program to program whilst telling me about everything she had seen – as kids do. I surprised myself by actually watching a couple of movies , Rampage to start with then A Quiet Place next.

In between the movie watching our food came out. There wasn’t a kid’s meal for Poppy she just had the same as us and If I remember correctly, it was the typical choice of beef or chicken. I do recall the food being ok here and the attendants were generous with the drinks.

For some reason, not sure why, but in our part of the cabin everyone had their window blind down? It made the plane really dark there which then made me want to have a bit of a snooze – I did actually nod off a couple of times!

In between watching films and napping the flight crew came round with a chocolate ice cream and another drink. Later we were given a couple of vegetarian pies – quite tasty!

We were offered another drink and I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly the flight had seemed to have passed. It was 2pm when we landed and was a beautiful sunny day in Miami.

We had a wait in Immigration at it was at this point when I started to feel a little sick. Thankfully all the kids felt fine we had no repeat performances of the last time we came here.

Slowly but surely we made our way down the lines then eventually through immigration. Once through we picked our cases up and took them over to the drop off area, everything was pretty straight forward with plenty of staff there helping and directing us to the relevant places.

Had to go through security - Hayden got picked out at random for an extra security check. Once through we had a little bit of time to spare before our last flight of the day.

We had a little look around the shops but honestly we weren’t in that much of a mood for shopping. It passed some of the time having a look around a new airport, not that we had to wait too long for our flight to Tampa.

Jamie and Poppy were feeling a little peckish though and whilst not in need of a big meal, they wanted a little something to nibble on. So we bought some hotdogs from one of the eateries. Really tried to find a sandwich shop but we couldn’t see anything, still the hotdogs did their trick.

Snacks finished we only had 15 minutes to wait until we were boarding, everything was going really well and we all felt fine, not at all tired.

An announcement was made telling us that the aircraft was really hot and asking us all to keep the window blinds down in order to keep the airplane cool! This delayed the flight by 15 minutes. Well went we walked onboard we certainly could feel the heat and realised why we’d had a slight delay. At least I knew the reason for the blinds being down on this flight!

Flight number 3

Annoyingly on the previous flight I’d started watching a film, The 15.17 to Paris and hadn’t had enough time to finish watching it. Anyway the good thing was I was able to catch the last bit of the film on this flight as the system was the exact same.


The flight was another short one and again we landed on time even with the slight delay. Easily collected our bags then we took the longest escalator up to the monorail, shuttle which took us to the car rental place (2nd stop).

Straight over to the garage as Scott is Avis preferred - We could see Scott’s name up on the board along with the bay number of the car.
The car waiting for us was a Ford Fusion which was to be expected I suppose as we’d booked a full size car. The boot space didn’t look very big so I went back over to the desk to enquire about upgrading to a larger car, or at least one with a bigger boot!

As the lady was dealing with another customer I had to wait a little but the kids were happy enough looking at the prestige section and soon the lady was assisting me. I kindly asked about a different car within the same category to which she replied to say we could have a minivan.

I was a bit confused and explained we didn’t need a massive car but anyway she passed the new keys over and told us which bay to go too. I thanked her and we headed off round the corner to our new car. I think it was a standard SUV? Anyway the boot size was plenty big enough and soon enough we were on our way.

The time was now 8pm so we had been up for quite a while. I think at that point the long travel day finally hit the kid’s. We set off from Tampa and around 10 minutes into the drive I noticed that both Poppy and Jamie had fallen asleep.

Scott did so well with the drive up to Orlando which took us an hour. It was dark by the time we arrived - thankfully we had no problems finding the Blue Heron Resort.

Check in was quiet, just us there so within no time everything was sorted. We had to pay a cleaning fee of $150 which we weren’t aware of at the time of booking. Once we’d settled up we were given a parking voucher for the car then we went over to Tower 2, easily parked up and then got the lift up our room on the 14th floor.

The room was quite nice, a little dated maybe but very clean which was the main point.

We had a beautiful view of the lake and pool from our balcony and further in the distance we could see the bright lights of Orlando.

We quickly washed, brushed our teeth then changed for bed. It had been a long travel day but much to our delight an extremely smooth one. We couldn’t have hoped for it to have gone any better with no delays or sickness to speak of – our bargain BA flights had gone well!

The kids had done brilliantly too, and Hayden especially had loved travelling on the various different aircrafts. We were so happy to have arrived in Orlando. Keen to get some much needed sleep ready, for our first park day in the morning, we were in bed at 10pm.

Excited for the start of our holiday

Thanks for reading

[Cinderella]

The kids did brilliantly on your journey 👍 looking forward to more 😁

[juliab]

Originally Posted by Cinderella

The kids did brilliantly on your journey 👍 looking forward to more 😁

See more...

I was so glad that it went well and we had no real hiccups!

Thanks for reading

[collybird]

Ah Julia, I thought you had abandoned us!

A very long travel day, you must have been so relieved it all went to plan.

[JanetteP]

Great start, what a lovely travel day, I think you all did so well to keep awake, and the bed looks so comfy. Looking forward to more.

[Disneycraft]

Thanks for sharing .a long day but you got there safely x

[GALE88]

Sounds like a very smooth travel day. Looking forward to reading all about your holiday 😀

[kblackman]

Loved your travel day! You do so well organising the flights!
Look forward to reading the rest xx

[sotagals]

Ooh a new report from you... I thought you went to california?

[ziggyzag]

Yay another report from you!