Back one week - highs, lows and general thoughts

[sophiepop]

We have been back a week and I thought some highs/lows etc would be helpful. They always make interesting reading for me.

Hilton Garden Inn T2 & 3 Heathrow - brilliant location with very comfy rooms. We paid for runway views and I suppose if you strained your neck from the window, you could definitely see the runway. Not worth grumbling about though! The Apron restaurant at the Hilton was really good and I would highly recommend this.

Virgin - We were lucky enough to fly UC and we are now doomed to a lifetime of saving as it was worth every penny! We decided that we would use the UC wing and organised a driver to take us (all of 5 minutes ), we had read about the chaos in check-in and security so we thought this would save us any hassle and it totally did.

Virgin Clubhouse - Wow, brilliant.

Flight - we went on the A350 and had seats 1A, 2A & 3A. Brilliant flight with really good food. My only grumble was that I didn't realise you had to ask for the 2nd meal and I missed it completely.

MCO arrivals - through in 10 minutes and went to find the Visitors Toll Pass (thanks to the Dibb and Mick), this is well worth doing and saves the not having enough change at the toll booths.

Alamo - Really straight forward as we used 'Skip the Counter' so we went straight to the garage, chose a car and off we went.

Highlands Reserve Villa, H27 - We had read about how awful the traffic has been recently and to be honest we were dreading it but this location was perfect. 100% recommend this area.

Dolphin Hotel - To get the LL and early entry we decided to stay 1 night at this hotel. Virgin sold this hotel as queen beds or double beds. When we arrived we were told they only had doubles. Not ideal as we have a super king at home, but as it was only 1 night we weren't too worried. After checking into the room we discovered that the rooms were not even doubles, they were 3/4 beds. Not happy but what can you do!

Hollywood Studios - managed to get the LL for ROTR but it was a serious pain having to stay up till midnight to get the Genie+ and then up again at 7am to get the LL! Thanks to someone on the Dibb who mentioned that the app doesn't always work if you don't change your location. It didn't work, we panicked and then I remembered what we had to do! Stress!

Clearwater - We love Clearwater and always look forward to staying for a couple of nights here. This trip we stayed at the Sandpearl and it was really nice.

Baseball game - We went to watch the Tampa Bay Rays and it was brilliant. The atmosphere was fantastic and we had the best day and will definitely be doing this again.

Seaworld - Not great. I have had an issue with this place for a little while now but we go as it has some good things there. The stores were shut with signs saying 'open at 11am'but when we went past at 3pm they were still shut. Loads of the food places were boarded up too. I think this place has served us well on past trips but for us it has had its day.

Universal - We enjoyed both of these parks and had a brilliant time. We did get stuck on Spiderman and it took over half an hour for them to get us off.

Portofino Bay Hotel - I love this hotel and it didn't disappoint. They were at 100% capacity and it showed. The boats were always quite a wait but its our favourite place so we will return.

The best food we had was a new one for us, Cheddars Scratch Kitchen. It was really good an very reasonably priced.

We returned to Mannys on this trip and it wasn't great. Shoe leather for steak, coconut shrimp was so over cooked I couldn't cut though them. We have crossed this off for our next trip.

We have never managed to get to the Olive Garden and I was really looking forward to trying there, yuck, tasteless rubbish.

Strangely Applebees (which often get a slating on here) was really nice.

Keke's breakfast - recommend to us but we much preferred Ihop.

Food Court offerings were really good on this trip, especially Shake shack and the teriyaki chicken.

On the whole we had a great holiday. There are bits we will change on our next trip and things we have yet to try.

The saving starts again

[Loopylooloo]

Love a highs and lows, this was a great review, tha ks for sharing glad you had a good trip.

[katebush95]

Thanks for posting. We’re staying at Highlands Reserve later this year. Did you get Ubers/taxis to the parks at all or to restaurants in the evenings as I was wondering what the costs were like in case we don’t want to drive all the time x

[Th1nkT1nk]

Thanks for posting - I always find a highs and lows post a useful read. Can I ask what you mean by “Thanks to someone on the Dibb who mentioned that the app doesn't always work if you don't change your location”? … sounds like that might be important and not something I’m aware of! Thanks!

[sophiepop]

Originally Posted by katebush95

Thanks for posting. We’re staying at Highlands Reserve later this year. Did you get Ubers/taxis to the parks at all or to restaurants in the evenings as I was wondering what the costs were like in case we don’t want to drive all the time x

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We drove so I can't tell you the price of Ubers but we did speak to a few people who said they were using uber and it was really cheap and always on time.

Highlands is a really great location with a Publix about 2 minutes away. Also Ihop and an Applebees right next door.

Posner Park is not too far either and there are some good shops there too

[sophiepop]

Originally Posted by Th1nkT1nk

Thanks for posting - I always find a highs and lows post a useful read. Can I ask what you mean by “Thanks to someone on the Dibb who mentioned that the app doesn't always work if you don't change your location”? … sounds like that might be important and not something I’m aware of! Thanks!

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I can't remember who posted it but they said that when you go to use the Disney app to buy the LL it sometimes doesn't work, so you need to make sure that you change your language/region to USA or Canada. It worked as soon as we had done this

[lizzie145]

Hollywood Studios - managed to get the LL for ROTR but it was a serious pain having to stay up till midnight to get the Genie+ and then up again at 7am to get the LL! Thanks to someone on the Dibb who mentioned that the app doesn't always work if you don't change your location. It didn't work, we panicked and then I remembered what we had to do! Stress!

Do you really need to stay up to midnight? You can buy it in the morning surely?

[2point]

Thanks for sharing - great variation on locations

[gjdjud]

Very informative. Thank you.

Can you explain the change your location for the app please?

[PoohBears#1fan]

Oh no, I told friends yesterday that Keke's is supposed to be very good and they were going to try it, I hope they had a better experience than ihop!