Day -1/0 - Back once again like a Floriday Master - Pre Travel Day/Travel Day

[Man v Disney]

After what has seemed like an incredibly long wait and endless planning and countdowns we have reached Pre Travel Day.

If you haven't read the Pre Trippie we are:

Hannah - Chief planner
Jamie - Chief report writer
Josiah - Chief eater
Eliana - Chief talker

I would like to say that we have all been as cool as cucumbers leading up to this day and not overly excited, however that would be a lie! In particular Eliana has been very enthusiastic this week and has drawn a countdown sheet for each day of the week! As you can see – much time and effort was put into this activity.

I don’t know if anyone else does this but we have been tidying and cleaning all week, just so we can come back to a tidy house. This morning we had a final look round the house and made sure that the instructions for feeding the fish and sorting the bins out was ready, as a friend of Han's will be looking after the house for us. Thanks Charlotte (& girls), you are legends.

Han's dad, Chris, arrived at 10.30am and as we had been ready for weeks (it feels like) we loaded the car quickly and set off within 15 minutes. As it is the first Monday of the summer holidays the traffic was busy all the way down, although it did not impact us too much and we were only held up a few times on the M25. We arrived by 3pm after a stop on the way down at McDonalds and Subway for lunch.

Eliana and I had a final Maccies:

Han, Chris and Josiah had a Subway. There are no pictures as the server was incredibly grumpy and they felt they were being told off with every choice! Ah well – filled a hole!

Having researched the best way to do the bag drop. we parked in the Gatwick Long Stay (free for 2 hours unlike the £12 for 1 hour in the short stay) and headed to the South Terminal to do Twilight check in. This went pretty smoothly although one of our cases was slightly over, however the other was under so we were good to go. We have done the old ‘suitcase in a suitcase’ trick and only checked 2 cases, leaving us with space for 4 to come home with – judging by our last trip we will need the extra ;-)

I'd recommend the Twilight Check In (from 4pm) if you have an early flight the following day. It was very quiet. Lets hope the cases don’t get misdirected, although we did pack a couple of days worth of spare clothes in our hand luggage. (Just in case! )

I have also got a picture from when we arrived on Travel Day below, this was the opposite area they had to open which was empty when we did our Twilight check in.

After popping upstairs to grab a Caffe Nero before Chris headed home, we got the bus back to the Long Stay Car Park and went to our hotel for the night. The Crowne Plaza, near Crawley. Bargain at £17.50 using Tesco vouchers for the bulk of the cost. The room was really nice and was easily big enough for the 4 of us.

We booked our spots for a bus transfer in the morning, aiming for the 8.30, which should get us there by 8.45am.

After a very quick turnaround we headed out to our evening meal, Chiquito's. It was about a 10 minute walk from the hotel, which given the drive, was more than welcome.

We had booked this intending to use Meerkat Meals 2for1 which was a bonus. It was pretty quiet in there, although they only had one server on, so service was a little slower than we would have liked. We weren't in a rush though, so not too much of an issue today.

Hannah had two starters instead of a main, Halloumi with Jalapeno jam and Nachos with Chicken and sweetcorn.
Josiah had the BBQ Pulled Pork Enchiladas,
Eliana the kids sliders with sweetcorn and rice
while I had the Hot Pulled Pork Burrito.
We got sides of chips and coleslaw.

To drink I had a Doom Bar ale, Han had the non-alcoholic Rhubarb & Raspberry mist, Josiah had milk and Eliana had Blackcurrant juice, which tasted very much like Vimto. I finished this off for Eliana as Vimto is a very marmite drink and we got her an Orange juice instead.

Desserts were plenty of Churros, with a Chocolate Coconut Lava Cake for Josiah. The bill came to £47, with the Meerkat discount.

As we will be eating a LOT on this trip, we will be scoring each meal and have started with this one...

Food: 7
Service: 6.5
Ambiance (cleanliness/atmosphere/decor etc): 7

Total: 20.5

We headed back to the hotel and after getting clothes ready for tomorrow, settled in to watch a little TV. I wrote the first day up (this is a fresh report! ) and then we all tried to sleep. As we are all so excited about tomorrow, and some of us are nervous about the flights, lets hope we can get some good sleep. This should be made easier by the Lavender deep sleep mist that our friend Sarah gave us, another bottle of which was on our hotel pillow – plenty for the entire holiday now.

See you all tomorrow!

Here comes a special feature which is ‘apparently’ going to be added to each day (she named it herself ;-)

Eliana’s Brilliant, Spectacular, Amazing daily report:

This is Me (Eliana) and today we went to an airport! I woke up at 7:05am and got my legs done (Mum took off my leg hair with cream- not as painful as wax). Then I got ready and watched Netflix/YouTube. We got picked up at 10:40am then drove for 2 hours and I was playing on games. Dad and I got Mcdonald’s, Mum and Josiah got subway (and Grandpa). Then we arrived after 2 more hours and got our bags checked in and had hot drinks. Then we drove to the hotel where grandpa left us. Then we went to dinner and I had a burger or two! We went back to the hotel and got into our pj’s, had coffee (not decaf-Mum didn’t let me finish it) and brushed our teeth. Now we are sitting watching TV and getting ready to sleep for the flight tomorrow. My Ipad is charging and I’m comfy. To end my 1st day report I will say that the time in England is 8:43pm and the time in America is 3:43pm. Bye everyone. See you tomorrow (I am taking pictures of Crawley and Florida from in the plane).

Travel Day - Day 0

We all had a good night’s sleep although with a couple of false start wake ups (getting in practise?) and after showers left the room at 8.10am to get the 8.30am transfer bus. We started through security and it wasn’t too busy although five minutes later we looked behind us and it was crazy!

All went smoothly through security although Han got pulled out of line for random extra checks so she had to be full body x-rayed and take her shoes off for checking. This would have been fine except the person in front of her decided to bend over to adjust her shoes just as Han thought she could do hers and she ended up with a lady’s bottom literally touching her nose – getting personal Han!

We had done our research and decided that it could only be 1 place – Nando’s- as Gatwick has the only place that does a breakfast in a Nando’s. We weren’t disappointed. 2 Nando’s Benedicts and a chicken sausage and portugese roll later and we were fully satisfied.

Those astute followers will note that we only had 3 breakfasts. As we have mentioned previously, Eliana is a ‘limited’ eater and this has kicked in already.
Because of this our next stop was Boots to get her some snacks for the journey. We had pre-ordered her a lactose free meal (not because she is lactose intolerant but because most kids meals have a hefty portion of cheese) but weren’t holding out hope she would eat it (SPOILER – she did eat some of it! )
4 packets of fridge raiders and 2 bags of apple slices (don’t judge ;-)) later we left Boots and soon realised that Gatwick had very limited seating.

As we didn’t want to shop, we decided to take a walk and after a few ‘which way shall we go’ decisions, we ended up using the toilets opposite Gate 15 which also had a departures board so we could check when our gate was released. 15 minutes later, the board updated and our gate was...you guessed it, Gate 15! We picked up our bags and ran in (no joke) grinning all the way. They must have seriously wondered about us but we were going on holiday!

The waiting area was empty other than us!

We settled into our seats near the window, right at the front and others started joining us about 5 minutes later. Jamie was wearing his maths equation t-shirt a pupil had given him and within a couple of minutes he had been approached by a Computer Science Lecturer at the University of Tampa to discuss the meaning (answers in the comments guys – you can see the t-short in the Nando’s pic).

That filled a bit of time and at around 10.50am we were boarded. We get to go on first and get settled due to Josiah’s anxiety around flying so we were watching the entertainment while everyone else boarded.

Take off time came...and went. The captain came on the tannoy to say that a food cart had broken down and will delay us by 10/15 mins. 15 minutes later another announcement came saying that the food cart had just been moved but there were still dogs to load. Then another announcement 20 mins after that to say that we now had to queue to take off.

In total we were 1hr 15mins late taking off. This along with us being on the plane 45 mins before meant it felt a REALLY long journey... Han had watched the whole of ‘Stan & Ollie’ (which she said was very good) before we even took off!

Entertainment was good and kept us entertained (living up to it’s name I guess) but I hope there’ll be changes for coming back because we definitely used lots of the options in our ultra-long flight!

Drinks came round first, then dinner was served. Eliana’s lactose free came first and it was chicken with broccoli on a lentil sauce. She ate the whole piece of chicken and some broccoli and then had a bread roll and some of her fruit salad! As well as her Boots snacks. Overall, we were impressed by Eiana’s consumption!

Then ours came out – we all chose the Spicy (which wasn’t really) chicken with potato wedges and a tomato sauce. This came with a roll & butter, cheese & biscuits, a Moroccan Salad and a Berry Posset. Jamie had a white wine with his and we all agreed that it was probably the best plane food we have had. Well done BA!

4 hours before landing, mini Magnums were brought round and Jamie helped Eliana with hers (she doesn’t like chocolate or ice cream so Jamie is quids in!) and then 1.5 hours before landing sandwiches and banana loaf were given out. Unfortunately Eliana wasn’t keen on her salmon sandwich, only Jamie ate the Chicken Ceasar one and only Han ate her Banana loaf. Not quite as successful that one.

Overall it was a good flight with some turbulance but it felt so long and around 4.15pm we started the ½ hour descent. Eliana got some good pictures and called all the clouds ‘Betty’ other than one large one which she named ‘Jack-Jack Cookie Num Num’ after the snack Josiah is most excited for in Disney. She also declared that she could already see the heat radiating off Florida!

We touched down at 4.55pm and were some of the first off the plane at around 5.10pm. As we were at the front of the security line, we soon got directed to a self service computer which asked our security questions, took our photos and gave us a receipt to take to security agent...pretty smooth but not the quickest and the people at the back would have had quite a wait.

As we got to the baggage claim, our suitcases were just coming out and as we picked up our final bag, our names were being called across the tannoy! My first thought was ‘what have we done’ but then it transpired that due to an email Han had sent about Josiah’s flight anxiety, we had been allocated a ‘Customer Service Assistant’ to take us through security – and we had walked straight past them. Han explained to her that we had actually had a good landing and had got our cases now and were OK, but she insisted on seeing us to our rental car and took us through some back doors and short cuts and we were soon on the 2 monorails to our car! In the end, we got in our car at 6.17pm which meant security, baggage claim and car pick up was just over an hour – good going!

Setting up our phone maps app, we headed straight to The Cheesecake Factory for our first Florida meal. This has been on our list for our previous trips and we never got there so it was our first time. We parked and got seated within 5 minutes and were left in our booth with the most extensive menu ever – 15 pages of food choices, plus a specials menu!

It hit us then that we were actually really tired as by this time it was midnight our time. We got the amazing bread and drinks (2 raspberry lemonades, milk and coke) and placed our order:
Eliana – Old Fashioned Burger with lettuce only
Josiah – crispy chicken sandwich with chipotle mayo
Han – crispy roasted brussel sprouts and cheeseburger spring rolls (she’s been reading the Dibb suggestions ;-))
Me – Chicken enchiladas

We had planned to eat cheesecake in, then changed that to getting take out and in the end decided that cheesecake would have to wait and we will pick some up at another time. The food was delicious but our tiredness outdid us!

In total, this came to $80.81 with 20% tip of $16.16, total $96.97.

Food: 8
Service: 8
Ambience: 8

Total: 24

We headed to the car and set the maps app for Harborside Suites at Little Harbor which was to be our room for the night. It took around 40 minutes and we were soon settled in our room.

I went for a little walk with Eliana along the beach, looking out over towards St Petersburg from the private beach (her choice – she doesn’t usually like sandy beaches but the lure of getting some shells was too great) and Han and Josiah settled for the night.

Eliana’s Brilliant, Spectacular, Amazing daily report:

Hello Dibb fans! Yesterday was our travel day and our first experience in Florida/Tampa. To start the day we went from the hotel (at 8:10) to the airport and got through security very quickly. Then we went to the shops in the airport and I got 4 packs of fridge raiders and 2 packs of apples for the journey (I don’t like ‘plane’ food). When we got on the plane we were held back an hour because of a damaged something that was holding the plane back and we needed clearance to take off. In the middle of the flight the ‘plane food’ came along and I actually ate the chicken! When we arrived we were escorted by a member of Tampa airport staff to our car. We then went to Cheesecake Factory and I had a burger, I didn’t finish it. I think I’m going to stick to kid meals from now. Finally, we arrived at the hotel and got comfy (mum and Josiah at least). Me and dad went down to the beach where I actually wanted to walk on the sand. We collected some shells for the others and made our way back with the constant sound of crickets chirping. When we got back we got to sleep almost instantly (well, I know I did...) ready for the confusing day tomorrow.

Tomorrow – Keke’s breakfast, Drive to Orlando, Ohana’s

[margyloveswdw]

Apart from the delay sounds like the flight was ok.

I like Eliana's take on the day too

[4holibobs]

Great report, looking forward to reading the rest!

[Dixiechic]

Love the double aspect - my daughter and i did this on our trip in May and it was well received. I didn't think she'd keep it up as we were doing it live but she never missed a day. m looking forward to reading the rest

[Goldia]

Fab start, shame about the delayed take off, but still you managed cheese cake factory and a walk on the beach on travel day so that's not bad.

I hope you have a fab trip, I'm looking forward to reading all about it.

[Rob & Jan]

Great start we stayed at the Harborside Suites last year-enjoy your holiday.

[Twinklestar1]

Good - if long - travel day. The food at Cheescake factory looks scrummy.
Eliana - you did well to eat so much ‘plane’ food. Looking forward to reading your trip reports.
Have a fantastic holiday xx

[princess allie]

Lovely detailed report, looking forward to reading along

[MaryMendes]

I like your meal scoring system.

[Vlally]

Loving Eliana's additions. Have a fabulous time. Looking forward to all your holiday reports 😊