Wandering around the West Coast - Pre-Travel & Travel Day

[jocat]

Index is here.

Pre-Travel day - Sunday 23rd July 2017

We managed to lie in until about 9:30 am, before showering and getting dressed. The morning seemed to get away from us doing not much else other than a couple of loads of washing and painting my nails. It seemed that we'd got loads of time, and this can be a bit dangerous, as in reality we hadn't. Luckily we'd completed the main part of our packing yesterday and I am officially now a packing cube expert.

We finished getting ready as we were going out for lunch for FIL's birthday. DD and her boyfriend came to pick us and DS up at 1pm and off we went for a very enjoyable Sunday lunch.

We got home around 4pm and proceeded to put the last minute bits into our bags. We had been under the 23kg weight limit but were soon just over it. DD and her boyfriend were laughing at me keep finding extra bits, plus my need to suddenly clean and hoover instead of leaving the house. Why do we do that? With DS staying at home, I'm sure he won't be keeping it clean and tidy.

After saying goodbye to our children, followed by a brief chat with our neighbours who were in the front garden, we eventually left home at 5pm. The satnav took us down the M1 - we usually go via the M40 and soon discovered why. The M1 was stop start most of the way.

We got to the hotel at about 7:20 pm, dumped our bags and went straight to the hotel restaurant. Fish and chips, sea bass, wine and beer soon followed, all of which went down very well.

An update of my pre trippie happened once we were back in the room (talk about leaving it until the last minute! ) and we eventually tried to get to sleep at around midnight. So much for an early night!

Travel Day - Monday 24th July 2017

It had taken me a while to get to sleep properly. The alarm went off at 7am, but I lazed about for 15 minutes before I got up and ran a bath. Martin jumped in the shower, we got ready and were all packed up and ready to leave by 8:20 am. That included some slight rearrangement and final weighing of the cases.

We drove to the Long Stay parking at T5, as although we were departing from T3, we would return to T5. Our luck was in - a bus turned up as we parked. We hadn't even got out of the car park when Martin realised he'd forgotten his glasses - he only wears them for driving, so with a road trip planned, he'd definitely need them! He asked the driver to stop near the exit and jumped off, telling me he'd meet me at the terminal. As the bus left, I realised that I had been left with 2 x 23 kg cases and 2 lots of hand luggage to get off the bus. I bet he was laughing to himself! Luckily I got talking to a very nice couple on the bus and the lady volunteered her husband to help me.

Martin arrived at just after 9am and we headed into the terminal towards the London Underground to transfer to terminal 3. With an Oyster card or contactless bank card, this is free. The tube was in the station so we boarded and it left a couple of minutes later. We made it to T3 by 9:25 am, so it took around an hour from leaving the hotel to park and transfer terminals - thought that might be useful info for someone who might face a similar predicament. Alternatively there were taxis next to where the bus had dropped us off at T5 if you are in a hurry.

Once in departures, we were directed to use the kiosk to print off our luggage tags - unfortunately it wasn't our day. Once I'd scanned my boarding card on my phone, it asked for my passport and said it was unable to fulfil my request as I hadn't got a valid ESTA.

Luckily I'd printed out my ESTA approval, but was sent to the bag drop queue to sort it out. The queue was lengthy so I waited for about 45 minutes, panicking!

It was soon sorted when we spoke to the agent on the desk. He had to reset something, but thank goodness we had our printouts. We headed to security and was through within 5 minutes, where we stopped at the first restaurant past Duty Free. Pilots Bar and Kitchen. Martin ordered a full English breakfast while I ordered some wholemeal toast and orange juice. The bill came to £23.45.

It came within 5 minutes, so we could finally start to relax. Once we'd eaten it was 10:50 am so we headed off to Boots to pick up my travel sickness medication. I also managed to pick up a meal deal of a sandwich, some fruit and a bottle of water for the plane - I really don't like plane food. Well actually it's the hot meal part of it I don't like. I think it's something to do with my motion sickness - the smell of the meals make me very queasy. My favourite plane meal ever was a cold chicken breast with salad that we were served on a Delta flight, which was perfect for me.

We headed to gate 24 at about 11:15 am, where we had to board a bus to take us to the plane, but were settled onboard by 11:45 am. Initial impressions were good - we had plenty of legroom.

We pushed back from the gate five minutes earlier than the scheduled 12:15 pm departure but didn't actually take off until 12:45 pm. At 1:15 pm the first drinks round came. I stuck with an orange juice along with the obligatory start of the holiday pretzels.

When lunch came shortly afterwards, it was a choice of BBQ chicken or cheesy pasta. It came with a bread roll, cheese and crackers, salad and apple crumble cake.

Martin and I swapped part of it - he had my chicken and I had his crackers. It was actually quite nice as much as plane food goes. I'm quite happy with a salad and crackers. We both had a white wine with dinner.

They did another drinks run at 2:15 pm. I started watching Hidden Figures, but only managed half an hour before I paused it to go to sleep. The Stugeron was obviously kicking in. I probably shouldn't have drank the wine.

I woke just in time for another drinks run at 17:40 UK time, along with a tub of chocolate ice cream. I started feeling hungry shortly afterwards so ate my meal deal sandwich and fruit pot.

I watched the rest of my film that I'd started earlier, then dozed for another hour.

At 21:45 UK time, there was another drinks run plus a hot box of pastry and lemon sponge.

I ate the lemon sponge and a second pot of fruit.

I decided to watch something else, but discovered that I'd managed to break my headphones as they somehow got trapped behind my seat.

There was still an hour and 20 minutes to go, so I had to resort to watching the flight map.

We landed at 3:40 pm LA time. We entered the immigration hall just 10 minutes later, used the kiosks and were in the baggage hall by 4pm. The only downside was of being so quick, was that our flight wasn't yet appearing on the arrivals board. However, we'd picked up our bags by 4:15 pm and had exited the airport just 10 minutes later. Everything seemed to be going smoothly!

I spoke too soon. We got the shuttle to the car hire area, and as first time users of Avis Preferred we knew that our name wouldn't be on the board outside. However we didn't think that we'd have the wait we did for a vehicle though - it was about 40 minutes. They were struggling to find any Ford Escapes - in fact they struggled with that group car at all. Eventually they turned up with a Mazda CX-5. The red car proved easy to spot in car parks amongst all the lighter coloured cars.

We got on the road to Anaheim by 17:40 and arrived at the Hilton just over an hour later.

We'd been lucky enough to be given a corner room with a view of the Disney parks - we were in room 11339.

We quickly unpacked, made so much easier by packing cubes, freshened up and headed down to the lobby to meet our friends who had checked in earlier. We headed out to get something to eat, calling at the Clarion hotel over the road. Three of us had chicken Caesar wraps, while our friend Dave had a club sandwich. With two rounds of drinks the bill came to a bargain $66.

We headed back to the room around 9pm as I was close to falling asleep at the table! We were soon in bed, ready to watch the fireworks starting 9:30 pm.

After taking a few photos, I put my phone down to enjoy watching the rest, before falling fast asleep before 10pm. I was going to say that I'd managed to stay awake for 23 hours, but with how much sleep I'd had the plane, that is a blatant lie!

[Melbatb]

That was a long day! Good job Martin remembered his glasses when he did!

How nice to have had such a great view over Disneyland!

[P&S]

Great travel day
How did Martin find the drive from the airport to the hotel?

[Lovesholidays]

Great travel day, we enjoyed reading your Canada TR before we actually went, can't wait for this one now
View for your hotel of the fireworks looks fab, was it a nice place to stay? Very excited to read about the Cars ride in Disney

[dozy]

Who did you fly with?

[Pussycat Doll]

Sounds like an almost perfect travel day! Your tea looks lovely!

[anji]

Great first day! We used packing cubes for our road trip this year and don't know how we ever managed without them Wonderful room view!

[LLKJDisney]

Not a bad travel day at all, looking forward to reading about more of your travels xx

[jocat]

Originally Posted by Melbatb

That was a long day! Good job Martin remembered his glasses when he did!

How nice to have had such a great view over Disneyland!

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He'd put a reminder in his phone about his glasses, but had it on silent and forgot to look at it!

The view was such a nice way to start the holiday off.

Originally Posted by P&S

Great travel day
How did Martin find the drive from the airport to the hotel?

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He was fine with the drive - don't think it ever really phases him. It didn't take that long at all and the traffic headed to Anaheim wasn't as busy as we were expecting. Glad we had a satnav though.

Originally Posted by Lovesholidays

Great travel day, we enjoyed reading your Canada TR before we actually went, can't wait for this one now
View for your hotel of the fireworks looks fab, was it a nice place to stay? Very excited to read about the Cars ride in Disney

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Thanks. The view was great. I really liked the Hilton, right up until the last few hours of our stay when a convention took over - it got very busy then! In fairness, it was just a tiny bit of inconvenience when waiting for lifts, and dodging people as you walked through the lobby, so wouldn't put me off staying there again.

Originally Posted by dozy

Who did you fly with?

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We booked a BA Flydrive, but the outward bound part was with American Airlines. Would happily fly with them again.

Originally Posted by Pussycat Doll

Sounds like an almost perfect travel day! Your tea looks lovely!

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It was a very smooth travel day really and our tea was such a bargain. Far too much of course - I only managed half of it, but that was probably down to my constant grazing on the plane.

Originally Posted by anji

Great first day! We used packing cubes for our road trip this year and don't know how we ever managed without them Wonderful room view!

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Am such a convert to packing cubes. I tried some for the first time last year, as we did a 2 night stay in Venice before a Med cruise. However, don't think I got the best out of them really, as I didn't fit much in them. Then just before this year's trip, I read about the rolling method - that was definitely the key for me. The little things that please us!

Originally Posted by Jakes Mom

Not a bad travel day at all, looking forward to reading about more of your travels xx

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Thanks. Hope to have the next day posted later.

[Jake71]

A really good travel day.