12 Parsecs- Day 1 – Travel Day.

[MadHatter1]

12 Parsecs- Day 1 – Travel Day.

Welcome to our trip report! 😎

Us: me (mum - chief planner), Thomas (age 12 - nearly 13) and George (age 11 - navigator)
Location: Port Orleans French Quarter
Index: here
Steps: 6,812

******
Alarm went off at 5:30 am !

Yes this is early, although also I had spent a sleepless night worrying about how tired I was going to be tomorrow.

Rough outline of travel day is as follows:-

9:00 am LHR > JFK
4 hour stop
16:00 JFK>TPA
Pick up Mustang from Budget
1.5hour drive to Orlando

A long day but as cheap as chips, booked via Expedia and cost me just over £1200 for the 3 of us. These Florida holidays don’t pay for themselves, but as we approach travel day all 3 of us start to get nervous about having to stay awake so long.

Grandad gave us a lift to the airport, we are very lucky to live so close to Heathrow and despite not leaving till 6:30 got there before 7.
Once through the faff of printing out tickets (didn’t go well Virgin, had to queue up and be done manually as printing machine glitched). Then we were on to security this was the usual queue and messing about behind people who seem to take years to just take their shoes etc. off.

Heathrow was busy, not surprising for 7am on a Monday morning I guess. We chose Yo Sushi for breakfast.

The bill came to £19, although I can’t remember exactly how many dishes we had.

Thomas loved this, me not so much because their coffee machine was broken!

Me and T went to grab a coffee to take onto the plane, as you can see G was not impressed, he doesn’t drink coffee and just wanted to get on the plane by now.

As you can see from the photo below we travel hand luggage only.

Plane today was Diamond Girl, I tend not to think too much about which airline we fly with they all seem pretty similar to me.



Once on the plane we relaxed a bit always a relief when you have a long journey with a connection to make to be getting away on time.

I don’t pay to book seats normally I had booked seats on this flight though it cost me £60 but for the remaining 3 flights we would chance it.

Boys had done their usual trick of boots meal deals as they can’t stand the food on the plane. Although I had the chicken and found it to be ok for plane food.

however the afternoon snack was inedible

Landed in JFk, and luckily we had used the ESTAs and passports the year before so could use the machines to get through security a bit quicker.

Had to move terminals from 4 to 2 on the train. Still smiling though, but we had been travelling for some time already.

We found somewhere to sit and already the boys were starting to tire, we had a Wendys which was ok, it’s main purpose was to keep us awake. G took about 2 bites declared it too greasy and wouldn’t eat anymore.

We now spent nearly an hour on the plane while they first fixed it!
Then we queued with all the other planes for the runway. I lost count of how many planes were queueing but it was a lot. Still smiling…

Well done me moment for remembering to pack headphones, they were not provided on this flight both boys thanked me. Actual words were ‘all the hours on the dibb forum paid off”.


Finally landed at Tampa in a massive thunder storm and were all hysterical at the thought of having to drive down the I4 in a thunder storm AGAIN.

Budget was the hire car of choice this year. Thanks Expedia.
So a couple more monorail/sky train thingys and we were at the desk.

Theere was no queue (hooray)

Here I had made an amateur mistake, I had managed to bring a driving licence and credit card in the same name but didn’t know the pin for the credit card!

Don’t know how quite I managed to still get the car as they took my debit card that was in a different name. I wasn’t going to argue, never seen us get to the garage and pull away so quick.

They had given us a choice of red or white George chose red.

Drive down the I4 wasn’t too bad I think Thomas nodded off in the back a few times George was also struggling to stay awake in the front.

Only problem we had was in Disney when the new road layout was not in the cars navigation and we managed to take a few wrong turns in to cast members only sections, we could see we weren’t the only ones though. Actually I managed to do the same thing twice and G started shouting at me.

Kept having to do U turns and I was starting to tire so was missing turns, eventually we followed signs to Disney Springs and then approached POFQ from that angle.

Finally got to POFQ and the boys reliably informed me we had been travelling for 20 hours! Yay.

As we were walking up the front desk T said actually it is my birthday this holiday and I don’t mind if you tell them! Nearly a teenager but not too sulky yet.

thanks for reading

[Rabel]

Thank you for posting - I have missed trip reports! Yours sounds like it got off to a good start despite the long day. Well done on the boys for staying mostly awake and congrats on navigating Disney without the updated maps - we always get horribly lost when we follow the road signs there (and have visited many of the cast only places!).

[mick]

A long travel day but the holiday starts now

Joan

[eleele]

I agree with Rabel - it’s lovely to read a new trip report now, thank you very much! I have two boys, similar ages to yours by the looks of it, can’t wait to see how you all get on!

[prettymiarose]

Woah! I’m scared of (a) indirect and (b) driving in the rain in Florida! Hats of to you & you did it in style

[Palm trees]

Great travel day, I'm looking forward to reading more.