Yes, we’re off again to Florida. We’ll be out there for 14 nights and left a pretty wet and gloomy London as you can see from the wet tarmac.
One advantage with Rosemary getting bigger is we no longer needed a full car seat, but just a small booster. We picked one up for £5 in Halfords rather than hire one out there and it just hooked over my rucksack, so we could take it onto the plane if needed. As it turned out we didn’t use it, so probably put it into the luggage next time to avoid having to carry it.
So about 10 minutes into the flight Rosemary settles in for the long haul with her headphones on, a movies and snacks. Just got on with it and happy as anything just to sit and watch some films.
Guess we should have expected this as we worked out when we got home that these 2 flights bring her airmiles upto once round the world, so pretty experienced for a 5 year old.
We had an uneventful flight into the Orlando International Airport. Customs was pretty quick as normal, although the queue always seems to be huge, and used the automatic machine to check ourselves through. This meant we got to see the awful pictures the US Customs hold of us. Guess being up for so long isn’t a good look!
We picked up our car (Budget rentals this time) and amazingly no hard sell to get a a bigger car. Had booked an economy car and we ended up with an economy car. This was the smallest car we’ve ever had in the US (a Mazda 2) and maybe in hindsight was a bit too small. We did manage to get one case in the boot but the other had to go on the backseat. Will be interesting how we get the third case (at this time inside one of the large ones) in when it’s time to leave. Still it’s just for one short journey, so we’ll work it out somehow.
This time we had booked a room at the Hampton Inn Orlando/Lake Buena Vista, which is quite close to Downtown Disney (now Disney Springs). As Rosemary is getting bigger we decided to save on the room and not get one with a separate bedroom but go for a standard room with 2 queens instead. This was substantially cheaper, although we did get a massive bargain last time which we just couldn’t replicate.
We went for the Hampton Inn because they just seemed to get such consistently good reviews on TripAdvisor and are very highly rated. Their rates are also very competitive, so we thought we’d take a chance (although not a big one) and booked this.
Bit shocked when we arrived to check in that we were the guest of the day at the hotel.
We got a little complementary basket with some snacks and drinks.
First impressions of the hotel were very good and we had a room right at the end of the corridor on the top floor which was possibly the quietest spot in the whole hotel.
We had a quick meal at a local Perkin’s that evening and straight to bed.
Rosemarys Travels 