Saturday 18th December 2010

[9:34 EST]

Interesting morning really.

Update from last night - we dithered about where we wanted to stay for these two extra days. Finally, we decided to put it to chance and book ourselves a hotel via Priceline. With Priceline, you put in an amount to offer for a night's stay and then you are told which (if any) hotel has accepted it.

We bit £60 and got accepted to the Crowne Plaza Universal Orlando. It's just off of International Drive, where we've stayed before. I've also got the car hire extended for a couple more days.

So now we're packed up and waiting to pack the car up. Trouble is, it's currently lashing of rain. That might not normally be an issue, but we've got the Mustang this time and we'll need to get the top of the car down for a short time to allow us to load the back seat of the car. I'm giving it as long as I dare, in the hope that the rain leaves off. So far it's not looking likely. :(

[11:15 EST]

Indeed it wasn't. By 10:30 the rain was just as strong as it had been all morning. So we had to do the unthinkable and get the roof up whilst I loaded the suitcases into the back seat. The dashboard was protected by a towel, but the seats needed a good wipe down once I'd finished loading up.

With the top back in place, we left the villa in the rain and have now parked ourselves up in a nearby Starbucks to take advantage of the coffee, food, roof and wifi!

[16:56 EST]

Eventually, we'd had our fill of coffee so we set off on a slow drive over to the new hotel. Official check-in was 4pm, so we were hoping that something might be ready if we arrived at 2pm. As it turned out, the journey was made 40 minutes longer than planned by a long traffic jam near the I4 and the Premium Mall exit. Eventually we got past that and arrived at the hotel at 2:45pm.

Fortunately, there was no more than a 10 minute wait for a room to become free - to our amazement, it's on the top floor. It's an executive floor so we need our card in the lift to allow us to get to the top floor. Not bad for £60 per night.

This hotel has an odd 'inside out' feel as the main room areas all overlook the foyer on the inside. It's a long way down...

We are now unpacked and ready for the next couple of days. The forecast looks good for the UK, with no more snow expected around the airports this week, so we should be flying back on Monday as planned.