09 Dec 2016
[11:42 GMT]
Sitting here in the No.1 lounge at Gatwick South. The trip here was fine. We left the house at 8am and ran straight into a heavy traffic jam on the A13. Fortunately, we were travelling East against the traffic, so our only hold up was the lead up to the A13 itself and crossing over it. We dropped our car off in the parking area, collected our return ticket then headed over to departures.
We had already checked in yesterday and this time we were using our phones to carry the boarding pass. That was all well and good, except when going through the first electronic gate, Linda put her phone too close to the scanner, so the screen cuts out. Then it locked the screen, then it rotated itself... much hilarity did not occur!
Through security well enough - my rucksack of leads and electronics didn't get tagged for the first time in.. ever I think.
There was some promotion going on for the new Star Wars film which opens soon - Rogue One. They even had some costumes on display.
Linda did her customary wander through duty-free, returning with multiple bags - gulp!
Gate 21 has just popped up on the board, so we're moving on...
[12:37 GMT]
Seated in the plane. Flight time 8h 55mins.
Back in a few hours...
[20:44 EST]
It's now 01:43AM Saturday back at home in the UK. We have arrived at the resort place we are staying at (Sheraton Vistana Resort).
The flight was actually pretty uneventful. We flew out on (we think) Pretty Woman. 433 passengers plus 17 crew all together. The flight time was a little faster than expected and we landed about 30 minutes ahead of schedule.
During the flight, I initially tried to get some sleep, not easy when they are serving dinner around you. But as time progressed, I watched a couple of films - "Hunt for the Wilderpeople" first (I enjoyed that). Then later the Captain America Civil War which I only just finished watching as we were coming in to land at Orlando.
Linda tried the dinner, I passed, and wasn't very impressed. Luckily, we had a can of Pringles to have later in the flight.
We got the bags reasonably fast and walked out into the main airport area. Their big tree was back up.
It's always a favourite tree or ours.
Whilst Linda kept an eye on the bags, I popped over to see about the car, luckily I did as there were only two SUVs in the area we were supposed to use. And one of them was being loaded up. So I grabbed the other - a Nissan Pathfinder. Big old thing it is.
The drive over to the Sheraton was OK with just a bit of traffic on I4 just before and after we turned off of it. Whilst I was getting the key, the woman mentioned that our room was to be on the third floor, oh and there was no elevator in that block... was that a problem? Well, with 4 big cases to take up I asked her to look again. She found us a ground floor place in a much better location - we checked and the original room was quite near the main road past the resort. This new location is tucked out the back so it's really quiet around our bit.
The place is a two bedroom suite (with kitchen and washing machine area) and looks really nice. for once in these places there's plenty of electric sockets plus USB plugs to keep those phones and tablet charged!
PHOTO ALBUM : https://goo.gl/photos/BaRDdZ4UM81CCihX8