Tuesday 6th
10:19am
I'm sitting here in the No1 traveller lounge at Gatwick South. Linda's off and away to the Duty Free. It's pretty busy in here, even though we both got a seat and a table. Outside, it's really busy as usual.
Our trip down to Gatwick was OK. We left at just gone 7am and although the M25 was a little busy in places, we were parked up by 8:15.
This trip was the first time we have used the new Dart Tag system to cross the Dartford Bridge. Previously, we'd drop cash at a barrier, but now it's all done pre-pay online and you simply just drive through. This seemed to be a good idea, but as we approached the bridge there was lots of slow moving traffic. This turned out to be due to an accident on the bridge itself, not any congestion at the non-barriers which were all completely clear.
Weather was very overcast and we already see a 35 minute delay to the flight. It's scheduled for 11:15, but is now showing as 11:40. Lets hope it doesn't go back any further.
11:06am
Still no gate information :(
11:35am
Gate 19. We skipped the looong queue to the departure gates. Thank you premium economy!
Seated now and waiting the last boarders.
It's dull, grey and wet outside. Sunshine, here we come.
11:15am (tomorrow)
Wow that was a long old trip!
We took off about 20 minutes after the original 35 minute delay, so we were already almost a hour behind schedule.
The plane was pretty full, just over 450 people on board. This meant that, as we were two rows from the back in PE, that Linda didn't get any lunch as the cottage pie had run out already and she didn't fancy any alternatives. She was found some cheese and biscuits by the attendant. Not very good. Still the rest of the flight went OK, and pretty quickly. This was probably helped by the fact I watched three films at the start of the flight. Terminator Genesis - so so. Kingsman - pretty enjoyable. Mad Max Fury Road - really enjoyed this (again, as I saw it in the cinema too).
We arrived to a wet and drab looking Orlando airport. It looked like there had been a recent heavy downpour. Something had gone wrong with the aircraft too as we came taxiing into the gate. The captain said he wanted us to sit for a while so he could arrange for a member of the ground crew to "switch off one of our engines". Comforting!
We were within the first 20 getting off of the plane, as our seats are almost on top of the main exit. We were guided through to the new-ish automatic gates at Orlando's immigration hall. They asked questions, took photos and prints then printed off a receipt which we then had to give to the guy who we'd normally see anyway. Not sure whether we saved much time there!
Bags were tardy too, one of the last off of the carousel, and then we have to re-drop them off again to pick them up in the 'main' termainal. Orlando airport is strange like that. The second bag drop seemed to take even longer but we were finally off to the car rental place. The Dollar assistant said "pick what you want from the small SUV area in row B". So we did and found a grand total of two cars there, one being loaded up already by another family. So not much choice. However, just as I'd packed everything into this car, a guy drove up another small suv, this one a Jeep Compass. Linda liked that one better so it was time to swap!
We then had to wait for about 20 minutes just to get the car recorded on the exit gate. I did a timelapse of the journey. I've edited out the few times the GoPro decided to fall off its holder! You can see the car park wait at the start, followed by a sneaky stop off at a MacDonalds some place for a bite to eat.
You can click the video to see in HD if you prefer.
So after that long (2h 20 minute) drive, we'd now been up for almost 22 hours and on reaching the apartment, keys in hand, we were dog tired and ready for bed. However, we still needed to get into the place. Now I'm going to blame what happened next on the fact we were both tired, but we spent about 20 minutes trying to work out how to open the front door. See, here's the thing, we were given a key set with four similar keys on (no other markings) plus on the envelope, it mentioned right at the top a thing called "Key Code" with a three digit number. This is what the door lock looks like.
So that's two locks plus a key pad. So, you use the pad only? A key and the pad? Key only? Two keys? Two keys and the pad? If the pad then how? Click number then bar button or the other way around?
My frazzled brain couldn't find a combination of the above that was working. So in the end I had to call the support number to ask. Turns out it was one of two almost identical keys in the top lock. No key pad required!
Finally we were indoors :)
After just shy of 23 hours up and on the move, we both collapsed into bed asleep!