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Quite an eventful day in the end. Pretty much the whole day was travelling in some form or other. We left the house at just after 6am, heading over the Dartford bridge in light traffic. The M25 had some roadworks just before our turn off onto the M26, but in the end we arrived at Gatwick pretty much on schedule.
The check-in was painless and we headed over to the ServisAir lounge which we'd booked earlier. It was apparent that their air-conditioning wasn't working as we entered, perhaps it was the high temperature and massive floor fan running by the registration desk.
We were at gate 13, a short walk compared to some we've had to do before. We were flying on Ladybird this time.
The flight could have been better! Although pretty smooth, there was one point of quite violent turbulence, not far out of Florida. After flying through a minute's worth of 'rollercoaster' airspace. The captain came onto the loud speaker and dryly said 'That's why we recommend wearing your seatbelts at all time"!
Actually, that announcement system also caused another issue. After lunch, the attendant brought around their coffee and tea. At about that time we hit a small area of turbulence and I reached for my cup, picking it up in the hope I could pass it over to Linda for a moment to put my belt on. At precisely that moment, the over-air announcement came on advising us to put the belts on. Trouble is, the announcements are so sudden and so loud (plus I was plugged into the system using my in-ear headphones) that it sounded like a gun-shot in my ear. I jumped at the deafening noise,sending the coffee all over Linda. Needless to say she was not best pleased and had to do her best to mop it out with a towel and a bottle of water.
This was just to cap off the food issue - dinner was served from the PE cabin, we were at the back end of the cabin, maybe 12 rows from the front. By the time they reached us we were informed that the beef had run out. All that was left was curry or fish - neither took our fancy so we had to go without. Linda was later offered a Cottage pie that the attendant had managed to find somewhere else on the plane,but in respects, it was rather poor.
We landed on schedule, 15:25, at Orlando and once again we arrived behind the Manchester flight, so that meant we were 40 minutes getting through immigration. We joined the cross-back queue system that zig-zags along the whole immigration area. There was already two rows of people in the queue ahead of us (we were 6th off the plane). 40 minutes later, I looked back and the whole room was packed - 6 rows of queuing and the queue went back into the approach corridor too. It was the remainder of our flight, plus they were joined to by passengers from a BA flight that landed just behind us. Maybe 1000+ Brits in all. I bet the poor guys at the end were waiting almost 2 hours to get through!
I'd previously set myself up with Dollar Express membership (free) which allows us to pick up a car without the queue and excess paper-work. Thus, once we'd collected our bags, we went out to the Dollar car park where my name was on the bill-board outside the collection point.
We'd hired a mid-sized SUV (Ford Escape or similar) and the Dollar guy drove up a Silver Chevy something-or-other. I still don't know much about it aside from it carried our FOUR cases (all pretty much full) with comfort. It was easy to drive. Linda knows how to operate the radio! It has a reverse camera in it (weird thing) oh, and the windscreen wipers work pretty well. How do we know that? Well, our plan was to pick up the car and drive straight to Anna Maria island. The start of the drive was fine, but somewhere towards the end of the I4, it rained, then it poured, then it was torrential. I mean it was like buckets of water being continuously thrown over the front of the car. It was almost impossible to see the white lines on the road which also almost caught me out when the road suddenly split on an off-ramp, almost causing me to leave the interstate by accident! Finally, we got through the heavy cloud and the sky suddenly opened up blue with fluffy high white clouds. Perfect driving weather for the southern part of the trip down the I75.
I wasn't looking forward to this drive as it was on the back of the long flight over, but thankfully I felt fine the whole way. A quick stop off at the start at a Starbucks drive-thru certainly helped!
We found the place OK. It was pitch black when we arrived - made worse as it's turtle nesting season until the end of the month, so all external lighting near the beach is supposed to be kept off during the night. So we arrived in darkness, parking under the apartment units. However, on investigation, we couldn't find a registration office - indeed there was no-one about anywhere! I got on the phone (barely 1 bar signal!) and managed to get through to a woman on reservations for the company who rent out the units. Their main office closes at 5-30pm, it was now 8pm. She offered to get the maintenance man out (who was 40 minutes away) to let us in. As she couldn't call an international number, I needed to call her back in 5 minutes after she'd spoken to the maintenance guy. During that time I managed to find an unsecured wifi nearby and got onto the email where I'd stored an email confirming that they'd leave the keys in the overnight box (wherever that was). When I told Adrienne (the reservation woman) she said that box would be over at the office, about half a mile away. Indeed, we found this small box, unlocked, on the outside of the office with our keys and parking permits inside. Phew!
We got inside the property with our cases, but by that time it was gone 2am UK time. We spoke quickly to shirley to let her know we'd (finally) got inside.
On initial checking, in very low light, the place seemed OK, but we couldn't see any of the beach as it was completely in darkness.
We found the wifi password for our internet written on the back of a take-out menu, just where you'd expect to find it ;)
We grabbed what we needed from our cases and crashed out in bed - 22 hours after getting up.
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