The Getting Layed In Orlando Tour 2023 – Day One Monday 13th November

Well, here we are again folks. Even in the heady days of the Dibb when I used to write good trip reports I could never be accused of each one being unique. I was recycling jokes and content before recycling was enforced by your council. Now, with more trips recently than hair growth I am afraid you are in for some serious deja vu.

Knowing what we got up to I can assure you this report will be briefer than others, with no park activity to report, so in effect, most days will be a couple of shots around the pool (photos, not drinks) and then a restaurant at night, so if you’re up for that, welcome along.

We had a really good time by the way. I know I say this every time, but I cannot remember ever feeling so sad about coming home and not wanting to, so much so that we didn’t, for a few extra days but more on that later.

The title of this trip may not become clear until a few days into the report, but

a) it doesn’t matter,

b) thinking up titles for essentially the same holiday is hard, give me a break and

d) what happened to c) and

c) ah there it is.

So things kicked off in the usual fashion with a 5am alarm that we were both awake before. With showers, a half-drunk cup of coffee and some time sorting the dogs out, the cases were closed and loaded into the car.

I popped into Emily’s room to say goodbye and grabbed what I thought was her foot to wake her up. Imagine her boyfriend’s horror of being woken up by me grabbing his foot! After a slightly awkward goodbye after that, we were off.

I’m all for these winter holidays but it seems the penance for escaping the crappy UK weather is that the drive to the airport must be undertaken in monsoon conditions. To be fair there was an officially named storm in progress, but the drive was a headache-inducing one with huge levels of concentration as I was determined not to die and miss my holiday.

We got to T2 at 6.55, had to go up six levels in the T2 West Multi-Storey before finding a spot and were soon stood in what was a ten-minute queue to check-in.

As soon as we approached the desk and handed our passports over, the baggage belt broke down. Of course. So we stood staring at the check-in lady for a while until, thankfully it started up again and we could get rid of our bags.

Security was better than usual, and we were soon through to “the bit where you get some food”. The airport was incredibly busy for reasons I could not fathom.

Anyway, like the creatures of habit we are, we headed to San Carlo and only had a five-minute wait for a table.

I had my usual. The Full Works sandwich.

Louise had what I believe to be Eggs Benedict, expertly captured here.

After all these years, I had recently discovered that via some app that I have access to thanks to my bank account I can get into airport lounges (they were all fully booked by the time I found out) and I get some discounts at the airport. One of them was a 15% discount here.

Redeeming it took longer than eating the food, but we got there in the end. I tipped 15% so that was all worth it wasn’t it. £39 in total.

We had a very brief stroll through Duty-Free before picking up holiday read in the bookshop.

Louise then Facetimed Rebecca and Dougie whilst I queued for fifteen minutes for a poo. I told you the airport was busy.

We headed to the gate, which involved the usual half-marathon distance stroll. Gate A6, and being at the very back we boarded as our row was called to avoid having to wait for everyone to put their bags up to walk to the back of the plane.

I was selected for a random security check which involved swabbing a lot of things and taking my shoes off.

As ever, the ticketed departure time was a greater fiction than the book I had just bought and we didn’t take off until 11.25, just under an hour later than advertised.

It was a windy and bumpy ascent but much of the storm from earlier had now thankfully vanished.

Once we were up, Louise discovered her TV was broken. Luckily the centre seats to our right were empty so I moved across to those so she could use mine.

Drinks and pretzels arrived first at 12.12. The film choice was poor, mainly as it hasn’t changed for a while, so we didn’t watch too much. Being on the last row, we were the last to get food so our choice was beef or chickpea curry. The former for me…

And the latter for Louise, with no photo as I was sitting across the aisle at this point.

But you can see a blurry photo of my bun instead.

I watched three episodes of Friends and then played some of the games for a while. All of a sudden we were over New York and only a couple of hours out from Orlando.

I was, as always seems to be the case, inexplicably hungry. The pastry thing handed out as a snack was inhaled and I continued to watch “stand in the aisle guy” a few rows down the plane.

All flight, he had, as his name suggests, stood in the aisle, including every possible moment before take-off. He was “erect” again before the bong to announce seat belts could be undone had finished bonging.

The cabin crew must have had to ask him to get out the f…. I mean to, please move to one side about a dozen times.

He was still standing up as we started to descend at 2.40pm. I moved back to my original seat for landing as my considerable weight in the wrong seat could be catastrophic for the pilot.

Louise bought some perfume from duty-free for £50. I have expelled more liquid from a sneeze than turned up in the bottle.

It was overcast and bumpy as we touched down, but, we were home.

I do prefer Terminal C. Getting your cases first is better and avoiding that ludicrous trek/double bag drop thing is always good. It does however mean you do not get the Buddy Dyer talk on the monorail. We were last to the carousel and ironically last to get our cases too. This meant a ten-minute wait at immigration before being processed incredibly quickly by a cast member from Orange is the New Black who was only slightly terrifying.

Down to Level 2 for the car and I had booked with Alamo and managed to secure a “Get out of jail free card” in the form of a straight-to-the-garage pass. I took some small delight in walking past “stand in the aisle guy” as he queued at the car hire desks.

After figuring out where Alamo lives in Terminal C we were shown the vast array of Compact SUVs on offer….all six of them. Three already had folks crawling over them so pickings were slim and we ended up with a very average Nissan Rogue, but it did the job for the few times we would use it.

The sat nav took us to the hotel a weird way I had never seen before. We went through a few tolls and I had decided that getting a Visitor Toll Pass thing was simply not worth the trek over to Terminal A, especially as we had no plans to drive anywhere involving a toll once at the hotel. As we got to the release barrier at Alamo the lady there told us that all their cars now have toll pass set up and you just get charged for what you use, plus (and there’s always a plus isn’t there) a $5 per day activation fee.

That was good enough for us as we were only going to hit tolls going to and from the airport.

Check-in at the hotel was painless and very quick. The free parking perk, which I seemed to get by booking with Travel Republic was a big saver as it was usually $25 a day. With that and all the other perks at this hotel is really is a great choice. I’ll probably wang on about that later. Right now I’m tired from the flight!

We were given room 1841 so we needed the lift up to the 18th floor. One of the lifts was being fixed by the maintenance guy, so every time we pushed the button, that lift opened, revealing him on his knees fixing stuff. We did that about four times in total before he’d finished and we could get in a lift.

The room was lovely.

Is there a better feeling than the “just got to my room in Orlando” feeling? Almost certainly, but it was still a lovely moment.

The view would be fantastic once the weather behaved itself but more on that later.

I unpacked in under sixty seconds and after a brief rest we were out in the car heading for food. We were Sickies bound on the 192 and the traffic was absolutely dire. It took about forty minutes but luckily the journey would be very much worth it.

The experience did not start off as well as it could as us and a few others were stood waiting at the podium area with no staff to be seen for five minutes but once we were seated all was well.

Now, granted we were high on the “we’ve just arrived” dopamine but we loved this meal.

To start we had the Fried Pickles. To be honest these were one of the main reasons we had come.

These things were simply one of the tastiest things we had ever eaten.

The menu is huge. It was easy for Louise as where there are Nachos, she will be eating them, but in the end, the server was there, pen in hand and I had to take a stab at something. I chose, wisely it turned out, the Chowzilla.

It deserves two photos….again, one of the most tasty things to enter my gob.

The nachos…

As those nachos were officially an appetiser, they appeared at the table much sooner than my dish, which was a minor inconvenience. We asked our server when mine might arrive and she apologised saying her manager had brought out the nachos in error. It was absolutely fine and we did not in any way moan about it.

She removed the nachos from the bill! So I just added that back onto her tip as she had been great.

I simply couldn’t finish my Chowzilla despite really wanting to and all in all, it was $100.

It only took fifteen minutes to get back to the hotel, which shows how crap the traffic was earlier. We got some water from the hotel shop, read for ten minutes, and fell asleep to allow all those calories to do their work.

Till the next time……