Orlando, Florida - October 2019

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May 25th 2022

Published: July 21st 2022

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LifeThroughMyLens

Guiding Light

Taken from the Disney Boardwalk

Orlando 2019

This was supposed to be a big family trip with my boyfriend's family - 6 adults and 2 kids. Unfortunately, everyone else cancelled the trip as my mother in law had been diagnosed with cancer and would not be able to travel due to treatments and insurance not covering her. We were asked to join them on the trip after they had already booked the holiday - so luckily we had booked our own flights/ hotel and car hire separately from them. As usual, I was overly excited about the trip. My first long haul flight and my first time to America. I was already making lists and making sure that I had everything I needed. My bag was already packed months before hand - but I kept checking and changing the contents. I have OCD and I am a nervous traveller - as in I like to make sure that I haven't forgotten anything. We were in Florida for a week - and I apologise if I forget a few things/ places we visited as a lot has happened since but I will do my best to remember.

The morning of the

Little Lizard

Almost missed this one. I love reptiles - there were lizards everywhere!

flight, I got up early and treated myself to a McDonald's breakfast, did final checks on my luggage and my carry on backpack to make sure I had all my documents, money, charger and of course a book or 2. I even managed to get an extra set of clothing into my carry on, which was probably a saving grace for me on this trip. The flight was due to leave at 12.30pm from Heathrow Airport. Luckily my friend gave me a lift to Cockfosters Underground station in North London. This is on the Piccadilly Line - one train journey all the way to Heathrow Terminal 2. The good thing is, that the train is empty at Cockfosters as it is a terminus, plus not many people get on it. Which comes in handy when you have a large suitcase and a backpack to lug around and up and down numerous flights of stairs and escalators. The tube journey is about 2 hours long, so I defiantly recommend taking a book and headphones to listen to music - or at least to drown out the noise. The tube gets extremely busy when it hits Finsbury Park onwards into Central London

Bird and Fossils

A bird sitting on a rock with shells embedding into it

as people change to the Piccadilly Line from the Victoria Line if they travel via the over-ground as Seven Sisters is the 1st underground station on the train line from Enfield Town to London Liverpool Street. Word of warning: make sure you check the destination of the train as there are 2 options. First option goes to Terminals 2 and 3 first then onto other Terminal 5. The other option is that the train stops at Terminal 4 first and there is a wait of around 20 minutes while the drivers change over, so if you are in a rush to make it to your flight - please check the train destination. Also - at the time of writing this blog, the new Elizabeth Line has just opened with services to all Heathrow Terminals - again there are 2 different destinations to choose as you will need to change at the Terminal 2&3 station for either Terminal 4 or 5.

The ride to Heathrow went without any issues, however when I got off at the Terminal station, I went to the wrong terminal as it had been a while since I went there last plus the signs

Dragonfly

Took me while to wait for him to settle to get this shot

were very confusing - thankfully I wasn't the only one who when the wrong way. So, after backtracking and getting into the right terminal, I found by boyfriend waiting for me and we promptly got ourselves checked-in and bags dropped off and made our way to the departure lounge. It was around 10am and so we had a couple of hours to kill, and like everyone does at an airport - we walked around all the stores, got some drinks and snacks and I had to go check out the books in WH Smith. I love the departure lounge at Terminal 2. Huge windows where you can watch the planes take-off and land and watching people rush to get to their gates. Having been an avid fan of the various TV shows such as Airline and Britain's Busiest Airport: Heathrow - They had me wondering if what was shown on screen was actually how things were at the airports with potential passengers blaming the airline and staff for them missing the flight due to heavy traffic or them going to the wrong airport ( yes this is true - on the Airline TV show, quite a few people planned the

Alligator

Don't know how I didn't see this one

airline staff for crashes on the motorway and for them turning up on the wrong day!) As someone who has worked in Customer Services for almost 15 years, it amazes me what these staff have to go through on a daily basis.

We took a seat next to the nearest departure board and waited for our flight to show up. After about an hour, we got the gate number ( again it was on the far side of the terminal). This time there were no delays, cancellations or disruptions ( at the UK side at least). Unfortunalty, we were given separate seats, as I am a nervous traveller. I asked the guy who I was sat next too if he would change seats with my partner. First of all he refused and complained that he had paid for his seat - as did we all - he reluctantly got up and swapped with my boyfriend. We settled into our seats and got ready for our 7 hour flight. I was glad that they had movies on board and games so we entertained ourselves for a while - I tried to sleep but I never can sleep on

Monument of States

A huge monument in the old town of Kissimmee

a flight, so I read my book and waited for the food service to come. I was very surprised in the amount of food and drinks that were offered - we had a lunch/ dinner and breakfast with a variety of drinks from tea, coffee, soft drinks and beer. It felt like the food kept coming and for some reason I was quiet hungry - probably because I had a very early breakfast than usual and we hadn't eaten at the airport.

I managed to get some sleep on the flight and was awoken by the announcement of the plane landing in Charlotte, North Carolina where we had a connecting flight onto Orlando, Florida. Once the plane had slowed down on the runway, the pilot announced that we could not get off as there was a queue at security and there were no gates to park at and unload. So we waited for about 30 minutes and we were finally allowed to get off. Once we got to security, It was an utter nightmare. The queues seems to snake all around the terminal and it sounded like chaos with all the shouting from the passengers and staff

Wall art

Amazing and colourful flowers on the side of a building in Kissimmee

alike. We finally got through - however we missed our connection - as did many on our flight. We got told to go to customer services and ask them what to do. We were put on standby for the last 3 flights to Orlando that night, we went up to the airline's desk and they were just amazing. They got us on a flight to Tampa, which was leaving from the gate opposite the desk - they even held the plane for us. We got to Tampa and it must have been coming up to midnight. We asked for car hire and they did us an amazing deal for a small car to drive from Tampa to our hotel for only $50. We drove another 2 hours across Florida to our hotel, checked in and went straight to our room.

The next day, we got up at around midday, thankfully I had a spare set of clothes in my carry on (told you it would come in handy!) We had a shower and set off to Orlando Airport to drop off our hire car from Tampa and got the shuttle to the airport to see if our

Owl be seeing you!

More art work in Kissimmee

bags had arrived. There they were, waiting for us at the baggage claim desk - the last 2 to be collected. So, bags in tow, we went back on the shuttle to the car hire place, they apparently had a Halloween Holiday deal on and so we got an upgrade to a Mustang, which was electric blue and totally inconvenient as there was no space for our bags in the boot. We got back to the hotel and set about unpacking and went off in search of lunch. Using the hotel's free Wi-Fi, we located a nearby Wendy's, which was located just across the interstate from the hotel. According to the map, it would take us an hour to walk there and 10 minutes to drive there - as there was an interstate road to cross - there were very few pedestrian crossings so we decided to drive there. We had pancakes and bacon and eggs, although it was not a big breakfast - it filled us up as we don't tend to eat much when it gets really hot. There was a small kitchen area in our room that came with a decent sized fridge, so we got some

Mechanical Bull

Cowboy on a horse wrangling a bull. Kissimmee is the cowboy capital of Florida.

cereal and milk from Walmart so we could save some money on food while we where there.

Over the 2 weeks that we were there, we visited so many places, that I have forgotten in which order we went there.

We visited a town called Kissimmee, which is an old cowboy town with a speakeasy called the three sisters, we had a few soft drinks and some food then made our way to the lake front and saw our first wild alligator floating on the surface. It was extremely hot so we made our way back to the car where we got held up due to a huge train at the station - I have never seen an AMTRAC before and was surprised to see a double decker train. I later found out that this town had several museums and a theme park called Old Town.

We took an all day trip to the Kennedy Space Centre as it was quite a drive to get there. I have been a lifelong fan of everything space and to visit NASA was just amazing. It was a lot of walking but we made

NASA

The NASA globe at Kennedy Space Centre

sure we had lots of water with us and stuck to the shade as much as we could. I think we managed to see all the exhibits there, I just couldn't get over the amount of artefacts, vehicles and such in one place. there was a bus tour included which took you around the site to take a closer look at the rockets buildings and launch pads. I just couldn't get over the sheer size of these structures - there were even vultures circling the roof tops and apparently they have build a colony in the roof. At the end of the tour, the bus stops outside the Atlantis building were a real and used space shuttle is housed. The tour started like most do with a video on how the shuttle came to be and the ideas that were thrown around to come up with the perfect way to get our Astronauts back safely to Earth. This short movie was cast onto a huge screen, the last image shown was of the Atlantis which looked like it was floating in Space - however the screen parted and there she was for real - The Atlantis. As soon as I

AMTRAK

Of course we parked the car on the other side of the tracks.... I had never seen such a large train in person - really interested that it had an upper and lower level.

saw her, I cried! I just couldn't believe that I was standing underneath a Space Shuttle - something I never thought would happen. Apparently - I am not the first to cry over this, and the staff who work there haven't a clue why. My childhood dream was to become the first woman and British Citizen to walk on the Moon - unfortunalty we stopped going to the Moon a long time ago - so I became a Librarian - well Customer Service Officer who worked in a Library. This job gave me access to all the Astronomy books I could get hold of and further my knowledge and interest in the hobby I loved.

I had never been to Disney World, either America or France as my family didn't have much money and we couldn't afford holidays. When we at the hotel, there was a desk where discounted tickets were being sold to the various resorts. We ended up buying tickets for the water park Typhoon Lagoon, which a Disney themed waterpark. Initially, I wasn't to happy that my boyfriend had purchased tickets for the waterpark as I am not a great swimmer and had never

Rockets

Various rockets on display at NASA

been to a waterpark before. I actually found it quite fun and relaxing, they have a lazy river where you sit on inflatables and travel around the resort, I went on a few of the rides, one of them was just too much for me as I came down backwards and breathed in water as I went under - I also lost my sunglasses. After we had enough of the water, we made our way to the showers to change, grabbed some drinks and snacks and left.

During our time in Orlando, we visited Icon Park, Pirate's Cove Adventure Golf ( I didn't win - they gave my boyfriend a free game token for beating me) Universal Studios where we enjoyed an evening meal at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. restaurant - which is themed on the movie Forrest Gump and plays the movie on loop the entire day it is open - the food was amazing and huge portions. there was a wait time of around 30 minutes so we went to the nearest coffee shop to have a drink and get out of the hot, humid weather. After dinner we were quite full up so we took a

International Space Station Mural

Had to take quiet a few steps back to get this into shot

look around the Forrest Gump store, and took in the rest of the Studios as it was dark by then and everything was lit up which really added to the atmosphere. I tried to get some photos using my phone, but an unsteady hand plus not being used to taking night-time photos, they didn't come out as well as I had hoped. The studio area has a lot of things to do and see and eat such as Alien crazy golf, Hard Rock Café, Roller Coasters and a water park. Most of these were closed by the time we got there as it was near Halloween and the theme parks, including the Disney Resorts, closed early for special parades and fireworks events. We didn't go to the events as you had to buy tickets to the resorts but we could see them on the drive back to the hotel and from our room.

We visited a few restaurants while we were in Orlando, one of the best ones we visited was the all you can eat Brazilian Rodizio, where we jokingly asked the owner if we could take a whole joint of meat with us - she said yes

Grackle

Local Floridian birds. Much like our Magpie. Such beautiful colours!

as it's all included in the price and many people take the entire joint with them. There was a steak house where the service was just amazing - the waitress kept bringing over more drinks - even though we hadn't finished the one before. We also visited Wendy's, Denny's and IHOP ( International House of Pancakes), Chick-fil-a, which was so much tastier than KFC and the restaurant that was connected to the hotel we were staying at. This was themed as a sports bar and had around 10- 15 big TV screens with different sports on each one. We also visited a Golden Corral buffet restaurant as we had seen an advert for it on TV at the hotel. It was not good. The chicken was not cooked, rude staff, some food items were either cold or had been left under the heat lamp for so long they were dry. We saw a place called Firehouse Subs who help to support First Responders and they have their own foundation to raise money for equipment. Where we were staying also had the world's largest McDonalds - we didn't go in but just looked at it from the outside. This McDonalds has

Rocket and Boosters

This is a replica of the rockets and boosters used to take the shuttle into orbit

an arcade on the 2nd floor where you play for points to redeem prizes and food items.

On our last full day of the holiday we went to Gatorland. The tickets are a bit pricey ($32.99 per adult) but it is worth it. You get gator food ( hotdogs) and the chance to "wrestle" with a gator - which I did and it was amazing! They have both alligators and crocodiles as well as farm animals, wild cats and birds. That day was extremely hot and humid and we did struggle to keep cool. We got to the arena just in time for the feeding show where they had meat and chicken on high ropes to encourage the alligators to jump for the food. There was a huge monster truck type vehicle with a passenger enclosure that drove across the swamp area for a closer view of the animals as well as zip line that go over the top of the alligator pens.

This trip was the best holiday I have had to date. I apologise if I have forgotten a lot of things as work and personal issues have adjusted my memory a bit. But