Florida 2018 - Getting There

Question - What time do you leave for the airport when your flight leaves at 6:30a? Answer - You leave at 11:00p the day before of course. I should clarify that we booked a flight out of Seattle to save money on airfare so it doesn't really make sense to then stay in a hotel the night before. Getting up at 2:00a just seemed like a disaster so that left leaving late the night before with the intention of having a bit of a nap in the airport and sleeping on the plane. We were the only car at the border when we crossed and our drive down was very quick. Carter and I slept while Kerry and Callie played various Disney tunes. We dropped our car off at a long term parking lot and took a shuttle to the airport where we arrived approximately 4 1/2 hours early for our flight. Our plan to sleep at the airport didn't work out well because they decided 2:00a was a good time to drill concrete and for some reason they play an incredibly loud announcement about the size of your carry-on every 5 minutes. Things got a bit better once we were able to check in and get through security.

The best thing about getting through security was we were able to find some older style seats without the stupid bars in between each seat so you could lay down. We had a 3 hour lay over at Chicago and finally arrived in Orlando around 8:00p despite some crazy weather. Our plane had to circle for about 30 minutes and it seems we were lucky to land at all. Callie has a friend that is coming to Orlando at the same time and their plane got diverted to Tampa. By the time they got into their hotel room and into bed it was 2:30a in the morning local time.

We got to our hotel room around 10:00p local time and were pleased to find that the dining area was still open. We were quite hungry though after ordering our food we realized we were not American portion hungry. We each got our own meal and in hindsight could probably have gotten away with 2 or 3 meals split between us. The food was excellent but a bit on the expensive side. Good value for the amount of food we did get.

Before I end explaining our first day I must mention our wonderful travel agent. Kerry did the initial booking but our other travel agent always calls into the hotel later to see if there is anything special they can do for us. In this case this meant asking from a room that was a bit closer to the pool. Due to construction at the hotel, the only option was a 4th floor 'preferred' room near the secondary pool and close to the front entrance. We're also close to the first bus stop so we should always get a seat on the bus. I highly recommend BK Travel.