Florida holiday - February 2012....

Another holiday with Hubby, SisterM and bilA.
19 Feb off to Orlando in Florida for 10 days with a night flight on 29 Feb getting us home mid morning on the 1 March.

The journeys to and fro were thankfully uneventful, just the usual queueing and hanging around, but nothing really to report on. Collecting the hire car took time but was easy too. We had talked to lots of people before hand and been told which were the best diners to go to for a good breakfast and some venues we should not miss and the provided sat.nav. managed with everything Hubby put into it, including getting us to the place we collected the villa key from and then onto the villa. Hubby did all the driving for the whole holiday, of course.

By total coincidence our Canadian cousin F and her daughter M were going to be in Florida at the same time as us so we arranged to meet up with them, but as they were still over 3 hours drive away we suggested they sleep over so we had a full day with them which was lovely.

The villa was lovely and four bedrooms instead of the three that SisterM had booked, so plenty of room. Two double bedrooms both with en-suite so no arguments there, and the other two twin bedded rooms shared a bathroom so really easy when F&M stayed.

We used diners Bob Evans, Dennys, iHop as on our recommended list, also we could tell the very popular ones in the evening as they had huge crowds outside with people holding bleepers and having a 60-90minute wait.....we couldn't be bothered with that, so we mainly ate our 'dinner of the day' in the theme parks but not the fast food as each one had choices of 'nice' restaurants too, then snacked in the villa at night. The night F&M stayed we had Chinese takeaway delivered, which meant lots of chatting time :o)  Unfortunately SisterM had a rotten 'holiday' tummy day and was very tired so didn't enjoy their visit as much which was a shame. 

First theme park we did was Magic Kingdom, which we all were very disappointed with. It was very scruffy looking, seemed like all shops and fast food but very few rides and only geared to the very young, but no magic, no Disney characters walking around........we certainly wondered what we had let ourselves in for with this sort of holiday!!!

But very glad to report EVERYWHERE ELSE was so much better. We did NASA and was lucky enough to be there when they launched a rocket, we went to SeaWorld and were given an upgraded ticket to go back a second time for free which we did, Hollywood World was great fun too and Epcot was brilliant. On our last day on the way to the airport we also had an hour long Airboat ride spotting alligators in the reed beds of Boggy Creek then we listened to a short talk and got to hold a small alligator (with his mouth taped shut of course).

We got totally rained on twice and even bought those Mickey Mouse plastic ponchos the second time. M&A decided they needed two rest days, Thursday and Sunday so they could recharge their personal energy. Hubby and I left them to it on Sunday and headed out shopping, didn't buy lots but interesting to see the different goods and prices.

This was a very special holiday as my big sister has terminal cancer and we never thought she would be able to go on this sort of holiday, her travel insurance cost more than the holiday, so we made the most of it all and even cuddled Winnie the Pooh and Shamu the Whale posing for photos enjoying the silly-ness of it all.

Got home lunch time Thursday and so far Clive and I don't seem to be suffering jet lag, fingers crossed eh?
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