Florida 2022 - The First Week

Saturday 22nd October 2022 - The Journey

In 2019 I travelled a lot. In February I went to Cambodia with my dear friend Hellen Riebold to visit the girls we sponsor through a charity run by another dear friend, Ruth Williams. In June Hubby Dearest and I took our first cruise. We went round the Baltic, including to St. Petersburg, and I caught the cruising bug and now have four cruises booked. And then in October we went to Florida with the family. I'm beyond glad we did all that, because of course in 2020, and much of 2021, we went nowhere at all.

We own a timeshare (Westgate Lakes) so are obliged to go to Florida every three years to make use of it. We decided to have a taxi to the airport this time, and that was a good decision. A round-trip in a minibus for six of us was just under £300 - £100 less than the cost of parking two cars at the airport, and much less hassle. The first leg of the flight with Air Canada was uneventful. We had over three hours to kill at Montreal airport waiting for our connection so were slightly frustrated to have so much downtime, but decided we'd try some poutine and look around the airport shops.

In the event we were very glad we'd booked flights which such a long layover, because Montreal airport was the worst I've ever encountered. We were to clear American customs there, which is a nice idea, but we queued for 2 1/2 hours in a dingy room under some stairs. Occasionally airport staff would rush around asking whether anyone was on a particular flight and those people would get to jump the queue. (As we got to the blessed start of that queue that felt extremely unfair, as we watched them go ahead of us to passport control.) We also had a major "not in Kansas anymore" moment when directed to check screens for our names. The screens listed the names of every passenger on each upcoming flight, and their immigration status - green if they were approved, amber if they had to consult a member of staff. GDPR only came in in Europe in 2018 but already we're so used to it that it seemed horrifying to have personal data put on display in that way. In the UK displaying that information publicly is illegal.

We just about cleared customs with time to eat poutine at the gate before boarding our flight to Orlando.

I'm recovering from a nasty chest cold as I write this, the main symptom of which has been coughing. I had a coughing fit in the taxi to the airport, and another on the second flight. The French-Canadian lady in front of me threw an airline package containing a face mask at me, never mind that I was already wearing my own.

Once in Orlando the next challenge was locating our shuttle driver. It turned out that we couldn't find him because he wasn't there yet, but he showed up eventually and we finally arrived at our resort at 1.30am, which was 6.30am on our body clocks, having been travelling for over 21 hours. The journey is not my favourite thing about Florida. 

Sunday 23rd October - Walmart and the Water Park

One thing I do love about coming here is our tradition of going to Walmart on Sunday morning to buy all the weird and wonderful American food. Roderic and I walked the mile to Walmart, and the rest of our party took an Uber. For the second time we have decided not to hire a car during our stay. Car hire comes in at around $100 per day and it now costs $25 to park at a Disney or Universal theme park for the day. Ubers average around $15-$20 per trip (depending on where you're going, of course) and with Lyft too that price is competitive, so we decided we'd use ridesharing apps to get to wherever we wanted to go.

We always start with breakfast at the in-store McDonald's and I was pleased to find that oatmeal was no longer the only vegetarian option - I really enjoyed my egg and cheese biscuit. We then spent a very pleasant hour wandering round Walmart and stocking up on the essentials - corn dogs, Hawiian punch, pizza pockets, ranch dressing, cornbread mix, breakfast cereal that looks and tastes liked cinnamon buns, and hundreds of frozen burritos. 

The cost of groceries in America is generally higher than in the UK, and I'd been a little concerned that it would be an impossibly expensive exercise, but although many things were three or four times the price (apples, meat) we also got some bargains. Roderic's favourite flavoured water was 70 cents a bottle which is slightly less than it is in the UK, comes in more varied flavours and apparently tastes better. We spent $300 so not too bad for six people for a week or so.

In the afternoon we went to check out the resort's new water park which they were building last time we were here three years ago. When we checked in last night we'd been given a little slip of paper which entitled us, as owners at the timeshare resort, to twelve free wristbands giving us entry to the waterpark. I confidently presented a slip of paper to the member of staff in the entry booth, only to discover that what I'd actually given him was a random receipt from my purse. The actual paper I needed was still at apartment 213. Oops. He took my word for it that we were owners and let us in anyway.

After all that we found the water park to be unimpressive. The lazy river was very slow and there weren't enough rings available, the wave pool was tiny, there were two flumes but the steel steps up to them were the type I can't climb due to my fear of heights, and a kids' area which looked great fun but only if you're five years old. Entry to the water park was $20 for non-owners, and I couldn't help thinking it really wasn't worth that. We'd probably have quite liked it as an option when the children were small but decided not to bother with it again.

In the evening we ordered Sonic on Uber Eats. Half the order didn't arrive - Gwen got no meal at all - and what we did get was nothing to write home about (except my pretzel, which was very nice). So not a fast-food place we'll bother with again, although we did get refunded for the missing food, and we didn't get charged for a random large lemonade which showed up with our meal.

Now I read this back it looks like a disappointing first day. It absolutely wasn't. Did I mention we're in Florida? It's 30 degrees and the sky is blue. Our apartment is huge and very comfortable. Our resort has six other pools and hot tubs for us to enjoy as well as the water park. And none of us are at work.

Me at our resort (Westgate Lakes) the first morning

The entrance to Westgate Lakes in the evening

Monday 24th October - Universal Studios

Universal Studios! Our Lyft driver had come to us straight from talking to his divorce lawyer and told us all about it and how sad he was, so naturally we tipped him very well. Hari suggested later that he probably tells everyone that sob story precisely for the tips, but if that's true then I salute his ingenuity and he still deserves a good tip.

Gwen and Harley had gone to Animal Kingdom (they're doing Disney while we do Universal) and left early to be there for rope drop (when the park opens) so that they could take advantage of shorter queues. They reported later that they did very well and blazed through many of the best rides. Their safari was particularly good, with close-up encounters with lots of animals.

Since we went to Universal Studios a little later we knew that we would be looking at long waits to do the rides, but there is so much to see and enjoy, especially in the little details, that half the fun is just being there and taking it all in. Hari is a big Harry Potter fan so she loved Diagon Alley. We each had a frozen Butterbeer and it was delicious. We then decided to do the Gringotts ride, which I had chickened out of on our last visit. Lots of the rides at Universal don't allow you to take bag with you, so there are lockers to put your things in before you join the queue. The lockers are small, cost $2 for each hire, and you need you park ticket to open them. It felt a bit like being scammed for yet more money, so future reference - travel light and pack everything into a bum bag, since you can take those on the rides.

The Gringotts queue was advertised at 55 minutes which is really the upper limit for me, and in the event, it was well over an hour, but the ride at the end was good - the combination of hydraulics and VR which means it's a roller coaster without being a roller coaster, and thus not too scary for me since I kno w I'm not actually high up, even though it looks as though I am.

We ate our sandwich lunch in fake (but very well done) London, outside Grimmald Place, with the Eros statue and Leicester Square tube station, then joined another queue, this time for the Hogwarts Express. The train takes you from one park (Universal Studios) to the adjacent park (Islands of Adventure) and a story plays out through the "windows" as you travel.

We had a quick look around Hogsmeade, but the wait times for the rides were all very high, so we decided to call it a day at that point. Our tickets are valid for two weeks, so there really was no rush to do everything.

Calling a Lyft/Uber to take us back to our resort was something of a challenge. We have to pay an extra £6 per day for our data plans in the US so had decided just to use the wifi in the parks and our resort. That's fine, but it turned out the Universal wifi didn't quite reach the rideshare area. We had to buy data, and the rideshare pickup and dropoff areas at Universal are very poorly set out so finding and then getting to our car were tricky. Hopefully that'll improve as more people use Uber and Lyft.

In the evening Roderic and I went to a free dinner for Westgate owners over at Westgate Town Centre resort. It was further away than we'd expected, so the Ubers to get there and back probably cancelled out the value of the dinner, but we did win a few bits of Westgate merchandise in the after-dinner music competition.

Tuesday 25th October - Typhoon Lagoon

As a family we LOVE water parks. There's something about being in or around water that just feels so relaxing and lifts the spirits. Gwen and Harley had Disney tickets entitling them to use the Disney water parks, but the rest of us had to pay for day entry. We'd also pushed the boat out and booked a cabana again, and we got Beachcomber shack no. 1 - the same one we had last time. The advantage of having a cabana is that we each get a comfortable seat in our own private area with a locker, ice box, tables, and an assistant who will bring us whatever we need. It includes unlimited drinks, and towels, and it makes it much easier to find each other and have a base to return to without having to find six sunbeds together when the park is busy. For us it was well worth doing, even if it was expensive.

Everything about Typhoon Lagoon was wonderful. The huge wave pool generated a 6-foot high wave every 90 seconds. I loved the raft rides - Gangplank Falls and Misadventure Falls - and the solo tube rides, Mayday Falls and Keelhaul Falls. One of the great things about Disney water parks is that the climb up to the flumes and ride isn't steel steps, but a pretty mountain path. We spent a lot of time just bobbing round in circles in the lazy river, Castaway Creek, and I can't think of a better way to relax - I just wished my Kindle was waterproof so that I could also read my book. 

We had Julian, our attendant, bring us lunch, and like all Disney parks (but unlike America in general) there were good vegetarian options available. I had the crabless crab cakes which were delicious. 

We were at Typhoon Lagoon from opening until closing, and we all agreed that if someone were to ask which was our favourite Disney park, this would be it. There may not be Princesses and roller coasters, but it's the perfect combination of relaxing in the fun, and enjoying thrill rides.

I made steak with roast potatoes, broccoli and carrots for dinner. (Cheese omelette for me.) The knives in the drawer were extremely blunt, and we had no oven glove or tea towel, so that wasn't the easiest meal I've ever cooked.

Wednesday 26th October - A Rest Day

Part of being timeshare owners is that the company will keep trying to get you to buy more timeshare. They do this by inviting you to a breakfast where you can chat to a representative about the company's future plans. They also bribe you. We were told that if we went to the dinner on Monday and the breakfast they'd give us a $150 prepaid debit card. So off we went, and after a frustrating start (because no one told us we needed to check in in a specific area) Naima from Morocco welcomed us and took us upstairs to the buffet breakfast area. Very nice scrambled eggs, but less of a spread than I remembered from previous visits.

Naima then set about trying to persuade us to buy more timeshare, but we resolutely refused. As usual she took us on a little ride in a golf cart to see the new building with the bigger apartments. It was impressive - four interconnecting one-bedroom apartments sold as a single unit so you could bring friends, or use one section and rent out the others, or have four weeks for the price of one.

Since Roderic is an accountant it's difficult to pull the wool over his eyes when it comes to figures and investments, and he was quite sharp with Naima when he thought she was trying to blind him with numbers. But eventually he asked her to leave us to discuss things and explained to me that the latest offer she had given us was actually very good, and in the long term would be a better deal than the one we were currently on. So, we went with it, and spent a further hour with a very nice lawyer from New York tying up the paperwork. And yes, they did give us the $150 at the end of it all, and a tablet, and a free week.

During our chat with Naima I mentioned some of the issues with our apartment - the blunt knives, lack of scissors, tea towel or oven gloves, non-working light, blind, and patio door. Nothing got fixed until I told reception two days later, at which point it was all fixed so quicky that the maintenance man arrived at the apartment before I had got back from reception. Far from being our resort rep, Naima really was just a salesperson.

In the afternoon I walked the mile to Walmart and the parade of shops beyond it, including a DollarTree, to restock with cola and a few other things we needed. I had brought reusable shopping bags from home since Walmart will otherwise give you hundreds of little grey plastic bags, and the checkout staff seemed happy not to have to pack my shopping for me. With five large bags of shopping I needed to get a Lyft back to the resort, though. I thought I'd be clever and input the actual address of our apartment, not just the dropoff point at the resort. Unfortunately the driver got lost trying to find his way through the maze which is Westgate Lakes, and eventually dropped me and the shopping at a dead-end within sight of our building. I sent a quick "Help!" text, and Harley and Roderic came sprinting out to help me carry the shopping.

Pizzas for tea, including an American croissant-base pizza (which tasted nothing like a croissant) and a Stranger Things branded pizza.

Aggressively American car

Another car which would never fit on a British road

Thursday 27th October

We decided to take a leaf out of Gwen and Harley's book and get to Universal Studios for rope drop, which the internet helpfully told us was 8am. Unfortunately the internet failed to tell us that was only for annual pass holders or people staying in Universal resort hotels - for everyone else the rides didn't open until 9. So we waited in the Dr. Seuss area until we were allowed through to Hogsmeade.

The plan to join the queues early didn't pay off - the queue for Hagrid's Magical Creatures Motorbike ride was already at 3 hours, so Hari, Ceri/Val and I went to the Hogwarts castle ride instead, with a queue of only 25 minutes, while Roderic looked after our bags. The queue was a large part of the fun as wandering through the corridors of Hogwarts and looking at the talking paintings was wonderful. The ride itself - the combination of hydraulics and VR which works so well - was stunning.

The children and Roderic then went on an actual real roller coaster, Flight of the Hippogriff, while I looked after the bags. They liked it so much they did it twice. We then crossed the bridge from Hogsmeade to Jurassic Park. I really enjoy the little details, like the fact that there were now fossils and dinosaur footprints in the path. Roderic and Hari did the velocicoaster which they reported was very fast and very scary, and then Val/Ceri, who loves dinosaurs, bought a dinosaur mask.

We decided an early lunch was needed at this point so headed back to Hogsmeade to the Three Broomsticks which was a pub serving traditional English food with a Harry Potter twist. I had a mushroom pie and pumpkin fizz to drink. Meals for the four of us came to $80, so it wasn't cheap, but Hari was so excited to eat there.

We then took the Hogwarts Express back to Kings Cross Station. The film is different on the way back, and the queue from Hogsmeade to Kings Cross is a lot shorter than the queue in the other direction for some reason. Once back at Universal Studios Hari and Roderic did the Jimmy Fallon Race through New York ride. I'd decided to give it a miss because a) I have no idea who Jimmy Fallon is and b) I thought it was a roller coaster. They reported back to me that it was a very good ride and I'd probably have enjoyed it, so I will do it next time.

The queue for Minion Mayhem was too long, so we ambled along looking for something else with a short-ish queue. We saw several characters and Hari, as the photogenic one, had her picture taken with them. It was almost 2pm by now and uncomfortably hot so when Roderic saw than an indoor show, the Bourne Stuntacular, was about to start he suggested we try it even though we haven't seen the Bourne films, and we gratefully went inside for the air conditioning.

As we waited for it to start Hari asked me what the show was. It was so new it wasn't on the app yet, but I managed to find a description which didn't much help. It wasn't a ride, there were no 3D glasses or moving floor so it wasn't a 3D show.

It was, in fact, like nothing we had ever seen before and we all agreed it was the best thing we had done in the park. It was like a live-action film, with real actors who ran and jumped and performed amazingly choregraphed stunts on a moving stage with a seamless screen backdrop which surrounded the audience. We stared open-mouthed as Jason Bourne swung above our heads from a helicopter, raced a police car on a motorbike, and fought on top of tall buildings. Truly stunning.

From there we headed for the ET ride since I had read it was closing. The queue was barely five minutes, so we had one last nostalgic ride on those bikes, surrounded by wobbly animatronics. It's a lot like Universal's answer to "It's a small world" with kitsch singing aliens at the end. Going on the Simpsons ride afterwards (hydraulics and VR again) really shows how much technology has improved theme park rides.

We were all pretty exhausted at that point and the park was closing at 5 (for the Halloween show which needed a special ticket) so we decided that the other rides would have to wait for our next visit.

Scary dinosaur!

Entry to Jurassic Park

The ceiling at the Three Broomsticks

Friday 28th October

Every morning in Florida I wake up, look through the window, and think it has rained overnight. It hasn't. The sprinklers which keep the grass lush and green come on in the early hours, so everything is damp when I wake up. Today, however, it did rain. It was a planned rest day so we had only been thinking of going to the resort's pools, but we only actually managed an hour in the pool and hot tub between rain showers. and Roderic got soaked walking to Game Stop, a shop in the parade of shops near Walmart a mile away. Still, I had a very good book to read and doing nothing is one of my favourite things about holidays.  (I'm reading a Cormoran Strike novel by Robert Galbraith, JK Rowling's pen name, and the irony of reading her book while sitting in a theme park dedicated to another series of her books was not lost on me.)

I had said that I'd like to visit a Mexican restaurant at some point during our holiday, and for a while it looked as though that might have been tonight, but in the event we just ordered Taco Bell instead. US Taco Bell is very different from UK Taco Bell, but still very nice, and happily just as in the UK everything on the menu can be made vegetarian.

I can't believe it's almost the end of our first week in Florida! We're having such a wonderful time, it's going to be very difficult to go home again.