Mark & Mark's 2003 Report From The World June 14-July5 About This Page:

[markb]

Mark & Mark's 2003 Trip Report:

The Cast:
Mark B, 35, 3rd trip to WDW.
Mark, my fiancé, 33, first trip to WDW, first flight too.
Lloyd, 33, my Brother. 2nd visit to WDW
Jay, Lloyds boyfriend, 2nd trip to WDW too.

Dates: From 14th June to 28th June for Lloyd & Jay and
14th June to 5th July for Mark and myself

Lodgings: A friends villa in Chatham Park Kissimmee (just off 192 at mile marker 13)

Special Mission: Keys to the Kingdom tour [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

I started off making notes day by day, but as time went on I ended up keeping till receipts etc. in the Passporter to help me remember what we did. (bad move) We took lots of photos and over 2 ½ hours of video. Also Mark has a far better memory than me and will no doubt correct me as I go along! Next time I'm writing the report as we go, [img]graemlins/puter.gif[/img] much easier on the memory [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

Part 1
Saturday 14th July 2003

Alarm went of at some ungodly hour (about 5 am I think). We'd finally finished packing at about 8pm last night. It was the usual arrangement, enough clothes to half fill one suit case carefully divided between two cases so we had room for all the purchases we'd no doubt make in Florida. So, at the appointed hour we got up, showered and dressed. I packed the car with the 2 cases and 2 rucksacks, while mark checked the windows were closed, all the electric's were off apart from the fridge (which we forgot to empty, but that's another story) and generally tried not to get too excited, yeah right! We reached my brothers house about 20 minutes later, and met him and Jay walking into the carpark. It turns out they'd been ready for a while and were watching out the window for us. So off we set for Copthorn, West Sussex. My Aunt lives near Gatwick and had kindly offered to look after both the cars on her drive for us.

We arrived at her house in time to get a lift to the airport with her partner John. He works at Gatwick, and was more than happy to drop us off.

Mark had paid for him and I to fly Premi-air Gold (My Travels version of first class) so, when we arrived at the airport, we left Lloyd and Jay to join the end of the cattle class check in queue and went over to our check-in desk and formed a queue by ourselves Five minutes later we'd checked in, been given our seats and were waiting for the other two. Jay decided, as there were upgrades available, to pay the extra to go first class too. I complained to the staff that we'd paid extra to sit away from them, but they still let them upgrade [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img] After they'd checked in we had a wander around the duty free shops. Mark bought a personal CD player (having decided not to borrow mine), and a Dead Or Alive CD. That boy has very dodgy taste in music.

This was Mark's first time at an airport so we made sure we had a coffee and a snack in the café that overlooks the runway. I'm not sure if it was what he was expecting or not, but he sat there happily watching the planes come in and take off. He was surprised though by the way you can see 2 or 3 planes all on final approach in a line behind the one that's landing. Anyway, in no time at all our flight was being called.

Premi-air Gold passengers get to board first, so off we went to the gate. I don't know about Mark, but I was getting excited already and we were still 10 or so hours away from Florida. We found our rather comfy padded leather seats, stowed our rucksacks and settled in for the flight. We were in row 7 G&J. Mark had the window seat and I had the aisle seat. Lloyd and Jay were in row 4 A&B, far enough away that we could pretend we didn't know them [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]
The in-flight entertainment was great. I watched the Wild Thornberry Movie, Chicago (twice), Friends and loads of other stuff. I also spent quite a while looking at the map screen. It displayed our position, height, airspeed etc, all fascinating to an anorak like me. So, after 9 hours and 25 minutes we landed at Sanford Airport in sunny Florida.

Anyone who hasn't flown into Sanford should give it a go. It's only about 15 to 20 minutes further away than Orlando International. We were through a very busy Immigration check in half an hour or so, collected our luggage and off to the Dollar stand to collect the car in less than an hour total. Mark and I had originally intended to come alone, hence we had only hired a 2 door compact car. Since Lloyd and Jay had decided to come along also, Lloyd was going to pay for an upgrade to a 4 door car. We sorted this out with a very nice and helpful Dollar lady. She upgraded us to a Dodge Intrepid

but only charged Lloyd for a Cavalier (the next class down). Lloyd signed the credit card slip and off we went to find the car. At the time Lloyd remarked that he didn't notice how much he was being charged. When he got his statement it was £236, not such a bargain after all.

We found the car with no problems and were soon on the road south to Kissimmee. As we'd been to the villa before we were there in no time. The first surprise was finding a For Sale sign on the front lawn [img]images/icons/frown.gif[/img] Our friend has owned the villa since 1991 and we didn't realise he was selling up. Our hope is that he is going to buy another villa in Kissimmee somewhere else. After the initial shock and a quick fight with the front door locks we were in. Mark and Jay had never seen the villa and fell in love with it instantly. To me it felt like coming home. We dumped the bags in the bedrooms, had a quick look round and then it was off to Wal-mart for supplies.

The Wal-mart on 192 is huge. Lloyd and I had told Mark how big it was, but he was still amazed. We wandered up and down the aisles picking up the essentials of life:

2 pizzas
2 quarts of Icecream
2 litres of Coke
2 litres of Diet Coke
12 bottles of Bud Light
and a huge bag of crisps (chips).

It always amazes me how long it takes to get out of Wal-Mart. The check out staff seem to work in slow motion! We queued for about 20 minutes, in the UK it would have taken 5 [img]images/icons/confused.gif[/img]

After picking up all the leaflets and voucher books we could carry we set off home.

That's it for pt 1 so far. More to follow.