Yesterday
Yesterday was a “spare” day which we kinda “filled-in”. As we were flying on standby from Auckland to Los Angeles, it’s best to have a spare day before continuing on to Florida. So, we filled in the day with seeing crew friends that were overnighting here and eating at Kim’s favourite places. We also had dinner with my nephew at a Mexican restaurant Don Antonio’s.
Jetting across the USA
Today, we’re flying across the country from Los Angeles to Orlando. We woke at 0545 and left an hour later, driving to the Howard Johnson near LAX to return the rental car. The drive took an hour and we had some spare time to have breakfast at a diner before returning the car and taking the hotel shuttle to the airport.
We got to the airport about 2h prior our 1044 United Airlines flight for Orlando. Check-in was purely by kiosks and bag-drop was staffed by unskilled staff who cannot answer any questions apart from scan the bags. Airline staff were on hand combing the queues and the desks to help with questions though.
At security, there were signs saying that Ngurah Rai International Airport (Denpasar Bali) does not adhere to US security requirements. What a strange sign! How is it relevant to a passenger leaving from here? And there are no direct flights that go to Bali, let alone Indonesia.
On board the B757, Kim sat in front of a brat that kept kicking the seatback. The flight attendant was observant enough to notice this and shifted him to Economy Plus at no charge. The crew were attentive and gave drinks through the flight of 4h47 duration.
In Orlando
Arriving at Orlando at 1831, we picked up our rental car from Alamo, booked by the company that arranged our accommodation. They offered a choice of cars so we got a yellow Chevrolet coupe. But on the downside, the booking was two days short of what we had wanted. It was too hard to fix here without referring to the travel arranger so we thought we’d leave it for another day to fix up.
After heading in the wrong direction and then missing the motorway, we corrected ourselves and got to the Ramada Welcome Centre in Kissimmee. We were given details of our accommodation which was at the Magic Tree nearby.
The Magic Tree didn’t impress at first because it looked like a very old motel. Time-warp kinda material. But we had a beautiful suite inside, so it was a reminder not to judge a book by its cover. We had a Chinese buffet for dinner and called it a day.