A TRIP REPORT A YEAR IN THE MAKING
or,
HONEY LAMB SUGGESTS AN INTERESTING WAGER...
Dear lord. Where to start? Well, after being encouraged, cajoled, bullied and even threatened into posting a TR on our return from Orlando last October, I've finally managed to pull the following report together. This one culminates in a domestic US flight. A further report will cover our eventual trip home with VS.
For reasons you'll discover therein, things didn't go entirely to plan. Be warned: this is going to be a long one.
Still with me? Right, well for those of you who may have missed my outbound TR (well I did post it very nearly a year ago) this trip was intended to be part of mum's 70th birthday celebrations. I know: any excuse for a holiday.
We'd flown from MAN-MCO for 6 days in Disney World, which was to be followed by a hop up to La Guardia with Jet Blue for a quick 2 night stopover in New York, before heading homeward via JFK. Sure, it was going to be a hectic week or so, but that's the way the Reward Fare Gods had dictated it was to be. And who are we mere mortals to question why...?
First and foremost, we had the most splendid of times in Orlando. The weather was kind to us (oh, the irony!) and the parks weren't too busy, considering we were there during half-term school holidays. And, bearing in mind this was a three-generational trip of mdviponds, I'm happy to report that there were no instances of any family member attempting to maim, strangle or kill any other family members. Which is always a bonus.
Our digs in Disney were provided, once again, by Wilderness Lodge. This was our third time here and I really can't say enough good things about the place. Clean, comfortable rooms, plenty of food options, a great little bar that does a mean (and rather strong) G&T. It also has fantastic access to the parks without being too, well… too 'Disney'. Don't get we wrong, I love Disney World, really I do, but it's nice to leave Mickey et al behind you for the day when you head back to the hotel of a night, and Wilderness Lodge offers just that.
Whilst spirits were high during our first couple of days in Orlando, we still had our collective antennae out, searching for whichever potential disaster might be lurking around the next proverbial corner. This might seem over-cautious, unnecessarily pessimistic, even. But remember, dear reader, we are the mdviponds; misfortune stalks us, waiting like a fat teenage girl at the stage door of a One Direction concert, whenever and wherever we travel.
Take our first trip to Orlando back in '08, for instance, when Tizer spent a week of our 10 day trip bed-ridden with flu. Trust me, Disney looses a considerable amount of it's charm from the inside of a hotel room with a 3 year old who has a 103 degree temperature.
And remember the eruption of Eyjaf... Ejefer... Eyalif... Ejaky… that big volcano in Iceland? Yup, we got caught up in that one too although, mercifully, we actually made it out to Barbados at the last minute. Mind you, I did get bitten by a sandfly while we were there, which became infected (the bite, that is, not the sandfly), swelled up like a ripe mango and resulted in daily trips to the local docs, much bandaging and a course of antibiotics.
And did you hear about my 40th birthday trip to spend Christmas in Cape Town? You didn't? Well, that's probably because Heathrow was shut for a week due to snow and our flight was cancelled.
You know, between you and me, I'm amazed there are still travel insurance companies out there that dare extend cover to us...
So when, a couple of days into our Floridian jolly, we started to hear reports of a tropical storm brewing off the east coast, we were far from surprised. And a day later, when it was upgraded to a hurricane, we weren't exactly shocked. Rather like a hypochondriac finally being told 'Yes, you're right, you're actually rather ill', it was almost a relief. If nothing else, it stops all that dreadful uncertainty.
They named it Sandy (why they feel the need to name hurricanes is beyond me, by the way. I mean, we don't name any other sources of potential natural disaster, do we? Tsunami Tracey, for instance, Ethel the Earthquake. Volcano Vicky. It all seems to lack a certain gravitas if you ask me). And it was packing quite the meteorological punch, apparently. Hatches were going to have to be battened down. Whatever that means.
We were in for one more surprise, however. Reports were coming in that despite Sandy's increasing ferocity, it looked very much like it wasn't actually heading our way. Nope. It was travelling north, away from Florida, out of harm's way. Or so it would seem…
So our Disney World frolics continued; we caught a bit of the wet and windy stuff for a day, thanks to Sandy's close presence, but it soon passed and the sun came back out to play again. We'd dodged a hurricane! Spirits were high. Well done us! Time for a well earned gin and tonic in the hotel bar, and maybe catch up with the news.
Oh crap. The news. Turns out, Sandy wasn't a hurricane anymore. Oh no. Sandy was a 'Superstorm' now. And that wasn't the worst of it. She may well have missed Florida, but she was now heading for - wait for it - New York. In fact, she was due to hit the Big Apple on Monday, which was a bit of a coincidence, really, because so were we.
I downed my G & T, I like to think, with an impressive show of stoicism, and wondered exactly how I was going to break the news to my insurance broker this time. The problem, of course, is that no one ever knows exactly what the weather's going to do. Us weary Brits, who so often allow our hopes of a picnic or an outdoor concert to rest upon the sage advice of those tea-leaf readers at the Met Office, know this only too well. But when you're on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, due to check out of a hotel, get on a plane and fly to a city that's preparing itself - rightly or wrongly - for the 'Mother Of All Storms' (thank you Fox News for that one), then it does tend to concentrate the mind somewhat.
To put you in the picture, dear reader (assuming you've read this far), this was the Saturday. Our last night at Wilderness lodge was to be Sunday, with our flight with JetBlue up to New York leaving on Monday morning, just in time to meet 'The Perfect Storm' (that one courtesy of NBC News). Our trip home, of course, was due to be on the VS flight out of JFK on Wednesday night. But without knowing whether Sandy would actually hit NYC and if Jet Blue would pull the flight, it was hard to decide what we should do. We were left in a strange no man's land; a no man's land of waving giant mice and smiling princesses, where hurricanes hardly ever happen and every day is 'magical'...
By Sunday afternoon, however, something finally did happen: Jet Blue cancelled our flight. A cursory search of airlines proved to us that there was no real way of getting from Orlando to New York in the next 24 hours. Luckily, a quick word with hotel management resulted in keeping our rooms on for another few days, which was something of a relief.
Then all we could do was wait to see what Sandy - aka 'The Storm Of The Century' (copyright ABC News, 2012) - would get up to.
In uncertain mood on Monday morning, and not really feeling up to yet another Disney parade, we headed for the Boardwalk for a bit of shopping, mooching and lunching. We found a great restaurant with thoroughly tasty food (so clearly not part of the Disney franchise). It even had it's own, rather wonderful, micro-brewery.
Over a craft beer or three, we watched the first signs of Sandy starting to lash the New Jersey shoreline on TV. And later that evening, once we'd made our way back to the bar at Wilderness Lodge, the television pictures coming back from New York were looking every bit as bad as the weathermen and newscasters had foretold (much to their surprise and delight, no doubt).
As the evening wore on, it looked as if Jet Blue had done us a massive favour by cancelling our flight. New York was clearly not a safe place to be. Downtown was flooding, power was out across half of the city, roads were unusable and public transport was paralysed. So, not unlike Hull on a Friday night.
Obviously, our NYC trip was most definitely off; but our VS flight was still showing as leaving as scheduled from JFK on Wednesday. Only problem was, JFK was 1000 miles away and on the edge of a disaster zone.
Now, what concerned me at this point was this: Having your flight cancelled is one thing; missing your flight because you're seven States away is a very different matter indeed. If Sandy passed through during Tuesday and JFK either remained operational or got back on it's feet pretty sharpish, then our flight with VS may well be leaving without us, placing us in something of a pickle. Or a chutney, depending on your taste.
Fast thinking isn't normally one of my more obvious attributes, but it struck me that we had to at least try to get to JFK in case our VS flight was still operating. Unsurprisingly, a quick search of the web didn't come up with many airlines willing to fly to New York under the current circumstances, but American Airlines had a flight leaving Orlando late on Wednesday morning, which would get us to New York in time to catch the plane back to Heathrow. I booked five seats, and crossed my fingers.
Satisfied I'd done all I could for the time being, I bought us all tickets for Universal Studios for the following day. At short notice, they weren't cheap, but none of us could face another Disney day. It's great, it's magical, it's one of my favourite places; but after a week of perma-smiles, piped music and the almost constant and all pervading Disney 'smell' (a kind of mixture of cinnamon and popcorn, and possibly fairy sweat), we needed a change of scenery. Or, in this case, a change of corporation.
To be honest, the Disney food is probably the thing that wears you down most when you start to involuntarily extend your stay there. It all becomes so very generic. The burgers start to taste like the fried chicken, which in turn tastes much the same as the hotdogs. The fries taste of turkey legs, which taste of the burgers which taste a lot like… well, you get the picture. And don't even think about risking a salad, at least not unless you want it to be doused in enough dressing to give an elephant a cholesterol problem.
Our day at Universal was fun, Tizer thoroughly enjoyed the change of scenery (if you can call swapping one theme park for another theme park a 'change of scenery'), and dinner at the Hard Rock Café was a relief to body, soul, mind and palate. I continued to check my emails periodically through the day and, by early evening, I got the message I was pretty much expecting: American Airlines had cancelled our flight to New York. And, as such, we were officially stranded in Orlando.
Okay, dear reader, if you've got this far: bravo. I did warn you it was going to be a pretty long one this time. Possibly time for a break. Have a stretch, check your emails, put the kettle on, then we'll settle down for Part Two. You never know; it might even involve some aeroplanes. Look, here it comes now…
PART TWO
MR. VIPOND GOES TO WASHINGTON
or,
DC, OR NOT DC
So, when you last joined us, the intrepid mdviponds were at Universal Studios and had just discovered that their last chance of getting to storm-lashed New York in order to catch their flight home had disappeared like Nick Clegg's poll ratings once the country realised what a complete twat he is. Back at Wilderness Lodge, matters weren't helped by a message from the hotel manager that we'd need to move rooms if we wanted to stay on for any further nights.
It was time for another call to our trusty insurance broker. We have a business travel insurance policy, which we were hoping would be comprehensive enough to get us out of the hole we currently found ourselves in. Our broker confirmed that as far as she was concerned it should cover us for any reasonable expenses incurred in getting ourselves home. How we actually did that, of course, was down to us.
One hope I was clinging to is that VS would cancel Wednesday's JFK-LHR flight. My thinking on this was that at least then the responsibility for getting us back to the UK would fall more squarely with them.
But they were determined not to cancel the flight, the little tinkers. This was Tuesday night. Most of Lower Manhattan was under a foot of water, La Guardia, Newark and JFK were all closed, but Virgin were still adamant (stand and deliver!) that our flight would be leaving, as scheduled, on Wednesday night.
Mrs. V hit the phone to Flying Club to see what we could hammer out. No Virgin flights available out of MCO for the next week (unless we dropped a class or two, and that wasn't going to happen!). Nothing doing for Miami, either, which would have been the next obvious port of departure.
Things were starting to look desperate. The hotel manager hadn't given us any specifics when he told us we'd have to 'move rooms', but I had an awful feeling that he wouldn't be upgrading us to a suite. Fears of being consigned to a dank mattress in the basement began to torment me…
"How about Washington?" asked the very helpful chap at Flying Club. Well, unlike New York, it hadn't just had the shit kicked out of it by Sandy, so why the hell not? Only thing was, we needed to get there. With Flying Club on hold, I quickly searched for available flights to DC. Bingo! We could fly up with Jet Blue the following afternoon. I booked five tickets (and, since the insurance company was picking up the bill, upgraded to 'Even More Space' seats. It's okay. I'm worth it).
The only slight drawback with flying home from IAD was that we couldn't all travel on the same day. Mum and dad could get back on the Thursday, but Mrs V, Tizer and I would have to wait until Sunday before there'd be enough UC availability for us. Four days in the US capital, at the insurance company's expense? Well, I imagine we could just about handle that. All we needed was a hotel in Washington and we were all sorted.
Now I'm of the belief, dear reader, that choosing oneself the right hotel is something of an art. And like most art, it's not something that can be rushed. And if art is like religion (stay with me here), then my bible is TripAdvisor. I like to read and inwardly digest each review, research locations in line with local sights, restaurants and bars, examine every reviewer's photos in fine detail. This whole process has been known to take me weeks, sometimes even months. What one clearly shouldn't have to do, is to make a snap decision on a hotel, in an unknown city, at one o' clock in the morning on the day you're expecting to check in!
So, I did the only thing I could do. It went against every fibre in my body, but I brought up the list of hotels in DC on TripAdvisor, picked the top rated one, and booked two rooms. Just like that.
I have to say, it was quite a liberating experience. One that was helped in no small amount by the fact that the No. 1 rated hotel in Washington at the time was the Hay Adams, a beautiful, five star property on the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. I'm not entirely sure if I'd have felt quite the same way had it been a two star motel on the outskirts of town, but then, who knows…?
Wednesday morning dawned and at last we had a bit of a spring in our step. For the first time in almost a week, we knew where we were going, where we would be sleeping and how we'd be getting home. Lunch in Wilderness Lodge finally used up the last of our 'Disney Dining' credits (I swear, they give you enough to feed a small army for a week. That, or an average American family for two days.) Then finally, we were on the road, en route for MCO! Those nice people from Quicksilver had done a great job of switching our dates around, by the way, so credit is due to them.
MCO is an easy airport to fly out of, and even easier when you're flying domestic. Jet Blue's check-in was quick and painless, security a breeze and we barely had time for a beer before we were boarding. Tizer and I had the front seats, so there was bags of legroom. Mum, dad and Mrs. V were further down the bus with the exit row seats. Of course the first thing that Tizer noticed was that the TV was on. One of Jet Blue's 'quirks' is that they provide gate-to-gate in-flight entertainment, including live TV. Tizer was, as any kid would be, delighted. Headphones went on, Nickelodeon was found, and silence ensued for the next two hours or so.
I like US domestic flights. There's a refreshing matter-of-factness about them. No one's going on holiday, everyone wants to get where they're going as quickly and painlessly as possible, so an attitude of 'let's try and do this with as little fuss as possible and without bothering anyone else' ensues. The FA was that typically US breed of cabin crew: a brassy, to the point, borderline mother figure. She called my 'Dad' throughout the flight, and brought me numerous 'Jack and Cokes' without an awful lot of payment exchanging hands, so she was alright by me.
And the snacks were copious. Cookies, pretzels, rice cakes, tortilla chips. Bag after bag of tasty treats all guaranteed to create acute hypertension. And the blue crisps (another Jet Blue 'quirk')! Guess what? They're blue! No, really! Sadly, they only taste like regular crisps. But they're blue! I wanted to bring a pack home, but Tizer ate them, the rotter.
The flight flew by (probably helped by the afore mentioned 'Jack and Cokes') and we were soon on approach to Ronald Reagan Airport. It's eye-wateringly close to the city, by the way. One of those approaches where you can almost wave to people in their offices as you pass by their window. For regulars on that route, it might make for an interesting 'mooning' challenge...
Ronald Reagan Aiport is a small, does-what-it-says-on-the-tin kind of airport, with no real heirs or graces. We had our luggage and were in a taxi in less than 20 minutes. And one of the benefits of it being so close to the city is that it's - well - close to the city, so in no time at all our taxi was dropping us off at the rather beautiful Hay Adams Hotel. Did I mention that it's next door to the White House? Well, if it hadn't been for the fact that this was a week before the Presidential Election (probably quite a busy time for the President of the USA), I'm pretty sure we could have waved to Barack, and he would probably have waved back too.
The Hay Adams, it should be noted, is a spankingly good hotel. Beautiful rooms, lobby and restaurant and some of the friendliest and most attentive staff I've had the good fortune to meet. And the bar. Oh, god, the basement bar. It's called 'Off The Record' and instantly found itself in my Top 5 Bars Of The World list. A dark, atmospheric, basement bar with street level windows showing only peoples' feet walking by (a la 'Cheers'). The walls are covered in caricatures of US politicians, the waiters are bow-tied and the vintage-style cocktails are to die for. In particular, the Knobby Sidecar (Knob Creek Bourbon, Cointreau and freshly squeezed lemon juice). Heaven in a glass.
Sumptuous breakfast was partaken of the following morning (courtesy of our lovely insurance company!), and after a quick wander around the outside of the White House and a coffee, it was time for mum and dad to head for IAD and their flight back to the UK. It had been quite the adventure for them, and they were certainly ready for home.
And for us? Well, three days in DC awaited before our thoughts needed to turn to our flight. Here's hoping our new found insurance expense account could keep up with us...
Well, if you got this far, dear reader, well done for sticking it out. Part Three of this little opus is going to be contained in another TR - IAD-LHR - with a working title of 'Dream Suite/No Sleep'. If you have the stamina for it, I'll be posting it very shortly. No, really. I will. Promise.
Last edited by mdvipond on 20 Sep 2013, 09:53, edited 2 times in total.
to HL for the challenge! Has made very entertaining reading 
I can forgive this missed opportunity to praise me 
