Day 1 Orlando Trip 2026

Wednesdy 01st July 2026 day before the big trip, let me give you an overview of waht we supposed to be doing versus what we actually are doing!

Our trip consisted of a direct flight from London Heathrow to Miami (02.07..26) which had been cancelled now causing us two fly from Heathrow to Atlanta then onto Miami! As we live in Manchester required a drive down the day before (Thursday 02nd July) then staying at the Premier Inn on the Bath Road at Heathrow all pretty straight forward you’d like to think yes? Noooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!

When we travel no matter where we are going we have this unusual scenario where we do the most obscure things before leaving, be it cleaning the house, planting plants in the garden, cleaning Airbnbs, packing on the day of travel, pissing around posting Vinted or Ebay items, oh and writing out itinaries for our trip. I cannot understand or remotely explain why we do this but we do, or actually I do not do this, my fiancee Michelle has this awful habit of completely doing all these items and driving me to absolute despair.

Last time we went as a family Michelle left the passports at home whilst we had arrived at London Heathrow which constituted us changing the flight to the folloing day, me driving back home having just driven from home to London to then drive back home to collect the passports and return back to London to get the flight, total driving 594 miles!!!

So on this trip we aimed for the least stresses prior to the trip ha ha ha ha! So we have a friend in Florida who had very kindly sorted us 4x Universal Park tickets for our trip, we have a very strict itinary when we arrive in Forida with hotels and days booked to the max, so when on the morning I was typing up the itinary, I noticed that our Universal passes were for 07/07/2026 instead of 09/07/2026 arghhhhhh on 07th we have the Hilton Clearwater beach booked fk fk fk, Michelle went into meltdown (typical) I remained as calm as a person getting yelled at can do, after all it was my fault I sent Sarah the wrong date lol but hey lifes to short for stresses yes!

So then I was advised that I we needed dollars as well as buying more stuff for people in the USA, my stress levels were hitting overdrive but i persevered, we got the dollars got the shit we needed then home to actually pack which incidently all down to me! Once home i cracked on concious we was supposed to be leaving at 1pm, now 12.30pm not even packed, one thing I despise is sitting in traffic, I’d rather leave earlier and beat expected traffic, rather than leave as rush hour is starting but that was never going to happen in this lifetime!

Long story short with lots of stress and anxiety through the roof we set off at 3.20pm on the M6 heading to London Heathrow, today was also the day England play DC Congo in the world cup knock out game, so decided to stop to watch it, quite a few pockets of traffic on the way (expected) we decided to listen to the first half in the car then stop somewhere in Warwick to watch the 2nd half, we ended up in a pub called the “Black Pug” and watched the 2nd half thankfully England won 2-1 after coming behind for most of the game, once it had finished back on the road next stop Premier Inn Heathrow.

Nice steady drive to the hotel un-eventful to be fair, once we hit the car park it was off to check in for our nights stay, our room 119 was ready for us, once in it was time to chill out and relax after a loooooooong day, but (always a but!) there was a heard of fkng elephants on the floor above us making a right racket! First James went to reception ro kick off, and was told security would intervene as others had complained, it stopped briefly then started again around 10.40pm this time Michelle had, had enough she and James went to reception again to register our concerns, again security was advised, now let me be clear this wasn’t kids playing this was jumping around and really banging the floors hard, literally sounded like a party going on, as we needed to be up at 5.30am wasn’t acceptable.

Finally peace became the room we all zonked out to get a good nights sleep ready for what day 2 has to throw at us.