So, it’s finally here. Our epic one-month-long Florida holiday officially starts today.
Despite not falling asleep as quickly as I needed to last night, I surprised myself by waking up after having had a good few hours of restful sleep after all. For the past few nights, I’ve struggled to fall asleep at a reasonable hour. With this being the last night before departure, I feared I wouldn’t get any decent sleep at all. I’m still fighting off several ailments, which hasn’t helped either. Sandy managed but a small handful of hours asleep, but that’s par for the course for her.
As usual, I beat my alarm clock. I don’t know how or why this tends to happen. Curiously, if I don’t set an alarm, I often fail to wake up on time. When I set an alarm, my body clock kicks in and wakes me ahead of time, like I’m anticipating the alarm going off. I was already stumbling out of bed by the time it finally announced the ungodly 3:30 am call to action.
At this time of the morning, we were operating on instinct alone, wandering around the house, polishing off the packing and car-loading process on autopilot. Most of the car loading was done last night, but there are always last-minute items that need packing.
As anticipated, the car accommodated the four of us and all our checked and carry-on baggage…just. Since we anticipate bringing home more luggage than we are taking, good friends of ours will be taking our other car to the airport to help shepherd us all home at the end of the return journey. That way, we’ll have another car with plenty of space for the luggage overflow. So, with everyone squeezed in like sardines, I reversed out of the garage within a few minutes of our planned departure time. Nice.
It was perhaps inevitable, but seeing practically no other traffic on the roads during the dead of night was still a little eerie. Once we were on the motorway network, traffic volume picked up a bit, but it was still a straight run to the Schiphol area.
As planned, I stopped just outside of Utrecht so we could all stretch our legs, and I could recharge the car. Although we left with 100% battery charge, the car’s range isn’t great —just around 250 km. That range is further reduced whenever I am driving over 100 kph. By the time we were an hour into the journey, the car was already down to under 25%. After about 15 minutes of charging, it was back up to 80%, which was enough to get us to where we needed to be, with sufficient reserves to reach another charging station for the return journey in a few weeks.
Unlike the rest of the clan, I took advantage of the sandwiches I had the forethought to make and pack last night while the car was charging. Everyone else was holding out for something warm at the airport. As it happens, Sandy also packed food for everyone for on the plane.
The traffic had really picked up by the time we neared Schiphol, even though it was still not yet six O’clock in the morning. I eventually made it to our chosen long-stay car park a few kilometres from the airport. As luck would have it, the next shuttle bus was about to leave, and there were still four seats left. I quickly parked the car, and we all piled in.
While doing so, the Axxicom assistant called to ask where we were. To aid us through the stressful labyrinth that is a major international airport, I had arranged special assistance. The airline was good enough to apply the DPNA code to our complete booking (in both directions). This affords us access to a special assistant who will lead us through all the procedures at the airport, from check-in to security to immigration. Axxicom provides that service. We were, of course, immensely grateful for the assistance. Navigating a busy international airport is stressful at the best of times, but that’s compounded exponentially when someone with autism also accompanies you. Trust me: finding yourself in a crowded terminal building when someone has a full-blown meltdown and stops cooperating is no fun for anyone involved.
Our start to the airport terminal navigation challenge wasn’t an auspicious one. The car park shuttle driver insisted on dropping everyone off at terminal building three, since that’s where they pick up passengers at the end of their journeys, and he wanted everyone to understand this. However, we had to check in at Terminal Two, where the Axxicom guy was waiting for us. In the end, it was just a short walk, and no big deal, but that didn’t stop us stressing about the uncertain ‘how on earth are we going to get from here to there with all our luggage’ problem. Even if it wasn’t a real problem in the end, the heightening of the stress levels was something we could all have done without.
The nice man from Axxicom not only led us to exactly where we needed to be throughout the terminal building, but he also ensured we didn’t have to queue anywhere. We were led directly to the front of each queue at every step of the process. Nice. Had we not had the benefit of this additional assistance, we would likely have been wrecked and depleted human beings by the time we reached the aircraft, assuming we had gotten that far.
Despite going straight to the front of the queues, we still had to go through the usual motions of having our bags checked, passports inspected, etc. Most of our carry-on bags were directed from the X-ray scanner onto the inspection belt for a closer examination. Fortunately, nothing untoward was found, and we were all sent on our way with a smile. I did have to hold my breath for a bit when the nice security man quizzed Joey about the smaller metallic objects in his backpack. It turned out to be a collection of his Beyblade toys he insisted on taking with him. Fortunately, that’s all it was, and I could breathe again.
By the time we made it through the terminal concourse to the boarding gates, we had parted company with the friendly Axxicom assistant. We needed to grab breakfast for Joey. Otherwise, our mild-mannered assistant would have walked us through to the departure gate. Fortunately, there was a McDonald’s on hand. Unfortunately, I had to remortgage half of my liver to pay for it. Honestly, it seems like companies feel that placing their business at the airport is a license to triple their fees.
Sandy did the honours and placed an order for what Joey wanted, leaving me to sit there, silently stressing that the display screens were already demanding that passengers for our flight make their way to the departure gate immediately. It took forever for the food order to be processed. Joey often doesn’t understand the need to speed up, often responding to such suggestions with a gritted determination to take his sweet, bloody time. A hungry Joey often doesn’t understand anything at all, making it a vanishingly small prospect that we’ll convince him to get a move on. I had to sit there, hoping the subtle ‘we need to go’ signals I was cautiously emanating were at least sub-consciously sinking in, and that we weren’t going to miss our flight.
I finally got everyone into gear, and we made our way down the concourse towards the departure gate. Irritatingly, that gate location just happened to be about as far away from where we were as was humanly possible. Typical! By the time we all arrived, there was a hubbub in the air, as they were just about to start the boarding process.
They put out a call for anyone requiring extra assistance to undergo another mini security check, during which our passports and boarding passes were to be re-examined. I went up and handed the stash of paper tickets and passports exactly as they had been handed back to me at the previous point in the process. The security person wasn’t impressed. He wanted each boarding pass to be inside the correct biometric page of its owner’s passport. When I fumbled with the stash to do just this, the staff were again thoroughly unimpressed with me for doing that on the spot. They wanted me out of the way so that others could be tended to in the meantime. I complied, admittedly reluctantly, and shuffled to a nearby counter. That was apparently still not good enough for them, and they nagged me to move farther out of the way. I stood my ground. You can either ask me to move or to reorganise my paperwork, but you can’t ask me to do both concurrently. Much to the tutting of now two security staff, I decided to stake my flag on that hill and just kept rearranging the paperwork for them throughout their protests. Evidently choosing to forego the effort needed to brow-beat me into further submission, they eventually accepted my stash of now sorted boarding cards and passports, and we made it through to the door to the walkway—literally just three meters farther from where we were. Seriously, I just don’t need this kind of stress at this point.
The security staff weren’t from our chosen airline, so I made a mental note not to hold the little spat that just played out against the airline. Moreover, I deliberately put myself in a better frame of mind because we were about to do something nice for the flight crew. For the 10 airline staff members on board, we have created 10 small gift bags with a few goodies. We put things like hand sanitiser, pens (with my website branding), a notepad, some chocolates, a stick of lip balm, and a nice card with warm words of thanks. I got the idea from a random video I saw on social media a few weeks ago. This was a preemptive thank-you to the crew for doing a good job of taking care of us on the flight. Being the very first people down the gangway and onto the aircraft, I had a few seconds to warmly thank the staff and hand them their goody bags before we were directed to our seats. The nice gesture was not lost on the staff, who were very appreciative—not just there and then but also later during the flight.
We squeezed our carry-on bags into the overhead bins and were comfortably seated in the 2-4-2 configuration of the A330-900neo cabin. It’s a nine-hour flight into Atlanta, and we started off well with only a moderate amount of accumulated stress to this point.
After exchanging a few last-minute messages with friends and colleagues before flying out of range of any terrestrial cell towers, we settled in to explore the in-flight entertainment options. I watched a movie, played a few games, and just tried to relax as much as I could before whipping out Jae’s laptop and sitting down to work on writing this blog. We left my laptop behind, anticipating buying a new one upon arrival. At the time of this writing, we have just passed the halfway point.
The rest of this first and major leg of the trip concluded without incident. We landed at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport pretty much on time as scheduled. We had a bit more chit-chat with some of the flight crew, who again expressed their appreciation for our little gesture. We even got a lovely selfie with one of them.
We were deliberately the last people to disembark. Once clear of the gangway tunnels, we kept an eye out for whoever we were supposed to hook up with for our special assistance. The only person around was expressly there to push people in wheelchairs. We did engage with her, but communication wasn’t brilliant. It felt like she was trying to push a square peg into a round hole. She said she didn’t have Joey in her system, but would add him on the spot so she could wheel him through the airport. Again, I clarified that we don’t need anyone to push Joey around in a wheelchair. Eventually, having started to feel my patience ebbing away, I suggested she might not be the ‘assistant’ we were looking for and that we would set off on our own to navigate the airport. We never did find anyone else.
As luck would have it, the passengers from our flight had by now largely passed through the airport. The only other passengers were from a smaller flight some time earlier, and they, too, had now already passed through. Despite the absence of a helpful assistant, we didn’t have to queue or wait for anything. We went straight through a mostly barren immigration hall. The agent there was super friendly, took our photos and fingerprints, and waved us all through with a smile.
Despite being told by Delta helpdesk staff a few days ago that we wouldn’t need to collect our bags at Atlanta, that’s precisely what we had to do. Although the bags were checked through to Orlando, we still had to collect them because Atlanta was the first port of entry into the US. This was my suspicion all along. This discrepancy between what we’d been told on the one hand versus what happened in reality is the one aspect of this airline that failed us. In all other respects, they were entirely on the ball. I shall remember all of this (the good and the bad) when the time comes to provide the airline with feedback on our experience flying with them.
Having dropped the bags off a few meters from where we collected them, we ‘enjoyed’ a long walk to get to the shuttle train to take us to the far reaches of the sprawling airport to make our connecting flight to Orlando. When we finally made it to our gate, we had perhaps an hour to kill before boarding. We parked ourselves in the gate’s departure area and wandered around the nearby food court to see if there was anything worth eating. For me, that was a no, but the others all managed to find a snack or two.
While killing time at the gate, our good friend Jennifer in Florida reached out. We spent a few minutes on a call catching up. We agreed to continue the conversation tomorrow, when we would organise the logistics for how and where to meet in person. This will likely mean they will come to Orlando and spend some time with us.
Throughout the day, Jae has been brilliant at handling Joey. She has engaged with him, helped keep him calm and anchored, played games with him, and just generally looked out for his well-being. This has been really nice to see. Like any siblings, they can often be at each other’s throats, but I’ve been especially impressed with Jae’s maturity in this regard.
When the boarding call came, we were among the first to claim spots for the pre-boarding procedure, which serves those who need extra time or assistance boarding the plane. I think there was a single wheelchair flyer ahead of us.
Once comfortably seated, it took about half an hour for the remaining passengers to board and for the main door to close. An hour later, we landed in Orlando. The shuttle train whisked us to the main terminal building, which was busier than I had remembered it from past visits.
We collected our bags and then made our way to the car rental desks. Within half an hour, the rental car process was all done and dusted, and I had acquired a toll tag to hang on my rear-view mirror. I paid the deposit, collected some paperwork, and we were off towards the elevators to take us to the adjacent multi-story car park to collect our Chrysler Pacific. I had specifically requested this make and model. We’ve driven it before and even owned a predecessor, the Chrysler Grand Voyager, when the kids were young and we were living in the UK. The car has a neat feature called Stow ’n’ Go Seating, which allows the seats to collapse into the car’s floor. Since we already anticipate taking home more luggage than we brought, the extra space in this minivan will definitely be needed.
Once all the luggage and passengers were nicely stowed in the Chrysler, I gingerly manoeuvred the car through the multi-story car park maze. It certainly was a maze. It felt like I was driving around in circles, but I eventually managed to exit onto the Orlando road network.
Orlando was clearly going through a roadworks epidemic. By now, the rigours of travel were also starting to wear us all down. Everyone in the car was tired and irritable. What we all needed was to fill our tummies; that always does the trick in situations like this. Somewhat predictably, this presented a problem—one that I felt sure would raise its head repeatedly in the coming weeks. The tension in the car rose sharply when it became clear that whatever we decided would be a suitable meal option would be disliked by at least one person. We can rarely all agree on what to eat if all four of us are present. We have all been accommodating towards Joey since we left the house this morning. That’s par for the course and simply one of the facts of life we have to live with, but this often disadvantages Jae, who is usually the one forced to buckle or compromise. I keep a mental tally of these situations. Whenever I feel there’s a need, I interject to ensure that Jae gets treated fairly—even if that means upsetting Joey. Even though this can cause strife and stress, I feel it’s important not to lose sight of Jae’s health and well-being. I therefore decided to honour Jae’s food preferences, which meant we would find an Applebee’s. Joey was vying for a Waffle House, so this immediately put him in a foul mood. In fact, so unimpressed was he that he decided not to even get out of the car when we arrived at the Applebee’s restaurant. The rest of us went inside, sat down, ordered and ate our meal. All the while, Joey sat in the car in a defiant huff.
Jae checked on Joey periodically during our meal, so we knew he was safe and secure. We later learned that Joey would have been happy with anything other than an Applebee’s. Despite it being seven years since we were last in the States, Joey still remembered which restaurants he liked and didn’t. Applebee’s was apparently firmly in his dislike column. Joey doesn’t cope with disappointment very well. When something doesn’t go his way, it can frequently be the trigger for him to shut down and become non-communicative and non-compliant. He can’t cope in situations like this. It can be pretty frustrating for the rest of the family, but it’s something we have learned to live with. He always bounces back eventually, but that can take time. The good days are the ones where we can recognise his triggers, so we at least understand what’s happening and why. At other times, we’re all left scratching our heads over what underlies his behaviours.
In the event, the Applebee’s meal was mediocre at best. Although the staff were excellent, the meal wasn’t terribly good in the end. Perhaps it was a tinge of guilt, but we decided that Joey needed to eat something, so we made our way to the nearest Waffle House so that he could at least eat a waffle, which is what he wanted all along. The Waffle House we found was empty of customers (we thought it was closed), but they invited us in anyway. Being the first through the door, as I was designated to check whether it was open for business, I told the staff we wanted a table for four, but that only one of us was eating. In fact, we had a good chuckle with the staff when I explained the situation.
When we all sat at the table, we all buckled under the weight of the intoxicating aromas and enticing menu. Then the first domino toppled. “Maybe I’ll have a waffle, since we’re here anyway.” That was quickly followed by, “Oh, OK, just one small portion of hashbrowns, then.” Several more dominoes followed in quick succession. Before we knew it, the table overflowed with delicious cooked breakfast foods. All four of us tucked into a full-blown meal. And so it came to pass that this evening’s dinner was immediately followed by…breakfast.
Now bursting at the seams from an indulgent first few hours in Orlando, we made our way to the Solterra resort, near Champions Gate, to check into our rental villa that will be home for the next month. We had to first check in at the front gate before driving to the clubhouse to complete the reservation procedures. For the princely sum of $45, our entire family, and any guests we end up receiving for the duration of our stay, were now entitled to the full use of the resort’s amenities, such as the clubhouse, pools, fitness room, and so on. Our villa already has a heated pool, so whether we avail ourselves of the clubhouse and facilities over the coming weeks remains to be seen.
A short drive through the estate’s meandering roads, and we found our way to our villa. Our first impressions were that this was a stunning property. The house is presented very well, spacious, and kitted out to a standard. We will be very comfortable here for the coming weeks.
Awaiting us on the kitchen island was a welcome goody pack with a lovely handwritten note from the owners. While everything was still pristine, I walked around the property, snapping photos from every angle.
We all unloaded the car and found some rooms to claim before settling in for our first night. It has been a long, tiring and sometimes challenging day. Tomorrow, we will have an opportunity to acclimatise and get our bearings. For now, it’s off to the land of nod.