I know that this is not the same as the film with a similar name, but it is how we got to Kissimmee yesterday.
Train into Zurich 🚊, change to train for airport 🚊, flight to Chicago ✈️, change planes to fly to Tampa ✈️, pick up hire car 🚘 and drive to our condo. Start to finish 20 and a half hours!
All started smoothly with the trains running on time although very busy on the way to the airport as it was the first day of the school holiday. After a quick pit stop at Visilab to adjust my sunglasses we went through to departures.
Passports were checked as usual as we headed to the train to the E gates and then checked again to ensure we had ESTAs on our way down to the gate.
Our plane was already waiting for us.
Soon it was time for me to put on my sexy compression socks and board.
I always think the holiday starts as soon as you are on the plane so I decided to start as I meant to go on. There were even mini bottles of Bombay Sapphire!
There were some lovely views on the way over including some stunning tundra landscapes over Canada.
We landed 30 minutes early in Chicago. The queue at immigration wasn’t as bad as we had expected – we had to do the first part ourselves at an automatic machine and then take the print outs to the immigration officer. He was really helpful in explaining what we needed to do to get our onward flight. I had already checked on the O’Hare airport website but it was good to have the info confirmed.
Our suitcases took ages to appear so it was lucky that we had landed early. After collecting our luggage and clearing customs, we handed our suitcases back in at United and made our way from terminal 5 to terminal 1 using the monorail.
Not sure what happened to terminal 4!?
We had to get our boarding passes printed from our phones as the scanner would not accept them at security. After clearing security (slowly) we went to gate B5 to wait for our flight to Tampa. While we were waiting a gate change was announced. We had to go to C29 which couldn’t have been further away from where we were.
The incoming flight was delayed so we ended up leaving around 15 minutes late. They had been two hours delayed earlier during the day so had done well to catch up.
I think possibly terminal 1 is exclusively for United Airlines?!
We had a great view of downtown Chicago as we flew out.
As we started our decent into Tampa we has a bit of turbulence due to a lightning storm. It was amazing watching the lightning from the plane.
We actually managed to arrive 10 minutes early in Tampa and after collecting our suitcases again we went to get on the monorail with everyone else to collect our hire car. Luckily we were the only people renting from National. Alamo and Hertz were jammed!
The drive to the condo was uneventful and Bethany slept for most of it. We arrived at Windsor Hills just after midnight local time (6am Swiss time 😴). After being checked in at the gate house we drove to our block and parked. The condo was easy to find with the directions we had been given. We unpacked the bare minimum and went to bed.
It was a bit strange to have done all our traveling only to find that the bath mat in the condo is the exactly the same as the one we have at home. Good old IKEA!
We are looking forward to starting our theme park adventures!
Crouch Family On Tour 