Top tips for Orlando

[flik]

Don't forget that the Dolphin swim is NOT private 1 to 1 as they try to imply !

[stu99]

Did the Steak last night, a 32oz Porterhouse. It was a little too much to be honest, I had an Alligator bites starter, then some salad came out, along with a small hot loaf of bread. Very nice though, cooked over an Oak flame which gave it a very distinctive taste.

I'll look you out some voucher books Crash, PM me your address.

[sniper]

I'm looking at booking for next year , can get flights , car and nice house with own pool for about £4500 for 19 nights ... is that good going or could I do better , are there better places to stay than others ?

[stu99]

There are masses of villa's around, might be worth a call to a company called Floridavillas based in the West Sussex area. We booked our holiday with them, much cheaper than we'd managed to get it. Work them on the price though, don't accept the first offering.

Flights wise you can either fly to Orlando International or Sanford, Orlando is more expensive I think. For your car hire try Netflights or Virgin.

On the shopping side of things we ventured into the Prime and Premium Malls today, certainly some good savings to be had there. Bought 4 pairs of Levi's for just over $110.

[stu99]

Arrived back in the UK yesterday morning, absolutely knackered but we've had a great time.

Tolls were a bit of an issue if you arrive at an unmanned one without the correct or enough change. We got stuck at one which 'robbed' us of 7c, we didn't have any more cash to throw in and as it was a single lane the traffic built up quickly. As you can imagine the Yanks weren't keen on waiting so in the end we had no option to drive through. After some research I found the people that deal with the tolls for rental cars, sorted it with them and saved myself the penalty charge and rental company admin fee.

Got to the bottom of the Sizzlers issue - We went into a Sizzling Grill and not a Sizzlers. Avoid Sizzling Grill at all costs, it's shite. We also went to a a Ponderosa for an evening meal which we also thought was pants to decided to stick to The Golden Corral from then on - Very well recommended.

Tried the Logans Roadhouse on the last night - All I can say is I wish we'd gone before, awesome food, good price and good service.

Anyone thinking of booking the Royal Palm at Sanford - Save your money. It's $30 each for full paying adults and all you get is 2 free draft beers and free fizzy drinks. I could have better spent my money elsewhere.

I took my Macbook Pro without any issues from the US guys, we used BBC iPlayer quite a lot especially for the F1 racing, it was a godsend. If you don't already know you need a proxy IP address to do this. I used xroxy.com who were excellent, 2 days free trial to make sure all is ok and then £7 for the month - all via PayPal. We had a few onlookers as we sat and watched this weeks qualifying in the lounge on Saturday

The Santander One Credit card is ideal for getting your fee free cash/purchases.

Petrol is PrePay only so you need to pull up at the pump then go in and prepay for an amount for your pump before you can use it.

Fags and Baccy seemed cheap at Sanford.

Premium/Prime and Florida Mall are all ok for shopping. Go to guest services for voucher books although unless you qualify for a discount you'll need to pay $5 - $7 for the book. Festival Bay Mall has a great 'boys' shop. More boats, fishing, hunting and shooting gear than you can shake a stick at.

Watch your case and hand luggage weights, alongside our flight with Thomson was a Thomas Crook flight, they were having all their bags strictly weighed at check in. We were ok.

Don't try to bring detailing clay back in your luggage it looks a little like Plastic Explosive and makes the US Border Guards a little uncomfortable Although they weren't overly keen on my 6 boxes of spark plugs and 2 APR fuel pumps either but hey ho. While they were ripping my bags apart and testing the clay another woman behind us said oh shit, we have some of that in our bag too

[Kolobos]

We used ALAMO car hire and it was faultless all the way, we did however take out the gold insurance which covered waiver damage and we could take the car back empty so didn't have to bother filling it up.

[stu99]

That's kinda what they wanted us to do however Netflights were very insistent that we'd paid everything we needed to fully insure including cdw. Filling up before return was not an issue as the station was just across the road.

[Little John]

We used ALAMO car hire and it was faultless all the way, we did however take out the gold insurance which covered waiver damage and we could take the car back empty so didn't have to bother filling it up.

I guess you didn't actually know the price of petrol over there? I got back from California last weekend and had 2 lots of car hire one in Louisiana and the other in California fuel prices in Louisiana were about $2.19 per gallon the hire car companies would charge $7.95 per gallon for their top up. In CA the fuel was more expensive at $3.09 per gallon but the refill rate was still $7.95 per gallon. I was filling up the car in Louisiana for about $20 and in LA it was a bigger tank 14 gallon was about $40.
Pretty much all car hire that is booked in the UK has the full cover included in the package so you pay the extra just to take the car back without a full tank. It is their way of making a fortune from dumb tired tourists. The guy in Louisiana tried it on with me but the girl at LAX didn't.

And detailing clay? I was going to a few shops looking for a few items I wanted but nowhere had them I saw the prices for the meguiars stuff in Walmart $6 for the half gallon gold class shampoo we get screwed over for £15 here. I didn't bother with any clay as I have about 6 bars already to go.