At some time through the night I woke and checked my phone for the time as I always do... today however there was something there I really didn't want to see.... today my Grandfather passed away. He was an amazing man, he had such a huge impact on all his family, all his children and grandchildren adored him and all our lives were moulded in some way by his influence.

Frank Couch Michell was born March 23rd 1912.. he passed away 28 days short of turning 100. Goodbye and thankyou, for being you... a most incredible man, a gentleman, an intelligent man, a compassionate man, a devoted father and husband. You will be missed. xxx

Today is also the day we leave New Orleans and move onto Orlando. After our experience with getting to NO we decided to have lots of time to get to the airport so up bright and early... who could sleep anyway, given the circumstances!



Check in and security was pretty breezy here, I had checked in online the night before so we got a B boarding group.. for those of you that have never flown with Southwest ( and I don't remember if I explained this in the beginning of the trip when we flew SW from LA to Vegas ).. they don't have seat allocation and have boarding groups A,B & C each letter has 1 to 60 .. it's a very interesting experience. Everyone in the US seems to travel with a huge carry on bag... there is only limited space in those overhead bins so you want to hope you get an early boarding group if you want bin space!!! It's quite funny how every flight they announce before boarding that they're overbooked and are offering a free trip plus $300 voucher if someone will give up their seat! Or they announce it's a really full flight and only one bag weighing 7 kg is allowed so come weigh your bag now and you can check it FREE now.... I mean really why would you pay to check bags if you could exploit this little hitch in the system???

Anyway... we had a good flight, it was pretty short and we landed in Orlando around 11 am... collected bags without any problems.... everyone seems to mention horror stories about the airlines losing their luggage but we ( touch wood ) haven't had any problems with that. Out to the taxi stand and before we knew it were in a cab bound for the Holiday Inn, Lake Buena Vista on Hotel Plaza Drive ( in the Walt Disney Resorts area ). Once again even though we're early we manage to get into our room straight away. It's a really nice room too.. even got a mini fridge and microwave.. bonus!

After we'd settled in we both realised it was lunch time so we just went downstairs to the poolside bar and had some lunch there. It was pretty good and very relaxing just hanging out by the pool for awhile.



Around 5pm we went out the front of our hotel and caught the free Disney bus to Downtown Disney. There's restaurants, bars, shops, a cinema and other things all on the lake. It's divided into 3 sections, West Side, Pleasure Island and the Marketplace. There was also sooo many people there, it was hard to walk around without bumping into them all!! Especially all the families with strollers that walk 3 or 4 abreast taking up the whole footpath.. I mean really.. some people have NO idea.. they are so egocentric they just have no perception of how they effect the space around them, they just breeze through life thinking they are the center of the universe.... ok sorry.... just had to vent. Disneyworld is not the place to be in a hurry or "crowd phobic" so the next few days will be tough for me!!



We wandered from one end to the other and on the way back we bought a pina colada at a little bar next to a stage area where there was a fantastic spanish guitar player. He was so talented and played vigourously for ages, I thought he must have been exhausted by the time he stopped. After that though we made our way back to the bus stop and went back to the motel, stopped in at the bar for a couple of rum punches and were in bed before midnight.



Saturday 25th.. first full day with all things Disney... we're off to Epcot today. Once again went out to the parking lot of our motel and caught the Disney bus. I had bought 3 day ( with a 4th day free ) park hopper Disneyworld tickets online from a website called Undercover Tourist, it's packed full of Disney information and discounts for tickets, hotels etc. Once again this I found on TripAdvisor on the Disney forum. The tickets had been mailed to us in Australia and I had no problems with them at all... well apart from the fact that when you go through the turnstiles you pop in your ticket and put your finger on a machine and cos both tickets went back in my purse Rodd and I kept using each others tickets so the fingerprints didn't match!



First thing you see of course when you enter Epcot is the big ball.... inside that is Spaceship earth so that's where we headed first. It was pretty cool... especially where you get to make your own video postcard to send home.



There were a few more things we particularly wanted to see so we made our way over to the Test track and Mission Space to see if we could get a fastpass.... these are great, you put your card in a machine and it gives you a time to come back to get on the short line. It's so good when the line is about an hours wait long and you just breeze past all the people waiting because you have a fastpass.... we made use of those as often as we could!



Mission Space was one of the best rides of the whole 3 days... you're strapped into a shuttle, 4 people to a capsule.. one engineer, one navigator, one commander and one pilot. Then it's blast off... awesome!! Soarin' was another good one. The whole day was great.. you've all been to theme parks I'm sure and know how exhausting it is. The fighting the crowds, kids screaming, cranky parents, tripping over strollers etc.... fun, fun, fun!!!



We left around 3, 6 hours of fun was just a little too much fun for us.. the plan was to go back to motel for a rest and then go back to Epcot to see the fireworks show.... well once again, best laid plans... we instead chose to get the bus a couple motels up towards the main road and then walk to the shops, bars and restaurants we'd seen there on our way in from the airport. Turns out to only be about a 10 min walk from our motel to the end of the road where this all was. We found some great "local" bars and spent a few hours "bar hopping", at one place we started talking to the bartender, she had the opportunity to come to Australia to study and turned it down cos she didn't think she could be away from her parents for that long... sweet but I reckon one day she'll regret it! We ended up eating at Buffalo Wild Wings that night.. OMG so good and a great end to another great day.