Florida 2022 - Day 16

 Home time...

Today is always hard, but we know we will see our travel buddies again soon.  They embark on a road trip, while AA and Lola head back to reality of Work and Life. 

After AA and DD packed the car and the 4 of them left (after a see you later...not a good bye), AA and Lola ventured to the gift shop and animal look outs 1 more time to kill time.  It was sure warm out this morning.  We got a personal shuttle to Jambo House, where we the most shopping, and then walked back Kidani Village to see majority of the animals on our venture and finish packing.

AA ordered an Uber and he said we had 10 minutes to get to the lobby, as we started walking briskly, it changed to 6 minutes.  We then walked to the lobby (which is pretty far) as fast as we could.  Lola wasn't sure she was going to make it. Shins were burning and panting pretty bad.  But we did the car was waiting, but we loaded up and said good bye to Disney. Lola's heart rate was at 105 BPM when she sat down in the car!

The drive to the airport was uneventful.  Once arriving at Orlando International Airport, we couldn't get our boarding passes from the machine, so we had to stand in a decently long line, but it moved quickly to get our bags checked and our boarding passes.  We headed through security and then to lunch.

Lunch was very slow, and AA ate most of his meal before Lola even got hers.  Would not recommend Island Grill to anyone.  The food was good, but the wait and service was terrible, good thing we arrived early and had lots of time at the airport.

We boarded the plane and headed "home". The flight was pretty turbulent on the ascend and decent, Lola was happy AA was in the seat next to her, to let her squeeze his hand.  AA was sleeping before the safety briefing and Lola feel asleep just after drink service.  

Once we pulled up to the gate, that is when the "weird" started. They announced only those with connecting flights were allowed to get off the plane as Customs was backed up. So they let off the first 50 people, and then continued to the next 50 connecting flights. We had a connecting flight but not for 5 hours, but we were done sitting on the airplane so we disembarked when we were able. 

Customs wasn't bad for us, as we had Nexus, but the line was pretty long.  We went through the baggage area when we noticed at least 500+ pieces of luggage waiting in groups for passengers to pick them up.  We continued to our "connection", where we had to go through security again.... which was also a long line, but Nexus helped us there as well.  Quickly through, except for AA's laptop that got flagged, but once at the CBA the guy gave the laptop back as they didn't know why the bin went to the "check" side.

We went for supper at Fionn MacCools.  The service there was just as slow, but we thought we had 5 hours so it wasn't a big deal.  We had ordered food, and then we got a text....

Ground Crew delayed our flight 2 hours and 55 minutes..... leaving at 12:30am.  If we knew we could have gone somewhere else to eat rather than staying at the airport.  They also didn't have any beer....so weird. "Irish pub with no beer??".

We ate our food and then began the long long long wait. To fill the time we walked, we drank starbucks, we watched almost 2 NHL Game 7's  (NYR vs PITS, and CAL vs DAL), we played Dr Mario, and we ate a snack. Our trip was great, just wishing we could go to bed earlier than 3 am tonight. The flight was uneventful, but they sold out, so very full. Even thought it was after 2 am when we got home it was sure nice to see that the grass was green.

Till our next trip.

Lola and AA.