Holiday bullets

Okay, I promised this nearly 2 weeks ago (cripes has it been that long?!) but better late than never, right?

The kids.
Ben was an absolute little star! He was only just 5 months old on the way out so we expected big problems, but on the plane (both ways) be pretty much slept most of the time and was a happy chappy the rest of the time. In fact, on the way back he fell asleep on take off, woke up half an hour or so before landing, had a bottle of milk and fell asleep again; not waking until we had got our cases!
Luke. Well, he was pretty good on the plane, and on the whole he was okay. But the excitement of it all must've got to him because at times he was a real little monster; tantrums (which he hardly ever has), impatience, insolence and more.

Landing at Orlando.
Shocking. I've been there 4 time before, and I know what an absolute pain it can be to get through security but this was the worst ever. After a big cue we finally got to see the Security chap, who looked at me really oddly. He spent ages analysing me and my passport, telling me to scan my finger numerous times, calling some other chap over, mumbling away to himself and then staring some more. Finally he figured out that the last time I visited his colleagues had made an almighty cockup; They had got my biometric record incorrect and had somehow got my Dad's picture and fingerprint on my record and vice versa. Luckily my parents were travelling with us so he could see the error, otherwise I'd probably be in Guantanemo Bay by now! However, having figured out what the problem was Dad and I were marched off to a security room (leaving my Wife and Mum with two tired kiddies to fetch the suitcases) made to wait about 15 minutes while another security chap had another look at our records, finally confirming what his colleague had suggested was the problem. Unforutnately he could not do anything about it. All he could do was send a message to George Bush (probably) asking him if he could get Condolesa Rice to fix the records but there was no guarantee that anything would get done (i.e. it would be left as it is and I'll forever have problems entering the US of A). Sorry for my sarcasm -this really pees me off just thinking about it. Funnily enoug we weren't the only ones. There was an elderly couple where he was her and she was him apparently - I'm not kidding!

Anyway, we finally got released, our wives had the cases and we were on the move...to another security scan! And bye bye cases. They were taken away and sent to another collection conveyor belt so we could collect them upstairs. Haven't they heard of lifts?!! After this we had fun with our holiday reps (who could not be bothered to help us identify a course of actiuon to make sure the biometrics would be sorted), and even less fun with Dollar (who wanted to charge us more for the car we were supposed to have in our package - unfortunately I didn't have the brochure with me so could not prove my point. We accepted the inferior car and it wa okay, but ever so slightly less roomy than the one I ordered. And how long were we at the airport? over 4 hours before we managed to get in our car and on our way to the hotel! 5 minutes later I took a wrong turn, which took another 20+ minutes to rectify. I'm so glad the kids had been good so far!

More to follow....