Day of Departure

On Friday, everyone arrived at the office earlier than planned. Everyone was excited and ready to go!

We split up the groups, decided to get lunch at the airport and left the office at around 11:30am.

My group drove to a park ride and fly spot to leave my car. We got to the airport with no problems, where the rest of our group already arrived. When we tried to check in curbside, I was told I had to pay fifteen dollars. I disagreed and explained I had purchased the tickets before the new rule went into effect (for at least half the group). Then he told me someone had already checked in a bag and I would have to go inside. We dragged our bags inside and took a few minutes to straighten everyone out. The party of 15 people with my name linked caused some confusion when we did not all arrive at the same time.

We gathered as a group and we discussed the next step of going through security and what would be required. Everyone nodded their head as if they understood and we went to the security area. One person in my group did not want to remove her shoes and simply refused to do so. After a minute, she took off her shoes and threw them towards the belt. A bit more noise and we made it through without being thrown to the ground and accused of being terrorists. Apologies and regrouping happened soon after. Apparently we were not as loud as it seemed to me because the other people in our party were not aware of the scene.

Fifteen sandwiches and fifteen bottles of water later, we were ready to board the plane. Just when it was time, one person had to use the rest room. We all got on the plane and waited for the last two members of our party to arrive. The flight was pretty cloudy conditions, with a pretty steady bumpy ride. Everyone did fine and we landed on time at 5:30pm.

It was easier than I thought to grab fifteen pieces of luggage. Having the ribbons and luggage tags helped a lot. Taking fifteen people with fifteen bags of luggage through elevators is a lot of fun! We got our rental cars within short time and packed up the vehicles. We left the airport just after 7pm. Orlando International Airport is so big it takes so much time go get around. We flew into Sanford last Christmas and had our luggage and rental car within 30 minutes of landing, no lie! The GPS took us on back roads and we arrived at the same time as our groceries, around 8pm. I was so glad we ordered those ahead of time. We were too tired to go shopping.

We got into the home and folks chose bedrooms. The people who typically rely on overnight staff are in one house, the rest in the other house. We did this so we would be able to staff one house constantly. We split up the groceries and Bill went out to get pizza. He went to a spot called the Godfather, but it was pretty close to Pizza Hut in taste. Everyone ate and jumped in the shower. We went to bed pretty late, after 11pm.

Tomorrow, Animal Kingdom! We decided to leave a bit later in the morning due to the hour we went to bed.