To the Gulf Coast - Club Class all the way.

[Kingy]

I'll add to this thread over the next few days as I'm struggling for time with being back in work (boooo!). 

As folk will know we had our hollibobs over the last couple of weeks. My wife Yaz works for BA, so whenever we go on our jollies we fly BA. It means a drive down to Heathrow or Gatwick - but I really don't mind that as I love driving and we have a big 'funbus' that eats the miles up and is like driving a big leather armchair. 

This year we had decided we would go back to the Gulf Coast. We love the place and would both like to live out there at some point. I managed to sort it so I had 10 days off which is a luxury for me. We flew from Gatwick on a Wednesday and a week later than we usually would have. This was good ... and bad.

Good: Flights weren't as busy, so we got on and got bumped up. We got bumped to Club World seats there and back. These are the 'pods' which can lie flat. Were we paying for them ourselves the full cost of our flight (only) tickets was £17,400.  Yes, you read that correctly .... £17,400 just for flight tickets. Needless to say, the flights were amazing.   I've flown Club World a few times, but never got bumped 'both ways'. 

Bad: I missed three United matches.   I know that would be a 'good'' for a lot of you, but I've never missed a game I've had a ticket for. Still, £17,400 seats was a fair trade I guess! 


So, we park the funbus in Gatwick longstay and then within 12 hours we land at Tampa International Airport. Part of my holiday is arranging car hire. I have a very specific taste in cars, so it's something I enjoy doing. We got there and had to wait 30 mins until they reluctantly stopped trying to fob me off with vehicles they thought were suitable and gave me what I'd ordered .......

Behold, The Beast ....



A GMC Yukon. 5.3 Litre V8 Petrol engine. Auto with stick shift.
All the bells and whilstles. Electric everything. Easy to set up as my car has very similar kit, so setting everything up just took minutes. 
Officially seats 8 people, so plenty of room for the four of us. We always leave a lot of kit in the car for beaches, so want a bigger car - plus with petrol at £1.44 a gallon why not have a big monster like this!  

Best economy I saw was a huge 24.2 mpg at 55 miles per hour on a stretch of freeway (cruise control) and worst was 1 to 2mpg when booting it hard! 
Fantastic, ridiculous dinosaur of a machine and I loved it. 


To be continued ....

[croweman]

That's a beast of a machine! £17,400 well if its there why not take advantage of it.

If only fuel were that cheap here.

[jollyjoiner]

Seventeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen thousand pounds ???????
Shittinghell.
Thats some beast of a veeehicle (said in and american accent) and down to 1 mpg sounds like it must have wanted to rip up the tarmac lol

[Kingy]

Yes on all counts.

Agree on fuel prices. TBH spending time over there just makes me/us yearn to try living there. Whilst I wouldn't want to sever all ties with the UK and there are certain things I would certainly be reluctant to give up - In general the way of life over there is something I'd love to try... 

It's always warm - even when it rains. If it rains, the rain generally lasts for upto an hour. Then it's gone and sunshine and blue skies are back. Petrol is £1.44 a gallon and will not rise any time soon. They literally try to give cars away on lease (main way of purchasing over there). The deals are ridiculous - and you are looking at big, fun petrol engines. You can go to the beach after work with the family and have tea there and a swim. It's still 80 degrees in the evening and beaches are all free with parking usually $2 for the evening. The Malls have huge parking spaces (which are free with no parking companies hiding trying to give you a £100 fine) and clothes and food are cheaper. The roads are bigger/wider and much easier to use. Pot holes and roadworks (where we went) don't exist to any great extent. Cyclists and runners have proper lanes and signs up clearly stating by law they have right of way. It's very clean. No rubbish and signs up warning of $200 fines for littering. The Police are visible. We saw Police vehicles every day on the road - Policing. Not cameras, but actual Police. If you fancy a winter holiday for a change - get a domestic flight. 70% of Americans don't had a passport because they have so much choice for travel.

Obviously, there are downsides. The Police and public are gun happy. Whilst we've thankfully never witnessed this its shown enough on the media. Americans are impeccably nice when they are taking your money, but quite an arrogant lot otherwise. They don't know how to queue and thing nothing of trying to push in. (I say trying as thats as far as it gets with me ).

All that said, I'd move there tomorrow if I could sort it. 

Anyway, back to the hollibobs. 

Last time we went to the Gulf we stayed at a very nice hotel. Got bumped up to a suite which had three seperate rooms and a cabana on the private beach. There were seperate pools for adults and families if you didn't want kids around - On the face of it, the hotel was amazing. Only problem was we got bored after about five days as we were just staying at the same very nice private beach in St Petes.
So, this time we went back to our favourite way of holidaying in the US. We booked a Hotel (on the outskirts of Tampa), hired a feck off big beast of a car and went to a new beach every day. Chuck in a drive over to Orlando for the kids to enjoy Universal and we had a plan. 
We have done this before (same hotel) and really enjoyed it, so we knew this was going to be fantastic. Also, this time we had 10 days instead of the usual seven or eight which makes a big difference. 

This is the view from the hotel one evening and one morning. Its a nice place on the Bay ...



Mornings were either straight to the beach, or if hungry calling for food on the way. We stopped at some great places, but this was our favourite. A proper Amercian Diner (Pops). Great service, good food and just like you see in the movies! 

 
 



Then onto the obigatory beach ...



At this one - Passe A Grille beach at the bottom of Gulf Boulevard we watched a wedding whilst we were there ...

 
Thats ^^ our little beach set up (bottom left). First night we arrived we went straight to the nearest 'Target' store and bought some drinks, food, boogie boards for the kids and a couple of chairs and a parasol. We leave the beach kit in the car and then use it throughout the holiday. Hiring chairs and a parasol is $15 to $35 a day depending on the beach. We paid $45 for ours so saved money and had the convenience of setting up where we wanted - usually well away from the hiring places. 


To be continued ....

[croweman]

Just like Southport...... NOT!!!


Looks amazing that view from the hotel is spectacular.

[BB]

Looks fantastic, warm every day.... wouldn't that get boring? lol

[Kingy]

(08-26-2015, 08:17 AM)croweman Wrote: Just like Southport......      NOT!!!

Looks amazing that view from the hotel is spectacular.

Ha ha. Cheers. It is a lovely place.

(08-26-2015, 09:25 PM)BB Wrote: Looks fantastic, warm every day.... wouldn't that get boring? lol

I'm sure with a nice cold drink to hand we'd manage


So, another day, another beach.    They are all similar, but different. Some are known for 'shelling', others have softer sand with no shells. 
We avoid the busy beaches like Clearwater. We've been there and weren't impressed. It's the 'go to beach' if you ask, but that means, as lovely as it is, it's crowded compared with others and too noisy for us.
 
This is Reddington. A lovely place (we'd live there happily) with a stretch of beach and a boardwalk/ pier. 



We saw the odd jogger and cyclist on the beach. No one was working too hard because of the heat. I loved the bikes they had. We saw a shop at India Rocks beach which hired them. I couldn't as I was on Doctors orders to rest my knee as stitches were only taken out the day before we flew, but these bad boys looked a good laugh ...



Mid way though the holiday we had a trip to Orlando. I'm not a fan of the place at all. I've spent a week there before we had the kids. We then had a week in Naples (further down the Gulf Coast) and I needed that to get over the daily bunfights in Orlando. The only thing I enjoyed there was a trip to Daytona Oval.
The kids did Disney last time we called in at Orlando, so this time it was Universal. It's a complete rip off for a day, but we couldn't spend more that that length of time there. It cost us $25 to park (thieving gits) and then $104 per person to enter the park, which works out at about £280. They tried to get us to pay another £160 so we could ride on the 'Hogwarts Express', but my comment that I could buy a fecking train for the money we were paying saw them backoff from 'upselling' to us. 

So, suitably fleeced we went to join the queues which averaged 60 minutes, with popular rides 90 to 120 mins. 
I went to a ticket booth and enquired about 'Fast track tickets'. These let you go into a seperate queue which is quicker as people are paying for the privelige. I know tickets are cheaper if you buy them for a week, but I was a tad shiocked when told four woud be $117 per person = $468 / £300. That would have taken our ticket spend to £580 for one day! Given the max number of rides we could get on (due to queues) was eight, we would be paying £18 per person per ride! 

So, we stuck to what we had! 

After doing a couple we decided to try 'single rider' queues instead of 'family' Got on rides within 15 minutes and managed to keep the kids together, or the kids and Yasmin so all was good. 
Had some (crap but expensive) food there and stayed to watch the movie show at the end of the day (9pm). It was a clever idea. They projected a film onto a waterfall shaped like a large screen, and occasionally sent up wide jets of water and broadcast onto those, with fireworks in the sky. This was all set up in big ponds and you sat around the grounds watching it. The film itself was 100 years of Universal. Tbh it was shite - a self promotional pile of crap, but it was done in a novel way. 

By the end of the night we had two kids who had thoroughly enjoyed the rides and were knackered, so our work was done. 

Universal by day ...



Aliya looked a bit moody walking past 'The Mystery Machine' because she was trying to stay out of the photo! 

The rollercoaster which drops straight down (bottom left) was a good laugh. Yaz doesnt like rides like that, hadn't weighed it up at all and took my description of it being a ..... "Meandering ride aimed at small kids" on face value (the fool!). She found out different when it set off forward them immediately climbed up 90 degrees to then drop down before starting its loops and sending us upside down.   I wasn't popular! 

And Universal by night ...



Aliya checking the warm sea out as we arrived at the beach ...



And Samee doing the same at another ...



To be continued ...

[croweman]

Your a cruel man poor Yaz mwah ha ha ha! Unfortunately you are paying inflated prices because people will pay those prices.

Clean sea with no turds what did we miss out on as kids lol

[speedymadR6]

Great read Kingy, looks amazing :-)

[Kingy]

Are you sitting comfortably? OK, I'll continue   ...

How to make a Range Rover look like a dinky car ...



Park a mahooooosive GMC next to it! 


Madeira Beach. 
Lovely place and this is the area we'd love to live in if we considered Tampa Bay / Gulf Boulevard ...



One of our trips to a Mall (this was International Mall) and Samee did a typical 'lads' shop. In one sop, bought one item, shopping done. Can we go now? Brilliant. 
This is his purchase. A highly sought after (and collectable) Deadpool Snapback Cap ...



For our last day we travelled right to the bottom of Tampa Bay. We visited Fort DeSoto Park. A fantastic place. Huge and so much there. Lots of history as it was the Fort/ defences for the AMerican / Spanish War. 









Of course, the day wouldn't have been complete without one last beach!



We had dolphins swimming nearby here. Lovely place.



Aliya and her novel way of sunbathing ...



And Samee chilling in his 'sea chair' ...




And one last look at the sunset from the hotel. 
A picture we will remember for a while yet ...