Departure Day

So today is finally the day that I get to set off on my epic journey to begin working at Walt Disney World in Florida. For me the day begun at 3:30am. My family was kind enough to drive me to the airport, and we decided it was best to leave at 5:00am to minimise the amount of traffic that we would hit along the way to the airport. This was a great idea however it worked a little too well and we hit no traffic and arrived up in Brisbane at 6:00am. I had pre-paid for parking at the airport from 6:30am-10:00am so we decided to pull into a Maccas and just chill before continuing on.

We arrived at the car park at exactly 6:30am and as expected were still too early for the check-in process which began for my flight at the 3 hours before departure mark. Overall it was a rather smooth process and went quickly. Before long I was saying my goodbyes, heading downstairs and clearing security and customs.

The next stop was subway for some lunch that really hit the spot. Then all that was left to do was to wait for them to announce boarding was allowed. So I went down to my gate and waited. I actually ended up meeting up with two lovely people that are doing the program with me. Before we knew it they announced that they were ready to begin boarding.

The process was fast and efficient and before long we were taking off and reaching for the sky. The flight it self was rather uneventful but pleasant enough for a 13 hour trip.

After what seemed to be an eternity we were beginning our decent in to Los Angeles international airport and taking our first steps on American soil. After meeting up with the others we went down to the customs hall to the most shocking sight, an empty customs hall with no wait. It took us only 30 minutes to deplane, clear customs, change terminals, clear security and arrive at our gate. It was efficient and well.

We had the last bit of waiting to go, stretching out legs, and meeting another Aussie. It was time to board the last flight. I think we were all done with travelling by this point and just ready to finally be in Orlando. The flight was only 5 hours but seemed so much longer.

Finally we were in orlando and there were no more planes to catch, just one final bus. We caught the monorail and grabbed our luggage before saying goodbyes and catching our seperate transport to our seperate hotels.

I’ll cover my hotel in more detail in a seperate post but it definitely exceeded expectations and was the perfect start to this amazing program. After check in was time to freshen up, grab some dinner with great friends and laugh the night away