The temptation is to start the holiday at full speed, but the first 24 hours can set the tone for everything that follows. Immigration, baggage collection, collecting your hire car, driving on unfamiliar roads and finding your villa can make arrival day surprisingly tiring.
A little planning can make your first evening and morning much easier.
Allow Plenty of Time After Landing
Your aircraft touching down doesn’t mean you’ll be driving away from the airport 20 minutes later.
UK visitors need to clear US immigration, collect their luggage and make their way to their car hire provider. Depending on queues and how busy the airport is, this can take time.
If you’re travelling with young children after a long flight, everyone may also be tired by this point.
Avoid making unnecessary plans for your first evening. Instead, treat arrival day as exactly that, a day to arrive, get settled and recover from the journey.
Before leaving the UK for your Florida Villas stay, make sure you know your villa’s address and have downloaded or printed any arrival, resort and entry instructions you have been provided.
Collecting Your Hire Car
Before travelling, familiarise yourself with the arrangements for collecting your vehicle and make sure you have the necessary documents readily available.
Once you have the car, take a few minutes before setting off. Adjust the mirrors and seats, work out the basic controls and set your destination in your navigation system while stationary.
Remember that you’ll be driving on the right-hand side of the road.
Driving in Florida soon becomes familiar, but your first journey is not the time to be searching through emails for an address or trying to work out where you’re going.
If you’re using your phone for navigation, having an offline map available can also be useful in case you experience problems with your mobile connection.
Your First Grocery Stop
Unless you’ve arranged otherwise, an Orlando villa should be approached as self-catering accommodation, so you’ll need to buy your own groceries and household supplies.
You don’t necessarily need to undertake a huge supermarket shop on your first evening.
After a transatlantic flight, wandering around an enormous American supermarket trying to decide what you’ll need for the next fortnight probably isn’t anyone’s idea of fun.
Instead, concentrate on the essentials.
Think about breakfast for the following morning, bottled drinks, snacks and anything your children are likely to need immediately. Milk, cereal, bread, fruit, coffee and tea are obvious starting points.
Families with babies or young children should also think about nappies, wipes, formula or baby food and anything else that might be needed before the next day’s main shopping trip.
You may also want basic household products such as washing-up liquid, dishwasher tablets, laundry detergent and additional rubbish bags.
Once you’ve had some sleep, you can tackle the proper supermarket shop the following day.
Arriving at Your Villa
Before travelling, read the arrival information supplied by your villa company carefully.
Depending on the property and community, you may have gate-access instructions as well as separate instructions for entering the villa itself.
Many Orlando holiday homes now use electronic door locks, although other methods of entry are also used.
When you arrive, get everyone safely inside before unloading everything from the car.
Have a quick look around the villa and establish where everyone will be sleeping. Check the bedrooms and bathrooms, familiarise yourself with the main living areas and locate the doors leading to the pool.
If you’re travelling with children, make sure you understand any pool safety features and door alarms before they start exploring.
This is also a sensible time to check that everything appears as expected.
Companies specialising in Orlando villas, such as Debbie’s Villas, provide customers with information before departure explaining their accommodation and arrival arrangements, so it’s worth keeping these details somewhere easily accessible rather than buried amongst hundreds of holiday emails.
Don’t Try to Do Too Much
Once the cases are inside, the children have chosen their bedrooms and everyone has something to eat and drink, you may discover that you’re considerably more tired than you expected.
Remember that your body is still operating on UK time.
If you arrive at your villa at 8pm in Florida, it will feel much later to you.
There’s nothing wrong with ordering a takeaway, sitting beside your pool for a short while and then heading to bed.
You’ve got the whole holiday ahead of you.
Think Twice About Booking a Theme Park for Your First Morning
One of the advantages UK visitors have when they first arrive in Florida is that the time difference often means everyone wakes up extremely early.
It can therefore be tempting to book a major theme park for your first full day.
For some families that works perfectly, but don’t feel that you have to.
A quieter first morning can be an excellent way to begin an Orlando villa holiday.
Have breakfast beside the pool, unpack properly, visit the supermarket and familiarise yourself with the local area.
You could spend a few hours enjoying the villa pool, go out for lunch or do some shopping.
Then start the theme parks once everyone has recovered from the journey.
There is little benefit in spending a substantial amount on theme park admission only to discover by mid-afternoon that the whole family is exhausted.
A Simple Arrival Plan
For a UK family landing in Orlando during the afternoon or early evening, the first 24 hours might look something like this:
Land in Orlando: Clear immigration, collect your luggage and pick up your hire car.
Before driving: Set up your navigation and check the route to your villa.
On the way: If necessary, stop for a small selection of groceries and essentials.
Arrive at the villa: Follow your access instructions, choose bedrooms, unpack the essentials and familiarise yourself with the property.
First evening: Have something easy to eat, relax and get an early night.
First morning: Enjoy breakfast at the villa, unpack properly and make your main supermarket visit.
Later that day: Relax beside your pool, explore the local area or start your Orlando adventures if everyone is feeling refreshed.
Start Your Holiday at Holiday Pace
An Orlando holiday can be incredibly busy. Between Disney, Universal, SeaWorld, shopping, restaurants and everything else Central Florida has to offer, you’ll have plenty of opportunities for early starts and action-packed days.
Your first evening doesn’t need to be one of them.
Whether you’ve booked through Debbie’s Villas or another Orlando accommodation provider, preparing for those first few hours before leaving the UK makes arriving considerably easier.
Know where you’re going, have your access information ready, buy only what you need immediately and give yourself permission to relax.
After all, one of the biggest advantages of staying in an Orlando villa is having your own space.
You might as well start enjoying it from the moment you arrive.
