Hasn't Newark airport changed?.........and it's definitely,
definitely, definitely a change for the better.
Admittedly, it's been 16 years since we were there so a
few alterations are bound to have been made but I wasn't expecting it to look
so different. It's gone from dull &
depressing (well, let's be honest....it was!) to bright and airy and it's now
full of shops, bars & restaurants.
On our previous visit, it had one tiny duty free shop and one bar near
to our 'gate'.... this time around, we were spoilt for choice (not that we
could purchase duty free but you know what I mean).
A few of the bars/eateries had implemented a 'nearly no
need for humans' ordering system that both amazed and saddened me.
I'm sure the frequent travellers amongst you will have
seen this before, we fly (maybe) once a year so it was totally new to us.
Attached to the bars, in front
of each stool was a tablet that customers had to use to order what they wanted -
click on the name of the bar (we were at the Happy Clam), choose food, drink or
both, swipe a debit/credit card in the little gizmo thingy at the side of the
tablet and, hey presto!, in a few minutes a human being will come along with
what you ordered (a beer for me and water for T).
Is this the way things are going now?..........no more
long chats with bar/wait staff about the state of the weather, the world or the
universe! It's all really very
impersonal......
(One techy thing I did like about the tablet is that you
could also key in your flight details and it would post up to date info.)
Our flight to Orlando was delayed and delayed and delayed
but despite that, we still managed to arrive just 1 hour later than
planned.
We got our luggage and made our way to Alamo for our
pre-ordered hire car.
As usual, they tried to talk us into getting a larger vehicle
because, according to them, the one T had picked was about the size of a Fiat
500 (although it hadn't looked like that on the website!). We stuck to our guns & stayed with our
original choice, ending up with a decent size car (we were actually very lucky
because there was only a choice of two left in our category and, would you
believe it, the other one WAS a Fiat 500.......in bright gold - we'd have definitely upgraded if that's all they'd had left!!).
We arrived at the hotel (Best Western Plus, Westwood
Boulevard) just in time for me to see my fave ever quiz show (Jeopardy) and
while I got a load of questions totally wrong, T went to the local convenience
store to stock up on essentials (aka beers/snacks).
Neither of us were particularly 'meal' hungry (I forgot
to mention we'd had a pasta dish in the airport) so we decided to stay in with
our mini-mart goodies, unpack, sort clothes/ironing out and - because we'd been
awake since daft o'clock - have an early night and a decent sleep in readiness
for a few non-stop days at the theme parks.
So much for best laid plans and all that.
I'm not going to go into details but I woke at 2pm, was
down in reception nearly crying & making a HUGE complaint at 2:10, and back
upstairs at 2:15 helping T to move us and all our stuff into a different room.
I can tell you, it took a while to go back to sleep!