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Thanks, super helpful!
Interested in this thread as we plan a visit in 2026.
Do people not find it too hot and humid in July / August? Some websites say the temperature reaches 33-34!
It will be very hot and humid. It depends on your personal tolerance – I can do a beach holiday in that kind of weather but wouldn’t be doing theme parks!!
Interested in this thread as we plan a visit in 2026.
Do people not find it too hot and humid in July / August? Some websites say the temperature reaches 33-34!
Unless we were lucky with an August road trip that ended in Florida, I found it a lot easier than either Japan or Hong Kong in August.
This is the second half of a combined Washington DC and Florida trip report, the first part can be found in the thread titled “Washington D.C. – worth visiting?”.
We arrived in Orlando on an internal AA Avios redemption booking with the flight being uneventful. I’d booked a rental car with Avis using the recent Avios offer. The Avis app works pretty well at MCO as it told me which bay our car was in so we could avoid the desk and we were on our way pretty swiftly. We had a Jeep Grand Cherokee with only 1,500 miles on the clock so a nice result. Being Avis Presidents Club I usually book an Intermediate SUV but always get upgraded to larger SUV.
The first thing we do when we get to Orlando is leave! We’ve done the whole theme park experience a few times in the past but as time has moved on we don’t have so much interest in them anymore – never say never though and we have some great memories from our previous visits. We headed east to Melbourne Beach which is a 75 minute drive from the airport and is the only place where we return regularly. It’s a fairly small beachside town on the barrier island that runs down the east coast of Florida. It has no high rise and is mostly populated by locals and snow birds, although a number of those are going to stop coming down from Canada given the current political tensions. You can fly direct to Melbourne during the summer season as TUI fly there from the UK regions over the summer.
We stay at The SeaGlass Inn which is an historic B&B in a quiet part of the main street. We really like these small independent owner managed B&Bs and always try to stay in them when we are in the US. They are not really suitable if you have children but they suit us perfectly. The SeaGlass has 8 rooms and provides a 3-course breakfast each day, a social hour 3 times a week where they serve wine and nibbles, they provide beach chairs / umbrellas and bicycles and have free parking. There is a Hilton Tapestry Hotel (The Melby) on the mainland if you want a chain hotel – we haven’t stayed there but they have a cool rooftop restaurant and bar.
We don’t usually do too much when we are there but Sebastain Inlet is nice for a swim and a wander around. We usually go on a boat trip on the Indian River to see the local bird life, manatees and you will also likely have dolphins come alongside and surf in the boat’s wake. Melbourne Beach is also about an hour south of Kennedy Space Centre so you can often see rocket launches from the beach there.
Restaurants we usually go to include Islands Fish Grill, Ocean 302, Oceanside Pizza, Djons (good for happy hour drinks and appetisers), Café Surfinista (great smoothies), Frigates, Yellow Dog and Villa Palma.
After a week at the beach it was time to check-in for our return flight to LHR. When checking-in online Virgin were asking if we would be prepared to go on standby which we declined. When we got to MCO for our flight we returned the car with no issues and on checking-in at the desk UC passengers were being offered complimentary Upper Class return flights anywhere on Virgin’s network if they were prepared to fly the following day. I was tempted as Virgin would have paid for food and accommodation for 24 hours too but we had some things we needed to get home for. I didn’t see any takers and the Upper Class cabin was full on the flight but I noticed one of the seats was out of action so that may have been the reason. I thought it was good that Virgin were being proactive about this and not just trying to force downgrade / bump people at the airport.
TSA-Pre got us through security reasonably quickly and on to the lounge, Virgin use the Delta Sky Club which was fine for a couple of hours. All good on the return flight and after a quick meal managed to get a bit of sleep followed by breakfast. Arrival at LHR was smooth with priority baggage working so that our cases were on the belt already having got through passport control.
We didn’t use the arrivals lounge at LHR so it was a quick walk to the car and a 3 hour drive home. Mrs MoK and I have had the conversation about future US trips given the cuts to funding of the National Parks in particular – we have a trip planned for November to visit some of the National Parks in Arizona and Utah so it will be interesting to see what effect the cuts have had. We don’t generally discuss US politics when we are there but on this trip a couple of people wanted to engage to apologise for what’s going on there and they wouldn’t blame people if they stopped going.
Happy Travels!
We also flew into MCO last week and left the next morning (having indulged too much to drive, as planned in UC!) Currently in Bimini, Bahamas, though I do want to visit the Gulf coast at some point as lots of people rave about it. We had the obligatory trip to the mall in Fort Lauderdale to buy clothes, gifts, and bumper tubs of pain meds 😂
Virgin do seem more generous than most with compensation for voluntary bumping or downgrading, and other issues. My tray table would only come out half way in UC – it wasn’t a problem at all but the cabin manager immediately and proactively said she would put in a report and get me some points.
Lol, if people stopped travelling because of dodgy governments, forums like this wouldn’t exist!
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