Some USEFUL advice
I have written about the Orlando Visitor Toll Pass in recent posts Orlando Sunshine Pass and Orlando Airport – Visitor Toll Pass that allow UK (and any overseas visitors) to use the Florida toll system like a local.
For some reason the Visitor Toll Pass is only available from ORLANDO (MCO) but you should consider using it.
More about that later though. It has been at least 25 years since I flew into MCO and boy has it blossomed into a monster sized airport. To be honest I was taken aback about how poor the experience was considering the immaculate environment of this reasonably new terminal.
Unusually the flight route did not include the eastern seaboard cities and literally flew across the Atlantic Ocean. The flight arrived exactly on schedule at 18:00 but in fact was delayed because of having to avoid a thunder storm with a very wide flight path. I watched the landing gear front wheels deploy from the camera from the belly of the plane and then the runway came into view as well as the enormous taxi route that took 20 minutes to the gate.
Due to the storm and a threat of lightning near the airport there was a delay with the air bridge being moved into place to allow disembarkation and just at the time passengers were starting to return to their seats the air bridge was attached.
Virgin Atlantic must be paying minimum rates to park at the furthest gate at Terminal C from passport control and baggage collection. I must have been walking for about 20 minutes to find carousel 5. Bags have to be collected first before joining the lines at Border Security.
There were 4 other flights using carousel 5 and it seemed like we had all arrived at the same time. All these people probably needed to collect cars as well. It was becoming stressful! Nothing was happening and there were no announcements. Customers started getting frustrated and after about 40 minutes the belt started, then it stopped again. Cutting this story short one bag bashfully slid down the belt and unbelievably there was a wait of 90 minutes for the second bag to join us. I was just at the point of reporting the bag missing. When there were announcements they were difficult to understand and not loud enough.
Conversations were overheard of previous days bags being delivered by Virgin Atlantic to customers accommodations because the bags were not handled for nearly 5 hours. Make use of the MPC Mobile Passport Control App and when WiFi is available on landing simply take pictures of your party and then use the MPC line which is monitored by staff to move arrivals more efficiently through the process.
To be honest the line at the Dollar desk wasn’t too bad and I asked the Virgin Atlantic representative where the Visitor Pass vending machines were located. Once they had been pointed out it was very easy to collect the tag and once the car had been signed for the licence plate could be added to the toll pass via the app.
All in all from landing to exiting the airport was nearly 3 hours.
The Orlando Visitor Toll Pass is not offered by the rental car desks but only by downloading the APP at Visitor Toll Pass. Dollar (for example) charge $15 per day not including toll fees to use their transponders. It maxes out at about $90. So if nothing else by having the visitor pass for only a $10 deposit to encourage users to return the tag at the end of their trips you use the roads like a local. The passes are simply returned at the same vending machines that you collect from and posted into the slot under the word Return.
USA Road Trips by Max 