Visit Orlando was instrumental in helping juggle
logistics for the Chevrolet Orlando Summer
Road Trip Adventure from Toronto to Orlando and back!
By Lisa Calvi, Postmedia News - Chase vehicle in position at the Buffalo, N.Y. border. Check. Advance vehicle in St. Catharines, Ont., motel waiting to leap frog. Chevk. Customs documents, passports. Check. Seven Chevrolet Orlando drivers briefed and packed with bathing suits, Mickey Mouse ears and empty shopping bags. Check. Sweet, sleepy children roused and nestled in back seats. Check. (Well, maybe not so sweet at 6 a.m. on a Monday morning, almost at the end of summer.)
It's the start of the Chevrolet Orlando Summer Road Trip Adventure and seven blogging and tweeting families are heading to ... where else? Orlando, Fla! The aim: Put the Chevrolet Orlando vehicles through their paces. And these families will surely do that with a two-and-a-half day marathon drive from Toronto to Florida.
Hope no one barfs.
Since the Orlando can hold up to seven passengers and still have gear in the back, it's a good, solid contender in the category of multi-purpose family vehicles. Its short wheelbase ensures it's easy to manoeuvre and great on gas. There's a healthy supply of comfort features and it's loadd with all the safety features you'd expect from a Chevrolet.
So far, as the organizers, husband Garry Sowerby and I, have planned a 2,155-kilometre drive route (southbound and northbound), found cool overnight stops in Sutton, W. Va., and Savannah, Ga., selected a blitz of Orlando options with the help of VisitOrlando and booked seven vacation homes (through All-Star Vacation Homes) in Kissimmee, close to all the action but with room to spread out for each of the excited families.
Now it's time to put the plan into practive. Dawn in St. Catharines and I'm ready to go at 5 a.m., itching to get on the road. Garry's already ahead waiting to hear that all of the families have made it through the border at Buffalo. I'll be leapfrogging Garry, trying to stay ahead of the group and arrive first at the overnight stop in Sutton, the lovely Café Cimino Country Inn where owners Tim and Melody Urbanic have perfected the art of 'southern hospitality'.
I muse to myself that a stop at the Premium Outlet Stores in Grove City, Pa., is well-deserved, but who am I kidding? I've got to keep moving. With over 2,000 kilometres to cover in less than three days, everyone is focused on getting there. Outlet shopping will have to wait.
Our motley crew includes 16 adults, 14 children (ranging in age from 23 months to 12 years), two teens, 14 iPads loaded with Disney movies, seven 'mi-fi' units that allow mobile connection to the Internet while we're rolling, maps, road atlases, and countless personal devices that have become family necessities on long road trips.
The trip is being recounted online in real time in 140-character snippets of conversations with photos attached on the onmipresent Twitter, so although the seven families in their seven vehicles are on their own, there is a sense that we are travelling in convoy as we keep up on everyone's progress from the lead vehicle, using Twitter 'hash tag' #ChevyOrlando.
We go deeper south into the United States of America, winding our way through the Appalachians in West Virginia and Virginia, almost floating down from dizzying heights into the flats of North Carolina in the soft light of the early morning of Day 2.
We're in the thick of Road Trip now. Roadside Americiana, Cracker Barrel Restaurants, over the longest steel span in the Western Hemisphere, the breathtakingly high New River Gorge Bridge, in West Virginia.
Every stop at service stations and rest areas brings at least one "What the heck is that?" from curious Americans who have never seen an Orlando and probably won't any time soon since there are no plans to market the Orlando south of the border.
Our second night on the road is in sultry Savannah, Ga., at the AVIA Hotel on fun and funky Ellis Square, steps from the riverfront, the CityWalk and from the store and restaurant of Food Network maven Paula Deen.
Absolutely no calories were harmed in the making of dinner, with the gang at Paula's famour BBQ and buffet, The Lady and Sons.
Everyone is excited about the next day's arrival in Orlando. Who will have the first Orlando in Orlando? The kids want to know what our vacation houses are like. Will they get to meet Cinderella? Harry Potter? Spider-Man?
There have been many driving directions, crumpled-up maps, wrong turns, and even a couple of encounters with state troopers. There have been details, addresses, navigation questions, tears, cries of "are we there yet?" and "do you really know where you're going?"
But finally, all the Orlandos make it to Orlando and arrive at Acadia Estates Court, where we take over the neighbourhood.
Up at 6 a.m. the next morning, out into the humid stickiness of Central Florida, Garry and I creep around the neighbourhood while our seven families are soundly asleep.
We've got spare keys to all of the Orlandos and want to top up their fuel, clean the bugs off the windshields before they head off on their day's adventures.
We manage to get everyone's Orlando tidied up, fuelled and ready to whisk the gang off on a magical day. As the convoy pulls out, we stand and wave wistfully in our driveway as if our children are heading off to college.
One last instruction from Garry sets everyone laughing: Don't throw up!
It's the start of the Chevrolet Orlando Summer Road Trip Adventure and seven blogging and tweeting families are heading to ... where else? Orlando, Fla! The aim: Put the Chevrolet Orlando vehicles through their paces. And these families will surely do that with a two-and-a-half day marathon drive from Toronto to Florida.
Hope no one barfs.
Since the Orlando can hold up to seven passengers and still have gear in the back, it's a good, solid contender in the category of multi-purpose family vehicles. Its short wheelbase ensures it's easy to manoeuvre and great on gas. There's a healthy supply of comfort features and it's loadd with all the safety features you'd expect from a Chevrolet.
So far, as the organizers, husband Garry Sowerby and I, have planned a 2,155-kilometre drive route (southbound and northbound), found cool overnight stops in Sutton, W. Va., and Savannah, Ga., selected a blitz of Orlando options with the help of VisitOrlando and booked seven vacation homes (through All-Star Vacation Homes) in Kissimmee, close to all the action but with room to spread out for each of the excited families.
Now it's time to put the plan into practive. Dawn in St. Catharines and I'm ready to go at 5 a.m., itching to get on the road. Garry's already ahead waiting to hear that all of the families have made it through the border at Buffalo. I'll be leapfrogging Garry, trying to stay ahead of the group and arrive first at the overnight stop in Sutton, the lovely Café Cimino Country Inn where owners Tim and Melody Urbanic have perfected the art of 'southern hospitality'.
I muse to myself that a stop at the Premium Outlet Stores in Grove City, Pa., is well-deserved, but who am I kidding? I've got to keep moving. With over 2,000 kilometres to cover in less than three days, everyone is focused on getting there. Outlet shopping will have to wait.
Our motley crew includes 16 adults, 14 children (ranging in age from 23 months to 12 years), two teens, 14 iPads loaded with Disney movies, seven 'mi-fi' units that allow mobile connection to the Internet while we're rolling, maps, road atlases, and countless personal devices that have become family necessities on long road trips.
The trip is being recounted online in real time in 140-character snippets of conversations with photos attached on the onmipresent Twitter, so although the seven families in their seven vehicles are on their own, there is a sense that we are travelling in convoy as we keep up on everyone's progress from the lead vehicle, using Twitter 'hash tag' #ChevyOrlando.
We go deeper south into the United States of America, winding our way through the Appalachians in West Virginia and Virginia, almost floating down from dizzying heights into the flats of North Carolina in the soft light of the early morning of Day 2.
We're in the thick of Road Trip now. Roadside Americiana, Cracker Barrel Restaurants, over the longest steel span in the Western Hemisphere, the breathtakingly high New River Gorge Bridge, in West Virginia.
Every stop at service stations and rest areas brings at least one "What the heck is that?" from curious Americans who have never seen an Orlando and probably won't any time soon since there are no plans to market the Orlando south of the border.
Our second night on the road is in sultry Savannah, Ga., at the AVIA Hotel on fun and funky Ellis Square, steps from the riverfront, the CityWalk and from the store and restaurant of Food Network maven Paula Deen.
Absolutely no calories were harmed in the making of dinner, with the gang at Paula's famour BBQ and buffet, The Lady and Sons.
Everyone is excited about the next day's arrival in Orlando. Who will have the first Orlando in Orlando? The kids want to know what our vacation houses are like. Will they get to meet Cinderella? Harry Potter? Spider-Man?
There have been many driving directions, crumpled-up maps, wrong turns, and even a couple of encounters with state troopers. There have been details, addresses, navigation questions, tears, cries of "are we there yet?" and "do you really know where you're going?"
But finally, all the Orlandos make it to Orlando and arrive at Acadia Estates Court, where we take over the neighbourhood.
Up at 6 a.m. the next morning, out into the humid stickiness of Central Florida, Garry and I creep around the neighbourhood while our seven families are soundly asleep.
We've got spare keys to all of the Orlandos and want to top up their fuel, clean the bugs off the windshields before they head off on their day's adventures.
We manage to get everyone's Orlando tidied up, fuelled and ready to whisk the gang off on a magical day. As the convoy pulls out, we stand and wave wistfully in our driveway as if our children are heading off to college.
One last instruction from Garry sets everyone laughing: Don't throw up!
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