Landing at Orlando International Airport

What MCO is like

Orlando is an airport where most passengers travel as a family, with big cases and a pushchair, and the arrivals hall moves at a visibly slower rhythm than a business airport. Short automated trains carry you from the gate concourses to the central building where the bags come out, and a newer terminal has been added in recent years. What sets this place apart is that almost nobody's destination is the city itself: the crowd is heading for the cluster of parks out to the south-west. That drive, and everything after it, is run from a phone.

On arrival

International flights here come from Europe as well as Latin America. Turn the line on at landing and follow the signs onto the automated train that takes you to the central building. Immigration comes before the baggage belts, and the queue lengthens in the afternoon when several flights land together. The thing to settle before you leave the building is how you are reaching the hotel, because the options split between a rental car, a hotel shuttle and an app-booked car, and each one boards somewhere different. Make the airport signage and the app agree before you walk children and cases across the terminal.

How far the airport Wi-Fi gets you

Wi-Fi here is free after the usual sign-in page with an advertisement, and portioned out in sessions like everywhere else in the country. The particular problem at this airport is that one family arrives with several devices, parents' phones and children's tablets alike, and each one has to go through its own sign-in. By the time they are all connected, the bags have arrived. The parks have their own Wi-Fi too, but it is slowest exactly when the crowd is thickest, which is the moment you are trying to book a ride slot.

Getting into town

Most people leave by road: a rental collected on airport grounds, a hotel shuttle, or a car ordered in an app. The run out to the hotel cluster near the parks takes around half an hour when it flows, along a straight expressway with steady signal the whole way. A longer-distance rail service also links this airport with the coastal cities to the south-east of the state, so check the airport signage for which side of the building the station is on. On a trip like this, data use actually climbs after you leave the airport, because a full day in a park means the in-app map, ride reservations, and photographs going home to relatives all day long.

What people ask about this airport

• Devices outnumber patience — Every device in the family has to pass its own sign-in page, so one mobile line shared out is far quicker.
• Settle the hotel ride first — Rentals, hotel shuttles and app cars all board in different places, so decide while you are still inside.
• The parks use the data — A full day in a park uses more than people expect, with the map open, slots booked and photos sent all day.