Things To Do In SW Florida

DEAR TRAVEL TROUBLESHOOTER: I prepaid for two nights in a hotel through Booking.com. But when I arrived, an employee said their confirmation system was down, and there was no record of the reservation or an ability to accept any reservations from Booking.com. So, I was unable to use this reservation.

I immediately contacted Booking.com and asked for a refund. The company asked for information about my reservation, which I sent. It’s been weeks since I asked for my money back, and I’ve repeatedly asked Booking.com about my refund. No one is answering. Can you help me get my $125 back?

— Justin Baribeau, Wickliffe, Ohio

ANSWER: You should have received an immediate refund from Booking.com — not a runaround.

I checked with Booking.com, and it says it experienced a system error when you tried to check in. This means that the hotel couldn’t see your reservation and couldn’t accept any new reservations from Booking.com, so calling the company and asking it to help wouldn’t have worked. read more

The landlord who sued TGI Fridays last year to evict the restaurant from its Mall at Millenia location will tear down the building and bring in a new tenant.

Cameron Group Associates, which owns about a dozen retail parcels around to the mall, received a demolition permit for the restaurant building at 4151 Millenia Blvd, according to a report in GrowthSpotter. The landlord evicted the TGI Fridays franchisee, Orlando Restaurants Inc., in October for nonpayment around the same time the chain’s parent company filed for Chapter 11 reorganization.

The company auctioned off the restaurant’s fixtures and equipment, and buyers were at the property last week removing everything from booths to light fixtures.

Cameron Group, a partnership led by real estate investors Frank and Steven Schrimsher, restauranteur John Rife and Shutts & Bowen attorney Jim Willard, declined to identify the new tenant. But the partnership has leased the 1.85-acre parcel to an affiliate of auto magnate Terry Taylor, who currently owns and operates the Infinity and Aston Martin/Lotus/Moke dealerships next door. Taylor, a Palm Beach billionaire, owns 120 dealerships across the U.S., including four in Orlando: Porsche, Jaguar/Land Rover, and Lincoln Mercury, in addition to the Millenia complex. read more

Winter storms that blasted the Northeast and South in recent weeks — causing flight delays and cancellations around the country — led to slightly fewer passengers flying out of the Orlando International Airport this holiday season compared to the previous one.

The airport — known by its code MCO — saw more than 1.4 million passengers fly out of the airfield between Dec. 20 and Jan. 5, what officials consider the “holiday period.”

That’s 6,802 fewer flyers than the previous holiday period that saw just over 1.44 million passengers, according to statistics provided to the Orlando Sentinel by MCO.

Before the recent storms, officials were forecasting 14,416 more passengers this holiday season than last because of high travel demand and low airfares into and out of Orlando.

Still, the airport was crowded during the holidays. The single busiest day for departures this season was Jan. 4, when 100,208 passengers took to the skies out of Orlando.

That was the second busiest day on record at MCO, said Angela Starke, an airport spokesperson. read more

Blue Origin pushed again its planned debut launch of its New Glenn rocket from the Space Coast now targeting an early Monday morning liftoff.

The 321-foot-tall rocket making its debut on the NG-1 mission is targeting a three-hour window from 1-4 a.m. Monday for liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Launch Complex 36.

It had been targeting an early Sunday launch, but the company called that off noting poor weather in the Atlantic where it intends to try a booster recovery after launch, similar to how SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket boosters make their landing. Blue Origin had already delayed its original early Thursday launch target this week because of high seas.

Space Launch Delta 45’s weather squadron forecasts a 90% chance for good launch conditions in Cape Canaveral at the opening of the Monday window coupled with low chances for poor recovery weather in the Atlantic.

Leave before launch pic.twitter.com/ME7yGzo5HA

— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) January 10, 2025

Billionaire and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos created Blue Origin back in 2000, but has to date only launched the smaller suborbital New Shepard rockets from its facilities in West Texas. read more

By KELVIN CHAN, Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — The new year is always a good time to make a fresh start — including with your email inbox. To kick off 2025 with a clean slate, why not clear out all those unnecessary and unwanted messages?

If you’re anything like me, you’ll have piles of messages that have been accumulating in your inbox: receipts, bank and credit card statements, mobile phone bills, plane tickets, restaurant bookings, reminders, security warnings, spam and more.

Mixed in with all that administrative detritus might be some personal missives from friends and family that are worth keeping.