I wasn't so much the visit in Orlando -- it was you using a Greyhound bus, which put you in the "possible illegal immigrant/poor person to abuse" category in the eyes of the cop.
They'd be much less likely to stop and ask you anything if you were just driving there yourself, or merely walking around Orlando.
If you're coming over to work in a knowledge field like tech that's less of an issue, pretty much all of those jobs have decent levels of vacation. This year (my 4th year at the company) I have 31 days off (26 base + 5 rolled over from last year) not counting bank holidays and that's going up again when I hit 5 years.
The portrait of the US as a PTO-less hellscape is very true for retail/sales/blue collar workers but the situation is better in many fields.
Meaning we view other countries through their most disadvantaged and genuinely believe that that could be us one day. If America treats their poorest badly, we believe they'd treat us badly if we ever had a bad run of luck.
The UK used to be a country of strong social safety nets, I'm not sure what it is today -- I don't recognise it (without getting overly political).
My first tech job had 2 weeks vacation, 2 weeks sick leave. Next 2 where 16 days total comp bumped to 18 + 2 floating holidays.
UK has a legal minimum of 28 days off, but as with any minimum many are significantly higher.
The loss of sick days also tends to get people to show up to work sick which is terrible downside IMO.
True though we're 90% hot/hotel seating now so pretty much everyone is setup to work from home if they're sick-ish and don't want to use a day.
Somebody posted about how medieval peasants had way more days off than us today - but it turns out it was about equal, considering everything.
The other half of the US equation is many people don't take their full vacation days either though direct pressure or informal social norms. Working weekends are also very common.
Every 5 years you get an additional month off for that year.
But, as it happens, I have been asked for my passport by British authorities on a train ride once in the early 2000s. Presumably if I’d had a British accent they wouldn’t have expected me to have a passport on my person.
I suspect both of us experienced relatively rare events!
It's embarrassing, and I'm questioned all those days in grade school I repeated the Pleadge of Allegiance.
If I had a do over; I would have high tailed it to Europe, or Canada in my twenties.
[edit] My brother moved to Orlando a few years ago, and I love visiting for the weather and Theme parks. I took a greyhound bus from Tampa one day and an immigration officer came on the bus and aggressively demanded to inspect my passport. Pretty crazy. I've never been randomly forced to prove I'm allowed to be in the UK in the nearly 40 years I've lived here. Yet, a few short stays in Orlando and I experience that.