Id set the alarm for 6.15 but I neednt have bothered, we were wide awake!
I think this sums up how we both felt
We tried a little snooze but we were both up and ready to go by 7am. I called meteor so they could come and get the car. We had arranged for them to pick it up from bewleys carpark instead of the airport to save repacking the suitcases back into the car to drive less than a mile to departures!
Unfortunately they were busy that morning and couldnt get to us any earlier than the 7.30 time Id booked, although they did say they would try their best!
7.30, that rang a bell
ah yes thats when we are getting the hotel shuttle, marvelous!
Adam went down to reception to see if we could move the shuttle pickup to a little later but apparently they had 4 shuttles coming at around 7.30 so we should still be able to get on one.
At 7.15 we made our way down to reception to wait, one shuttle came and went
At 7.25 meteor arrived and we handed over the keys before jumping on the second shuttle, phew made it!
The airport was very quiet, the virgin desks were dead so we made the silly walk, zig zagging through the empty queue line to the front.
Bags were weighed and handed over (one was only 2kg off the limit EEK!) and we were let loose into security, again very quiet.
As usual Adam was stopped for an additional bag search. They say this is random but he is stopped EVERY TIME. We cant decide if its his strange foreign surname or his dark features that do it!
We ignored all duty free and made our way up the stairs to the airport lounges, we were off to experience the v-room!
Well we thought we were, until we saw this..
Yep, shut
we were just a tad to eager, it didnt open until 8am!
######. Not wanting to be the annoying people you sometimes get starring down the staff to open up early we headed back down to mingle with the commoners for 10 minutes.
10 minutes, what to do for 10 minutes
.
I left Adam with the bags and went SHOPPING of course!
I was very restrained though. I only bought an eyeshadow from MAC, Virgin made me do it you see
As I walked back to Adam I noticed the booze sampling, which triggered a niggling what have I forgotten thought
.
MY DRIVING LICENSE.
Id left it at home, ARGH! There goes my drinking dream unless I carry my passport then, booooo!
By the time I got back to Adam and told him my bad news it was time to try the v-room again.
Still closed! It was definitely 8am now, LET ME IN!
FINALLY we were allowed through. The first in, boy were we eager!
We had the pick of any seat in the house but for some reason I choose to ignore the nice bar area
and plonked us down by the window near the gaming area and soft play.
I settled myself and noticed Adam had already headed off to the hot plates. Nothing keeps my hubby away from food, especially if its free!
I decided to check out the cold plates first.
They had some cute little popcorn cones and crispy cakes (I had both later and they were yummy!)
fruit and yogurt
I grabbed some fruit and a smoothie and then headed for the hot food as well.
They had a nice selection, the usual, beans on toast, sausage sandwich. I decided on the jet set breakfast plate
I didnt realize but they also had beans and toast so I really should have grabbed some of those as well. It wasnt the same without beans ☹
I also grabbed a pastry for dessert
It was a pleasant breakfast, definitely on par with what we would have had at Frankie and Bennys. If you really wanted to you could have had seconds but with the nerves setting in I couldnt manage anything else.
After filling up on the freebies we headed over to this:
While most of the kids were busy on the soft play we couldnt resist something a little more retro
I think its safe to say that Adam won by a fairly wide margin
but I let him win, honest!
We did check out the other gaming consoles and the rather cool kinect/wii room they had, but we kept coming back to the fuzzball table. I did get a little better, but I was still beaten everytime, on purpose of course!
Its amazing how exhausting fuzzball is, I was exhausted, so I headed back to the table and blogged for a bit. Over the last few months Id seen lots of people boasting that they were in the v room at the start of a wonderful holiday, while usually I was sat at work, so I was determined I was going to be one of those people
We also looked over the cocktail menu, it seemed very reasonable and it was cocktail oclock SOMEWHERE in the world rather then 9am right?
HAPPY COCKTAIL OCLOCK! We grabbed a cocktail each.
Mine was sparkling wine with orange liquor and Adams was I think vodka, orange and cranberry juice.
They were £3.50ish each, which I didnt think, was bad! Mine was very strong, I was getting squiffy near the end!
It was now an hour before boarding so we spent the time watching the news, reading the complimentary magazines and finishing our drinks.
I also asked the holiday reps if they would photocopy my passport, thinking that might come in useful, which they did which I thought was nice of them ☺
When it was time to leave the rep gave me another magazine to take with me and we headed to the gate.
We had ordered extra legroom seats so we were towards the rear of the plane so had to wait a while to board, but we did eventually make it and I was able to grab the last complimentary copy of wallpaper* before we boarded, today was a good day!
We found the usual array of goodies on our seat, which was a surprise. I thought we had to ask for blankets now, apparently not!
We also had the new entertainment system, which looked very swanky!
I had a quick scan through the options, nothing had caught my eye on the virgin website but I was pleased to see the first episode of smash season 2 on there, that was added to the save for later list alongside Wreck it Ralph and Anna Karenina.
We were on our way, finally. I was one happy lady.
see, happy ;P
I wont bore you any further with the events of the next 9 hours, we watched our favourite lists, we ate food (sausage for me, curry for adam) and I snoozed. I will however share some observations
Extra legroom seats are worth it VERY worth it. I paid £25 extra each and the extra room made sleeping easy and the 9 hours generally more relaxing. We had the first row behind the exit row seats and felt we had plenty of space.
Extra legroom seats are not well positioned The big negative, they are near the rear of the plane which means youre last on, last off and fed and watered last to. I felt we waited an age for everything.
EXIT row seats are wasted on the never satisfied The woman in front in the exit row seats complained the whole time. She clearly had expectations of upper class but not the funds to cover it. She had a hostess run ragged by the end of it! She had everything she could possibly want on a flight
SPACE, what more did she want! ;P
Flying is scary The woman across the aisle from us spent the whole flight wearing sunglasses and in tears for the whole 9 hours. On take off I thought she was going to pull the armrest off she was gripping so tightly. Still, kudos to her for suffering something that so clearly terrified her in order to take her kids to Disney!
Finally we landed, everyone jumped up eager to get going
. But nobody moved
for AGES.
FINALLY the cabin manager came over the tannoy with an announcement.
We apologise for the delay, we have been asked by ground staff to remain onboard as the customs hall is currently full
GREEEEAAAAAAT
.
The holiday gods must have been in a forgiving mood today though as soon another message was delivered, this time by the captain.
Just a few more minutes and then we can start to disembark, the customer staff are just changing over and then we should get the go ahead from ground control
Being at the back of the plane did not give us much of an advantage for what we were about to enter. We emptied into the customer hall, fearing the worst
NOTHING. Dead. Our flight was clearly entering an empty hall, we must have been held for the staff changeover only and not because it was full, hurrah!
I definitely prefer the new queuing in one line setup, its less of a free for all, and less annoying than when you realized youve entered the slowest queue.
We must have only waited 30 minutes and we were entertained by the family in front. Their young daughter kept looking at Adams face and breaking into a fit of giggles and gurgles. To be fair, I fine his face hilarious most of the time to. She was super cute.
Finally we made it into a smaller queue for a customs desk, guess who was in front? EXIT ROW WOMAN!
She took AGES! Turns out her family were spread out in the queue in front and behind us and she had everyones documentation. This was clearly customs fault and she made a big show of having to pass the document back and forth between them. Why not get in line together, as a group, stupid woman.
FINALLY we were through, gave everything but a stool sample to the cheery customs lady and then we were off to pickup the bags. Because of the customers saga there was no waiting so we were soon though and on the monorail to the main terminals.
I knew we had to pickup our discovery cove tickets from the virgin desk before getting the magical express. The difficulty was that one was in terminal A and the other was in B so it was a bit of a trek.
First, to get the tickets. It took a while to find the desk, its very hidden away. We were given the discovery cove tickets, our universal early entry ticket and two happy potter keyrings, which were our free gift.
Tickets packed away it was back across the terminal to the B side and onto the magical express. We found this a lot easier, we were getting the hang of the levels we checked in and were directed to a bus. The bus was rather empty so I thought wed be waiting a while. However after a 5 minute wait we were on our way.
We were going HOME!
More coming in Part 2, its not over yet! If you made it through all that I salute you, its boring stuff but it has to be done for the sake of completeness It gets a lot more exciting and interesting I promise ;P
