Ruthie25
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Mar 6, 2004
- Messages
- 105
After a slightly stressful night before we woke at our usual time of 6am, and for a change both lept out of bed, more excited about going on holiday than going to work. Funny that, eh? (No photos today I'm afraid, so will add some random ones in for colour )
By 6.40 we were on our way to Manchester Airport, a fairly straight forward route of Motorways practically the whole way (M53/56) and despite hitting slow traffic in the narrow lanes east of the M6 we still made good time, and our Meet and Greet parking man met us at 7.30am in front of Departures. The parking was only £2 dearer than the cheapest off site parking, and was so much less stressful, thoroughly recommend it.
So off to Virgin to drop off our luggage. We were accosted by a lady offering us upgrades.. including only £50 each for seats in the bubble, it's like it's own special class, you'll be spoilt.... I pointed out that we had been booked there, but had been moved. Oh but these are extra leg room seats. Needless to say we were not impressed. Moving to the luggage drop line (which was empty) we discussed with the man allocating us to desks how dis-chuffed we were. He explained that there was a low load on the flight, and so 13 people had been moved from the bubble... including us. I asked if there was a chance that we could change our seats so that we had a better chance of having a spare seat next to us....... no problem, he arranged from us to have the window and aisle seats of row 34, only 4 rows back from our previously allocated seats, with nobody betweens us. Bonus! Well, you don't ask, you don't get!
We managed to get through security with no issues, and in to departures to run the normal gauntlet of Duty Free, expensive food and the promise of Win a luxury car from the most bored-sounding Mancunian I have ever heard. All of this by 8am, not bad progress!One bacon buttie, lots of wandering and a new top later, we arrived at our gate to find lots of cheer leading groups waiting to board. My heart sank...but I have to say they seems well behaved, and were sat well away from us on the flight, so no problems at all.
The flight itself was straight forward enough, we were indeed surrounded by empty seats which were soon filled with people expanding their personal domain. DH and I made the most of our in flight entertainment.. well, I watched 3 or 4 films, Richard stayed pretty much glued to the flight map... he isn't the best flyer, but finds it reassuring to know our location and altitude. (The first time we ever flew together was on our honeymoon........ I thought he was sick of me already as he went really quiet!)
On arrival at MCO we were off the flight pretty sharpish, and had perhaps a 30 minute at immigration. Apart from confusing the officer when he thought we said we were doing a Transatlantic cruise to Boston (instead of Barcelona), it was all straight forward, and soon we had collected our bags and were on to the famed fake monorail. We eventually hooked up for our shared shuttle ride (long story, all three couples on the shuttle went to the same place in the terminal, all wrong, but apparently there was nothing wrong with the meeting instructions. Really?!) and soon we were on our way to our hotel. We were both exhausted and grumpy after the long day, and we were glad to not have a car to pick up and drive.
The travel agents who had packaged our flight and cruise had booked us in to the Rosen Inn International, and it couldn't have been better located for us, in terms of proximity to restaurants, and for access to the I4. The room itself was fine, with a lovely big king size bed, kitchenette with coffee maker, microwave and fridge, and a bathroom painted a lovely shade of banana yellow,
but at least it was clean!
After a quick bath/shower, we headed out to explore the local area in real life, having already done it extensively on Google Streetview. We were surprised to find that the Hertz office we were to pick the car up from the following day was in fact a little kiosk outside a sightly dodgy looking gift shop.. but hey ho! We decided on Perkins for dinner, and enjoyed this very much, don't have a clue what we had but I know that we were already wilting slightly in the heat and appreciated the free refills on the soft drinks.
Heading back to our room, where we lasted until about 9pm before we admitted defeat, and soon were fast asleep.
By 6.40 we were on our way to Manchester Airport, a fairly straight forward route of Motorways practically the whole way (M53/56) and despite hitting slow traffic in the narrow lanes east of the M6 we still made good time, and our Meet and Greet parking man met us at 7.30am in front of Departures. The parking was only £2 dearer than the cheapest off site parking, and was so much less stressful, thoroughly recommend it.
So off to Virgin to drop off our luggage. We were accosted by a lady offering us upgrades.. including only £50 each for seats in the bubble, it's like it's own special class, you'll be spoilt.... I pointed out that we had been booked there, but had been moved. Oh but these are extra leg room seats. Needless to say we were not impressed. Moving to the luggage drop line (which was empty) we discussed with the man allocating us to desks how dis-chuffed we were. He explained that there was a low load on the flight, and so 13 people had been moved from the bubble... including us. I asked if there was a chance that we could change our seats so that we had a better chance of having a spare seat next to us....... no problem, he arranged from us to have the window and aisle seats of row 34, only 4 rows back from our previously allocated seats, with nobody betweens us. Bonus! Well, you don't ask, you don't get!
We managed to get through security with no issues, and in to departures to run the normal gauntlet of Duty Free, expensive food and the promise of Win a luxury car from the most bored-sounding Mancunian I have ever heard. All of this by 8am, not bad progress!One bacon buttie, lots of wandering and a new top later, we arrived at our gate to find lots of cheer leading groups waiting to board. My heart sank...but I have to say they seems well behaved, and were sat well away from us on the flight, so no problems at all.
The flight itself was straight forward enough, we were indeed surrounded by empty seats which were soon filled with people expanding their personal domain. DH and I made the most of our in flight entertainment.. well, I watched 3 or 4 films, Richard stayed pretty much glued to the flight map... he isn't the best flyer, but finds it reassuring to know our location and altitude. (The first time we ever flew together was on our honeymoon........ I thought he was sick of me already as he went really quiet!)
On arrival at MCO we were off the flight pretty sharpish, and had perhaps a 30 minute at immigration. Apart from confusing the officer when he thought we said we were doing a Transatlantic cruise to Boston (instead of Barcelona), it was all straight forward, and soon we had collected our bags and were on to the famed fake monorail. We eventually hooked up for our shared shuttle ride (long story, all three couples on the shuttle went to the same place in the terminal, all wrong, but apparently there was nothing wrong with the meeting instructions. Really?!) and soon we were on our way to our hotel. We were both exhausted and grumpy after the long day, and we were glad to not have a car to pick up and drive.
The travel agents who had packaged our flight and cruise had booked us in to the Rosen Inn International, and it couldn't have been better located for us, in terms of proximity to restaurants, and for access to the I4. The room itself was fine, with a lovely big king size bed, kitchenette with coffee maker, microwave and fridge, and a bathroom painted a lovely shade of banana yellow,
but at least it was clean! After a quick bath/shower, we headed out to explore the local area in real life, having already done it extensively on Google Streetview. We were surprised to find that the Hertz office we were to pick the car up from the following day was in fact a little kiosk outside a sightly dodgy looking gift shop.. but hey ho! We decided on Perkins for dinner, and enjoyed this very much, don't have a clue what we had but I know that we were already wilting slightly in the heat and appreciated the free refills on the soft drinks.
Heading back to our room, where we lasted until about 9pm before we admitted defeat, and soon were fast asleep.
