I agree with onlyholly - we've been flying Virgin for the last 5 years. Our recent trip to St Lucia was also flying Virgin and we were very lucky indeed to be upgraded for free (from PE) to Upper Class. This was a huge experience - thank you Virgin - but we all agreed that we wouldn't pay the £2500 extra of our own money for it. That said, I'd not turn it down again - the differences were amazing.
The "goody bags" - both the amenity kits and the KiD bags - have reduced contents even from a couple of years ago. On the St Lucia route not much at all in DDs bag (we've so many of these backpacks we gave Katies to our housekeeper in St Lucia - she thought it was marvellous for her children so pleased about that). No sweeties, but one of their coloured pencil thingies and a book for 5 year olds (DD's 10 with a reading age of 14 . . . she conquered that book in an hour, but actually it was a good book for younger little uns). The best part for her was the Virgin kids activity book which did keep her amused. It had the usual red baseball cap and a rubic's cube keyring.
Never particularly wanted to take one of their blankets, but in Upper Class you got a duvet and 'proper' pillow . . . now I think they might have noticed me trying to stuff those little beauties in my hand luggage
.
When we flew Cathay Pacific to Hong Kong and then on to the Philippines, the kids freebies were superb - all Winnie the Pooh branded stuff, excellent quality and we're still using loads of the bags now for swimming, beach etc. Beat Virgin's stuff hands down.
Still, at the end of the day, as long as the plane gets me there in the best possible comfort and safety, that's really all I'm interested in - the freebies etc are a nice extra (one thing I was disappointed in Upper Class - no lip salve - I live on Virgin Vie's little pots of lip salve all year
).
